Page 107 of Pansies

“Then we’ll be dead.”

Fen’s hands tightened on the wheel. “That’s not helping.”

“You’ll be fine, pet. Go on, now. Make her sing.”

There it was: the familiar throaty howl that never failed to grip Alfie’s heart, make his pulse race, and the effortless slide from fast to faster toreally fucking fast. They soared past seventy-eighty-ninety-one hundred in fragments of seconds. You couldn’t even really see it happening. Only feel it.

And, suddenly, Fen was laughing. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”

“Fun, right?”

They had to shout over the engine.

“Fun?” Fen sounded rough and breathless—sexy as hell. “I feel…I feel like I’m defying gravity.”

“Well, let’s not try any stunt jumps, eh? This isn’t the next Grand Theft Auto game.”

“I somehow keep forgetting you’re musically illiterate. It’s a song.”

“Oh aye? Going to do it for me?”

“I’m not sure I can hit the F but”—Fen tossed the hair back from his face—“but, you know something? Right now…maybe I can.”

So they roared along the empty A1, past hazy fields and trees that looked like shadows of themselves, while Fen—his voice as pure as starlight—sang about a wizard, and change, and how nobody would ever keep him down.

Alfie had no way of telling if he got the note right. But he didn’t care. It was just nice hearing Fen sing again—though did it count asagainwhen he barely remembered the first time? He wished he could. But the truth was, he couldn’t link that silver-and-gold sylph boy to the man he was now. Just like the stupid kid Alfie’d been couldn’t have connected Fen—or James, as he’d been then—to a person whose life he was ruining. But, still, for the first time since the night after the wedding, Alfie’s head felt a bit less split open. Like maybe there were bridges after all. Even if it meant accepting the reality of someone he didn’t want to be. And someone else other people didn’t want him to be. And the fact they were both him anyway and always had been…

Fuck. Maybe he did need therapy.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been entangled in phenomenology, but then Fen broke the silence. “Do you have any idea where we are?”

Somewhere between South Shields and Edinburgh probably wasn’t the answer Fen was looking for. Alfie glanced out of the window, looking for clues, but it had been such a long time since he’d driven this way, he wasn’t sure he’d have been able to recognise the scenery in daylight. “Near Berwick maybe? I don’t think we crossed the border, anyway.”

Fen made a cute little startled noise. “I drove us to Scotland? That means I should probably stop, doesn’t it?”

“You don’t have to.”

A river snaked by, gleaming dully in the darkness.

“N-no, I should. Or I might not. It’s kind of addictive.”

“Well, you’ll run out of motorway eventually.”

“Let’s try to avoid a Thelma and Louise situation.” Fen slowed and eased them into a slip road, and then into a twisty little B road, searching for somewhere they could turn around.

There still wasn’t much for Alfie to see—a stipple of wooden fences marking out a tumble of grey-washed fields that muddled into the sky. And no moon. Just its glow locked behind ragged clouds, turning their edges yellow, like a grandma doily.

“I’m also ridiculously horny,” murmured Fen, as he stopped the Sagaris on a dirt track beneath a dangling-branched tree.

“You what?”

“Apparently driving your car really fast while singing musical numbers excites me.”3 Fen caught him by the wrist and dragged his hand to his cock. Which was as stiff as the gearstick and quite a bit hotter.

“Lemme help with that.”

Fen’s hips bucked. “No, I mean yes, oh fuck. I mean, I want you to fuck me.”

“Not sure there’s room.”

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