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The problem was, Tim’s spirits were high. It was a beautiful spring day in Los Angeles, where he and Tom were promoting the feature-fucking-film they’d somehow made together, which was getting a surprisingly warm reception. What a ridiculous situation for a couple of dickhead Englishmen to find themselves in. There were screenings and Q&As and Zoom interviews, interspersed with Tim being able to show Tom around to some of his new favorite haunts he’d discovered whilst filming a sitcom in LA for a few months in the previous autumn, pretending he was an East Hollywood local. Griff had worked in LA for ages, of course, but let Tim giddily drag them to cafes and dive bars and his beloved reservoir.
The high spirits meant Tim had let his guard down, and just answered the question honestly. Four words in, he’d realized what he was about to say.
The interviewer was lovely. She’d done more research than most had, seemingly knew what questions had been asked and answered a dozen or more times already. The perfect final interview of the five or six they’d sneaked in before that night’s screening in some part of town Tim hadn’t explored yet — Burbank, maybe? His cheeks were flushed from laughing.
“So,” the interviewer said with a curiously cocked head that Tom mirrored, and Tim’s eyebrows raised expectantly. “Do either of you have that ‘one that got away,’ a Nell if you will?”
“Well, we all do, don’t we?” Tim heard himself say.
The interviewer perked up. “Would you like to tell us about yours? Was it a formative experience that helped shape the script?”
“Ah.” Tim balked, and felt his cheeks go a bit redder. “If I’m going to tell the story we’ll need some new names I think — how many people watch this show of yours?”
“Oh! Fans of the channel? Following your career?”
Tim’s laugh was sharp in his own ears. “You never know, do you?”
Tom glanced at Tim sideways, eyes narrowing the smallest bit. “Give us a name then?” he suggested as he turned his attention back to the laptop screen.
“Jessica?” the interviewer suggested.
“Oh!” Tom cheered. “Lovely lady!”
“Lovely!” Tim agreed over the giggling of the interviewer. “Charming woman. And her husband?”
“Oh no,” the interviewer gasped. “It’s like that, is it?”
“It’s a bit like that, I’m afraid. Do I need to go on, or is that enough of the story to get by?”
“Well, I don’t mean to pry, of course!” The interviewer had the decency to look at least a bit repentant. “Whatever you’re willing to share.”
Tim let out a theatrical sigh. “Give us the husband’s name then.”
“John?”
“Right. Jessica and John. Lovely people. The best people, actually.” Tim bit his lip to keep from saying…more. Cleared his throat. “I met Jessica at university.” Well, Jessica was Alex Horne, and they’d met at Cambridge. Which was certainly a university, but not one that Tim had attended any classes at. Technically. “Did some plays together. Y’know.”
“Classic drama society romance?”
Tim smirked at the memories of sneaking cheeky kisses in the darkness backstage, of stumbling home exhausted after rehearsals to tangle up together in Alex’s bed, of one quite adventurous handjob between scenes when Alex, quiet as he was, had nearly drawn blood through the jumper as he bit into Tim’s shoulder to keep from disrupting a dress rehearsal. “Well,” he drawled, “friends first. Really good friends. You know the kind? Like when there’s no real reason for the two of you to be friends at all, but suddenly one day you’re just stuck with each other?”
“Awww,” the interviewer cooed, and Tom turned a smile to him.
“Anyway. Jessica found herself a John. Because of course she did! She deserved him — deserved the world!” Rachel of course had always been on the scene, had known Alex longer than Tim had. And of course Tim knew they belonged together, that they were perfect for each other. He had just been happy to be able to go along for the ride, bask in their glow, for as long as they’d have him.
“The best people,” the interviewer said with a sad little smile.
Tim closed his eyes as he nodded. “Deserved each other. Too good for the rest of the world, we don’t deserve them.”
“That’s a bit dramatic.”
Tim let out a sputtering laugh at Tom’s admonition. “You know them too, then?” the interviewer asked.
“Oh yeah,” Tom nodded. “They are lovely people, don’t get me wrong, but Tim’s got them on a bit of a pedestal.”
“You can just about see the love hearts popping out from my eyes, then?” Tim asked, making little bursting motions with his hands over his head.
“Three peas in a pod, they were.”
Tim shrugged. “Until we weren’t.”
“What happened, then?” the interviewer asked quietly.
“Well, it’s your standard cliche, finding yourself falling just a bit in love with your best friend!” Tim gave a big shrug.
“Perils of opposite sex friendships,” the interviewer nodded, and Tim gave a thoughtful hum that he hoped would drown out the sound of his heart thumping sickeningly in his chest. He swallowed around the lie, pulled a hand over his beard as he got the pronouns straight.
“I really was in love with — Jessica, was it? Maybe still am a little bit, if you’re gonna drag it out of me. Fairly certain it was reciprocated.”
To Tim’s credit, he’d wager almost anybody who met Alex Horne fell in love with him a little bit. He was just such a good person, such an amazing friend, really made you feel like you mattered. But not everybody got to be wrapped up in his gangly arms in a crushing hug and feel his big, warm heart race against your own and get a little forehead kiss when you maybe really needed one.
“But she had her John.”
“She had her John. I mean don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of love for the guy as well!”
Rachel’s hugs were nearly as powerful as Alex’s, even if she was half his size. The incredibly lucky might get hugs from both of them at the same time. Tim was fairly certain he was the only one who got to experience it in the nude, giggling under some blankets. And if anyone did, Tim hoped they was as grateful for the experience as he was.
“Peas in a pod.”
“Three very cozy peas. I was in the pod — well, expanding the metaphor, the pod here is a flat, I’d been sleeping on their sofa for quite some time when he got round to proposing. Encouraged him, even!”
Tim was losing track of the pronouns again. But of course he’d been thrilled when Alex came to him, brimming with excitement about proposing. By then the pod had been getting a bit less cozy, and there’d certainly been more sofa sleeping than sharing the bed that certainly wasn’t designed for three people but fitted them well enough.
“There’d been plenty of assurances that the pod would always have room for three, that the friendship would stay strong as ever. And it did! Mostly. But then there were, y’know, suggestions I maybe find myself a nice girl of my own, that sort of thing. And the pod started to feel smaller. So I jumped ship. Found a new pod. Forced poor Basmos to let me in.”
“I at least had a spare room for you,” Tom chuckled.
“Bigger pod,” Tim nodded. And a room of his own, at last! Not that that stopped him from cuddling up with Tom in one of their beds from time to time. Until Tom had found a pea of his own, too. “Until I eventually got on my feet. Figured out how to cope with being in my own pod.”
Tom squeezed Tim’s knee below the table. “Worked out in the end, though, didn’t it?” They both knew it should’ve been a firm declaration, or a joke perhaps, but Tom’s question sounded just a bit sad as it lingered in the air.
“Oh yeah,” Tim insisted with a perhaps overly decisive nod and thoughts of his flat in London, where Fatberg and some struggling houseplants were eagerly awaiting his return. “No real complaints. One quite minor heartbreak, what sort of a poet would I be without one or two of those to fuel me?”
“Idiot loses girl, girl finds more deserving husband,” Tom said with a cheeky smirk that got a full laugh from Tim, “you can’t say it wasn’t perhaps a bit helpful to the script.”
The interviewer let out a giggle but didn’t take Tom’s bait. Her attention turned back to Tim. “And are you still…friends? Do you still…hang out or whatever?”
“Oh yeah! Not as much as I’d like, they moved away a bit, we’ve all got careers, they’ve got kids, I’ve got a feature film. But that’s just being an adult, isn’t it?”
“Hmm, isn’t it just,” the interviewer said with a petulant little wrinkle of her nose. “Tom, have you got your own one that got away?”
“Ah, well, nothing quite so poetic as his.” Tom gave another squeeze of Tim’s knee, and Tim gave a little relieved huff of a laugh. “I did effectively stalk the woman who is, thankfully, now my wife, so she’s the one who got away for awhile until I managed to wear her down.”
“I was there for that, there were mix tapes, it was all a bit sad.”
The interviewer gave a hearty laugh, and Tim guffawed and leaned into Tom’s shoulder just a bit.
It was easy enough for Tim to get through the last few minutes of the interview, a couple more questions, a round of thank-yous, and Tom ended the video chat and eased the laptop closed. He let out a breath through puffed-up cheeks and turned to Tim. “Alright?”
“Yeah, fine.” Tim leaned back in the chair he’d dragged across the hall from his own hotel room so they could sit at the tiny table together. Stretched his arms over his head with a little grunt as his bones cracked. Cleared his throat.
“You didn’t have to tell that story, you know.”
Tim pulled his hands through his beard. “Just sort of came out, didn’t it.”
“Do you…want…” Tom petered out, clearly not sure what to offer. Tim didn’t know what he’d accept.
With a jerk of his head in the vague direction of his room across the hall, he said, “Might just try to squeeze in a bath before the screening.”
“Right, yeah.” Tom nodded to himself. “Good idea.”
Tim stood from his chair with an old-man grunt and grabbed the back of it. “Should I drag it back to mine?”
“Do we have more interviews tomorrow?”
“I don’t remember a time when there weren’t interviews, if I’m honest, I’ve lost all track.”
“Probably do. Up to you if you want to do ‘em in here or in our own rooms I guess.”
Tim patted the chair, and then ruffled Tom’s hair as he walked past on his way out the door. “What, and give up the chance to have you squeeze my leg when I’ve said something stupid?” He turned to give Tom a moderately successful wink as he stepped through the door, and then disappeared across the hall.
After another screening, filled with awkward praise and grateful thank-yous and so many of the same Q&A questions and lovely fans asking for autographs, and then dinner and a couple drinks at a nearby restaurant, the whole crew stumbled back to the hotel with a chorus of good-nights, until Tim and Tom were the last in the hallway, fumbling for key cards in pockets.
“Come in with me,” Tom urged, but Tim gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. “Just for a minute.” He grabbed Tim’s hand, both of them cold from the evening chill, and gave a little tug. Tim let out a performative sigh, but Tom could see the smile in his eyes even as they rolled.
“Just for a minute.”
Tom didn’t let go even as he beeped his key card against the lock and shouldered the door open, leaving Tim to keep the door from swinging closed on him as he was dragged inside.
“Shoes, please.” Tom toed off his trainers as he let go of Tim’s hand, and Tim scowled at him.
“What happened to ‘just for a minute’?”
“Trousers too.”
“What?!”
“Take your trousers off.”
“What are you on about, man,” Tim grumbled, hands on his hips, jeans still on, “this hasn’t happened in at least a decade, we should probably have a chat bef—”
“No, not — you’re going to get a cuddle whether you like it or not.”
“I am, am I?” He’d given up trying to hide his smile, even if his voice was still argumentative.
Tom shucked off his jeans and pulled back the bedclothes. Once he’d crawled in and situated himself, propped up on one side on his elbow, he patted the space in front of him.
“And why do the trousers have to go?”
“Nobody wants to spoon in denim, Key, just get in here.”
With a very performative sigh, Tim undid his flies, stepped out of his jeans and tossed them over his chair still at the table, then tugged down the hem of his red jumper with both hands and a huff, and slid into the bed. As he settled onto his back, hands clasped over his stomach, Tom flipped the covers over them both, and then curled around Tim, one arm across his chest, cheek on his shoulder, bare legs tangled together. He let out a cartoonishly pleased sigh, and Tim sputtered out a reluctant laugh. “Why are you so insistent on this cuddle?” he demanded.
Tom wiggled in closer. “Thought you needed it. That last interview was…. Seemed like you might need to be reminded that people love you.”
Tim wrinkled his nose at the ceiling. “Shut up.”
Tom gave him a squeeze. Nuzzled his face into the warmth of Tim’s jumper. Smirked into Tim’s shoulder as a sleepy little hum rattled in his throat. “S’true.”
“Well.” Tim moved to drop a kiss to the top of Tom’s head, where his breath rustled Tom’s hair and sent goosebumps down his neck. Tim’s hand grabbed at Tom’s arm perhaps a bit too strongly.
“I’m sorry neither of us picked you.”
With them wrapped up in each other so tightly, it was impossible to miss Tim’s hitched breath, and he knew it. He paused for a few beats, chest rising under Tom’s grip, heart thudding under his cheek. He shifted suddenly, and Tom was afraid he’d gone too far, that Tim was retreating back to his room. But he grabbed Tom’s arm as he rolled away onto his side, clutching Tom to his chest and leaning back into his body and shuffling their socked feet together. “Thought you said you’d spoon me.”
“Sorry, that was thoughtless of me.” He pulled Tim about as close as he could, snuggling into the back of his neck and delighting in the shiver Tim gave in return.
“Never a thought in that pretty little head of yours, is there.”
Tom wasn’t sure if the watery quality of Tim’s voice was sleepiness or…. “Yet?”
He gave a tired chuckle. “Yet.”
It only took a few soft breaths and maybe an unacknowledged sniffle from Tim for the air to grow heavy with sleep. “I think our ‘just a minute’ is probably about up,” Tom said softly into Tim’s jumper.
“No it’s not,” Tim mumbled, and snuggled deeper into the pillow.
“Okay.” Tom shifted a bit, letting his limbs fall heavily around Tim. “Aren’t you glad I made you take off your trousers?”
Tim giggled in spite of himself and jostled Tom’s arm still in his possession out of protest. “Shut up.”
Jet lag meant that Tim had fallen asleep in the comfort of his own bed while the sun was still up after a restless overnight flight from LAX, which meant he was up before dawn the next day. He waited for the sun to rise before heading out into a crisp spring morning for a jog around the heath. A swan was honking away at a heron, or perhaps some coots in the bathing pools as he sat on a nearby bench with a coffee and the last couple bites of a pastry. His phone chimed in his pocket. He thumbed at the screen and grinned down the line as he pressed it to his ear. “Rach!”
“I saw the interview.” Leave it to Rachel Horne to cut to whatever chase she was on.
“Yeah, flight was good, thanks, didn’t get much sleep though.”
“Tim.”
“It does feel nice to be home, actually, but I’m not sure the girl upstairs watered my—”
“You know what I’m talking about, Key.”
Tim let out a huff and leaned back into his bench. “Alright, I’ll bite. Which interview did you see?” There was only one that could have elicited such a reaction, surely, but he wasn’t going to offer up more than he needed to. And he’d rather hoped the interviewer would have edited it kindly.
“We never meant to kick you out of our pod.”
“Ah.”
“I mean yes, we did want you off the sofa and into a place with your own walls.”
“Kicked me out of the pod, Rach!” he shouted into the cold morning air, but softened it with a chuckle. He was pretty sure the swans were honking in protest behind him.
“I think you maybe…slipped out of the pod and we just didn’t think to catch you.”
“Didn’t try very hard to get caught, did I,” he said with a smirk.
“Tim,” she sighed. He wasn’t sure if it felt patronizing or comforting. “Just. Come and get your man, Key.”
“Oh. Really?” Even Tim could hear the ridiculousness of his smile in his voice.
“Of course really!” Her grin was equally evident. “Pod’s been waiting for you this whole time!”
“So can I…can I be selfish and ask if you’ll still be there? In the, er, pod?”
“Just try and stop me, you silly man.”
Tim let out a cackle, and the swan allowed him that one.
“You could have said something, you know,” Rachel said in a chastising tone.
“No I couldn’t,” he countered.
“Hmm.”
“Hmm.” He took a gulp from his cup, and he was certain he heard the clink of a mug against her kitchen counter a moment later. “This isn’t just, y’know, out of pity or whatever. Because of my pathetic podcast appearance. Is it?”
“It was a bit pathetic, wasn’t it.” Rachel only managed to hide the giggle for a moment, and Tim giggled right back. “Come over for dinner Friday. Kids will all be away for the night. You can be the middle spoon.”
He bit back a laugh. “Which way do the spoons go, big to little or little to big?”
“Whichever way you like. We'd always fit together so well. Bet we still do.”
“Like peas in a pod.”