Married Ones

by Matthew J. Metzger

“If you come in here for five whole minutes,” Stephen said, “then I’ll blow you in the car.”

  Mike narrowed his eyes, sensing a trick.

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “Fine.”

  Trousers were rolled, shoes and socks lost, and carefully so that damned sand didn’t get in them, and then Mike stepped out into the ridiculous ice box that was the North Sea, even in high summer. Stephen, being Scottish and therefore having pure alcohol in his veins instead of blood, was unperturbed, just sloshing around like it was a bloody paddling pool in Mike’s mam’s back garden. Mike, being an actual human being with a circulatory system and an internal body temperature that required maintenance somewhere above the heat level of a pious archangel’s porn collection, could feel the ice cubes forming in his ankles and soldiering their way up his legs. Heart attack in ten minutes, guaranteed.

  “Better be the best bloody blowjob of my life,” he groused.

  Stephen beamed.

  The wide, unfiltered smile momentarily took away what little breath Mike had kept from the sea’s icy grip. For a split second he was in his first term of that teacher training course, and Stephen was a debating club student with a passion for a stupid subject. For a single moment, they were young and dumb again—alright, fine, just young again—and there were no weddings, no histrionics, no in-laws. Just them, their tent, and their crap beach.

  Mike blamed that for the childish instinct.

  He pushed.

  The sea clapped shut over Stephen’s head, silencing the yelp, and then he surged out again with a battle-cry that would have made his ancestors proud. Usually Mike stood far too solid for such antics, but the shifting sand and the surging sea had unbalanced him, and he crashed down into the frozen water with Stephen’s shoulder in his neck.

  “Fucking arse!” he yelled, but Stephen wriggled free before Mike could duck him again, and then they were crashing through the surf, running along the narrow expanse of empty sand, laughing like drains and just as wet.

  By the time the chill set in and they retreated to the car, Mike’s legs were coated in a slimy film of sand and seaweed to the thighs, and Stephen’s fingers were blue. But his mouth was hot in a layby on their way back to the campsite, and Mike reckoned he could probably come to like beaches a bit more.

  Pun intended.

  * * * *

  Mike woke up in the night when Stephen zipped their sleeping bags together, blind in the pitch-darkness, and wriggled around until his backside was jammed into Mike’s lap.

  “Knock it off, you pest,” Mike mumbled, dropping an arm over Stephen’s waist anyway.

  “S’cold.”

  “Bollocks it is.”

  A hand groped. “No, they’re not.”

  “Lay off,” Mike grumped.

  “Bloody hell, worn you out?”

  “Too knackered for that.”

  “Old man,” Stephen taunted.

  “Watch it!”

  “Prove me wrong.”

  Mike found an ear and bit it until a high whine told him to knock it off.

  “Don’t start what you can’t finish.”

  “Finish me off then.”

  “In the morning,” Mike promised, locking the arm over Stephen’s waist in a tight squeeze.

  Sleeping bags were a bloody struggle on his own, never mind with Stephen joining in the burrito party. Two bags for two blokes the size of four blokes wasn’t exactly comfortable.

  Mind you, Stephen’s yoga evened the score a bit.

  “Could do it now.”

  “We’d have to unzip,” Mike said. “Bit cold for that.”

  “S’pose…”

  Mike nudged a knee between Stephen’s legs, and earned himself a pleased noise.

  “Mm. S’better.”

  Though to be fair, the thighs wedged in beside his own were cold.

  “You alright?”

  “Just cold. And don’t come out with a line about Scotland.”

  “Wasn’t going to. It’s Finns who’re hard enough for this. Finns and Geordies. Not you lot.”

  A dark chuckle sounded by Mike’s ear, and then the flurry of movement stilled. In a few more minutes, Mike felt the tension sag from the lean body that had invaded his personal space, and after a couple more, that familiar, gentle snoring started up again.

  But Mike was bloody awake, wasn’t he?

  He lay there in the dark, listening to the wind slapping the side of their tent and the gentle rush and call of the sea. Peaceful. Calm. No weddings, no teenagers, no Bastard Blacks or Jezs and Jos. Just him and Stephen, alone in their dark little pocket of the universe.

  Maybe for the last time.

  Because Stephen hadn’t quite told his mother the truth. They were done talking about starting a family. That ship had sailed. They were just working out how. Been shopping around adoption agencies, and talking to Mike’s stepsister about surrogacy. The actual having a baby part? Yeah, they were having a baby.

  Maybe the next time they came camping there’d be brats to feed. A baby to be watched over. Buckets and spades, and escaped crabs finding sensitive areas in the night. An abominable smell somewhere about five in the morning, and Stephen—because of course he would—leaving Mike to clean up while he went for a run.

  Mike slid an arm under the body at his front, and locked his hands around a slim chest.

  Bastard Black was right, they weren’t wealthy. They had savings, though. Decent income between them. But things would be tighter—kids were expensive, and Mike was already helping Mam out with paying off the repairs to her roof last year. This would be all their holidays for a little while, when they got themselves a baby. A long while, given Mike fully intended on at least two saplings to raise, and not with too many years between them. And they would be saplings, if Stephen’s leggy DNA got anywhere near them.

  But right now it was…silent.

  The first time they’d ever gone camping they couldn’t have been dating more than six months. It had been bloody winter, a freezing little bivouac in the Lake District. A Christmas party just for them, seeing as how Stephen was being summoned home to the Highlands to explain himself but Mike didn’t actually exist as far as the Blacks were concerned yet, so wasn’t invited. So they’d gone for their own Christmas in the middle of sodding nowhere, and Stephen had neatly inserted himself into Mike’s sleeping bag—much more seductively than this attempt—and said they’d get hypothermia if they didn’t share body heat.

  “Oh aye?” Mike had said. “You don’t feel hypothermic to me.”

  Stephen had shoved Mike’s hand between his thighs, and told him to take a closer feel.

  Mike grinned at the memory. Messiest sex of his life. He’d nearly done a hamstring, and then Stephen had sulked that they’d skipped the condom. Mike hadn’t helped by asking if Stephen thought condoms grew on trees, and had nearly been kicked out to go and look for his magical rubber plants at two in the morning.

  The Northumberland coast in August was nowhere near as harsh or as cold, but everything else, Mike reckoned, had stayed the same. Even if nobody would recognise them from the selfie Stephen had taken the next morning, packing up their tent in the snow wearing matching cheesy grins.

  “Careful,” Mike had warned. “That’s the kind of thing they’ll show at our wedding.”

  “Who said anything about a wedding?” Stephen had replied. “Death of a good love affair is that.”

  “Wrong,” Mike whispered in the darkness of their new tent, nine years away from that flippant remark. “Got a bloody good love affair right here.”

  He’d seen it coming. Knew he was in deep from the very first date. Knew he didn’t want to let go long before he bought that ring on Stephen’s finger. But he supposed he could see the scepticism. He’d never been taken for the marrying kind before.

  But even after nine years, he’d do it all again. For this guy.

  “Love you, you twassock.”

  He squeezed. Stephen mum
bled something about frogs. Mike snorted, and let him be.

  Could always try for the condom trees in the morning.

  * * * *

  They went home the evening before the wedding.

  Stephen did take pity, ringing Jo earlier than that, but the earful of blue words he got for his efforts just made Mike laugh and call him an idiot.

  “You knew that’d happen.”

  “Yeah, well, we do owe her for ours.”

  “True.”

  “And she said Jez is threatening to marry her chief bridesmaid.”

  “What, Milly? Has Jez seen Milly?”

  “Yep.”

  “Sodding hell, that’s desperate.”

  They got home late in the evening, having swapped driving duty at York after Stephen nearly nodded off at the wheel, and Mike shepherded him upstairs by saying he’d fetch the cat personally. Thankfully, Molly didn’t like Vikki and so was pleased by the return of her better trained staff, curling up on Stephen’s belly to purr contentedly as they settled in for the night. Stephen looked like he could purr, too, when he wriggled into Mike’s shoulder and peered at his phone through half-lidded eyes.

  “Knock it off, you berk,” Mike scolded, taking the tiny screen away. “She’ll be bawling for you first thing. Get your shut-eye.”

  It didn’t take long for Stephen to go under, and Mike found himself dozing to the synchronised purring and snoring that he’d gotten used to over the years. So it was a surprise to blink and see dawn creeping through the gap in the curtains, and find the purring had been replaced by meowing and claws tugging warningly at the duvet over his neck.

  “Alright, alright. Bloody thing.”

  Stephen was already gone—running, by the lack of shoes—and Mike texted Jo to say they’d be in plenty time.

  Don’t need you, came the icy reply. Just him.

  I’m wounded, Mike said.

  You’ll bloody wind me up with bollocks about Jez having run off or something!

  Now there’s an idea.

  She made a slight on his mother, and Mike cackled, putting the phone back on the charger just as a wet-through Stephen came clattering in through the front door. He was wearing his ridiculously short rugby shorts, that showed off his equally ridiculously shapely legs, and Mike groped him obscenely on the way past.

  “Oi! Don’t make promises you can’t keep, fatso.”

  “Who said anything about not keeping them?” Mike shouted up the stairs.

  The shower went on, nearly covering Stephen’s laugh.

  “Breakfast and a cuppa?”

  “Please!”

  Breakfast got bagged up after Jo called in a panic about the florist, and they ate their bagels in the car on the way over to the hotel. The traffic was bloody awful, an accident on the ring road snarling up the whole city, and the phone didn’t stop ringing once for the final ten minutes of the drive.

  “She does know the wedding’s not for two hours?”

  “Says the man who’s never been a bride,” Stephen said loftily, and let himself out. “Find the important bits.”

  “Bar and bogs?”

  “Got it in one.”

  Stephen disappeared upstairs to help with the mayhem, so Mike explored. Jo had opted for a rural hotel out near Oughtibridge, and Mike was pleasantly surprised to find it wasn’t as poncy as he’d feared. It was built more like a hunting lodge: low brown ceilings, exposed beams, and creaky wooden floors. Open grates yawned in the walls where there’d be fires in the winter, and the art was all landscapes and black-and-white photographs of the Peaks just beyond the doorstep. The bar served a range of ales, and the kitchens smelled of proper food, not posh wedding nosh. It was the sort of place Mike might have liked to get married, if things had been different four years ago.

  Maybe, Mike thought as guests began to fill up the place, and he received the text message to come upstairs for Jo’s last hug before she needed horse tranquilisers, Mam’s nagging for them to do it properly wasn’t such a bad idea. Maybe once they had a couple of kids. Kids looked cute as flower girls and page boys. And they could put up a wedding photo, like other couples did.

  (They had a wedding photo, even if it was in the rain and taken on Jo’s iPhone, but Mike wasn’t allowed to display it.)

  The honeymoon suite had been given over to the bridal party. The bridesmaids were ready, taking pictures of Jo’s niece in her puffy little dress, and Mike skirted around them into the room, only to be assaulted by a wave of perfume thick as fog.

  “Need a hand?” he asked jovially, and Stephen rolled his eyes. He was wrist-deep in curly hair, helping Jo with a silver clip that looked like a rabid spider. It snapped into place violently, and he shook himself free to let Jo rustle to her feet.

  And Mike mentally wiped away any and all regrets about getting married on the sly.

  The dress was enormous. And Jo…wasn’t. She was a wiry woman, a marathon runner like Stephen, and the sudden explosion into fluffy whiteness was startling. Beautiful, without a doubt, but startling. Mike could have easily mistook her for somebody else entirely, and as his eyes slid sideways to Stephen, he settled on his new opinion.

  He’d married a man in muddy wellies. Much better.

  Still: “You look stunning.” Because she did.

  “I feel dolled up,” Jo said, grimacing. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”

  “Don’t be daft, Josie, you look perfect!” one of the bridesmaids hollered from the doorway.

  “You do,” Stephen said sedately. “Trust me, Jez is going to look just as stuffed into his suit. But you look amazing, and he’ll look…presentable—”

  The room sniggered as one.

  “—and the minute you step out there, you’ll forget all about the hairdresser and how tight the seams are.”

  Mike glanced. Tight? Could fit a whole other person in there.

  “Mind stepping out for your photos?” the bridesmaid demanded. “We’re not going to have the sun for long, you know! It’s forecast for rain all day!”

  Jo squealed and wobbled out on her heels, leaving Stephen and Mike temporarily alone in the suite. Mike grinned, and said, “Wedding game?”

  Stephen put his fingers to his lips. Then mouthed: “Divorce.”

  Harsh but true, in Mike’s opinion. All the soon-to-be-married couple did was fight. Jez was a nice bloke, but he was also a big kid. Wife and sprogs were nice in theory, but they took time and commitment, and Jez stil had a wandering eye and, more significantly, wandering hands. If Jo had her hands full with a couple of young kids and a huge pile of marking from work, Mike was pretty sure Jez would find his fun somewhere else. And when Jo found out, which she would, that’d be the end of it.

  But what were they to do? They’d both warned her. Both warned him, too, not to fuck her about. They couldn’t really do more than that. If Jo wanted to believe Jez was different for her, then she’d believe it until she was proven wrong. And who knew? Maybe they would be.

  But neither of them thought so, so Mike groaned and rummaged for a spare coin.

  “Call it.”

  “Heads.”

  Tails. Stephen groaned. Mike grinned.

  “Chippie.”

  “Boring sod.”

  “Oi, you lost, suck it up.”

  “Rather suck it than a greasy pile of chips from Big Al’s.”

  “Could always do both.”

  Stephen laughed as he headed for the door. “You old romantic, you.”

  “Romance would be buying the chips myself.”

  “Yeah, yeah…”

  As they followed another guest down into the lobby, and Jo’s shriek of, “I told you not to wear those shoes!” echoed from the glass doors that led out into the car park, Mike sighed and found the coin again.

  “Eh?” Stephen asked.

  “Heads there’s a fight before the ceremony,” Mike said, “and tails there’s one after.”

  “What’s the prize?”

  “Loser pays bar tab.”
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  One of the bridesmaids stormed barefoot through the lobby and up the stairs to the rooms, past the astonished stare of the receptionist.

  Stephen said, “Heads.”

  * * * *

  “Well,” Stephen said, placing the last of the empty shots on top of his pyramid. “That could have gone better.”

  They were in a Wetherspoons. It was quarter to midnight. Mike’s top button was undone, the tie was missing, and he was starving. The wedding, suffice it to say, had not exactly gone without a hitch.

  “I’m surprised though,” Stephen continued blithely. “I didn’t think Jo’s dad would get involved. Mostly because I didn’t think he’d show up, but still…”

  Mike peered fuzzily at the pyramid. Steady hands. Stephen was still sober. So all—he counted—ten belonged to him.

  “Could’ve gone worse,” he slurred.

  “How?”

  “Could have been a jilting.”

  “A what?”

  “Jilting. You know. Jilted. Um.”

  “Left at the altar?” Stephen asked.

  “Yeah!”

  Mike knocked over the pyramid in his enthusiasm, and Stephen laughed.

  “Bollocks!”

  “Alright, pisshead. Come on. Let’s go and get some food into you.”

  “Where we goin’?”

  “Food,” Stephen repeated loudly. “Then home, I think. Don’t fancy looking after you being sick all night.”

  “You’re not drunk. You need to drink.”

  “Oh, believe me, I did.”

  Mike frowned. “Did you?”

  “Yep.”

  “When?”

  “When you were trying to break up the fight,” Stephen said.

  “Oh. Oh.”

  Stephen had lost the second coin toss, though not by much. Jez had been late. And it had been reasonably obvious why, by the smell of Carlsberg and the fact that his best man had been replaced by an usher due to a raging hangover. Vows had been said through gritted teeth, and Jo had turned her head last minute so the first kiss between man and wife had landed on her cheek instead. Even the minister had looked uncomfortable, and the mingling between the groom’s and bride’s guests had been minimal at best.

  Still, they had—technically—lasted until the reception.

  At which there was a noticeable tension, and no speeches. Mike and Stephen had stuck like glue to their fellow teachers, the quiz team having been granted a whole table to itself, and watched the simmering tension come to a boil.