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Posner walks over to Scripps’s on New Year’s Eve, and so gives himself entirely too long to visualise all the ways things could go wrong. He almost hadn’t come, and still half expects to get a door slammed in his face and to go back to Oxford to find a box of all the things he’d ever given Scripps left outside his door. He’d been all set to curl up under a duvet with a book and a glass of wine to cry into, but Akthar had called and insisted he get out of the house and at least try and start the new year on the right foot.
So he’s outside Scripps’s flat at almost midnight, and he’s terrified, honestly.
A woman he doesn’t recognise answers the door, but she looks just enough like both Scripps and his mum that he thinks she must be an aunt or a cousin. She lets him in and points him to the kitchen, where she says Scripps is, and Posner just tries to stop his hands from shaking.
“Scripps?” He asks, pushing the ajar door open wide and stepping inside. Scripps has a toddler on his hip, bouncing her softly and making quiet noises at her. Posner doesn’t really like children, not in the least, but something about the sight of the man he’s really rather in love with cradling a child is… moving, he thinks. He feels himself go red across the tops of his cheeks and stops his thoughts there before he considers the picket fence and the marriage and the two point five children.
“Hiya, Posner,” he says, not really looking at him and instead busying himself with the child. “Give me a minute, yeah?”
The child looks like she’s going to explode into tears at any moment, so Posner nods in understanding and watches as Scripps fusses and coos over her.
The woman who’d let Posner in reappears, sticking her head around the kitchen door to check if everyone’s still okay.
“Linda, can you take Jenny for a minute? She’s getting a bit upset,” Scripps shifts the toddler around and kisses her on the nose before he gives her to the other woman. The child giggles at him and Posner looks at his shoes to hide the redness in his face. “Cheers.”
“No problem, love,” the woman looks fondly at the toddler, who’s immediately settled down happily against her chest. “I’ll see you for the countdown in a few?”
“Yeah, bear with.”
Posner chances looking up to see Scripps is sheepishly and awkwardly pushing his fingers through the hair at the back of his neck, and not really looking at him.
“You’re good with children,” Posner voices his discovery softly, like if he says it any louder he’ll spill secrets he’s not ready to share. “I don’t know why I didn’t expect that.”
“I don’t treat them like unexploded bombs like you do, is all,” Scripps’s laugh is quiet but there’s something fond in it, Posner thinks, and he watches the bob of his throat as he takes a drink from the pint he’d left on the side. “Tends to help, that.”
The room falls into silence again, and Posner looks away at his feet so he doesn’t stare. He’s examining the pattern in the lino floor when Scripps finally breaks the silence and clears his throat.
“What are you here for, Pos? I thought we were done with this,” there’s a heaviness in his voice that Posner immediately dislikes hearing, and when he looks up Scripps’s expression is soft and sad, somehow.
He tugs at the hem of his shirt and tries to order his jumbled thoughts for a moment, before he meets Scripps’s eyes at long last.
“It –it occurs to me that I can be a bit thick,” he says slowly, deliberating over his words like it hasn’t taken him long enough already. “And given I attend Oxford University on a scholarship, that’s something of a worry.”
Scripps laughs again, quiet and almost fond, and Posner jerks his head up again to look at him like he expects an answer. They both stay quiet for a moment or so, Posner’s thoughts aligning into something that begins to make sense, and Scripps’s family start talking and laughing in the other room.
“I’m sorry,” Posner breaks the silence after he’s made everything make sense, at least in his head. Scripps lifts his head to look at him, his eyes almost confused, and Posner swallows. “I should’ve just done what Akthar said and been brave and just asked you properly like a reasonable adult would, but I thought you were straight, and I did tell Mum and Dad about a boyfriend I had that didn’t exist and–”
Posner knows he’s rambling and panicking and probably not making a great deal of sense, so part of him his grateful for the interruption as Scripps’s family start the countdown into the new year, and when he finally chances a look at Scripps, he’s staring through the wall in their direction. He’s about to start a clumsy backpedalled apology, when he remembers everything Akthar’d said before, about being brave and finishing the new year properly, so he clears his throat and starts again.
“You are in love. Occupied until the month of August. You are in love.”
Scripps had always liked Rimbaud, after all.
“–Your sonnets make Him laugh.” Scripps finishes, a kind of desperate look on his face as he crosses the room until he’s in Posner’s face, and when he breathes their chests about touch. “Shit, Posner, just–”
There’s loud noises from Scripps’s family in the next room, and Posner registers vaguely that that’s it, it must be 1985, but he’s a little busy twisting his fingers into the soft cotton of Scripps’s shirt and pulling him into him, fixing their mouths together hard and breathlessly. Scripps seems to relax into him with a sigh, and his hands fumble across his hips, down his sides, like he doesn’t quite know where to touch first. Posner feels his back hit the wall, the ridge of the tiles digging into his spine, but he doesn’t have it in him to care, and something like a bitten off groan tries to rise out of his throat. Someone, somewhere, is singing something Posner recognises vaguely, but he’s rather preoccupied trying to stop his chest from heaving to focus too much on it. Scripps pulls away, just barely and just for a moment, but Posner finds he almost chases his mouth with his own anyway. Scripps just grins, all fond and lopsided, and lets out a soft little laugh at the pink flush Posner knows is darkening his face, before he leans back in and connects their mouths again. Posner thinks he’d be quite happy to stay here for as long as Scripps will let him.
“Eurgh, Mummy!” A child’s voice rises from near their ankles, and Posner’s not one for violence but he’s rather tempted to close the door on the poor thing’s face. “Don’s kissing. A boy.”
“Jenny, love, not now,” the woman from before appears and collects the child again, scooping her up to silence her. “Leave them be.”
She smiles warmly at the two of them, and Posner almost thinks she approves from the look on her eyes. She sees herself out, and the door clicks shut softly after her. Posner knows he’s gone red right to the tips of his ears, like he always does when he’s embarrassed, and Scripps laughs at him, soft and affectionate, and ducks in to kiss him again. Posner loses himself to it for a moment, before a thought occurs to him and drives its way to the forefront of his mind.
“You love me,” he says, pulling back to stare at Scripps. He knows he sounds ridiculous, like he doesn’t believe it’s true, but he can’t bring himself to care. “You love me.”
Scripps presses his face into Posner’s hair, laughing again but quieter somehow, the smile in his voice obvious.
“Yes, I think I rather do.”
His voice is muffled a little, but the affection is there, and Posner grins brightly. He shifts his hands to press his fingers against the hard lines of Scripps’s hipbones, tugs him in and kisses him and kisses him and kisses him.