Chapter Text
The cock crows gloriously most mornings.
George opens his eyes blearily. He lets out a heavy sigh, letting himself float for a moment on the warm sunlight filtering in through his thin curtains, on the drowsy remnants of sleep still clinging to him, on the light, unsteady feeling in his legs. He takes a moment to process what it is that’s making his whole lower half feel so shaky, face pressed into the warmth of the pillow, but the realisation quickly dawns on him that it’s happened again.
He rolls over onto his side, allowing a frustrated, sleepy groan to pass his lips as he notes the dampness of his underwear. He pulls back the covers to assess the damage - wet patch on the sheets as well as on the front of his pants - and groans again. Just his luck.
It’s been happening more frequently recently — he doesn’t know whether it’s the onset of summer heat or something else, but he’s waking up almost every morning to that warm sensation spreading through his crotch, quickly turning to a sticky mess. He can’t say it’s entirely unwelcome — it’s like it relieves something inside him — a tense coil in his stomach that’s desperate to unfurl. But the clean-up is tiresome, and he’s sure his mother is getting suspicious of his many early-morning laundry runs. He can’t explain it, and frankly, he doesn’t want to, especially not to her.
He lies on his back for a good minute, soaking in the early morning light, before it becomes impossible to ignore the sensation of damp fabric clinging to his legs and he heaves himself out of bed. He’s never sure what his body’s doing in the night when this happens, but his legs always ache a little afterwards. It makes working on the farm tiresome. There are scraps in his head of dreams - heat and bodies in ways that he’s never thought he could imagine them - that float to him throughout the day: when he’s feeding the horses, milking the cows, lifting hay, he’ll feel a sudden dangerous rush between his legs that makes him terrified he’ll make just as much of a mess of himself awake as he seems to be able to asleep. But it never happens, it’s only ever hints and small, persistent urges, and if he lets his mind drift to reel off his daily to-do list, the uncomfortable stiffness in his trousers usually dissipates without too much bother. He's left frustrated and unsatisfied, but he can't figure out another way to make it go away, so he recites his list of daily chores and is left unsated. That’s what he does now, as he dresses, pulling on a linen shirt and pale, cool trousers that he hopes will keep him somewhat from the sun.
It’s been searingly hot the past few days - summer is well on the way, and it’s taking them and their little farm with it. The slightly pink skin over his nose and cheekbones tingles under the heat of the sun coming through the window as he gathers up the soiled sheets and underwear and drags the shameful pile through to the bathroom, praying that he doesn’t run into his mother on the way. By the time he’s managed to scrub his sheets and underwear clean, he can hear her rattling about downstairs; he can’t very well take them down to hang up unless he has a perfectly good excuse for why he’s starting the day with laundry, so he drapes them over his cupboard door and prays to God she won’t go nosing around in his room. He’s 22, he should be entitled to some privacy.
Which isn’t to say he doesn’t love his mother more than anything - she raised him alone for most of his life. In the 16 years after his father went off to war and didn’t come back, it had been just them and their farm, and his mother has been the only constant. She’s part of the reason he’s still here: she’s alone apart from him, and she could never take care of the farm on her own. He just thinks that sometimes, she doesn’t realise that he’s grown up past the age of 12 and can take care of himself.
Well, somewhat.
“George!” calls his mother up the stairs, right on cue as usual. “Breakfast!”
He descends the stairs two at a time. The stove top is bubbling, the toaster humming, kitchen floor tiles warm as the day wakes up around them. The dog, Abel, circles their feet; he leans down to scratch between his black, pointy ears. Mother comes next: a kiss on the cheek and an awkward, half-sitting half-standing hug. He breathes a deep breath of the fresh morning air through the open door, looks out at the swaying fields of crops and grass. He thinks life really is almost perfect here on their little farm.
George likes the way most of the days look exactly the same. Wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast, tend the animals, stock the cart, go to town, sell their wares, go home, goodnight. He doesn’t like the way instances like this morning are fast becoming part of the daily routine, but he figures they can’t last long. Maybe it’s just because of the heat. That’s what he tells himself, anyway, as he sits down with a piece of toast and a cup of tea.
“Sleep well?” asks his mother, kind cornflower eyes looking at him over her bowl of porridge. He freezes instantly.
Does she know? Was that her way of hinting that she knows? Has she pieced together what all his early-morning sheet washing has been about? Oh God, oh God, she knows. He’s sure of it. His heart is racing. He feels like he’s going to explode.
“Yeah,” he says finally, then takes a bite of his toast. “Great.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” she scolds, standing up to put her dish in the sink and batting his shoulder on the way past. He offers a small smile; maybe he’d overreacted a tad.
“Warm out today,” she says as she rinses her dish, and George hums in agreement, focused on his tea, watching a beetle crawling over the gingham tablecloth. “Don’t you push yourself. I remember, I found your father, once, at the bottom of the cornfield. Out cold, he was. Had to carry him inside myself. He was burnt for a week, I’ll tell you. Oh! The things that man would do-”
“Mum,” he says, cutting her off with a look, really not in the mood to listen to this story again . She gives him a fond smile, and her cheeks turn a shade of pink; she’s always gushing stories about his father, and George can tell that even after all these years she’d still never dare to think of anybody but him. He was her one and only , and she’s always telling him so, telling him how lucky he’ll be when he finds a ‘one and only’ of his own. He tries not to think too much about it.
He sets his empty tea cup and his plate by the sink, thanking his mother for washing them, before taking his sunhat from the coatrack and settling it on his head. He leans down to scratch Abel’s ears one more time before stepping outside into the warm summer morning. The air smells sweet and full of opportunities, and he’s met with a surge of excitement as he thinks about warm, long nights, swimming in the river, eating ripe fruit from the trees. He walks a few paces away from the house, and then the urge to run hits him, and he can hardly help himself.
He flies through the fields, and he can’t help but laugh as he does. He’s not sure anything will ever feel as good as this; as being free and warm and surrounded by life. Right now the last thing on his mind is his list of chores, and his dreadful morning has been forgotten; he’s living for the way the long grass caresses his fingertips, how the hills crest and curve perfectly beneath his feet, as if they were made just for him to run over. He catches himself with one arm against the trunk of the old apple tree, laughing like a child as the adrenaline peters out. Bright fields sprawl out beneath him, and beyond them lay the roads, and somewhere along the roads lays the town, and then somewhere, far, far beyond the town, is the city.
The city is made of people who are not his type. They argue, they fight, they make messes and spend money. They wear suits and ties and live in tall, blocky houses. There’s no room to move, nowhere to hide, no space to breathe. He went to the city once as a child and vowed himself never to go back. Even the town, with its people kinder and significantly less busy, is exhausting if he stays there too long, but they can’t very well live without selling their wares at the weekend market. That’s what he’s preparing for today, and tomorrow he’ll gather up their wares, load them into the cart, and push it into town to set up their stall at the market.
They sell their crops — the berries are growing ripe and plump this time of year, the tomatoes and cucumbers weighting on their vines — and what they can get from their animals — eggs, milk, butter. Mother makes jam from the strawberries, when she’s feeling up to it, and the townspeople buy them out in seconds. George doesn’t blame them - his mother’s jam is insanely good.
When he’s come round from his moment of giddiness, he makes his way to the cow paddock, focusing on his list of chores in his head now. The sooner he can get them finished, the sooner he can go for a walk, or maybe a swim in the river.
“Hi, Bluebell,” he coos to the cow as he swings open the door to her paddock. She huffs at him in response, and he strokes her withers as an apology for disturbing what must have been a very hectic and busy morning, for a cow. He humours himself in thinking that she must have all sorts of important cow things to do; cow business to attend to and the like. He chuckles, if only to himself. Bluebell snorts impatiently again.
“Alright, alright! Calm down, love, it’s just me.”
Despite knowing that she can’t understand him, George takes comfort in talking to the cow. And not just to her, to all the animals. They’re his friends in the absence of any siblings or other farmhands. He’s not lonely, he likes it that way. He’s never been too great with people.
He hums a little tune to himself as he milks her, and when he’s done, feeds Bluebell some dandelions as a token of gratitude. She huffs and flicks her ear at him. He thinks it means thank you. He scratches her side as he unlocks the door to her paddock, letting her out to graze in the meadow.
“Have fun, girl,” he says to her quietly as she walks past him, and he pauses for just a moment, the milk pail at his feet, as he watches her saunter out and then lay down in the warm grass.
*
“Matthew!”
Matty groans loudly and rolls over in his bed, rubbing his sleepy eyes hard enough to see colour dance behind his closed eyelids.
“What?” he calls, his voice still thick and heavy with sleep. It’s his mother outside the door, waking him from his blissful slumber as usual, and he wants more than anything else to tell her that, just for one day, he’d really love to sloth about for as long as he feels like it.
“Get out of bed this instant, young man!” She calls, her voice far too loud and angry for — he sits up to check the clock — oh, 11:30 in the morning.
He rubs a bleary hand over his face, swinging his legs out of bed, noting that the other side of his bed is empty, despite two girls falling asleep there last night. It’s no more than acknowledgement; he didn’t even know their names. This happens all the time: he falls asleep with a girl, or two, or a boy, or a girl and a boy, or two boys, or — you get the idea — in his bed, and then he wakes up, and they’re gone, or going, or sometimes still clumsily redressing in the dark.
He pulls his t-shirt from last night over his head, thankful that he’d at least had the foresight to put on some underwear before he fell asleep, and, still foggy with sleep, opens the door to his mother. She’s seething, visibly seething, her face a stony mask of anger and disappointment. She folds her arms, trying to look very cross and intimidating.
“I have just had to explain to your brother why two women came walking through our kitchen. What do you have to say for yourself?”
Matty isn’t sure what to feel. Embarrassed, would be the normal person’s reaction, ashamed, maybe, but not Matty. A grin breaks on his face, and he shrugs nonchalantly.
“He’s got to learn about these things sometime, I suppose—”
“Matthew!” His mother shrieks again, her face turning red with his angry she is at him. Despite how cool and collected he can be sometimes, he genuinely is a bit scared of his mum, especially when she shouts.
She starts, and she doesn’t show signs of stopping; she shouts at him and shouts at him, and all he can do is stand there in his underwear and listen. The worst thing is that everything she says is true; he’s lazy, he’s decadent, and he’s rested on his laurels for too goddamn long. And she’s right, he’s been coasting by without a job or a purpose for quite some time now, leeching off his parents’ money, being a general bad influence on his brother, and drinking, smoking, and fucking in excess. He does blush then, a little shame twisting in his stomach, and he curses his mother for always being able to have this effect on him. She knows it, too, and when his cheeks turn red, her mouth curls into a smile.
“This conversation is not over,” she promises, jabbing a finger into his chest, and he holds up his hands in surrender. And then, she’s off, grumbling and shaking her head as she goes downstairs. He’s left watching her retreat, and then Louis appears at the bottom of the stairs, and he quickly ducks into his bedroom again to avoid having that conversation.
The rest of the day goes by without incident, until that evening, they’re all sat around the dinner table — his mother had insisted, quite harshly, that he stay for dinner, and he’d been too scared to defy her — and she pulls from seemingly nowhere a letter, neatly folded and written in perfect script. She hands it to him.
“Give this a read, Matthew,” she says, almost sickeningly sweetly, “Just see what you think.”
Dear Mrs. Daniel, begins the letter. Matty reads it with increasing horror, as his mother details in the letter all of his overindulgences in all their glory, to a woman who he doesn’t even know. The final paragraph asks if he could possibly come and spend the summer working on her farm. His mother ends the letter with, I’m sure both of our boys could learn a thing or two from it.
He puts the letter down in disbelief. His parents are looking at each other almost smugly. He’s lost for words, for once in his life, he doesn’t even know what to say. A whole summer away from home — and more importantly, away from the city? Away from all the haunts he knows, all the bars and the people, the noise, the lights. A whole summer in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to see or do or experience, apart from working on a farm under an old friend of his fathers. His head is spinning.
“I—” he begins, but his mother cuts him off yet again.
“No buts,” she says, holding out her hand for the letter back. “It’ll do you good. Maybe when you come back, you’ll have learned the value of hard work.”
He stares miserably down into his potatoes, struggling to think of a single silver lining about this situation. When he’s finished his food, his mother takes his plate and sends him straight upstairs, telling him to start packing his summer clothes.