Page 15 of Pansies

Alfie made a frustrated gesture, nearly losing the sheet. “It wasn’t just me.”

“That’s the best justification you can find? God, you’repathetic.”

There was a long silence. Fen was shaking slightly. If he squinted, Alfie could just about see James O’Donaghue in him. So fragile and defiant.

“Look,” he tried. “I’m sorry, okay? I should have said that first, but you should have told me.”

Fen said nothing. He didn’t need to. The look on his face was enough.

“Okay, forget that. I’m sorry. Just sorry. But it was a long time ago. I’m not the same person.”

“Oh, right, yes. Because you’re gay now and you feel allsadabout it.”

Alfie’s mouth dropped open. He knew his sense of betrayal was probably out of proportion. But it was like he’d shown his belly in a moment of weakness and Fen had responded by ripping his guts out.

Before he could muster any sort of answer, Fen had torn right on. “You think you have it rough? Try growing up queer in a place like this.”

“Ididgrow up gay. I just didn’t know it like.”

“Well, it didn’t stop you making my life miserable.”

Alfie was still feeling too unexpectedly wounded to be capable of controlling what came out of his mouth. “Yeah, but you didn’t exactly help yourself either.”

Silence. Again.

“What,” asked Fen very quietly, “the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, you could have kept your head down. You didn’t have to make a big deal about it.”

Fen’s hand came up, trembled, and then dropped. In some ways, Alfie might have preferred it if Fen had tried to hit him—he knew how to deal with that kind of thing—but Fen never had. Not once. He had struggled and protested but never pleaded. Never struck back. And there it was in those gorgeous, sea-glass eyes: all the old hurt, the helpless anger, and the same stubborn pride. Only Fen was a man now, strong and beautiful, and as lost to Alfie as he had ever been.

“Look, I’m—”

Fen darted for the door and pulled it open, making Alfie wince in the sticky yellow light that flooded in from the hallway. He paused, hand on the handle, half-turned-away. “You’re wrong, Alfie Bell. You haven’t changed. Maybe you suck cock these days, but you’re still a coward and a bully, and that’s all you’ll ever be.”

And then Fen was gone.

For a long time after, Alfie just stood there in the awful quiet, clutching his sheet and staring at the fire notice pinned to the back of the door. He thought of getting dressed and going after Fen, but how would he find him? What would he say? He’d already tried to apologise, and Fen had been awful. Although admittedly it hadn’t been one of Alfie’s better apologies. He’d been too startled.

Not really knowing what else to do, he got back into bed. It was cold again, but it smelled like sex. Like Fen. His brain felt weird. As if there was a gap in the middle of it and he couldn’t get the edges to join up straight again. Fen. James O’Donaghue.Now. Then. And Alfie: who he used to be, who he was, and who Fen thought he was—which was some kind of monster.

He tried to sleep, but bits and pieces of memory kept washing back on him like sea-wrack. Everybody had teased Fen. Or James, as he’d been. It was what kids did. And, yes, it had occasionally been a bit rough, but that was just the way it was. Same for everybody. They would probably have done it to Alfie if he hadn’t been the biggest and the strongest. The ringleader. And even that wouldn’t have made a difference if they’d known the truth.

If they’d known he was just like Fen.

Faggot. Puff. Sissy. Pansy. Fairy. Fudge-packer. Cocksucker.

His hands tingled suddenly. Remembering Fen across the years. Holding him down. It had all been petty. Small hurts. Humiliations. But relentless. And heedless. A habit.5

He was too hot, then too cold. He shoved the sheets aside. Blundered into the bathroom and drank and drank, directly from the tap. The water was so cold and clean, it tasted sharp somehow. Straight from the Kielder Reservoir. Not like the mineral-heavy shit they had down south.6

He pulled back, gasping, hardly daring to meet his own eyes in the mirror—bully,coward—but he looked exactly the same. He searched his face for a reason. Maybe he’d always fancied Fen, and beating him up, taking the piss, generally harassing him, had been the only safe way to get his attention. Like pulling a girl’s pigtails in the playground. Or maybe it came down to some psychotherapy bullshit: attacking the part of himself he couldn’t accept. But, no. There was nothing. Nothing to redeem or comfort him. Nothing to lend meaning to it. Fen had simply been there, and it was what you did to people who were different, even if you couldn’t exactly work out why they were different, or why it mattered that they were.

Fuck. He was fifteen years too late to be thinking about this stuff.

Which meant he also had fifteen years’ worth of bad to feel about it. And if nothing else, he owed Fen a proper apology. No more excuses or defensiveness. Maybe then he’d realise that Alfie reallyhadchanged. That he wasn’t like that anymore.

God… Fen had slept with him. Wanting him and hating him at the same time. Alfie had no idea how he was supposed to feel about that. Used? Deceived? Fucked up? But he kept remembering the sweetness. The scent of Fen’s hair, the salt in the crevices of his lips, the roughness of his hands.

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