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“I’m in hell,” Greg said, sat on the sofa at his mother’s house in Wem. “I’ve died and I’ve gone to hell and this is my punishment for everything bad I did during life.”
His mother rolled her eyes. “There’s no need for the dramatics, love,” she said, more amused than she had literally any right to be.
“Yeah, Greg,” Tim Key echoed from where he was sat next to Pauline, his arm casually draped around her shoulders in what had to have been some kind of coordinated attack against Greg personally. “No need for the dramatics.”
Greg wasn’t being dramatic. He just could think of no other explanation for why he’d gone home for tea to meet his 84-year-old mother’s new beau only to find that of all 68 million people in this cursed country, his mother somehow wound up dating Tim fucking Key.
Next to him on the sofa and the literal only reason why Greg hadn’t yet lost his entire mind, Alex cleared his throat. “You have to admit it’s, er, a bit of a shock,” he said, giving Tim a look that Greg couldn’t quite read. “When you told me you’ve been seeing someone who has kids, I don’t think anyone would’ve expected…this.”
“To be fair,” Tim said, in that infuriatingly smug way that made Greg want to punch him in the face, though admittedly that instinct was probably heightened by the fact that Tim’s arm was still wrapped around his mum, “you didn’t ask.”
Alex huffed a small sigh of irritation that Greg alone caught by virtue of sitting shoulder to shoulder with him. Ordinarily, Greg would say something to him to try to ease the tension, but he was too full of his own irritation to bother. “This is a joke, right?” he said instead. “I mean, fair play, and I’m sure I’ll laugh about it someday, but—”
Pauline frowned at him. “Why would this be a joke?”
“Because you’re 84 years old and you’re dating this cunt?”
“Oi,” Tim said mildly, while Pauline’s frown deepened and she chided, “Language.”
Alex glanced sideways at Greg before standing. “Tim, let’s give Greg a moment with his mum,” he said. It was worded like a suggestion but Alex said it with the quiet authority he usually only used when in executive producer mode, which was probably why Tim didn’t argue, just shrugged and glanced at Pauline, who nodded.
Tim stood and followed Alex out to the garden and Greg crossed his arms in front of his chest as he glared at his mother. “Well?” he said with a bite of impatience. “What have you to say for yourself?”
“I really don’t know what you mean,” Pauline said mildly, carefully standing up. “Now come help me in the kitchen.”
She headed into the kitchen to get tea ready and Greg trailed after her, arms still crossed in front of his chest, so distracted that he almost forgot to duck down below the door lintel. “Have you lost your entire mind?” he demanded as he watched his mother putter around the kitchen as if this was an entirely normal day under entirely normal circumstances. “Is it some kind of dementia that makes you date an entirely age inappropriate twat?”
Pauline sighed and gave Greg a look. “That’s not a very nice thing to joke about to your mother,” she said, bending down to take the roast out of the oven and set it down on the hob.
“Good thing I’m entirely serious, then,” Greg said, reaching over his mother’s head to take the plates out of the cupboard. “I mean, Tim Key, Mum? Seriously? He’s half your age!”
He set the stack of plates down with a clatter on the worktop and she pursed her lips. “He’s 35 years younger than me,” she corrected as if it made it any better as she checked on the pot on the stove and whatever unidentifiable veg was cooking inside.
Greg threw his hands up in frustration. “This is my fucking point!” he said hotly. “Is this some sort of elder abuse or something? Is he after your money?”
Pauline threw Greg a nasty look as she retrieved the gravy boat from the cupboard. “Hilarious.”
“Still not joking,” Greg told her.
She rolled her eyes. “Right, because if anyone’s going to be after me for my pension payments, it’s going to be a famous comedian,” she scoffed.
Greg refused to concede, even if she did have a point there. “Well, he’s obviously after you for something,” he said instead. “Or am I meant to believe that he’s so pathetic he can’t find a woman within a decade of his own age?”
Pauline straightened with a sigh. “Sometimes, the things you say are so very hurtful,” she told Greg, who tried not roll his eyes. “I realise I may not be much of a catch these days—”
“Oh, come off it,” Greg said impatiently. “This isn’t about you—”
“But Timmy is very sweet to me,” Pauline continued, ignoring Greg’s attempted interruption. “He phones me every day, he always brings me flowers when he comes to visit, and he’s honestly just the perfect gentleman.”
It was enough to very nearly make Greg gip. He scrubbed a hand across his face before relenting, “Yeah, I reckon Tim’s a good enough actor to just about pull that off.” His mother rolled her eyes again, shaking her head as she turned back to the hob. “But that doesn’t explain how the two of you even met.”
“I met him at a recording of Taskmaster,” she said immediately, and Greg gave her a look.
“That was a decade ago,” he snapped. “I meant when you would’ve met him recently to actually develop whatever weird fucking thing you seem to think you’ve got going on.”
Pauline raised both her eyebrows. “Do you think I haven’t left the house in the past decade?” she asked coolly.
Greg scowled. “I think that you live in Wem and he lives in London, your lives literally could not be any more different, and absolutely none of this makes any fucking sense!”
His voice raised in volume so that he was practically shouting by the end. His mother looked unimpressed. “And your partner lives in Chesham,” she countered evenly. “With his wife.”
“What has that to do with anything?” Greg asked, instinctively defensive when it came to Alex and their less than conventional arrangement.
Pauline just shrugged. “Love doesn’t always make sense is all,” she said simply, as if that was the end of the conversation.
But to Greg, it was just the beginning. “How you could possibly compare—” he started hotly, but before he could say anything else, Alex and Tim returned from the garden.
Greg caught Alex’s eye and Alex just shook his head slightly. Greg’s heart sank. Whatever Alex had discussed with Tim, he clearly hadn’t gotten the answers that Greg was hoping he’d get.
Tim cleared his throat. “It smells lovely, Pauline,” he said, strangely formal in a way that Greg didn’t think he’d ever heard. “Anything I can help with?”
“Don’t be silly, love,” Pauline scolded, giving Tim a soft smile. “You’re a guest.” Tim just raised his eyebrows at her, his usual smirk soft and unreadable, and Pauline sighed before swatting at him with the tea towel. “Go on, get some wine for everyone then if you insist on helping.”
“You know I do,” Tim told her before heading to the pantry to fetch a bottle of wine.
Greg watched him go, watched the easy, familiar way he flit around the kitchen, and bile rose in the back of his throat at the thought of how many times Tim had to have been in his mum’s house to be as comfortable as he certainly seemed.
When Tim turned to him, glass of wine in hand, it took everything in him not to smash it to the ground. “Wine, Greg?” Tim asked.
“No.”
Greg could barely recognise the way the word punched from his chest, but if Tim heard any of it, it didn’t show on his face. “All right, then,” he said, turning to Alex, but Greg wasn’t done yet.
“I mean, no,” Greg repeated, slightly louder. “No, I don’t want wine, no, I’m not going to sit here and have dinner and pretend like everything’s fucking fine. This is– this is absolute madness.”
Pauline sighed. “Greg—” she started, but he didn’t want to hear it.
“I’m leaving,” he said flatly, not waiting for his mum to say anything, instead just turning to Alex, who was staring up at him with those big blue eyes that could normally talk him into doing just about anything. Not now, though. “You don’t have to come with me, but I’m not staying.”
That wasn’t entirely fair of him, seeing as he’d been the one to drive, but that thought didn’t occur to him until he had already marched out to his car and slammed the door after him. Still, because he loved Alex and didn’t fully blame him, he gave himself a few minutes to stew in his car, just in case Alex decided to join him.
Luckily, about ten minutes later, Alex emerged from the house, laden down with almost more plastic containers than he could carry. “What’s all that?” Greg asked sourly as Alex deposited the containers in the boot.
“Your mum packed us some food to take home,” Alex said, settling down in the passenger seat and giving Greg a look as he added pointedly, “Seeing as how we didn’t stay for dinner.”
Greg sighed and started the car. “I imagine she’s upset,” he said sourly.
Alex sighed as well. “More resigned than anything, I think,” he told Greg, disapproval clear in his tone. “Tim offered to come fight you if it’d make her feel better.”
Greg very nearly turned the car around to head back to his mum’s so he could take Tim up on the offer. Instead, he gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. “Oh, I’d love to see him try.”
“He didn’t mean it,” Alex said. “But it did make her laugh, which I think was his goal in the first place.”
Well, that made something very close to guilt twist in Greg’s stomach, even as he did his level best to tamp it down. “Look, I know he’s your friend—”
“One of my best friends,” Alex interrupted, which only went to show how cross he was. “Who, I might add, I trust with my life.”
“Yeah, but would you trust him with your mum?”
Alex just shook his head, staring out the window and away from Greg. “Well, I think Hugh might have something more to say about that than I would—”
“This isn’t funny,” Greg snapped. “My mum’s spent the last ten years swearing up, down and sideways that she didn’t want to date again, and now not only is she dating someone, but she’s dating Tim fucking Key?”
Alex tipped his head back against the headrest. “His middle name’s David, actually.”
“I swear to fucking Christ—”
“Listen,” Alex interrupted, turning his head to look at Greg. “I love you, and I love Tim, and whatever you seem to think is happening here, I have no intention of getting in the middle of it.” He paused as if waiting for Greg to interject, and when he didn’t, he continued, “But because you love me, and because he’s my best friend, I hope you can at least give both him and your mum a chance to explain. Because from what he told me, he does care about her.”
Greg scowled and stared out at the road as if it was the one dating his mother. “I’d rather take a chance on swallowing broken glass.”
From the corner of his eye, he was fairly certain he saw Alex roll his eyes. “Don’t worry,” Alex muttered, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “At the rate you’re going, I’m certain that can be arranged.”
It wasn’t that Greg didn’t like Tim.
He did! For the most part. In small doses. And preferably without Alex in the mix, because once those two were together, all bets were out the window. Somehow, for two relatively intelligent men, all of their brain cells tended to disappear once they were in the same room.
Still, he’d made every effort over the years once he and Alex had sorted their shit out of trying to embrace Alex’s twerpy friends, Tim included. But where Greg now counted some of Alex’s friends, like Joe and Ben from the Horne Section, close enough to also be friends of his, Tim had always kept himself at arm’s length.
It was as if Tim didn’t think Greg was good enough for Alex, or as if he felt like Alex somehow belonged to him because Alex had been his friend first.
Well, Pauline had been Greg’s mum first, so two could play at that game.
Over the next few weeks, Greg did everything in his power to make his mother see sense, but she refused to. He rang her every day, just like the dutiful son he was, but she either hung up on him when he worked the conversation around to Tim or she didn’t pick up at all, sending a message that she was Facetiming with Tim.
Well, either Tim or his nieces, but Greg couldn’t exactly blame two teenagers for thwarting his attempts.
To make matters worse, Greg’s filming commitments meant he couldn’t drive back out to Wem the way he would like to. So he did the next best thing, and invited his mother to come visit him in the city, figuring that once they were on somewhat neutral territory, it’d be easy to talk some sense into her.
Instead, she had barely put her bags down in his flat before she told him that she was going out for the evening.
“Out?” Greg repeated, incredulous. “Out where?”
“Tim’s taking me out,” Pauline told him brightly. “I so rarely get into the city, he’s got a list a mile long of places he wants to take me.”
Greg gaped at her as she paused in the hall to check her hair and makeup in the hall mirror. “I didn’t invite you round so that you could go on a date,” he spluttered, indignant. “I thought you might want to spend some fucking time with your only son!”
Pauline gave him a look. “I’m here all weekend,” she reminded him. “Surely that’s more than enough time together.”
It was, and under any other circumstances, Greg would’ve practically cheered at the chance to get his mum out of the house without him. But this wasn’t any other circumstance, and as it was, Greg scowled at her, feeling far more like a petulant teenager than a grown man knocking on the door of 60. “How are you planning to get there anyway, seeing as how neither you nor your ‘boyfriend’ drive?”
“Tim taught me how to use Uber,” Pauline said, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Greg had spent the better part of the past decade trying to teach her how to use Uber. “Not that I need to on my own, of course. He’s ordered one for me.”
“Of course he has,” Greg muttered darkly.
Pauline just shook her head. “You should give him a chance, love,” she chided, patting her hair one last time in the hall mirror. “He’s really quite sweet. He writes me poetry.”
Greg ground his teeth together. “He’s a prick,” he said sullenly. “Writing you poetry doesn’t make him less of a prick.”
In fact, in his personal opinion, it only made him more of a prick, but he had the good sense not to say as much to his mother.
Pauline’s eyes met his in the mirror, and her lips pursed dangerously. “Not that you’d know,” she said, saccharine sweet. “Seeing as how you’ve never written me anything.”
Which was so far from the truth that it left Greg fuming silently in her wake as she left, and by the time he’d drummed up the wherewithal to respond, his bellowed, “I wrote an entire fucking comedy show about the back of your head, you treacherous old woman!” out the front door was met with no more than a polite wave from the backseat of the Uber.
There was, it seemed, little point in trying to talk any semblance of sense into his mother, and to make matters worse, Tim seemed to find the whole situation quite funny and was apparently determined to rub it in whenever possible. Greg would’ve been content with never seeing Tim for the rest of his life, but of course, Alex had other ideas, and Greg saw Tim several times over the next few weeks. Normally just in passing as Greg met up with Alex for dinner or drinks.
Ordinarily, Tim and Greg traded off without an incident, but that was before Greg knew that Tim had nefarious plans for his mother. Now their routine few minutes of overlap at the pub were laden with enough tension that Greg would’ve had to give Tim 5 bloody points had he done the ‘make the most tension’ task on Taskmaster.
“Good to see you, son,” Tim said when he saw him on such night, and Greg’s hands clenched into fists as he wondered if he could throttle Tim with his bare hands before someone was able to pry him off.
Or on a different occasion, Tim blithely asked Greg, with all the simpering faux-sincerity that Greg could only imagine he usually saved for his mother, “How about a kickabout in the park? Great day for it.” He waited expectantly for Greg’s answer, and when all he got was the sound of Greg’s teeth grinding together, he added, “I forget, you’re not a football fan, are you. Game of catch, then? Spend some time with your old man?”
Alex caught sight of the look on Greg’s face and interjected pointedly, “Goodbye, Tim,” and Tim skipped off into the night as if entirely unaware that Greg was going to cause him grievous bodily harm one of these days.
Even Greg’s sister got in on it, though she had the audacity to come down on their mother’s side after meeting Tim exactly once. “She’s lost her mind, Sian!” Greg protested as he sat at his kitchen table, phone pressed against his ear, desperate for the one person he was certain would be on his side to listen to him.
Sian sighed. “I promise you, she hasn’t,” she told Greg, though she paused and added, “Well, no more than she usually has, anyway. And you’d know that if you actually had a conversation with them about their relationship.”
“It’s not a relationship!” Greg snapped. “It’s– I dunno, wrong, obviously, but beyond that—”
“She loves him.” Greg felt the words like a punch to the gut, and Sian continued, “I’m not saying she’s in love with him, but she does love him. Surely that has to mean something.”
Greg refused to acknowledge what Sian had said, largely for the sake of his own sanity. “Yeah, it means she’s lost her fucking mind,” he retorted, thinking for a vague moment that he had at least one ex would be impressed with his ability to stay on message. “You’re really going to let our mother be taken advantage of this way?”
He couldn’t hear her roll her eyes through the phone, but he could certainly hear it in her voice. “How is she being taken advantage of?” she asked, exasperated.
The question was so stupid that Greg almost couldn’t formulate a response. “How—”
“He takes her to dinner,” Sian continued, ignoring his attempted interruption. “He chats to her on the phone. He takes two trains to visit her in Wem, and from what I understand, he’s been nothing but a perfect gentleman when visiting her.” She paused before adding, unusually snide even for her, “Which is more than can be said for you of recent.”
“Because I’m the only one who seems concerned by this!” Greg snapped.
“Oh, grow up,” Sian told him. “She’s 84 years old and he makes her happy. Why can’t that be enough for you to at least hear them out?”
“She may have a point,” Alex said later that same night as he cuddled with Greg on the sofa.
Greg scowled down at him, the hand he’d been rhythmically running through Alex’s hair stilling. “I thought you weren’t getting in the middle of this.”
Alex sighed and tipped his head back to look up at Greg. “I’m not,” he said. “But this has gone on for quite long enough, don’t you think?”
“I don’t think there’s a time limit on making sure my mum isn’t being taken advantage of.”
Alex muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like ‘fuck sake’ as he squirmed into an upright position. “And surely the best way to make sure your mum isn’t being taken advantage of is to actually learn more about her relationship with Tim,” he said in that logical way of his that usually made Greg want to kiss him but currently only made him want to shove him away. “What’s the worst thing that happens with hearing them out? Having all your worst fears confirmed?”
Greg scowled. “I guess,” he said reluctantly.
“And surely you want confirmation so that everyone might actually believe you?”
More logic, and Greg glared at him. “Don’t take that tone with me,” he said warningly.
Alex’s lips twitched. “What tone?” he asked innocently.
“You know exactly what tone, you little—”
Alex cut him off by kissing him, and Greg was happy to put the discussion to the side for the foreseeable future, having far better things to keep him occupied. But the next day when Alex went home, he was left with nothing to do but brood about it, and worse, admit that maybe both Alex and his sister had a point.
At the very least, hearing them out would be an opportunity for Greg to prove once and for all that Tim Key was a fraud taking advantage of an elderly woman.
So Greg did the one thing he’d spent the last several weeks avoiding: he rang his mum and when she picked up, he said, in what he hoped was a casual way, “How about the four of us try the dinner thing again?”
And he tried very hard not to feel guilty by how excited she was at the prospect.
“Come on in,” Tim said after answering the door to Greg’s mum’s house, and the actual audacity to invite Greg into his own childhood home wasn’t exactly the best note to start on. Especially since he followed it up by telling Greg with a grin and a wink, “You can sit on the sofa if you’d like, or you can have a seat on your old man’s lap.”
Greg took several deep breaths to stop himself from throttling him, the situation not helped by his own mother laughing and squeezing Tim’s hand as she scolded, “Oh, behave yourself.”
“I make no promises,” Tim told her with another lascivious wink. “Can I get anyone anything to drink?”
Greg thought darkly about asking for a bottle of vodka but forced himself to smile and say in as pleasant a tone as he could manage, “Just tea, thanks.”
He settled down on the sofa next to Alex and Tim nodded, for the first time looking almost nervous. “I’ll just, er, open the window, shall I?’ he said, crossing over to it without waiting for an answer. “Bit warm in here.”
Greg’s mum tended to run cold, but Greg figured there was no real need for him to tell Tim that, instead smugly watching as Pauline shivered in the breeze. Of course, Tim promptly ruined it by sitting down next to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.
“I was just telling Tim before you came,” Pauline said, “how excited the ladies were for Tim to do his show here!”
Tim pulled a face. “It’s just a WIP,” he told Greg and Alex. “And I’m not entirely sure, er, how it’ll go over with the girls—”
Pauline giggled and Greg ground his teeth together at the sound. “I’ve already told them about the beer thing,” she told him. “But I figured it’d be best to let them learn about the poetry on their own.” She turned her smile on Greg. “It’ll be so nice having a proper comedian in the family,” she said happily.
Despite his best efforts to keep his temper, Greg immediately tensed. Alex’s hand flashed out to grip Greg’s arm, but not quite fast enough. “A proper comedian?” Greg repeated, trying and feeling to keep his voice steady. “The fuck do you think I am?”
"Well, I consider you more a presenter these days, love," Pauline said, and Tim nodded, seemingly unaware that Greg was thirty seconds away from throwing him out the closest window. "Besides, Timmy won the Perrier!"
Greg's mouth opened and closed again. "You don't even know what the fucking Edinburgh Comedy Awards are!" he protested. "Because if you did, you'd know it's no longer called the Perrier and also, more importantly, I was nominated!"
"As was I," Alex muttered.
Greg and Pauline both ignored him. “Yes, love, I know,” she told him. “But winning and being nominated aren’t the same thing. Besides, the nearest you brought your tour was Birmingham.”
Greg opened his mouth to retort with something that was undoubtedly going to be both cutting and witty in one blow, but Alex gripped his thigh, the touch enough to remind Greg why he was there, and he managed to swallow it down. “It occurred to me,” he started instead, his voice stiff, “that I didn’t give you both a chance to explain this whole– thing. So perhaps we should talk about that.”
Tim glanced at Pauline. “Ah, right,” he said. “Well, there was a showing—”
She cut him off, and for once, Greg was glad that the shoe was on someone else’s foot. “You know I keep an eye on the paper for anything Alex or his band does so I can get all the ladies to support him.”
Next to Greg, Alex straightened, just slightly. “I didn’t know that,” he said, sounding genuinely touched, which, well, even Greg had to grudgingly admit he should be.
“Of course, love, it’s the least I can do,” Pauline told him with a smile. “But I saw that there was a special screening of Tim’s movie in Birmingham, and even though you weren’t involved, I do like to support your friends as well when I can.” Again Alex looked touched, and Greg decided not to ruin the moment by sharing all of the times that his mum had supported his comedy friends largely by texting Greg and asking him to tell them that they should cut down on the amount of swearing they did in their shows. “So I got the ladies together and the senior centre got us a bus and we all went down to see it.” She beamed up at Tim. “And who should happen to be there?”
Tim managed a small, embarrassed smile. “There was a Q&A,” he said. “Basden and Griff were there as well.”
Pauline patted Tim’s knee. “And of course, I had to tell Tim what a fabulous job he did,” she said. “I had so many questions for him– I don’t know if you seen it, Greg, ‘The Ballad of Wallis Island’, but it– it touched me, it did. Very much.” Tim squeezed Pauline’s shoulders and her smile softened as she looked up at him before continuing, “And he didn’t quite have time to answer all my questions—”
“So I gave her my phone number and told her to ring me,” Tim finished. “Didn’t expect her to take me up on it.”
“Well, it’s not every day a handsome young man gives me his phone number!” Pauline said with another giggle, and it took everything in Greg not to punch something.
Preferably Tim’s face.
“But she did take me up on it,” Tim continued. “She phoned me a few days later and—” He broke off, looking down at Pauline with a look that Greg couldn’t quite read, but that made his stomach squirm uncomfortably. “I don’t even know how to explain it. What was meant to be a five minute phone call that, quite frankly, I only took for your sake, Al, because it’s you mother-in-law, somehow turned into a two hour conversation.”
Pauline nodded, smiling up at him. “It was like talking to an old friend that I’d somehow just met.”
Unless Greg was mistaken, Tim actually blushed a little, and he almost had to congratulate him on his acting skills to pull that off. “And then because I felt like I was taking too much of her time, I told her I need to go because Come Dine With me was on—”
“And I told Tim that I love Come Dine With Me, that I rewatched all of it during lockdown—”
“And I told her I’d done the same thing.”
It would almost be cute, Greg reflected sullenly, if it wasn’t enough to make him gip. “So we made it a date,” Pauline said. “We’d Facetime during the show and chat and such, and then he came out to visit one weekend, and…”
She trailed off and Greg pounced on it like a puma. “And what?” he demanded, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
But Tim just took Pauline’s hand and squeezed it gently. “And we just realised that it worked, in a weird sort of way,” he said simply before glancing almost nervously at Greg. “I know that you’re understandably sceptical, but—”
He was cut off by a beeping noise from the kitchen, and Pauline patted his hand. “Oh, that’s the timer,” she said. “Tim, love, can you—?”
“Of course,” he said immediately, squeezing her hand once more before standing. “Be right back.”
He bent down and kissed her, and Greg’s vision went red. He didn’t even realise he’d stood until he was staring down at his mother, his hands clenched into fists. “Right, well, I’ve heard all I need to.”
Pauline frowned up at him. “Greg—”
“It’s clear that you’re not capable of making responsible choices for yourself.” Alex tried saying something to him but Greg ignored him. “I hate to do it, but I am your lasting power of attorney, and I’ll be finding a care home that can look after you and make sure you’re safe.”
“Fucking hell, c’mon, man,” Tim said from the doorway to the kitchen, and Greg turned to glare at him. “That’s your mum! Show some fucking respect.”
Greg glowered at him. “Don’t tell me how to speak to my mother!”
“Maybe it’s time someone did!”
Greg drew himself up to his full height, staring down at Tim as if he was a bug that he could crush underneath his shoe. “Look, I didn’t want it to come to this, but I will fucking roundhouse you if you say one more word to me.”
The corner of Tim’s mouth twitched towards a smirk and Alex stood, holding both his hands up. “Timmy—” he started warningly, but Tim ignored him.
“One more word,” he pronounced, and Greg’s blood pressure shot towards a level his cardiologist would not appreciate.
“God, but you are a cunt,” he sighed, cracking his neck in what he hoped was a menacing sort of way.
Tim’s smirk didn’t fade. “Takes one to know one.”
Greg almost laughed. “I’ve been looking forward to this,” he said, before lowering his head and charging at Tim like an ancient and morbidly obese rhinoceros. They collided rather like two cartoon characters, a mess of limbs and swearing punctuated by Pauline’s cry of, “Gregory!” and Alex’s exasperated, “Tim, for fuck’s sake—”
But Greg’s momentum took both of them several steps further than either man anticipated, straight towards the open window, and before either man could get his bearing, Greg’s attempt to draw his arm back far enough to punch Tim in his stupid mouth instead caused him to lose his balance, and instead of punching Tim, he practically threw himself on his neck. The move was enough to tip both of them out of the window, and gravity took care of the rest, both men falling in a jumbled heap to the newly fertilized flower bed below, landing in a mess of manure and mud.
“Ow,” Greg managed, lying on his back and staring up at the sky.
Next to him, Tim groaned. “I didn’t think this sort of thing happened outside of sitcoms,” he said, sounding a little dazed.
Greg shook his head, the motion enough to make him dizzy. “I don’t think it’s meant to.”
“Tim!” Pauline called, rushing outside. “Tim, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Tim told her, and Greg rolled his eyes as he carefully picked himself out of the muck.
“And your only son is fine as well, in case you were concerned—”
But Pauline ignored him, starting towards Tim, only to slip in the mud and pitch forward. “Pauline!” Tim half-shouted, rushing over to her.
“Mum!” Greg called, but Tim was already steadying her, holding both her hands in his.
“It’s all right, I’ve got you,” Tim told her, his voice low. “Are you okay?”
Pauline nodded. “I’m fine,” she assured him. “No need to fuss.”
Tim didn’t seem convinced, only letting go of one of her hands as he told her, “Here, you’ve got some dirt on your cheek—” But his attempt to wipe it off with his thumb only spread additional mud across her cheek, and he pulled his hand away. “Oh, Christ, I think I’ve made it worse.”
Pauline laughed lightly. “What, like this?” she asked, reaching up to smear mud across Tim’s cheek.
“Oh, very funny,” Tim said with a mock-scowl, and Greg’s mum laughed lightly.
“I know,” she said smugly, and Tim laughed and pulled her into a hug.
For some reason that didn’t seem to have anything to do with his entire body aching from his fall, Greg felt tears prick in his eyes, and he looked away, crossing his arms tightly in front of his chest as if it would be enough to hold himself together. “I have to go,” he said abruptly.
And so he did. He didn’t bother with his car, instead practically jogging down the drive, trusting his feet to remember the way to any of a hundred places he had hidden himself during his childhood.
Sure enough, he was soon at the play area nearby. The town council had put up newer, more colourful equipment in recent years, but the rusting swing set was still standing, almost swallowed by the nearby trees that hadn’t been nearly that tall when Greg was younger.
He picked his way over to the swings and sank down, relishing the familiar squeal of metal protesting someone of his size testing the limits of the swings.
For a few minutes, he mostly sulked and felt sorry for himself. Then, by the time he’d mostly started wondering how long he could stay there before Alex got worried, he heard the telltale squeal of the swing next to his, and he whipped his head around. “Tim? What are you doing here?”
Tim shrugged, looking as rough as Greg felt. “Alex gave me a lift,” he said. “He wanted to be the one to come talk to you, but I asked if I could.”
Greg snorted. “He’d’ve probably had better luck.”
“Probably,” Tim agreed.
Despite himself, Greg sighed. “I didn’t mean to leg it like that.”
Tim glanced over at him. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen you run that fast,” he said mildly. “Didn’t think you could, if we’re being honest.”
“Oi,” Greg said, though he couldn’t quite muster the requisite energy to be offended.
“You made the same joke about me on Taskmaster, fuck off,” Tim said, and Greg barked a laugh.
“Fair play.”
Silence fell between them, and Tim twisted the swing around a few times before turning to face Greg. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Not about dating your mum, to be clear. But I am sorry you’ve taken it this hard. It genuinely was not my intention.”
Greg sighed. “I know that,” he said, because he did. Because he always had, even if he was the last one to realise it. “I just—”
He broke off and Tim glanced at him. “Just what?”
“Why my mum?” Greg asked. “Genuinely, of all the people in the world, why her?”
Tim shrugged. “Have you any idea how hard it is to find someone who doesn’t mind just holding hands, or staying in to watch Come Dine With Me for the tenth night in a row?” he asked. “Because it’s damn near impossible, mate.” He paused before adding, his face again flushing, “Besides, she– she makes me laugh.”
He said it in a terribly earnest sort of way, and Greg hesitated before asking, “And that’s all you’re looking for, is it?”
“What else is there?”
Tim didn’t ask it like a joke, and Greg swallowed and looked away. “And you don’t feel at all weird about dating an 84-year-old woman?” he asked instead.
To his surprise, Tim just laughed. “Of course I feel weird about it,” he said. “But I’d feel far worse not dating her.” Greg frowned but Tim didn’t let him interrupt. “Look, what you’ve got with Horne—”
“I don’t want to talk about Alex,” Greg said, a note of warning in his voice.
Tim shook his head. “Believe me, neither do I, but it’s relevant.” He hesitated, and Greg got the sense that he was choosing his words with a deliberate sort of care that to this point, Greg had never once seen Tim show. “I didn’t get it,” he said finally. “When Al first told me about you and him. I mean, you’ve met his wife. If he’s got her, what could he possibly want with…”
He trailed off and Greg supplied dryly, “A fat old fuck like me?”
For a moment, Tim managed something like his usual smirk, though it was short lived. “Well, you said it, not me.” He sighed and shook his head. “But seeing you two together, watching you figure it all out…at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter if I get it or not, because he’s the happiest I’ve literally ever seen him.” He said it firmly and Greg’s chest felt tight. “That’s all any of us have in the end, the happiness we make for ourselves.”
“Yeah,” Greg agreed, his voice thick. “And he makes me very happy.”
Tim gave him a long, searching look. “Doesn’t your mum deserve that?”
The simplicity of the question made the breath catch in Greg’s throat, and he looked away. “She does,” he agreed after a long moment, before sighing and adding reluctantly, “And for reasons that I will never understand, you make her happy. I know that.”
“Then why…”
Tim trailed off, and Greg swallowed, a wound he’d spent the better part of ten years ignoring feeling perilously close to bursting. It was what he’d refused to admit, refused to give voice to, because it would make it real in a way that he’d been avoiding for so long.
But he owed his mum this, if only because he loved her and he’d already caused her more heartbreak than he had any right to.
“This whole time, it’s felt like– like a joke.” he said, staring determinedly away from Tim. “I don’t know what my mum’s told about when I was younger, but– we were always a big joking family. And this seemed exactly like something my dad would’ve set up just to see the look on my face.”
He was crying, and he only just managed to resist the urge to angrily wipe the tears from his cheeks, if only because he realised that between the mud on his face and hands, he was only bound to make it so much worse if he tried. “And knowing that it’s not a joke, knowing that he’s not going to pop up be like, ‘Gotcha!’…I dunno. It’s harder than I thought it’d be.”
Tim was quiet for so long that Greg almost turned to look at him. But then he sighed and said softly, “You miss your dad.”
Greg jerked a nod. “Yeah,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I miss my dad.”
Tim glanced over at him and for just the hint of a moment, Greg could almost see whatever Alex saw in him. “I don’t know if it’ll make it better or worse, but we talk about your dad a lot,” Tim said quietly. “That’s– when she first phoned me, that’s one of the things we talked about. Grief, and holding on to the people you’ve lost while still living your life.” Greg swallowed and Tim added, “Your mum misses your dad, too. And believe me, neither she nor I would ever think that I could somehow take his place.”
Greg managed a dry, humourless laugh. “Didn’t stop you from joking about it.”
Tim grinned. “That was all Pauline,” he said. “She found the idea very funny.”
Greg laughed again, but this time it was genuine. “Of course she did,” he said, finally reaching up to brush the tears from his cheeks with the heels of his palms. “She’s a treacherous old hag who lives her life to make mine miserable.”
“Yeah,” Tim agreed. “She loves you a lot.”
Greg exhaled shakily. “I know,” he said. He hesitated before glancing at tim. “I suppose I owe you an apology,” he said, each word more reluctant than the last.
“Mm,” Tim hummed, sounding so much like Alex that Greg almost shuddered. “Not sure I’m the one you need to apologise to.” He raised both eyebrows at Greg, a small approximation of his usual smirk back on his face. “I’ll still take the apology, mind.”
Greg rolled his eyes. “Fuck off.”
Tim nodded. “Odd way of pronouncing ‘I’m sorry’.”
As much as Greg wanted to roll his eyes again, he figured that after all this time, he owed it to Tim, and to his mother, to at least temporarily be the bigger man. “Maybe, perhaps, I was slightly and entirely understandably wrong,” he hedged. “And you dating my mum isn’t in fact the worst thing in the entire world.”
Tim nodded again. “Second worst, though,” he said.
“Oh, definitely second worst,” Greg agreed, and both men shared a tentative smile with each other.
Then Tim stood up, the swing creaking ominously as he did. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go back to your mum’s.”
“Yeah, all right,” Greg agreed, standing as well. Together, they started across the park toward the road, and after a long moment, Greg glanced sideways at him. “Oh, and Tim?” he said, as casually as he could. “If you make another joke about being my stepfather, I will deck you.”
Tim grinned. “It’s a risk I’m willing to take, my lad.”
Greg slung an arm around his neck, more of a headlock than an embrace. “Fuck you, Tim,” he said cheerfully, and both of them just laughed.
It was late by the time Greg and Alex got back to the city, late enough that both men changed into their pyjamas without even pretending they were going to do anything more than cuddle until they fell asleep. Alex pillowed his head on Greg’s chest as soon as they were both in bed. “I’m glad you and Tim talked it out,” he said through a yawn.”
Greg huffed a sigh, setting his phone down on his bedside table. “He made a very rare good point,” he said, turning the lamp off.
“Mm,” Alex hummed in agreement. “He is infuriating that way.”
Silence fell between them, comfortable and warm, and Greg carded his fingers through Alex’s hair before telling him, “I’m not– I’m never going to be fully okay with it. But I’m not going to stand in the way of my mum’s happiness. Even if her taste in men is absolutely dogshit.”
Alex laughed sleepily. “I’m sure she’ll be delighted to hear it.”
Greg couldn’t quite stop his grin as he added, “Besides, I realised something.”
He felt Alex’s head twist around to look up at him, even though it was too dark to see him. “Oh?”
“You’re the one who’s going to suffer most in the end.”
He couldn’t see Alex’s frown in the dark, but he heard it in his voice as he asked, “How so?”
He allowed himself a small, triumphant smile before he told Alex, keeping his voice light and even as he did, “Because Tim’s now essentially your father-in-law.”
Alex immediately laughed, burying his face against Greg’s chest. “Oh, God,” he managed, his voice muffled.
Silence again fell between them, but it was quickly punctuated by breathless honks of laughter from Alex, and Greg grinned down at him. “What?”
“This means I sucked my ‘father-in-law’s dick twenty some odd years ago.”
Greg barked a noise that was half-laugh, half-groan. “Jesus Christ,” he managed. “This is the weirdest fucking family ever.”
Alex laughed lightly before burrowing his head against Greg’s chest again. “Keeps life interesting,” he said.
Greg tilted his head down to kiss the top of Alex’s head. “Well, that’s one way of putting it,” he agreed.
Tim Key and his mother– honestly, whoever would have thought? And yet, he’d meant what he’d told Tim. At the end of the day, it wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
It might not even be the second worst thing in the world.
He felt contentment and warmth steal over him, and he was just about to fall asleep when—
“Wait, when the fuck did you suck Tim Key’s cock?!”