Work Text:
So obviously John's getting stared at here, same way he gets stared at everywhere. You get accustomed to it when you're usually at least a head and a half taller than every other person in the vicinity, not to mention wearing shiny gunmetal bondage trousers with a violet mesh top and platform boots that add another five fuck-you inches to your height. But he doesn't think it's dumb optimism to feel like it's maybe a touch less hostile than back home...? Curiosity, maybe even a nod of approval here and there, instead of instant wariness, or the fucking tedious jeering. That's a start.
Told you you'd be alright, his dead mum's voice says in his head. He always wishes she'd have the decency to sound smug when she turns up now and then for a reassuring comment. Might be easier to handle if it got on his nerves. Hearing her all pleased and soft and proud of him, the way she always sounded when she was alive, is a fucking relentless nightmare. No wonder he's not slept like a normal person in the month since she went.
He heads off across the railway bridge towards the electric cacophony of the seafront, always drawn to noise like some kind of giant sonic moth. Might as well explore a bit and distract himself while he figures out what the fuck to do next with his crumbling life.
What he wants to do next, he realises in about four seconds, is something with this soundscape that he can play in whatever club that next gives him a shot at riling up their crowd: the shrieks and laughter from people on the rides, the mechanical bass and pneumatic whoosh of the rides themselves, bursts of jangling, discordant music from claw machines and penny pushers trying to tempt passers-by to blow some cash on the cheerfully shit prizes held like museum relics in their locked glass cases, screaming seagulls, all of it underpinned by the soft but relentless swish of the low tide waves lapping onto the busy beach.
His tape recorder is in a side pocket of his rucksack, more easily to hand than his wallet or water bottle as always, and he grabs it without having to look what he's doing to start picking up some of this gorgeous, vibrant chaos. Exactly what he'll do with it he's not sure yet—but he can see the throbbing club lights already, feel the rumbling pulse of sweating bodies all moving in time with the beats he's offering like food or blood on an altar.
Off to his left there's the broken rhythmic beat of a kid all hopped up on sugar learning to use a plastic clacker she's won off some stall or machine. John picks that up, grinning to himself at catching the bonus muttered "for fuck's sake" from her frazzled mum. He gets the thump-squawk of someone bashing the shit out of a whack-a-mole type game where, gloriously, instead of moles all the pop-up creatures are the same ugly bloke with shit hair and a crown whom he assumes is meant to be Edward I. A musical series of outraged yelps when a teenager zooms his skateboard too close to a crowd of old ladies walking side by side, taking up the whole pavement like an entitled snowplough.
There's a howling schnauzer puppy, ear-splinteringly loud. Fucking fantastic, even as he sees a couple of people around him shooting dirty looks at its embarrassed owner. There's a bored little boy dragging a plastic lightsaber along the metal rails of the barrier keeping people tumbling off the promenade onto the beach. A bunch of twentysomethings chanting TOM-MO! TOM-MO! TOM-MO! with the perfect synchronisation of guys raised in football stadiums while their mate, presumably Tommo, rides a bucking mechanical bull with a look of sheer terror on his face. Tommo, that is, not the bull. He just looks bored.
The pier sticks way out into the sparkling sea, cluttered with yet more rides and arcades and food stalls. John heads under the wrought iron arch at its entrance—Rilby-On-Sea Pleasure Pier, it says, in elegant metal Art Deco lettering—and steals some more sounds, wandering here and there as the mood takes him. There's the raucous giggles and heavy muffled thump of dodgems over there. Over here, a guy in a clown costume with his makeup running a bit in the late afternoon sun is twisting long balloons into animal shapes while the reluctant children cajoled into watching by their parents cringe at the squeaking sounds of the rubber and the occasional squeal of releasing air. John collects those sounds too. The breezy Doppler-ish swoop of the swinging pirate ship ride. Cackles from the enormous animatronic witch mounted above the entrance to the ghost train. And so much percussion from the game stalls lining both sides of the wooden walkway between all the rides: balloons popped by darts, sharp thin jets from water pistols splashing into plastic targets, cracking air rifles, the clang of toppled tin cans, the hollow thud of falling coconuts.
"Hook a duck, mate? A quid a go, win every time," one of the stall runners calls nearby as John's heading for the promising sounds of a slightly day-drunk hen do all limbering up to take on the Test Your Strength mallet. The man being addressed walks on without acknowledgement, arm around the shoulders of a woman carrying a gigantic Orville toy with a conspicuously wonky eye, and the bloke at the booth cheerfully calls after him, "Yeah, no worries! Have a good day."
John intends to pass him by. Not much noise to be borrowed from plastic ducks and fishing poles. But the bright, unbothered tone of the guy's voice makes him smile, and then he has to look, and then their eyes catch.
"Oh, Lord above," says the stall runner, staring up at him a little bit wide-eyed.
Ah, okay. Here we fucking go, John thinks tiredly. "You're tall!" Or "how's the weather up there?" Or "your shirt needs mending, mate", although that one's more a favourite of older folks in this era of ripped jeans and faded old second-hand plaid shirts being in.
But: "Necklace twins!" the guy goes on, excitedly sorting through the dangling jumble of pendants on his own chest to hold up a dull silver peace sign on a leather cord.
Briefly startled, John glances down at his own chest, where—yep, there it is. He can't remember putting it on this morning, and doesn't think he chose it on purpose, just dipped his hand into the bag he keeps his jewellery in and teased one out from the rat king tangle of chains and strings.
"Oh, yeah," he says, lifting the pendant to look at it, then back at Mr Hook-A-Duck. He can feel a little smile spreading, unintentional, irresistible, at the stranger's clear delight. "What are the chances?"
"I dunno, sorry," the guy says, sounding a bit rueful suddenly like it was a genuine request for information, before brightening again and holding out the hooked pole he's still holding after his failed attempt to lure in that disinterested couple. "Won you a free go on the ducks, though."
Well, why not? John sets his rucksack down on the smooth wooden boards next to his platform boots, and his tape recorder on the ledge of the booth.
"You got any tips?" he asks, hefting the pole in his hands and eyeing the mismatched yellow plastic ducks. They're lazily floating in the gently-flowing moat around a fat wooden pillar wrapped in chicken wire, where all the usual brilliant-shit fairground prizes are fixed with zip ties in between several actually good ones: stuffed toys, bags of sweets, novelty huge laminated vouchers to get you on a pier ride for free, plastic ratchets and kazoos, t-shirts printed with slogans like Rilby-On-Sea Wet T-Shirt Contest Third Place. He quite fancies the pack of glowstick shapes with connectors so you can build yourself a pair of neon glasses or a glowing toxic-green tiara, or the gigantic Ursula plushie with boobs no plushie should really have spilling out of her slinky black octopus frock.
"Yeah. Get that hook on the end of the pole into one of the loops on the ducks."
John snorts a half-laugh. Fair enough. Nobody working on a fair stall really wants you to win, do they? He part-timed on fairs himself back home in his teens when they passed through town, he knows all the dodgy tricks about blunted darts and hoops too small for the jars you're meant to be throwing them over. If you care about that stuff you're probably going into it with the wrong attitude, he's always thought. Willingly being the butt of the joke is sort of the point, right? If you really, truly, desperately wanted a shit neon plastic ball game with velcro on the bats, you'd go and get one from the pound shop. At the fairground, you're paying for the one in a thousand thrill of winning something you don't really want. Gloating rights over all your mildly-scammed mates, until next year when it's someone else's turn to win the Pac-Man shaped stress ball they'll never use or the comically oversized plastic sunglasses they'll never wear.
"What are you recording?" the stall guy asks curiously, looking at the tape recorder and the slightly matted deadcat on the mic.
"Nice try. Don't distract me," John says, side eyeing him with a grin that's instantly returned.
The guy mimes zipping his lips, then folds his arms and leans there all rangy and languid against the side of the booth to watch, only speaking again when he goes to retrieve the yellow plastic duck John snagged from the water off the end of his pole. "Blue!" he announces, showing him the chipped paint on the underside.
"What's blue mean?" John asks, scanning the prize display again to see if there's any indication there.
"Whatever the fuck we want it to, babe," the guy says, tossing the duck back into the water and returning the pole to the rack on the side with all the others. He appraises John for a moment, looking him up and down, taking in all the colours and adornments of him, then leans over the moat and wriggles the bag of glowsticks out of its zip tie. "Reckon this one might suit you, yeah?"
"Spot on, mate," John tells him as he accepts the prize, strangely thrilled twice over—by being seen by this enigmatic stranger in a way most people never bother, too thrown off or enraptured by the size of him to look beyond that, and also by the way the confirmation makes the guy smile. He's got a pretty smile. He's got a pretty everything, really. "It was gonna be either that or the sea witch."
"Ah, have her too, why the fuck not?" says the duck guy, finding a pair of scissors on the ledge by the moat this time to snip her free from the plastic restraints holding her up under her purple plushie armpits.
John laughs, he can't help himself. "Come off it. I didn't even pay."
"Who cares? Money's all made up anyway."
He sits Ursula down next to John's tape recorder, then turns and with an intriguingly graceful, lithe movement sits on the ledge himself and swings his long legs over to John's side. He's tall, John realises now he's standing this close, nearer his own height than most people are although still a good way off. He's slender, and it made him seem slight with the barrier between them, but he feels very, very solid suddenly. It's weird. It's nice.
"Grab your stuff," the guy says, leaning back over to retrieve a shabby looking guitar without a case and a canvas rucksack covered in patches and pins, then he reaches up and hauls down a shutter until it clicks and locks into place at the base of the stall, blocking off the circling ducks and tower of prizes from view. "Fancy a chippy tea?"
Turns out his name's Frenchie, or at least that's the name he gives when they're chatting easily away in the chip van queue back on the prom. And when he sees the dangling keyring hooked around a buckle on John's rucksack, the chunky letter beads threaded onto kitchen string by his little cousin Lisa the last time he babysat spelling out 'Wee John' between two sparkly pink plastic flowers, Frenchie guesses correctly, "What, is that cos your dad's Big John?" as natural as anything instead of jumping straight to everyone's instant assumption that it's an ironic joke, like Robin Hood's burly mate.
"So, what's the sitch?" Frenchie wants to know once they've got their food, swiping a chip through his polystyrene cup full of marbled burger sauce and mustard as they walk along the seafront weaving between the crowds. "Roommate status? Camper van? You staying at the holiday chalets?"
"Dunno. Actually never planned to be here," John admits. "Come over on the ferry to Holyhead, was hoping to get all the way to Crewe and change for London but got kicked off for not having a ticket."
"They can be such dicks about tickets," Frenchie says fiercely.
The instant loyalty makes John grin. "Sounds like you got some experience there."
"Who doesn't? Fuck the man," Frenchie says, nonchalantly shoving another chip in his mouth. "I was heading the other way, aiming for Dublin. They didn't clock me for no ticket, I just... kinda chickened out and got off a few stops early. Fancied a go on the ferris wheel, you know, clear my head a bit. Then I just stayed."
"You been here long?"
"Yeah, mate, ages. Since about eight this morning."
That sets him off again, a proper laugh this time, and Frenchie grins back at him.
"And you got a job already?" John asks, equally impressed and amused.
"Oh—no, actually," Frenchie says, and glances around them cagily before jerking his head at an empty bench facing the sea and taking off towards it. "That booth was closed. I just picked the lock on the shutter for a laugh."
"Fuck, really?"
Frenchie's grin is pointy, like a letter V, like the old Grinch cartoon. He could so easily look properly wicked, John thinks, if he wanted to, but he doesn't. There's something sunny and comfortable and carefree about his manner—guarded, a little bit, but intrinsically as much a part of him as the cute scatter of freckles across his nose or the soft spiral curl of his hair. Maybe it takes another good-hearted misfit rogue to spot it. Anyone else, John would have been pretty sure they did it to lift whatever money might have been lingering in the stall plus whatever they could scrounge from oblivious punters through the day. Frenchie? Undoubtedly he could do that. Maybe even has before. Maybe will again. Maybe makes his living as some kind of roaming grifter, nicking giant Disney villain plushies and kids' glowstick craft kits for whatever new friends he makes along the way. But there's clearly an irreverent streak in him a mile wide, and doing something outrageous 'for a laugh' seems to fit him even better than his tight jeans—which, John hasn't failed to notice, fit him fucking sublimely.
"Nothing wrong with checking out the lay of the land," Frenchie says, going back to the tray of chips and saveloy on the bench between them. "Might stick around for a bit. Always fancied living by the seaside again."
That's familiar. The call of the water, like the call of the void, is a hard one to resist once it's in you. The rough part is finding a bit of sea that feels like it's welcoming you home, not putting up defences. You'd think with the amount of meandering coastline there is to choose from in this part of the world—or any other part, for that matter—it wouldn't be so fucking difficult, and still here he is, on the move yet again.
"Eh," is what comes out of John's mouth instead of any of that. Frenchie gives him a curious glance, eyebrows raised, and John wrinkles his nose. "I mean, sure, the seaside's great, if you're in Brighton, or San Francisco, or Ibiza. You ever been to Portballintrae?"
Chips apparently forgotten, Frenchie twists to rest his elbow on the back of the bench, his face on the knuckles of his closed fist. It distorts one eye, pulling the corner of it slightly out to the side, and somehow it's really fucking charming? Just the unselfconsciousness of him. The way he pays attention with his entire wallet, not just the bits of shrapnel he finds rolling about loose. "Nope. Guessing that's home?"
John nods, even though it's not, really, no matter how much of the past fuck knows how long he's spent there. "I grew up in Lisburn mostly, kicked around Belfast for a few years, tried out London for a bit, America, Japan. My mum moved back there when I was travelling, it's where she grew up. Then she got sick."
It's still really fucking hard. Maybe always will be. Christ, he hopes not. A whole life stretching off ahead into the murky distance with no respite from a grief that for the last month has either kept him awake all night or shoved him into a sort of helpless, broken coma for eighteen hours at a time? No. Fuck no. He'll cannonball off Fair Head and join her if that's all he's got going for him here.
Frenchie moves without him noticing, not until a couple of fingers, callused from guitar strings, are gently touching one of the rainbow tattooed stars on the back of John's hand. "Mine's dead, too," he says. Something about the matter-of-fact way he just lays it out there makes John want to smile again, even as his mouth is battling too hard with the sudden, tedious grief ambush to quite make the right shape. "It sucks balls, man. I get it. What's her name?"
"Ann."
Frenchie nods, thoughtful. "Did it suit her?"
The unexpected question stops the onward march of misery right in its tracks. Nobody's ever asked that before. There have been good and bad attempts to make him feel better, and plenty of both—all the usual sympathetic platitudes about better places that he's managed to grit his teeth and accept because he knows they mean well, as well as some previously unheard stories from his aunties and their old school friends that had all of them roaring with laughter through their tears the long, exhausting day of the funeral—but nothing's felt this personal. He knows he's grown a bit defensive and mistrustful over the years, for too many fucking good reasons, and usually something like this would feel invasive, or scuff his hackles up and make him growl or sneer something that only went and reinforced everyone's first impression of him, with all his eyeliner and tattoos and towering height and resting bitch face and fondness for thrash metal and witch house.
"Not really," John says softly. "She was a wee ginger firework of a woman. Came up to here on me, and that's in her good heels." He bumped the side of his flat hand off his breastbone just under the peace necklace that matches Frenchie's, aching there somewhere deep and bleak around the heart remembering how many times she hugged him and rested her cheek or forehead there. "But no one ever messed with her, they wouldn't fucking dare. She had this brilliant glare on her, like a kestrel. She wouldn't stand for bullies. Christ, the woman rode a Harley. Never knew how she managed it, but she was tough as old beef. Said she carried me for nine months, she can handle a fucking motorcycle. She was threatening to get a trike right before she died."
Beside him, he hears Frenchie murmur a pleased little sound, like he can picture all of this and is fucking loving it. You would, John wants to tell him. You would've loved her as much as I did. Somehow, after meeting this guy only half an hour ago, he already knows that, the same way that in the months and years to come he'll recognise that he already knew in that moment, as clear and simple and inevitable as the approaching sunset, that he'd never leave this town again without Frenchie by his side.
"It's just, you know," John says, awkwardly struggling to find the words for something unwordable. "Ann. A wee little nothing sound for someone who was bigger than the universe. There wasn't even an E on the end."
"That does seem pretty stingy of your nan," Frenchie agrees. He moves suddenly to pick up his guitar from where he's leaned it against the edge of the bench, like something's just occurred to him and it's important enough to share. "Purple clover, Queen Anne lace, crimson hair across your face," he sings quietly, picking at the strings with his clever fingertips. "You could make me cry if you don't know. Can't remember what I was thinking of. You might be spoiling me too much, love. You're gonna make me lonesome when you go."
"Don't stop," John tells him, because Frenchie's stopped, and he looks vaguely worried like he thinks maybe that was too on the nose.
"No?"
"No."
"'Kay," Frenchie murmurs, and now he's smiling with his head ducked, looking at the vibrating strings as he plucks the music out of them and sings quietly enough not to draw too much attention from anyone but John. "You're gonna make me wonder what I'm doing, staying far behind without you. You're gonna make me wonder what I'm saying. You're gonna make me give myself a good talking to. I'll look for you in old Honolulu, San Francisco, Ashtabula. You're gonna have to leave me now, I know. But I'll see you in the sky above, in the tall grass, in the ones I love..."
Abruptly he stops again and sets his guitar back down so he can bend his long legs and set the low stacked heels of his boots against his backside on the bench, arms wrapping round his shins, chin tucked in the dip between his knees. Grief does different things to different people, but turns out you can almost always read it when you know what to look for, whatever the language.
"You wanna get out of here?" John asks, and Frenchie nods slowly.
"I have a system for dealing with all the terrible things I've seen," he explains a while later, when they've wandered away from the busy, open stretch of the beach and found a quieter bit in the cool shadows under the pier where everything smells, not unpleasantly, like wet wood. "There's a box in my mind, and I put the things in the box. I lock the box, and then I don't open it again. Works like a charm."
"Really?" John asks, and watches Frenchie pull a dissatisfied sort of face.
"I mean, usually it does. Having a bit of a nightmare with this one, though, to be honest," he admits. "Turns out mums don't like being stuffed in boxes."
"You can tell me about her, if you want," John offers, because—fuck. He didn't realise how much he's been cramming into his own too-small mind box, and how much better he feels now Frenchie's gone and prised it open so tenderly with his questions and let some of the pressure out. Not better-better. Not good. He'll probably never be good again. But he's gonna make a point to say her name more, and that feels like some kind of a start.
Frenchie considers it for a while, and John lets him think. It's nice under there in the shade after the roaring heat of the day, and there's something lulling about the quiet, steady rush of the waves splashing up against the seaweedy base of the pillars. He could sleep, he realises suddenly. He could fall asleep right here and it wouldn't feel like a fight.
"Best not," Frenchie says eventually. He seems brighter, some of the light back in his pretty brown eyes. "I'll just get a bigger box. Make it nice for her, you know?"
"Get some wallpaper up," John suggests, hoping for a smile, feeling it like warm fingers stroking up the back of his neck when he gets one.
"Yeah! Fancy wallpaper and a decent carpet. And a pink velvet sofa with those lacy little covers you get for the arms."
"She'd like that?"
"Reckon so," Frenchie says, starting to lever off his battered old leather boots and mismatched socks so he can dig his bare toes into the sand. "We mostly lived in a camper van. And it was great, man, don't get me wrong. Love being able to just pick up and go any time. But, fuck, she dreamed of a nice sofa."
Then, abruptly changing the subject like it's the final turn of the mental box key:
"Hey, what's your thoughts on huddling for warmth?"
John eyes him up, amused but no less ready to lift an arm and say yeah, sure, bring it in. Frenchie's wearing once-black skinny jeans faded to a soft grey with holes in both the knees, a rainbow tie-dye scarfy sarong thing tied round his hips, a Townes Van Zandt t-shirt that's also cut off a little bit too short for its rolling hem to always touch his waistband, depending on how he's moving or sitting. There's no way he's cold. Even here in the shade under the pier it's pretty warm, everything in the world—including its dark places—feeling touched by the summer heatwave today.
"In general?" John asks. "Like, as a concept? Romance trope?"
"If I was a bit chilly, say," Frenchie goes on, nonchalantly watching the sand stream over his wiggling toes, each nail painted a different shade of blue. "You the type of bloke who'd go come on, then, let's huddle. Or are you more of a, you know, should've brought a jacket kinda guy?"
He thinks about it, only because he suspects it might get him another sideways grin for treating it so seriously and that's a nice thing to look at in the dim light and the slatted shadows of the pier far above them. "Reckon I'd let you huddle," John says eventually.
"Yes, mate!"
He's got a big helping of Frenchie suddenly, all the bones and hair and wiry muscle of him burrowing a home against his side, and John laughs a bit, soft and fucking besotted already, draping his arm across those narrow shoulders. It would be casual, probably, just really fucking cool, no big deal, just two fellas chilling under the pier at sunset, if Frenchie didn't settle eventually with his head against John's shoulder and reach up to hold his dangling hand.
"You're not really cold, are you?" John asks, still feeling fairly close to laughter. Nothing's really funny, but the last hour's been fun, despite the two dead mums, and that deserves the acknowledgement of some kind of reaction. He can smell sweat, faintly, fresh and intimate, and Frenchie is like a cat against him, warm and lithe and taking up way more space than he looks like he should.
"Nah, just wanted an excuse," Frenchie admits, perfectly open about it. He's letting his fingers drift gently across John's knuckles and the back of his hand, tapping some rhythm he doesn't recognise, a song playing only in Frenchie's head. "You slept rough before?"
"Yeah."
"You slept rough on the beach with a mysterious musician before?"
John grins. Dares to turn his face a bit and press his nose against Frenchie's curls, wanting to get a stronger hit of the sweetly lovely sweat scent of him, but it doesn't really feel like a dare at all, just a welcome inevitability. "First time for that. You ever sleep rough on the beach with an off-duty drag queen?"
Frenchie hums softly, considering. "Have done, as a matter of fact. Not one as pretty as you, mind."
"You've not even seen me in a frock yet," John points out, and feels the slide of hair against his cheek, then skin, then stubble, when Frenchie turns to look up at him. Their noses are close enough to bump. The air between them is being pulled into their lungs, exhaled again, breathed in by the other. John's been all around the world and never found anything there as intimate as this silent sharing of breath.
"Don't need to," Frenchie says, confident and simple. He kisses John's parted mouth, lingering there on his lower lip to take another breath right out of his body, then settles back against his side. Maybe he falls asleep first. Maybe John does. Maybe they do it together. However it happens, it's easy.
"Babe!"
John hears the loud whisper somehow, piercing his sleep like an arrow. For a fuzzy moment he thinks it's Frenchie trying to wake him and cuddles him closer, wanting just one more minute of this cosy comfort before the real world steals it away again. But then Frenchie mumbles something sleepy, twisting to press his face into John's chest, and John hears the voice again.
"Babe, c'mere!"
"Oh," another voice says, surprised and not bothering to even slightly whisper.
The first bloke speaks again. He's got an American accent. "We should wake them up, right? What if they drown?"
"Pete, me and you have literally fucked and fell asleep all night in this exact spot," the second voice says, this one English. "Even at high tide it won't come up this far."
"Well, we should still wake them up! They might need the last train home."
"Yeah, maybe," the second bloke says, and sighs heavily like it's a massive imposition. "Er, hello? Excuse me?" he says, and gently pokes John's leg with something. That's what drags him through the last bit of sleep-fog and makes his eyes open. "Oh thank god, I thought you might be dead," the stranger says, sounding genuinely relieved, while the other guy—Pete—hovers by his side with his fists clenched, like he wants to make sure John sees he thinks he could take them both on if he had to so don't try anything. He'd probably look a lot scarier if he didn't have a gleaming pink sunburn over most of his bald head.
"Not yet," John tells them, feeling dry and scratchy after the salty chips earlier.
"Is your boyfriend dead?" the English bloke asks suspiciously, and pokes Frenchie's bare foot as well with what John now sees is a litter picker.
"Not yet," Frenchie says, sounding just as croaky as John and not bothering to open his eyes, or to correct the assumption.
"Okay, well—great! That's my civic duty done, then." He gives his litter picker a bitchy look. "Well, almost."
"Community service?" Frenchie asks sympathetically. "Been there, man."
"No," the American says, gazing at the younger guy with the most lovesick expression John thinks he's ever seen on a human who's not looking at a puppy. "Lucius volunteers for the mayor's beach cleanup squad. He's awesome like that."
"Mmm, that's less altruism, more trying to get in his pants," Lucius points out, and Pete grins and blushes and fumbles his bin bag. Turning his attention back to John and Frenchie, Lucius studies them for a moment, seeming unsure what to do or say next. He's got a baby face and expressive eyebrows and a mouth that twists up at the side in something that's not quite a smirk and not a sneer but maybe just what his face does when he's thinking. "Are you okay?" he asks, sounding genuinely a little bit concerned. "Like, I know you're not dead, and that's, I mean, great job. Congrats. But have you got somewhere to go? Are you staying at the holiday lets?"
"Didn't really think that far ahead," John admits.
"Hang on," Lucius says, and wiggles a phone in a case the exact shade of a red rock dummy out of his back jeans pocket. His voice sounds flirty and cheery when whoever he's ringing answers, even as he's rolling his eyes and making flapping beak gestures with his hand at Pete: "Hiii, Janet! Afraid not, it's Lucius. You know you can program names and photos in so you see who's calling you, right? I'm not, I swear! I'll show you. Anyway, shut up for a sec and listen. You got space for two gorgeous young men tonight? No, not me and Pete. Cos I've got my own shithole flat, that's why! And Pete's got a whole house. Yeah, that actually is a good point—babe, how come I've not moved in with you yet?"
Pete's blushing almost as red as his sunburn now, but looks incredibly pleased with himself. "I guess because we've only been dating like twelve days?"
"You hear that, Jan?" Lucius says back into the phone. "No, days. What—because I'm twenty-two, I don't want a mortgage! Nope. Cos I spend it all on condoms and Malibu. Have you got a bed for my friends or not? Kingsize, if you can. Oh. Hang on—she's only got a double," he tells John and Frenchie apologetically. "Guess you could sleep diagonally?"
John and Frenchie eye each other. It's a very short conversation.
They're waved off towards the bed and breakfast near the harbour, following Pete's directions and slightly unsettled by Lucius's warnings about the woman who owns it. The town feels quieter towards this end, friendlier, not much like the noisy clashing chaos of the tourist end. It's all old stone houses, moored boats with cute names, the soft golden glow of pub windows even though the sky's not really dark yet. It's exactly the kind of cosy little place John was running from. Somehow, it feels less like a baited trap now he's walking into it holding one of the big plushie Ursula's tentacles, and feeling the occasional tug of Frenchie holding another, swinging her between them like a couple of parents with an energetic toddler.
"You think maybe we should've told them we're not boyfriends?" John asks, unlatching the wrought iron gate.
"Aren't we?" Frenchie asks with a return of that impish pointy grin from before, and kisses John on the cheek as he passes to go and ring the doorbell.