Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Greg is absolutely filthy. His fingers hurt, his back is fucking killing him, and he’s sweating like a pig in a sausage factory. He brings his sleeve up to his forehead to try to wipe away a metric fucktonne of muck plastered to his face composed of mud, crumbled lichen, grit, and tree sap. He leaves a sticky smear on the plaid pattern of his shirt – one of the rolled up sleeves falling down over his scratched, shining, muscular forearm.

With a grunt, he picks up the last, loaf-sized, round-edged stone, and heaves it onto the gap at the top of the wall, finishing the repair.

“Thank fuck!” he grumbles.

The recent storm had brought down a huge, dead, branch in the night and sent the mortar-less rocks scattering, leaving the graveyard’s east wall broken down and useless. Sometimes, he thinks he knows how it feels.

He kicks the branch and only hurts his foot a bit. He’ll have to deal with the culprit another day with a saw or something – it’s as wide around as his not insignificant thigh, and he’s not going to try to haul it down the hill through the bushes.

It's going to be hard enough hauling himself down the hill! With one last huff of satisfaction, he turns and limps (shut up) to the line of massive, 12ft tall rhododendron bushes between him and the graveyard prior. It's spring, but the fat, stiff, shiny evergreen leaves still create a solid shell of foliage that he has to pull apart to get by. The inside is practically hollow – leaving even the crunchy ground almost dry – and he ducks branches and inelegantly straddles others to get through to the other side, sweat sticking his black T-shirt to his back uncomfortably.

Finally he bursts out the other side like some twig-humped swamp beast.

And stops.

Not twenty feet away; a man. Crouched, side-on to Greg, at a grave. A mourner. His expression serious, his lips moving in a quiet, intense, monologue. He holds a bouquet of brightly coloured flowers awkwardly in his hands, and as Greg watches, he leans forward to rest a gentle, long-fingered hand on the headstone before reverently laying the flowers against its base.

Ah shit – Greg is intruding.

As quietly as he can manage, he backs up – the rustling and cracking of leaves both dry and fresh – deafening in his ears now. The man doesn't seem to notice, so engrossed in what Greg can only assume is deep, private, grief. Greg takes another step, parting the branches, into the empty void behind him. A sudden whap of a loosed, springy bough and he has to bite hard on his lip to stop from bellowing a startled “Fuck!!!”. At last, Greg is enveloped by the rhododendron’s leafy curtain once more, and then wonders what the hell he does now.

He's literally walled himself in at the back, and the only way forward is past the grieving man ahead. Greg checks his watch – half-six. He looks through the gap in the leaves again, moving his head like he's watching a snack in a microwave, and ponders.

He's seen this man before. Many times, in fact. Mondays and Thursdays, always at the same time just after six, and staying until a little before seven. He'd started coming to the cemetery just about two months ago, and his regularity caught Greg's eye. Of course, a new visitor – especially a regular one – was never a good sign, and Greg had done what he always does and minded his own business. Just like he’d really like to do now.

With another glance at his watch, and a long suffering sigh, he folds down cross-legged on the crispy, dusty, leaf litter and decides to wait him out.

For the first few minutes – four at least, which Greg feels should be commended – Greg studiously looks everywhere except at the man. Giving him and his grief some privacy. But all too soon, and with nothing else around, Greg finds his gaze returning to the strange, brightly coloured mourner. Tall, somewhat lanky, and solidly middle-aged, waves of awkwardness radiate off him as he talks. He wipes his hands on his jeans, touches his face absent-mindedly, and plays with the cuffs of his bright blue puffy jacket. He says something slightly louder – something about having multiple lives – and gestures to the gravestone, frowning.

Greg is hit with another wave of the shame of intruding, and looks away, face hot.

When he looks back again, because of course he looks back again, the man is standing up. Checking the time on a cheap orange Casio on his hairy wrist, he wipes his hand across the short greying beard on his chin, nods once, and turns to leave.

Greg notes the time – six forty-two.

The man – the brightly coloured, sad-eyed, tall and awkward man – was nothing if not consistent.

With a groan and a hiss, Greg stands up, hauling on branches and setting them shaking like crazy as he does. Making sure the coast is clear, he starts down the hill at last, stopping only to look at the engraving on the headstone the grieving man had been kneeling at. He sees it, and frowns.

Something doesn't make sense.

Chapter Text

Greg watches him a little more closely after that, contriving to be cleaning the gate, or sweeping the main path, a few minutes past six in the evening on Mondays and Thursdays. Like clockwork, the man arrives rain or shine, brings a bunch of flowers from the nearby florist’s – ‘Key, Watson and… someone’, Greg can’t remember – stays for just over thirty minutes, and walks out. Sometimes he sees the man consulting a small notebook, sometimes not. He always approaches from the same direction, and walks away from the graveyard in the same direction – but the bus stop is in that direction, so it could mean nothing.

Greg’s so caught up in trying to work him out, he’s even started keeping track of what ridiculous, patterned socks the man is wearing! ‘Sock watch’ should not be as entertaining as it is.

It’s Monday, and Greg is standing just a short distance from the cluster of the departed’s black-clad friends and family, the funeral for an elderly lady being laid to rest in the plot next to her husband. Dozens of people of all generations sit in their fold-out chairs, some with confused children wriggling on their laps, loudly asking what’s happening. A casket easily worth half of what Greg makes in a year lays gleaming in the bright spring sunlight above a nest of artificial green, as a young woman of some religious affiliation softly reassures everyone of the continuity of life or some shit.

Greg adjusts the sleeves of his black suit jacket – his usual costume for these events – and sighs, trying to resist checking his watch. A sudden flash of blue out of the corner of his eye startles him – the man from the mysterious grave, striding up the path, head down checking that fucking notebook, completely oblivious about what hes about to blunder into.

“Oh shit…” Greg mutters, lunging arm outstretched at the guy, and just manages to catch the edge of the jacket’s hood with his fingertips, interrupting him. The man immediately jerks upright with a yelp. Greg lays his finger on his own lip, shushing him, as the disoriented man whirls round, eyes wide with shock. They’re strikingly blue, just like his jacket.

Immediately, the man copies Greg – holding up his own finger to his lips – and then frowns, surprised by his own actions. Greg nods over his shoulder, meaningfully, and – finger still pressed on his soft lips – the man turns around to look.

“Oh. Oh no.” He whispers with a slightly husky voice.

He turns back to Greg, and with his shushing finger, instead points back along the path, the way he came, raising his eyebrows questioningly. Greg nods, firmly, and steps round to stand side by side, putting his arm around the tall, but still significantly shorter than Greg, man’s shoulders to usher him away from the crowd.

It’s surprisingly easy, Greg thinks, to walk like this – his long strides easily matched by the man at his side, the gravel crunching beneath Greg’s shined black dress shoes, and the man’s… gold trainers?

Oh, and it looks like watermelons on the socks today.

They duck round a corner on the path, stepping onto the grass – the funeral party only distantly visible – before Greg reluctantly lifts his hand off the soft puffy padding of the shoulder of the jacket, and faces him.

He’s nervous – that much is obvious – his notebook stashed into a pocket, but both hands wring the stalks of the flower bouquet he’s brought today. His eyebrows – grey like the rest of his hair with perhaps a hint of auburn clinging on – twitch and fluctuate from frown to questioning.

“Thank you?” He tries.

“Yes,” Greg smiles. “This is the bit where you thank me.”

“Oh. Right. Yes. Thank you…?”

“Greg,” Greg supplies, helpfully.

“Thank you, Greg!” And the man beams at him – a wide open-faced, beaming, grin and Greg’s eyes immediately snap to the glorious gap in the man’s front teeth. It’s surely just insisting on being stared at – so he does for a few seconds.

Clearly quite used to this, the man keeps smiling, quirking his head as if giving Greg ample opportunity to remember himself. Which Greg eventually does. Caught out, Greg falls back on old habits and shoves his hand out to shake.

“You’re welcome…?” Greg’s gut fizzes with curiosity, eager to finally learn something about this weird man.

“Yes. I think I probably am,” he replies, nodding very seriously, taking and shaking Greg’s hand.

When the man tries to let go, Greg holds on a little tighter – still shaking up and down as he clarifies. “No, I meant, what’s your name.” Just a hint of his frustration coming through his pleasant enough tone.

He has nice hands, the man. Soft. Long fingers.

“Oh! Is that what that was?” The man’s expression stays serious, though Greg is convinced he sees a twitch at the corner of his mouth. “I suppose that would make sense at this point in the conversation, yes.”

Their hands have stopped shaking – just held between the two of them, Greg’s hand enveloping the other man’s, as Greg feels annoyance bubbling up.

“Well??”

“Alex. Alex Horne. You have big hands.”

Greg immediately releases him – Alex – and can’t quite work out how he’s already so infuriated.

“Well, Alex, Alex Horne, the funeral you were about to blunder into has blocked out the next forty-five minutes and if I’m right…” Greg throws his wrist out with a flourish, exposing his watch which he then taps. “...That is fifteen minutes after you usually conclude your bi-weekly visit to plot 113.”

And oh, isn’t that interesting. Greg looks at Alex over the top of his glasses, and sees the man redden across his cheeks in a blush before he looks down, shyly.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Greg adds, remembering his manners, though not entirely innocently.

Watching like a hawk, Greg scrutinises every move, every reaction of Alex to this entirely standard comment. How Alex’s ears redden and redden – how that red spreads to his neck, clashing wildly with the blue of his jacket and the tiny triangle of bright yellow jumper peeking out of the neckline. How his fingers twitch and clench reflexively around the bouquet of pink daisy-looking things and fluffy green spheres.

“I could… lay those on the grave for you, once they’re gone, if you’d like?”

Greg steps in closer to Alex, and reaches for the flowers – letting his fingers brush against Alex’s for just a moment. The man squeaks.

Greg is delighted.

“Though, why you bring flowers to the grave of a man who’s been dead for sixty years – muttering something about French cat magazines – I couldn’t possibly guess.”

Alex, almost beetroot at this point, explodes with a breathy honking laugh with more than a taste of panicked mania to it. “Oh my god!” he gasps, wheezing. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry. I didn’t— Oh my god.”

He slaps his hand over his mouth, trying to muffle his laughter and, apparently, his unstoppable apologies for… something. His blue eyes are wide and horrified, staring at Greg who just stands, waiting, arms crossed and his eyebrow arched all the way up.

“He’s not… I don’t have a ‘loss’.” Alex finally whispers, unclamping the hand from his face just long enough to get them out.

“Yeah, mate, I figured as much. What the hell are you doing?”

“Practising?” Alex says, sounding again as if he’s asking for permission.

“What, like Wicca or something?”

“Oh! Oh no, thank you. That would be fine! But— No – stand up.”

Greg thinks he has an inkling. Doesn’t mean he needs to make it easy on the man.

“You can do squats at a gym to practise that.”

A spark – Greg feels it – between the two of them then, as Alex’s eyes sparkle all of a sudden. A glimmer of recognition of Greg intentionally trying to wind him up and the twitch, again, of the corner of Alex’s mouth where Greg already knows a smirk is threatening to break out.

Game on, then.

“I suppose a gym membership would be cheaper than the flowers,” Alex replies, holding up the flowers as if pondering them for the first time. “Do you think my set might be improved by the addition of sweaty, guttural, grunting?”

That’s a thought. Greg grins. “Mate – isn’t everything?”

“No, you’re quite right.” Alex nods, very enthusiastically. “I’ll see if I can fit it in around the beatboxing.”

“Seriously though,” Greg glances back at the funeral still proceeding just across the rolling, green, stone-peppered expanse of the cemetery, and beyond to plot 113. “Why?”

Alex wipes his free hand down his face. “I needed somewhere quiet and, ah, libraries take a dim view of monologuing in the history section, so where better than a graveyard? And when I found out that Tom Sergent was buried here – it just made sense.”

Greg remembered the name – Thomas Henry Sergent, 1894 to 1963 – but as far as he knew it wasn’t one of the more famous graves that other cemeteries had. No tourists making a pilgrimage to leave flowers or alternatively, to spit on it, in the case of some other, infamous, plots. At least, not until now.

“Tom Sergent was The Cheeky Chappie! The greatest stand up comedian of his generation! It felt right to, ah, have him on as set consultant, so to speak.”

“Huh. And the flowers?”

“Ah. Well. It just felt like what you’re supposed to do.” Then Alex adds, “And no-one bothers you if you have flowers at a graveyard.”

He’s right, of course. It had worked on Greg, after all! ‘Cheeky chappie’ is right. Time to make him squirm.

Greg sniffs. “Very manipulative that – one could say that was a bit of a prick move, in fact.” Greg examines his fingers, coolly ignoring Alex’s eyes widening in front of him. The way Alex’s mouth falls open, just on this side of horrified. “‘What a nice guy’, they’d think, ‘bringing a bouquet of beautiful flowers twice a week’...” From the corner of his eye, Greg can see Alex is wringing his hands and yes, squirming in those ridiculous gold shoes. It’s getting more difficult to fight down the grin.

Greg looks at Alex – stares him in the eyes. “I envy them, really. At least they don’t have to find some way to come to terms with the awful truth.”

“Wh— Which is?”

“You’re a comedian!” he bellows. Greg throws up his arms as if this is the worst possible thing that could befall someone! A life sentence – a critical, tragic, flaw – somewhat undermined by his grin finally breaking through.

A grin Alex returns.

He holds out his bunch of flowers to Greg. “Sorry for your loss?”

“Fuck off!” Greg laughs. “I’m not stealing flowers from a dead man.”

“Well technically, I’m the one dying on stage, usually, so… I think that makes it okay.”

And he looks up at Greg with such a cheeky, pathetic, half-smile that Greg feels a twist in his gut and he just wants to get him grinning again, however he can.

“Fine!” he huffs, snatching the flowers out of Alex’s hand.

Alex grins – wonky teeth and all – and that funny feeling in Greg’s stomach… changes. Huh.

Then a big fat raindrop hits Alex on his upturned face, and he flinches at the splash. One splats onto the plastic wrapping the bouquet with a loud rustle, and then Greg feels one land solidly on his own head. Both of them, like idiots, look up into the grey sky – as if it could be anything other than the start of the rain.

“Well fuck, that’s my evening ruined,” Greg grumbles, his mood immediately soured.

“Oh?”

“Look you should go – I’ve seen how you don’t like the rain – maybe it’ll make me feel better to know someone is tucked up all warm at home while I’m standing out in this shit all night.”

Alex looks from Greg, to the funeral party – the attendees of which are opening stern, black umbrellas like they’re hunkering under the outstretched wings of a murder of crows.

“I assumed you worked here, but why would… are you guarding against graverobbers?”

“Oh, mate…” Greg shakes his head. “It’s so much worse. I’ve gotta make sure we don’t get any wannabe TikTok celebrities reenacting fucking Saltburn!”

Greg wipes his face, despairing, smearing the raindrops through his beard and dampening his silver hair.

“Oh. And, uh… that’s a problem?” Alex asks.

“Course it’s a problem! Can’t have starry-eyed teens wearing nothing but mud humping the dust-to-dust!” Greg holds his hands out, grasping the hips of his invisible partner, and thrusts hard and frantically fast against the air. “Uh uh uh!” He squeaks, a high-pitched teenager imitation. “Smash! That! Like! Button!”

Alex explodes with laughter – a wild and ridiculous honking sound that echoes across the cemetery, immediately joined by Greg’s wild giggle. Both of them slap their hands to their mouths simultaneously, but not before multiple glared daggers are thrown their way by the closest mourners.

Greg feels bad, he really does. But also…

Several stern ‘shushes’ later, Greg and Alex retreat, half-scurrying to the front gate of the graveyard as the rain gets heavier and heavier, and their giggles start to fade.

“Right. I guess I’ll see you on Thursday then. Thanks for the apology flowers.” Greg gives them a wave – though they’re starting to wilt from the abuse.

“Mm. Doesn’t seem quite sufficient.” Alex hums. “And you’re going to be out in this all night?” He gestures to the rain, already starting to run in rivulets down the gravelly path.

“Yeah. Don’t worry about it. Pity any poor idiot that I catch!” Greg shakes his head – raindrops fly from the bottom of his increasingly rain-spattered glasses. “Nice to meet you, at last, Alex.”

“You too, Greg. I’ll, uh, see you?”

“Yes you will.”

Alex smiles again, and Greg smiles back, before both of them turn and go their separate ways.

Chapter Text

Greg is absolutely soaking. Constant, gentle-but-infuriating drizzle drifts down from a charcoal sky, softly and slowly drenching him as effectively as any sudden downpour would. It whirls, snowflake-like in the icy wind to whip under his hood, up his trouser legs, and down the back of his trousers. His shock of silver hair lies lank and dripping, stuck to his forehead, sending droplets into his eyes and down his nose at infuriatingly inconsistent intervals. And his glasses! Useless chunks of 70’s style decorative glass entirely covered in vision-confounding beads of water.

It is – and he is – so miserable.

He hunkers against the tree, trying to convince himself that it's providing any kind of protection from the rain at all, and shines his torch out into the graveyard’s darkness. The beam crazes with the spiralling rain, glowing like a shaft of static to sweep over graves, trees, and the mud-smothered paths and grass verges.

No sign of the dirt-fuckers yet.

Greg sighs and stuffs his hands back into the pockets of his hooded, puffy, and yes – very wet jacket. His jeans are sticking to his legs and he hates everything about this. The last time he looked at his watch, it was barely past midnight – usually the best cutoff time for the typical cemetery intruders – goths – but Greg wasn't sure these twisty copycats kept to such classic hours.

He'd be here for another couple of hours at least.

Fuck.

With a twist of his mouth, he discovers the inside of his pockets are soaking through too, leaving his cold, damp hands shoved inside for barely any benefit.

Fuck!

There's a… sound. A thump. Greg turns his head – rotating annoyingly within the immobile hood – to expose his ear. He hears nothing. Scowling, he waits, holding his breath to hear better over the ever present hiss of the drizzle. No. There's noth—

Wait. Another thump. He definitely heard a thump. Somewhere behind the bushes. Something heavy landed on the ground, and— Fuck! Something snapped!

Someone's here!

He thinks it's someone, not something, because the snap was accompanied by definite, human, muttering.

Now. Greg is a large man. Everyone can see he's a large man – it's always the first thing people notice about him. He's got height. He's got weight. He's got incredible reach and legs for miles, baby! So it often surprises people that he's fucking terrified of getting into a fight. It shouldn't. His size has been the perfect deterrent all his life and, genuinely he's found a quick, self-effacing wit and a winning smile diffuses most situations. Most. And those it doesn't? He walks away. He has to. The damage he could do without even meaning to. He quite literally has to be the bigger man. Also – and this can't be understated – fights fucking hurt! No, thank you.

And now, in the dark and the wet, exactly the thing he's out here to watch for, is happening – some sex mad, fame-hungry maniac is breaking into his graveyard. And Greg has to stop them.

Greg hauls his hands out of his pocket, wiping his sleeve over his glasses in a futile attempt to see through the smirr, and hefts to the long-handled torch in his hand. He hears rustling – coming from the bushes, and feels his own heart thumping harder and harder in his chest.

He should shout – scare them off. Blind them with the light and put the fear of god up them. He doesn’t need to confront them physically! The rustling gets closer – someone cursing and swearing as the branches whip wet and stinging at them.

Greg takes a deep breath, and steps out from beneath the tree. “Who the fuck goes there??” he bellows, blasting the rhododendron with a blinding, trembling, beam.

Someone screams!

Or tries to. A crash – branches explode and spit out the tumbling, bumbling form of a man who lands with an almighty squelch on the grass-speckled mud.

“Ow…” he groans.

“Alex?!”

“Present,” he mumbles, rolling off his shoulder and spitting a gob of wet grass out of his mouth.

Greg shakes off his stunned state and strides over to help him up – his fingers gripping through the mud to the padded wet surface of his jacket and the arm beneath.

“What are you doing here? I could have killed you!” Greg feels the trembling of his own hands – the tightness of his chest making the words come out far angrier than he means.

Alex looks up at him – blue eyes almost pupilless in the glare of the torch – and winces. “Apologising?” He staggers to his feet with Greg’s help – almost slipping once or twice before feeling stable enough for Greg to uncoil his grip from his arm. “That would be a bit of a conflict of interest, surely?” Alex asks.

Greg aims the light down at last. Confusion starting to replace his cocktail of fear and relief. “What would?”

“Killing me. Though…” Alex picks the last few lumps of mud off the side of his head, thoughtfully. “I had heard people were dying to get in here.”

The rain spitter spatters them both, and droplets play a constant ticky-tacky sound on the big hard leaves of the bush next to them – a background to the cogs turning in Greg’s head.

“Oh fuck off,” he finally blurts. “You think you’re the first one with cemetery jokes?”

Alex shakes his head – droplets of dirty rain flying off his beard as he grins back at Greg. “Nope! But the secret to good comedy is…”

Greg waits. And waits. And waits. Finally he slaps Alex on the arm, loud and wet – grinning, and infuriated. The slap’s bark is far worse than its bite.

“Seriously, mate, what are you doing here?” Greg asks.

“Apologising! I brought you some hot soup and some… hmm… sandwiches?” Alex pulls a tartan-patterned thermos from the mud with a sucking sound, and then frowns as he picks up the slightly flattened packet that had fallen to the side. “I think they’ll be fine.”

Even before he gets to the soup, Greg feels a little warmer. “You didn’t have to.”

“No, but I wanted to. I kept thinking about you out here, cold and wet and… subjected to social media fanatics. The least I could do was bring you a sausage sandwich.”

Greg’s stomach grumbles.

“Yeah… I suppose it was. Alright – come on then!” Greg turns, and carefully walks down the muddy slope to ‘his’ tree, convinced somehow that Alex will follow him immediately.

They’re sitting on the springy bed of soggy pine needles, one piece each of the sandwich’s butcher’s paper under their arses in a vain attempt to avoid getting any wetter. Alex has already finished his sandwich – much to Greg’s astonishment – inhaling it at a phenomenal pace, while half of Greg’s balances precariously on his crossed leg, the crusty bread slowly softening with the fine mist of the rain.

Both of them have a thermos cup full of steaming-hot potato and leek soup in their hands – warming and full of savoury comfort. The scalding warmth of it even slows Alex down who, Greg discovers, hates the cold so much more than he hates the rain.

“Did you really ask…” Alex tentatively asks in a quiet moment. “...’Who goes there?’” He goes back to blowing on his hot soup, which is only slightly hindered by his smirk.

“No.” Greg lies. He feels Alex, sitting beside him, twitch and the gentle breeze of his cooling breath turns to a sputter, so Greg clarifies. “I asked ‘Who the fuck goes there?’ – that’s different. I updated it for the modern audience.”

“Right. Of course. Very modern. 15th Century terminology is really where you want to be to get down with the kids.”

Greg knocks into Alex’s shoulder. “Shut up. I know entirely too much of the younger generation’s lingo, I’ll have you know.”

Alex, managing not to spill his soup when a veritable mountain of a man bumps into him, mutters “Lingo,” disbelievingly under his breath.

“That’s why I’m out here tonight, isn’t it? Young people on the Tik Toks and all that.”

“You’re not usually out here at night?” Alex asks, curious.

Greg has a mouthful of sandwich – a smear of tomato sauce left at the corner of his mouth – but he shakes his head with a hum. “Nah,” he swallows around most of his mouthful. “Not that I get much sleep anyway…” He finishes his bite with a gulp. “Nope – it’s just the goths usually, and they prefer to drape themselves dramatically over the box crypts when the weather’s fine and there’s a pretty looking moon in the sky. Not this shit.” He waves the remains of his sandwich at the miserable weather all around them.

“So just for this… Salt thing?”

“Saltburn, yeah. What an absolute ballache. It’s all over the forums – a fuckin’ international scourge.”

“Forums for...For graveyard… keepers?”

“For those of us employed in the time-honoured profession of graveyard maintenance, yes. Groundskeepers, cemetery workers – hell, we used to be called sextons!” At that, Greg slaps his hand on Alex’s thigh – just so delighted by the word.

Alex laughs – another one of those honks – and brings his soup-less hand up to his mouth to hide it.

“Anyway - a sex-tonne is sort of the problem here. Fuckin’ Saltburn.”

“What… What exactly is the problem?” Alex asks, eyes flicking between Greg’s eyes and the hand still on his thigh. Greg can feel the warmth of Alex’s leg – and honestly it’s nice compared to the freezing cold of the night. At least the rain is stopping.

Greg starts. “Oh! Haven’t you seen it? Fuck, mate – spoilers.”

“No no, it’s okay. This is, uh, cheaper than a streaming service.”

“Ha! Well, there’s a kid in it – messed up as fuck – and he loves this other boy that he met at college – it’s set in America of course—”

“—Of course.” Alex nods seriously.

“And he kills him, right? But he never got to… you know… so long story short, he ends up in the cemetery, butt naked in the rain, and fucks his grave!”

Alex splutters a chunk of potato back into his mug. “Wh… what?”

“I know!” Greg gets all animated, waving the crust of his sandwich with one hand, while the other grips Alex’s leg. Shakes him for emphasis!

“No, I mean – uh I guess. How?” Alex uses his free hand and… moves it around. Flattened, pushing against air. At first vertical, then horizontal, then winding around his other hand as he looks up at Greg. None of these hand movements are even the slightest bit suggestive.

“Oh! Well, ah, in the… normal way?” Greg tries.

Alex keeps frowning.

Greg lets him go, throws the crust behind him out of sight and with a crumb-scattering slap of his hands, begins to stand. “Alright, I’ll show you.”

Alex nods. “Yes, yes oka— what?”

“Get up!”

Greg looms terrifyingly huge over Alex on the ground, hand out. He watches him gulp down the dregs of his soup in one go before allowing Greg to haul him upright. But whoops – Alex pops up too quickly, too spritely, and Greg pulls harder than he meant – and Alex stumbles into him. Their hands crushed against their chests as they overbalance and almost embrace.

“Whoa there! Bit keen, eh?” Greg chuckles with a smirk.

Alex turns beetroot – a flush that flashes across his cheeks in an instant as he quickly looks away. “Oh, I didn’t— Hmmm.”

Greg slaps him on the shoulder with his other hand, turning it into a proper manly hug and then releases him. Reluctantly. Because of the cold.

“Right! So this scene then.” Greg steps back, looking around appraisingly with the eye of a drama teacher. “From the film, I mean. I think over here would work well…”

Alex is left to hustle along behind him, his trainers squelching in the mud, even with the rain down to an infrequent mizzle.

Greg stops dead, having found a good, flat, spot. There’s a panicked squeak behind him, and when he turns, he sees Alex wildly windmilling his arms, tilting backwards, already doomed to fall. His eyes are massive, pleading, and without thinking, Greg grabs a fist full of Alex’s jacket right over his chest and holds him there.

Alex freezes. Suspended by Greg’s grip. Slowly, Greg pulls him upright, feeling Alex’s panicked breaths warm against his hand. Alex repositions his feet, slipping dangerously in the mud, and holding his hands out for balance. Only when Greg is entirely sure he’s not about to go immediately horizontal, does he loosen his grip.

“Alright there?” Greg asks him.

“It’s, uh, quite slippery, isn’t it.” Alex rubs a finger along his face, still smeared with the last bits of mud from his eventful entrance to the graveyard.

“No shit. You almost went arse over tit in the mud there, mate.”

Alex hums.

“And it’s too early for that!” Greg grins suddenly. He takes two steps away and turns to look at Alex, excitement glinting in his eyes in the weak light of the streetlamps beyond the walls. “Alright – let’s dig into the narrative. Your man is in the graveyard…” Greg gestures around them both. “...and he’s, what, heartbroken? He’s fucked up, certainly, but he thinks he’s been denied what’s his or some shit. The object of his obsession lies six feet under, out of his reach.”

From where Greg is, half crouched as he rants, Alex looks entranced. Hanging on Greg’s every word, a tilt to his head as he processes what Greg is saying – and wondering, no doubt, where this is going.

And Greg loves an audience. “So what does our boy do? He can’t just give up! He’s monomaniacal!”

“Ooh,” Alex breathes, enjoying the word.

Greg gestures to the patch of ground between them – a formerly grassy spot turned mud hole. Notably, there aren’t any grave markers here – the nearest being several metres away. “This is the grave, let’s say, and you’re our psycho-sexual deviant.”

“Wow, typecast already,” Alex grumbles. His straight faced expression almost entirely hides the twitch of his mouth.

“You’re desperate. You’re horny!” Greg barks at him.

Alex smiles. “Well, funny thi—”

“—You won’t be denied! You roar at the uncaring sky!”

Greg waits, expectantly. Then he raises his eyebrows at Alex and waits some more. Alex tilts his head in that way Greg is coming to expect.

Eventually, and hesitantly, Alex says, “...Timing?”

“What?” The penny very, verrrrrry slowly drops, and Greg remembers Alex’s unfinished joke from earlier. About the secret to good comedy. “Oh I swear to god, Alex, I will throttle you later for that…”

The way Alex’s eyebrows shoot up has Greg stumbling over his words – suddenly flustered. “...I meant— You— Just— Just roar at the uncaring sky, you maniac.”

“Oh! Right. Yes. Ahem. ‘Raaaaa’, is it?” Alex says.

“...You’re kidding me – Is that all you’ve got?” Greg demands, incredulous. “That’s you viscerally screaming your traumatic rage at a cathartic pivot point in the character’s arc?”

“Raaaaaaar?” Alex croaks, barely any better than last time. He does, at least, throw his head back a bit, his hood falling off, clawing his hands at the air, his face a caricature of fury.

“Rubbish! Alright, moving on – you kneel at the grave, the source of your conflicted emo— Oh! Alright then.”

Alex drops to his knees, landing softly on the squelchy ground.

“‘How could he do this to you?’ you wail or some shit. I can’t remember the lines. You’re devastated—”

“—Oh dear,” Alex ‘acts’.

“Rending the clothes from your body to bare it all to the… Oh wait, no, mate.”

Alex stops – his jacket’s zip already halfway pulled down. “No?”

“You don’t have to,” Greg clarifies with a laugh.

But Alex shrugs – he shrugs – and Greg gets the strongest feeling that Alex really was about to strip naked for him. Just because he told him to. It gives him a funny feeling in his stomach and he stares a little harder at the mud-kneeling man barely feet from him, looking up with guileless eyes.

“What happens next, Greg?”

What indeed? The possibilities flash through his mind – what Alex might do for him. What Alex would let Greg do to him. Why?

“So, I’m naked and sexy in the rain!” Alex waggles his eyebrows. He puts his hands on his hips and waggles those too. Then he almost falls over and catches himself with a yelp.

Greg bellows a laugh tinged with relief. That’s all this is – a funny guy who apparently won't back down! A comedian, of course! Comedy, ha ha. Greg could smack himself on the head.

“No you fucking well aren’t, you maniac! This isn’t meant to be sexy.”

“Oh,” Alex pouts.

“Then, in the film, the guy lowered himself onto the dirt of the grave and stuck his dick in it! Fucked it, didn’t he. Missionary.” Greg guffaws, horrified by the image and having a good laugh about it – at scandalising Alex.

“Oh!” Alex looks down at the muddy grass, and then back up at a grinning, chuckling, Greg.

Then he shrugs.

As if in slow motion, Greg watches as Alex tips himself forward. Like a felled tree, he falls onto the wet, almost-black mud straight as a rod, catching himself with his hands only at the very last moment – nose deep in the muck.

Too late, Greg extends his hand to stop him. Far too late. Instead, Greg watches utterly transfixed as Alex – writhing in the sludge – thrusts his hips up and down, squelching with every sucking pull and push. A steady, entirely pedestrian pace, accompanied by Alex saying, in a very prim and proper tone, things like “Ooh.” and “Ahh?” and “Pardon me.”

Greg boggles at the man. Then he doubles over, clutching his sides, and absolutely fucking loses his shit. Laughs so hard it hurts. This ridiculous man squelching in the muck. Sounding like he’s laying back and thinking of England. Just the most uptight take on fucking in the mud. Greg can barely breathe. Wheezing his laughs – cheeks burning. And every time he tries to catch his breath in a lull in his belly laughter; the squelching! He can hear Alex squelching!! And Greg’s off again – clutching his thighs, laughs turning into horrified, delighted, giggles. Alex in the background, almost at Greg’s feet, still trotting out things like “Golly!” or “Ah, yes.”

He’s getting a stitch in his side – it hurts – but what can he do?! Alex is wittering on to himself down there, and Greg’s got tears of laughter in the corner of his eyes. “Oh my fucking god!” Greg gasps.

“Hmmm,” Alex hums between entirely mechanical thrusts. “I thought… I was… fucking mud… Greg?” Then he tilts his head, looking up at Greg with such a glint in his eye it flips Greg’s stomach. A beaming, gap-toothed grin between a dot of mud on his nose, and a beard full of muck-covered blades of grass – Alex looks up at him absolutely glowing with mischief.

“Fuck sake, Alex! Get up would you?”

“Hmm, not ‘get off’? Sounds frustrating, but okay – you’re the boss.”

Greg’s off again – laughing, scandalised, where he’d been the one trying to shock twitchy, nervous, Alex. Finally, at least, Alex peels himself out of the mud – wiping the worst of it off his jacket in long, splatting, swipes. The grin, however, stays.

Chapter Text

Three days – or Greg supposes – technically two days later, it’s Thursday. Greg is in his kitchen come six PM – having washed every dish he could find, rearranged the spice-rack twice, and scrubbed down the counters to within an inch of their lives. The kitchen window gives a great view of the path going up the back of the graveyard, by the rhododendrons, and with increasing frequency, he finds himself squinting out through the clear spring evening sunlight looking for a tall, ridiculous, bouquet-wielding man.

At quarter past six, Greg is gripping the formica worktop until his fingers go white – the radio he insisted to himself he was listening to, mere white noise in his ears.

Alex is late.

Whenever Greg had thought about Alex over the last two days, he’d felt funny. Certainly not funny ha-ha – though the memory of Alex apologetically humping mother earth never failed to twitch a smile onto his lips – but funny peculiar. He – Alex – is peculiar! Kind and thoughtful and so very weird. And, in an image that will not leave Greg’s mind – grinning joyously out of a mud-caked kinda-handsome face.

Funny peculiar – that’s how Greg had felt, and that seemed to be exactly what Alex was. Greg wondered if that’s what his stand up routine would be like – half of it entirely poker-faced wordplay, and the other half over-the-top physical humiliation. Then Greg got that feeling in his stomach again – the tight, flipping, feeling that made his grip on the kitchen counter suddenly weak – and he reminded himself for the umpteenth time that it was probably all just Alex being funny. Ha ha!

But what if he’s not coming back? What if he came to his senses, back wherever he lives, seeing himself caked in mud for no good reason, and the shame of it suddenly hit. What if he thought it was Greg’s fault – and wasn’t it? He’d hauled Alex up off the ground and bossed him around like some community centre drama group wannabe director.

I mean, fuck sake – Alex had been about to take off his clothes!

There he goes again – feeling that feeling. Twisty and weakening and hot on Greg’s face.

Greg should make tea! That’s what he should do. He sidesteps to the right and flicks the switch on the kettle, dashing back to the window immediately afterwards with barely any thought to his own dignity. Like the world's most enormous meerkat, he pops his head up as tall as he can – craning to see more out of the window, as if Alex was just ducked down behind a hedge or something.

The kettle clicks – too soon by far – and Greg stares stupidly at it. He grabs the handle and lifts and it’s too light, already boiled. Fuck sake – how many times had he thought to put the kettle on, and forgotten until it had almost boiled dry, while staring out this fucking window. He dumps it in the sink and fills it properly from the tap, shaking his head.

Movement! Red? Greg stares like a hawk – squinting out of the window to catch sight of the tall, hunched, form of Alex in an oversized, faded, red hoodie, a bunch of flowers dangling from his hand, trudging up the path towards plot 113.

Greg’s stomach does a somersault.

As he watches, Alex stalls, shuffling to a stop as his head jerks back further and further and further until ACHOO! Alex sneezes into the shoulder of his hoodie, resting his head there against the fabric for a few seconds longer than Greg would expect. It’s so loud, Greg can just hear it through the windows. Then Alex gives his head a shake – revealing rosy cheeks and a reddened nose – before continuing his trek up the gravel path.

Greg huffs. The idiot went and caught a cold.

Greg huffs again, spinning to look away from the window. Of course Alex caught a cold – he was soaked through to his bones bringing Greg an unnecessary peace-offering in the middle of a rainstorm.

This is Greg’s fault, basically.

He glares around the kitchen, annoyed, and then starts hauling open cupboards and drawers – a man on a mission. Finally, he finds what he’s looking for, and bolts for the door, slamming it behind him to follow Alex up the path.

The boiling kettle clicks off.

Greg finds Alex hunkered down at his usual spot – Tom Sargent’s old gravestone, the words picked out or partly obscured by greyish-green lichen on the pale grey stone. As Greg tears up the gravel in his approach, he sees Alex surprised by another thundering sneeze, falling flat on his arse with the sheer force of it.

“Guhhh…” Alex groans with a hefty sniff.

“Fuck, mate – that’s loud enough to wake the dead.”

Alex’s head whips round to find Greg, and he looks miserable. Tired eyes, that red and sore looking nose, and his cheeks rosy and warm – Greg can see one of his sleeve cuffs is stuffed full of tissues as he picks himself back up off the ground.

“Oh! Greg. I’m uhh, sorry. Just got a sniffle.”

“You caught a cold bringing me a delicious sausage sandwich, that’s what you did.”

Alex tries to hum, but his blocked nose interferes, leaving him frowning silently.

“Look – I’ll leave you to your practice, and giving Mr. Sargent his flowers…” Greg barrels over Alex, who looks at the bouquet and tries to get a word in. “...but come see me at the house afterwards, okay? At least let me get you a hot drink for that cold of yours.”

Once again, Alex tries to hum – instead issuing a gummy swallow instead – so instead he just holds out the bouquet. “They’re for you, actually. Look – there’s a card and everything.”

Greg’s mouth falls open. “Oh. You didn’t… Huh.”

Alex steps closer, Greg failing to close the distance between them, until he’s close enough to press the prettily-wrapped bunch of orange roses and frilly red blooms of some kind to Greg’s chest. He holds them there until Greg’s brain finally catches up, and he brings his hands up to cradle the crinkling, paper-bound, gift.

The card reads simply, in pencil, “To Greg, From Alex. xox”. The bottom of the card looks well erased – and repeatedly written over.

“The man at the shop assured me you’d like them,” Alex says, as he takes back his hand, adjusting the ostentatious red ribbon bow as he does. Then he clears his throat, suddenly finding his shoes very interesting. “So… do you?”

“What? Oh! Oh, uh, yeah, sure. Roses, right? Can’t go wrong with roses. Good solid, um, flower those. What are the red ones?”

Alex looks up – staring firmly at the flowers and nowhere else. His ears now almost as red as the flowers in question. “Not sure, actually. I think the florist said woolflowers? I just… It felt stupid to keep giving flowers to someone I didn’t even know. So, these ones are yours. Intentionally.”

“Ah! Because I gave you a hard time on Monday at the funeral. Look, mate, you didn’t have to, it’s okay—”

“—Did you say something about a hot drink? Only, I thought I could practise my set, but my…” Alex struggles with the word with the blockage of his nose. “Elocution leaves a lot to be desired today.”

“Oh! Fuck. Yeah of course. Come on then – a Lemsip for you and an aspirin for the flowers.”

“I think there’s a packet of food, actually.” Alex pokes at the flower bundle, still clutched to Greg’s chest. Alex’s hand is almost blue with the cold, and Greg grabs it – it feels like ice.

“Oh my god, you’re freezing! Right! Follow me.” Greg turns, his huge hand wrapped around Alex’s merely large hand, and before his brain can get in the way of anything, starts walking down the path towards the little brick cottage, pulling a scampering Alex behind him.

Unsure what to say or do, the fact that he’s holding Alex’s soft, long-fingered, hand in his own – slowly warming it up – dawns on Greg properly. So he does what anyone would do – he panics.

“Stupid spring. It should be much warmer by now,” he grumbles, inanely. “Get a fucking move on, Per—”

“ACHOO!”

“—sephone. Bloody hell! That was loud.”

“Sorry,” Alex sniffs. “What was that about pineapples?”

“What was…? Never mind.” Greg and Alex reach the front door – the little brick frontage with its quaint round windows on either side of the glass-surrounded entryway. Greg feels conflicted when he lets go of Alex’s hand to dig the keys out of his pocket.

“Right. Shoes off, I’ll put the kettle on.” Greg blusters about, ushering Alex in without really looking him in the eye. He stomps on the heels of his trainers to get out of them faster, kicking them under the side-table, and almost running down the hallway to the kitchen. “I’m gagging for a cup of tea!” he yells over his shoulder.

He gets the fright of his life when he turns around from clicking the kettle’s switch to find Alex already in the doorway, looking up at him. Their eyes meet at last, and Greg feels a jolt.

Alex seems almost expressionless as he says, “I sometimes finish my stand-up set with a quick gag.”

Greg looks away, grabbing a pair of mugs from the stand and busies himself with preparing their drinks. “Oh yeah? Go on then?” He asks, for something to say.

“Oh I… hmm. I think it works better in context.”

Grabbing the milk, sugar, and the sachet of Lemsip, Greg can see Alex out of the corner of his eye rocking back and forth in his brightly coloured socked feet, curling his toes into each other on the wood flooring.

“Can I help?” Alex asks, hopefully.

“Could you put the flowers in a vase, maybe? There’s one in the library – first on your left out the door.”

Alex is gone, and Greg takes a really really deep breath – gripping the kitchen counter again. “What the fuck?” he mutters to himself.

Then Alex is back with a cheerful, congested, “Found it!” and Greg almost sends a mug flying across the room as he turns.

“Great! Would you do the honours then?” Greg asks as he shuffles with the mugs and bits and bobs to the right hand side of the counter – leaving the sink where the flowers are leaning, to Alex.

The kitchen isn’t big, and with the two of them – neither of them dainty – working next to each other, their shoulders knock against each other companionably. Alex in his thick, soft, hoodie and pale stonewash jeans and… watermelon socks? And Greg in a heavy plaid shirt over a black t-shirt and black jeans – his own black and white striped socks almost boring in comparison.

The kettle boils. The flowers are snipped free. Sachets of powers tipped into water, and teaspoons clatter and stir. At almost the same moment, both Alex and Greg try to step back, and bump solidly into each other – warm and solid.

“Oop!”

“Sorry!”

They laugh.

“Here’s your drink – get that down you.”

“Thank you, Greg.” Alex takes the mug and practically hugs it – sticking his still-red nose over the surface of the steaming beverage and tries to inhale.

Greg grabs his own mug of tea and leans back against the electric cooker, regarding Alex who immediately mirrors him by the sink. Both of them take a scalding hot sip, and it’s quiet for a long moment. The late afternoon light pouring, low, through the kitchen window from the cemetery – the light’s hint of gold catching the few remaining auburn strands in Alex’s silvery hair and beard, and shining through his almost glowing red ear, as wisps of hot, lemony, vapour coil around him. His pinked cheeks and stuffy nose seem to calm before Greg’s very eyes, and Alex closes his eyes to take another careful mouthful of his drink.

Then, with a look of utter bliss, Alex takes a deep, swirling, breath through his nose. “Ahhhhhh.”

Delighted to see Alex so affected, Greg smirks. He’d done that.

“How’s the comedy coming along, then?” Greg asks.

The micro-frown on Alex’s face speaks volumes. “Hmm. Could be better. Stand-up is really hard. Really hoping the new material I’ve been working on will… be more broadly appealing?”

“Bit niche, are you?” Greg asks, sympathetically. “If that were the case, I’m sure your Mr. Sargent in plot 113 would have mentioned.”

Alex chuckles. “He’s a great listener, but practising crowd work with him has been… challenging.”

“It had better be!” Greg sips his tea. “Could always ask the goths with their ouija boards if anyone’s got notes.”

“They’d have to be quick – my first show is this weekend.”

“Oh shit. That’s soon. What about your cold?”

“I think I’m over the worst of it now, really. But, ah, can I ask you something, Greg?”

Uh oh. Greg gulps, but keeps the mild smile on his face. “Sure.”

“Will you bury me here if I die on stage?”

And Alex looks so earnest that it takes Greg a beat. Then he barks a loud ‘Ha!’ and Alex grins.

“Alright,” Greg concedes. “That’s a new one for me. Better than the ‘dying to get in here’ one at least. Well done.”

Greg’s phone pings – a notification – and he scowls hard, hauling the device out of his pocket, dangerously close to spilling the last centimetre of his tea. The liquid sloshes up the side and down onto the counter as he slams the mug down, glaring daggers at the screen.

“Fucking goths!” he bellows, to Alex’s obvious surprise. Greg squeezes in beside Alex by the window, and wobbles his head around, microwave style, trying to get a good look out of the window. “They’re at it again!”

Alex twists, rubbing against Greg’s side, trying to see what he’s seeing. Greg can see flashes of shadowy black, cut through with deepest, darkest, blood red, swirling and billowing half-hidden by the curve of the hill, tucked in between the rise and the tree-lined wall beyond.

“Fucking TikTok,” Greg spits. He pushes away from the counter and is out of the room, barrelling full-bodied into the hallway before he remembers Alex. With a quick pivot, he shoves head back through the doorway. “Are you coming? Or?”

“Oh! Right, yes!” Alex downs the last of his mug and chases Greg to their shoes, to the door, outside and up the pathway.

Greg strides – huffing and growling, murder on his face – up the hill. “Get out of it you lot!” he booms. “Fuckin’ disrespectful!”

A whirlwind of crushed velvet and lace, yelps of laughter and scared swearing, and by the time Greg gets over the rise, he only barely catches sight of the back of a purple-haired person of indeterminate gender scrambling over the other side of the wall. With the last of his breath, he roars, “And STAY out!”

It makes him feel better. It makes him feel old. When he reaches the old, stone box-crypt, he leans carefully against it, trying not to let on that he’s so out of breath he feels like he’s dying.

“Oh, wow!”

Fuck! Alex. Greg immediately straightens and struggles to hide his panting.

“You really don’t like TikTok, eh?”

Greg huffs a laugh. “I’ve… I’ve got a notification for the usual suspects ‘round here. And alerts for the name of the graveyard. Idiots… huff… Idiots usually made it pretty obvious they’re live streaming right under my nose. And I… fucking hell… I wouldn’t mind, but they’re damaging the grave furniture.”

“Oh no. That’s not right.” Alex’s brow knots into a look of concern, and he walks up to see the damage done, reaching to touch the cold stone surface and almost touching Greg’s hand as he does. Then his hand moves and he traces his fingertips along the bright white stone scrapes on the surface – freshly made marks. “What is it they’re doing?”

“Dancing. In their ridiculous shoes.” Greg shakes his head, brushing his hand over the marks. They’re not too bad this time. “Why can’t they go back to normal counterculture behaviour, like getting shitfaced, playing truth or dare, and painting each other’s nails?”

Alex walks around the other side of the crypt, his eyebrows raising. “I think they may have been planning on at least one of those.” He bends down, and then pops up again waving a full plastic 2L bottle with the label stripped off and an unsettlingly purple, barely carbonated, liquid sloshing inside.

“Oh fuck. Is that what I think it is? God, that takes me back,” Greg chuckles, coming round to the same side as Alex.

Immediately, Alex twists off the cap and before Greg can stop him – takes a serious swig of the mystery brew.

“What the fuck?” Greg asks.

Alex tips the bottle down, and wipes his mouth with his sleeve – the hints of purple tinged froth around his beard. “Yep. It’s snakey-B alright!”

Greg splutters his disbelief. “Firstly – who the hell calls snakebite ‘snakey-B’? And secondly – do you just suck down any old liquid you find?”

“You asked if it was what you thought it was. So I tested it.” Alex shrugs.

Hiding the confused, fascinated, and not entirely uninterested expression on his face, Greg bends down to pick up a plastic Tasko bag with most of a variety pack of meaty crisps still inside.

“God. I didn’t even need to dare you,” he mutters. He leaves the bag on the flat stone top of the crypt and busies himself catching the empty packets and picking up disposable vapes that litter the ground.

“I was always really good at truth or dare.”

“Were you n—?” When Greg looks up, he finds Alex sitting carefully on the stone crypt, a packet of cheese and onion Walkers in one hand, practically deepthroating a crisp held between his index and middle fingers with the other. The crunch seems deafening.

“Wan wun?” Alex mumbles, words garbled as he sucks the savoury flavouring off his fingers with a pop.

Greg blinks at him. Just agog at the cheek of him. Or, in this case, the cheese and onion of him. Finally, Greg takes a leaf out of Alex’s book – and he shrugs, dropping the trash in a little heap, and hops up to sit on the crypt next to Alex. “Give me those…”

Alex smiles as Greg snatches the bag out of his hand, and leans back to grab a bag of prawn cocktail instead – the pink matching his faded red jumper and the tips of his ears. Greg, trying to show him how a real human being does it, picks a stack of crisps out with his finger and thumb, and shoves them in his gob with a look. But Alex just keeps smiling.

“So, truth or dare, Greg?”

“Hold on – hold on. What’s the forfeit? If you don’t do the dare – there has to be a forfeit.”

“Uhh…” Alex looks around, then grabs the bottle of viciously cheap mixed booze. “A swig of this?”

Greg takes it out of his hand. “Oh come on – it’s not that bad.” He puts down the crisps and twists open the bottle, takes a confident swig and almost coughs. “Oh! Alright. I mean, it’s fine. Bringing back memories for sure. Okay - forfeit it is.”

Alex nods. “Truth or—”

“—Truth or dare, Alex.” Greg insists, talking over him with a grin.

“Uh, dare please, Greg!” And Alex genuinely sits up a bit straighter, eager for whatever Greg might suggest.

“Alright, hmmm.” Greg looks off into the distance, thinking. He has a hundred ideas, but that’s never the problem with truth or dare – it’s picking one you think is right on the edge of what the ‘victim’ will do. To find that frisson point and press it. Greg draws his finger down his lip, playing with the tiny beard hairs just beneath, thinking hard. Alex hasn’t backed down from anything yet.

For his part, Alex starts fidgeting.

“I dare you…” Greg says, and Alex freezes, hanging on Greg’s every word. “...To do a little dance! For me.”

“Oh. But not on the…”

“No, not on the stone, thank you.” Greg clarifies, a teacher’s tone in his voice.

“No. And is there any music or…?”

“I will clap an accompanying beat. Now are you dancing or drinking, Alex?”

Alex slithers off the stone, wiping his hands off on his jeans. A few steps away and he raises his eyebrows at Greg. Clap, clap, clap – Greg starts out a rhythm and immediately, Alex bobs his head in time, trying to follow. A couple of seconds later, Alex starts moving his whole body – bouncing up and down, jumping almost, shaking out his hands.

Greg is delighted. Not at the dance – the dance is rubbish, even when Alex starts sashaying about the place, waggling his hips, and throwing his arms up in the air – but that Alex just went for it. Greg gives him a whoop of appreciation, a few ‘yeah!’ and ‘work it!’s until Alex finishes his weirdo interpretive dance with a flourish and a clap of his own. Greg applauds for real.

“Whew!” Alex says, beaming as he sits back next to Greg. “Thank you for my lovely accompanying beat, Greg.”

“You’re very welcome, my tiny dancer.”

Alex hums, nonplussed.

“What? You’re only little.” Greg beams at Alex, amused at the little frown on his face. Little frown.

“Six foot two, thank you.”

“Practically fun-sized. Bite-sized!”

“Hmm. Okay, Greg – truth or dare?”

“Ah, fuck, alright. Hrm. Truth!”

“Oooh, truth. Well. How did you become a graveyard keeper, Greg?” Alex asks.

“Really? I thought you said you were good at this. Alright. The previous cemetery worker passed on, and it was so hard to hire a new one, that there was talk of selling the whole thing to turn into a golf course. I’ve got family here – so I applied. The pay, I might add, is shit – but you get somewhere to live as long as you work here.”

Alex stuffs his face with another peculiarly-grasped crisp, crunching loudly over the end of Greg’s answer. But he’s nodding, and his eyes are sparkling with what seems to be genuine interest – and it’s quite nice, actually.

“My turn again! Truth or dare, Alex?”

And the game goes on like that. With Alex almost always choosing dare, and Greg almost always choosing truth. ‘Sing an opera about Queen Victoria’, ‘Why do you have trouble sleeping?’, ‘Climb that tree and get me two feathers’, more and more. Sometimes one of them declines to answer or do the dare – and with a sour face, they throw back another glug of the beer-and-cider-and-blackcurrant concoction.

At one point, Alex asks Greg if he’s ever had sex in a graveyard, and Greg bursts out laughing. “Finally you figure out how to play the game, Alex!”

“Well, truth now, Greg?”

Greg grins at Alex as he leans over, getting so much closer to Alex’s beer-flushed face, replying in a low voice, “Wouldn’t you like to know?” He reaches past Alex to take the bottle and drinks his forfeit.

“Aww. No fair,” Alex pouts, and then grins right back.

“I imagine you want a dare then?”

“Yes, please!”

“Ugh! You make this so difficult, Alex! Every single dare, you’ve just gone ahead and done them! Embarrassing things, difficult things, hell – I’m pretty sure you were going to eat that worm before I stopped you!”

Alex nods, serious, his head a little too loose on his shoulders.

“Alright, alright. I’ve got one.” Greg pokes at Alex’s chest – feeling just the faintest looseness in his own body as the blackout juice warms him from the inside. “Do something that genuinely scares you. I dare you.”

And for once, Alex hesitates. Greg is captivated – utterly fascinated as Alex’s face twitches and emotes; realisation, surprise, shock, worry, and something like excitement.

“I… Hmm.” Alex hums and fidgets, looking away and down and back up into Greg’s eyes with those big blue shining ones of his own. Nervously, he bites his lip – practically chewing on it – as the debate seems to rage within him. “Maybe… maybe I should take the forfeit.”

Half-heartedly, Alex reaches for the bottle, and Greg – in what he could only excuse as sheer devilment – snatches it away and out of his reach.

“Ah ah! I’ve dared you, Alex. You’ve not backed down from a dare yet. How is this different? Do it for me.”

The sheer fizzing fear that seems to bubble out of Alex then – but strangely despite looking like a wild animal staring down a predator, Alex seems to exude an equal amount of excitement. He glows with it. Greg can’t look away.

Suddenly, Greg feels it – the intangible ‘click’ as Alex makes his decision. With a tiny nod to himself, he steels his courage and – darts forward to kiss Greg on the lips.

Not a quick peck, but not a full blown passionate snog – Alex, without touching Greg anywhere else, presses his warm, blackcurrant-y, soft lips to Greg’s own and holds there, eyes closed. For seconds – what feels to Greg both like forever and just a blink of Greg’s stunned open eyes.

It’s lovely.

Then Alex is gone – leaning back up again with a fierce blush all across his neck, face, and oh my god, his ears. His eyes are wide and scared and he’s breathing like he just ran a mile. Seemingly without even realising what he’s doing, he runs his tongue along his lip, tasting Greg back.

“I should—”

“This wasn’t—”

“You go—”

“No you—”

Greg gestures firmly, his lips pressed tightly closed, insisting Alex speak first.

“I should probably go,” Alex says, looking down at his hands in his lap.

“Oh. Right.” Greg’s voice sounds hollow to his own ears, echoing in the aching void where his heart used to be.

Alex’s hands flex and tighten, and for one chest-clenching second, Greg thinks Alex is going to reach down to the stone to wrap those lovely long fingers around his hand. But he hesitates, and swerves, and instead daintily squeezes his hand in the gap between where they’re sitting and pushes himself off the crypt to stand.

“I shouldn’t… you know. What with the… and everyth… Everythi…”

Greg looks up at Alex, who is hesitating, stumbling over his words and sees a man frozen. Utterly stuck in time, as his eyes stare past Greg. Alex inhales, hard, his face twisting into something cruel – something like a sneer when—

ACHOO!

Alex sniffles, unfrozen and a picture of bleary-blinking apology. “Oh, god. I’m sorry. I don’t— I hope I haven’t… Ugh.”

“Oh! Oh, right – of course,” Greg babbles. “No worries. Your cold, obviously. The sneezing. Right. Right! Fuck, you probably shouldn’t be freezing your arse on… Linda and Bernard Vashe-Mannakin’s limestone lid? Sorry.”

Greg stands, and doesn’t know what to do with his hands. Or his mouth. So he uses both for the things he doesn’t want them to do.

“Well, take some crisps at least,” he says, shoving the Tasko bag at Alex from arms length.

Alex chuckles, a thick sound in his rapidly snottifying nose. “Ooh, stolen goods, eh?”

“Fuck off, they’re… upcycled or some shit. Finders keepers.”

Alex takes the bag, and Greg’s heart leaps as Alex’s warm fingers brush slowly over his own like a promise. Like the smile that Alex gives him – soft as his lips, and warm. Greg somehow looks away.

“Right. I’ll just…”

“Yeah.”

Alex backs off, stepping around the stone crypt without letting Greg out of his sight.

It bursts out of Greg before he can stop himself. “I’ll see you though? Monday, yeah?” He sounds pathetic to himself, but he’s never felt so brave.

Alex hums – challenging with his congestion, and bites his lip, not answering for far longer than Greg can stand it. Instead, he says, “Truth or dare, Greg?”

“What?”

“Truth. Or dare?”

Greg is so confused. “Uhh, truth?”

“What are you doing at 8PM this Sunday?”

“I don’t… I… Nothing? Watching telly?!”

Alex smiles – smirks – and sets off down the gravel path, his back to Greg. Greg stares at him, wondering what the hell just happened.

Over his shoulder, Alex calls out. “If you come see my set at the Faithful Hound pub, I’ll buy you a pint of forfeit, Greg!”

The absolute bastard. The cheek of him! The fucking audacity! Greg bursts into laughter – booming out across the rolling hillocks of the cemetery as the last motes of dusk disappear. The sound bounces off walls and trees and crypts and brick walls of little cottages, and Alex, Greg can see, shakes with it – with his own naughty laughter as he gets further and further away.

“Wait!” Greg shouts after him “What if I’d said ‘dare’?”

Alex hesitates, head tilted, and then just yells back – his voice more like a funny-old man’s voice than Greg’s thundering bellow – “I would have dared you to come!”

The cheeky fucker walks out of the graveyard gates and Greg beams.

Chapter Text

It's brilliant. He's brilliant. Alex. Greg sits in the audience, slapping his thigh, having to wipe tears from the corners of his eyes beneath his glasses, from laughing so hard. Is he biased? Of course he's fucking biased – but he's not alone in the crowd in giggling so hard his face hurts. Greg gasps a breath in, and reaches for his hard won pint of snakey-b, and finds it already drained.

“And if you don't mind,” Alex addresses the crowd, a faux-serious face on his violently flushed face. “I often like to finish my set with a quick gag.”

Greg practically spins in his chair, giving Alex every (fluid) ounce of his attention. Finally, he'll hear this gag Alex had mentioned!

Alex reaches up to his shirt collar and tugs hard on the knot of his tie, loosening it with practised hands. The respectably-sized crowd quietens, waiting to see where this will go, and Greg leans forward, very curious himself.

But Alex keeps loosening until he whips the whole pink satin accessory over his head, and then back on again, adjusting so the fabric knot fits neatly and quite tightly into his wide opened mouth.

“Taa-gaa!” he garbles with a flourish.

Groans. Shaking heads. Reluctant laughter ripples across the room and slowly, almost as if against their better judgement; applause. Louder and louder, more enthusiastic, and Alex beams – his gappy teeth visible over the darkening cloth of his impromptu ball-gag.

After a beat, Greg remembers to clap too. He joins in, loud and whooping his cheers. He stands – almost taking the wobbly little table with him – and shoves his fingers in his mouth for a deafening whistle. Alex finds his eyes across the darkened room, and they sparkle together.

Then Alex bows, releasing himself from the tie, and thanks his audience, scrambling off stage clutching his soggy tie and a bottle of water.

“Seriously though, mate, you were brilliant.” Greg slaps Alex on the back of the shoulder and then leaves his arm around him as they walk, laughing and chattering, away from the pub.

The cold night air is lovely on Greg’s skin, cooling him through his sweated-through black T-shirt. His suit jacket, also black, had been dangling over his other shoulder, the pale blue lining flashing as they companionably knocked into each other until Alex got cold and Greg wrapped it around his shoulders for warmth.

“You really liked it?”

Greg smiles. “Oh yeah – though I'm sure Max Miller deserves a writing credit or something.”

Alex gasps, delighted. “You looked him up? Thomas Sargent?”

“Wanted to know what I was getting into, coming to watch you on stage in your element.”

“And?”

“Didn't help in the slightest!” Greg says with a laugh that shakes Alex against his side.

“Ah. Well I hope you still… got into it? In the end. I mean.”

They reach the front gates of the graveyard – tall and metal with a latch over the top. They pause, Greg all too aware of Alex's warm, stage-sweaty, body under his arm.

“I, uh, hope I'm going to— Look…” Greg carefully, jerkily, removes his arm and steps in front of Alex. “...Do you want to come in for a coffee or something?”

Alex giggles, and – cards on the table – it wasn't the reaction that Greg, heart in mouth, was hoping for.

“It's like you with your torch, Greg.”

Practically vibrating with nerves and exasperation, Greg tears his hand down his face, knocking his glasses askew. “What? What is—?”

Alex leans over to him and, no joke, waggles his eyebrows up at Greg. “Remains to be seen.”

“...”

“Because of the bodies. Their remains. And you with a torch, but also because—!”

Greg fucking kisses him.

Just kisses the absolute shit out of the man – full on, hand cupping the back of his head, lips pressed hard and hot and soft and damp until their noses are squished and neither of them can breathe. Until Alex's tiny moan puffs his cheeks out with nowhere else to go, fizzing against Greg's mouth. Until, feather soft, his fingertips rest like a breath against Greg's chest.

Until finally, Greg releases him, and they catch ragged breaths.

Both of them stare, lips red in the streetlight, eyes darkening by the second.

Alex speaks first, his voice a little husky. “I prefer tea.”

Greg nods. “I can do tea. And other things.”

“Yes, please.”

Suddenly, Greg is all action. Spinning to smack the gate’s latch unlocked, and slamming the metal surface with his shoulder to send the heavy, creaking, gate swinging open.

He almost yelps with surprise when he feels Alex slip his hand into his.

“I liked when you held my hand,” Alex says, looking up at him through long eyelashes.

Greg is so, so glad of Alex holding his hand because he feels like he’s about to float off into the clear, starry, sky. He holds on tight, and smiles – seeing those same stars in Alex’s eyes. He pulls Alex through the gate, and reaches behind his head to slam it shut behind them.

“Are you scared of being in a graveyard at night, Alex?”

Alex shakes his head.

“Because I used to be…when I was alive.” Greg winks at Alex, who immediately brings his other hand up to his mouth to hide his giggle.

“No, I don’t think that dare would work on me any more Greg.”

“Oh, all brave now, are you? Go on then.” Greg leans up on the gate – his arm over Alex’s shoulder – ever so slightly boxing him in. “I dare you.”

Greg can feel Alex’s hand in his own, twitching and trembling. He can see Alex biting his lip. Then suddenly, he’s on his tiptoes, head tilted up, pulling the entwined hands between them down. Alex’s eyes flutter shut, and Greg’s chest swells with warmth to see it, before closing his own, and letting Alex pull him into the kiss.

It’s not fleeting, like their first kiss. It’s not breathless and bold like their second. Instead, it’s vulnerable and open – their lips already sensitive and tingling. Alex opens his, and Greg follows. A tender, tentative, touch of his tongue to Alex’s lip, and he melts for Greg. Greg, who cups Alex’s face, and finds the feel of his beard soft and morish beneath his fingertips. Alex, who leans into Greg’s hand, nuzzling into it, as they deepen the kiss, hot and welcoming.

Alex ends the kiss, immediately regrets his decision, and launches at Greg again before either of them can breathe. Hungry, hopeful – Alex’s tongue wants him, all of him, and with a growl – with a smile – Greg pulls him closer and gives him more. Alex’s head softly, softly falls against the gate, and Greg gives him more – their chests pressed together, rising and falling as they breathe each other in and in and in. Greg feels the heat of Alex, in that place where their tightly grasped hands are crushed between them.

Again, Alex breathlessly tears his face from Greg, and stutters into his shoulder. “Oh— Oh my god.”

“How are you doing, down there?”

“P— Pretty good!” Alex’s breath is hot through Greg’s t-shirt, huffing warm against his skin as he half-laughs.

The slightest move of his leg, and Greg pins him against the gate – thigh between Alex’s own – and Alex is electrified. His laugh immediately replaced with a shuddering gasp that Greg kisses off his lips.

A moment then; hanging like the moon, as both of them feel themselves falling, inevitably, into the other.

“Right! You’re coming with me!” Greg’s voice is rough against Alex’s forehead, hot and raw, and tastes of salt.

With a halting laugh – interrupted by his own moan – Alex gasps, “I hope so!”

Then Greg is pulling him along the path behind him. Men on a mission, and Alex giggles with delight, jogging to keep up. The cottage isn’t far, and Greg’s already digging his keys out of his pocket, gasping as his hand brushes just a touch too close to where his hardening cock is trapped.

“Greg! Greg, wait.”

Greg stops dead and turns. Worried, he searches Alex’s face for regret or worry, and finds neither – instead, that quirked up corner of his mouth on an otherwise straight face. An effect utterly destroyed by how flushed Alex is – how red his lips and how darkly his eyes flash.

“Truth,” he says, with a challenging tilt of his head. “Have you ever had sex in a graveyard, Greg?”

Alex is going to be the death of him, he’s sure. His heart’s doing a fucking samba, his cock just kicked so hard it must have punched a hole through his pants, and Alex is nodding. Nodding and staring into his eyes with such intensity, Greg feels like he’s going to fall into their midnight pools.

Greg hauls their hands up, exposing Alex’s wrist between them and, barely believing his brain can even still work right now, he growls, “What time is it now, Alex?”

Alex checks his orange watch. “Nine forty six.”

“Then the answer is no. But Alex? Ask me again in… twenty minutes?”

Alex raises an eyebrow.

“Yeah, better make it twenty-five.”

They stumble, kissing, touching, and dragging each other over the rise and, coming up for air, both find themselves by the stone crypt from earlier. The Vashe-Mannakin’s. With a flourish, Greg takes his jacket from Alex’s shoulders and lays it down on the stone top – pale blue lining almost silver in the moon’s light.

“I need this back…” Greg says, holding their hands, and trying to untangle their fingers. Before he can, Alex leans over to kiss him messily on the sensitive tip of each finger, and Greg’s sure he’s going to just die and go to heaven right now. Burial be damned.

But Alex gives him his hand back, and Greg knows exactly what he wants to do with it. He presses Alex back with a kiss, turning his head with hungry fingers hooked beneath Alex’s jaw to find his neck – to lick against his pulse and taste him hot and delicious. Their hips press, and Alex gasps and squirms – the lip of the stone box digging into the crease at the top of his thighs and giving him nowhere to go. Greg scrapes his teeth against the goosebumping skin, licking down and into the hollow of his neck, nuzzling against the bob of Alex’s Adam’s apple as he gulps and pants.

Further his hands roam down – feeling Alex’s soft skin through his shirt, trembling in the cold night air but hot with his arousal. His fingers ghost over the cotton where Alex’s nipples harden and is rewarded by a gasp. Further, over where the shirt slips and slides over hair, soft over a stomach that Greg wants to grasp and haul and bite. To a belt. Victorious hands, pressed between their bodies as Greg finds Alex’s ear with his hot lips, hot breath, and sharp and gentle teeth, undoes Alex’s trousers. Alex’s hands grab at Greg’s shoulder blades, clawing through the t-shirt, searching for purchase as he reels – his every breath closer and closer to a whimper.

Greg hauls Alex’s jeans down, and without a moment to think, sends his pants the same way – feeling the smooth, soft, hairy thighs against his thumbs and god he wants more.

With a slap, he grabs Alex’s hips – digging his fingertips into the meat of him and he would roar. Then he hauls him – a grunt more growl than groan clawing its way out of his chest – picking him up to drop with a dick-slapping smack on the top of the jacket-covered crypt.

Greg looks at him then, and god, if he’s not the most delicious looking creature he’s ever seen. Hard and glistening in the moonlight, shirt dishevelled and his legs pinned against Greg where his pants and trousers bunch at his ankles. More than a mouthful. Greg watches, fascinated, as his hands – entirely of their own accord, almost – reach to touch and feel and grasp Alex’s lovely, lovely, hard cock. He runs two fingers along the underside of it, and Alex gasps, throwing his head back. Velvety, like eyelid skin over bone, Greg wraps his hand around Alex’s squished, thick, thigh and squeezes – warm dough beneath his kneading while his other hand traces teasing strokes, light and infuriating, along Alex’s length. Just to see him writhe.

“Hey,” Greg breathes. “Kiss me Alex and then…” He smirks as Alex pulls his heavy head up and opens scrunched closed eyes to look at him. “...I’m gonna suck your brains out.”

“Oh fuck,” Alex gasps, his hips bucking as a hard pulse makes his cock leap out of Greg’s barely-there touch to slap against his stomach. Both of them laugh, and then Alex throws himself at Greg – arms around his neck, back still arched, mouthing moans into Greg’s lips as Greg delights in grasping Alex properly and stroking him firmly and slowly and only once.

Alex hangs there, immobile, suspended from Greg’s neck, overcome. So Greg leans over him, following his lips, his neck, kissing through his shirt, laying Alex down on the satin-covered stone, until Alex’s fingers free, and let him go. He leans up – branding into his eyes the sight of Alex supine – arched over the grave furniture, his head fallen over the edge exposing his perfect pale neck. Alex’s hands fist against his eyes as he twitches, waiting – suspended over the edge of pleasure, quivering in Greg’s stilled hand.

When Greg touches Alex’s cockhead with his tongue, Alex twists. The taste of him is heady and rich and Greg swirls with his tongue, feeling Alex heavy on his tongue. With a groan – relief and desire warring within him – Greg sucks him fully into his mouth, cheeks hollowed as he presses with the flat of his tongue. Under his hand, Alex’s thigh twitches wildly, and Greg smiles a slurping sucking sound as he moves his head up and down Alex’s shaft. It’s filthy sounding – wet and fucking indecent – and Greg loves it. Loves that with every bob, Alex squirms against the blue of his jacket. That when he laves hard against the slit, Alex’s legs struggle against where they’re pinned by his own clothes bunched at his shins – pinned by Greg’s leg pressing between them so that his knees writhe and his hips desperately try to buck, but Alex is helpless under his mouth. Louder and louder – filthier and more wanton by the second – Greg sucks harder and deeper and faster. His jaw aches, but Alex’s noises – those god damned noises – pour through him and fill his veins with fire. Greg needs this. He needs Alex. He sucks like his life depends on it, and Alex cries out his wails, breathy and strangled, to the stars in the sky.

He’s lost in it – lost in Alex – his fingers digging harder and harder into the soft of his leg, wanting to own him. To have him, to feel him devastated by his mouth, reduced to nothing but a single, endless, whimper on his tongue.

A hand in Greg’s hair pulls him back to here and now – to Alex up on his elbows, gasping his name.

“Greg, Greg, god, wait. Please. Not— not ye— Oh god!”

Alex’s hands tug hard at his hair – pulling his head, trying to slow him, and Greg feels a vicious need to push him over that perfect cliff of agony – ecstasy – and see him fall. But he blinks, and lets Alex move him where he needs – off his cock with a choking sigh. He leans there, panting – a string of saliva still connecting Alex’s red cock and Greg’s red swollen, shining lips. Catching his eye, Greg slowly licks all around his lips – the taste of Alex – doing nothing for the spit soaked short hairs of his silver beard. He’s rewarded by Alex almost throwing himself off the crypt with a thrust – a groan – the look of such struggle as he asks for what he needs and not what he wants.

His chest heaves – each breath a syncopated thing – until Alex can speak. “Fuck me, Greg. Please. Oh please.” His elbows give up and he slams onto his back, until he can pull himself together enough to beg more. “I need you, Greg. Please. I… God, I ache!”

“Fuck, Alex – in a heartbeat, but I don’t have—”

“My pocket. There’s a condom in my pocket!”

Greg laughs – but it doesn’t stop him from kneeling on the grass by the crypt to rifle, frantically, through Alex’s scrunched up jeans. “Someone’s well prepared!”

“I… I did… Ask you to come tonight.”

Greg pops to his feet again – marvelling at himself – brandishing the shining packet and a small bottle of lube he’d found with it. “Jokes? Clearly I’ve failed at sucking your brains out…”

Greg bends, and for the sheer fuckery of it, licks Alex’s aching prick – like a prick.

“Oh! Oh Greg! I… Oh my god.”

“I guess fucking your brains out, it is!” Greg sets his treasures to the side, and running his hands down Alex’s soft thighs, grasps his legs just below the knee – pulling them up and up and up until he’s holding Alex’s legs aloft by the mess of his trousers. Then he ducks – diving his head between them, and locking Alex’s ankles behind him, leaving Greg’s hands entirely free.

Alex grips onto the stone, white knuckled, eyes huge and black and full of stars.

Greg tears open the condom packet, and leaves it ready – quickly flicking the cap of the lube and coating his fingers while Alex watches – anticipation quickening his breath. Greg strokes his leg, those soft hairs tingling against his palm, while his other hand slips between Alex’s cheeks. Slippery and hot, he strokes – over Alex’s hole, behind his balls, pressing against the base of him. Their eyes lock, and Greg delights in Alex’s every twitch. As he circles his entrance, and Alex’s brows knit and release, his eyes flutter and open wide, and then as Greg pushes a finger gently inside, Alex’s mouth falls open with a silent sigh.

Greg eases him open – slippery and messy and hot – and Alex is already in a state. For fun, Greg curls his finger, looking for a reaction, and gets one – a squeak of surprise that Greg immediately decides he’ll chase forever if he can.

He adjusts – shifting Alex’s legs on his shoulders – and hears jangling as coins and keys come tumbling from inverted pockets. And neither of them could give less of a fuck.

Instead, Greg whips off his belt and, closing his eyes with relief, shucks his own trousers and boxers. Just a touch – the faintest stroke of himself – just to ease the ache, and he’s already groaning. With his clean hand and teeth, he pulls the condom out and almost trembling, puts it on.

When he looks up, he’s hit by Alex’s desperation. Pure and powerful. “Please.”

Greg wants to bite him, but instead he wraps one massive hand around Alex’s hip, and the other around his own aching cock, and lines them both up, breath hesitating in his chest. Alex can feel him, wants him, wants him so badly and Greg can barely stand it – he pushes in and it’s everything good. Alex is tight and hot and soft around him. The pressure just right. The feeling hollowing him out and filling him again with light and heat and motion. He pushes and pushes – slowly – as Alex arches tighter and tighter. Greg pulls at his hips – splitting him open and whispering a litany of filth. The last half inch, he can hold out no longer and with a grunt, slams into Alex with a shudder.

“Fuck! Oh god, yes.”

“Oh my god, Alex.

He mouths at Alex’s calf, close to his face – licking senselessly at the soft skin and silvery hairs while he tries, desperately, to steady himself. He breathes. But he can’t – he can’t wait, he can’t hold out – he wants Alex so goddamn much, and he throws his head back, cradled by Alex’s bunched up jeans – and moves. Slowly at first, hesitantly he draws back until he’s almost out – until Alex is almost whining – and then he pushes into that white hot core of him. Faster and faster, until he’s slapping against Alex’s arse with a rhythm that sends Alex’s cock bobbing like a metronome, until Alex is gasping with every thrust. Harder he fucks him, and Greg grits his teeth – driven wild by Alex splayed out and senseless beneath him. Fingers tight enough for bruises, Greg chews him up with his grasping hands – slamming Alex down onto his cock as he slips on the lining of Greg’s jacket.

And it’s good – so good. He can feel hot molten need spilling through his body with every thrust. Alex is beautiful and Greg needs him every way – scrambling a hand under his shirt, sending a button flying, to grasp at that perfect stomach. Wanting to have all of Alex in his hands – to wrap him entirely in his grasp and squeeze every sound, every breath, every drop from his ravaged body.

He’s so fucking close.

“A— Alex… Ahhh… Ale— touch yourself.”

Alex bucks, writhing on Greg’s cock, before the words can get through – before his trembling hand can loosen its death grip on the stone’s rim and wrap – long fingered – around himself with a cry.

“Oh fuck. Greg. I’m going t— I’m—”

Alex pumps hard, fast, and clenches around Greg as he comes – spilling all over his chest, his shirt, white spatters. He chokes out Greg’s name.

Greg’s climax bears down like a freight train – a final slam that he feels in his teeth as Alex spasms and spurts and shivers. The feeling is too big, he’ll scream, his every muscle tight and desperate. He flinches, thrashing his head, finds soft skin and bites – Alex’s calf between his teeth as he yells his muffled orgasm into flesh.

Then his knees threaten to give out. Alex is dead weight about his shoulders – utterly limp – and Greg isn’t far behind. He slumps forward and almost folds Alex in half before he catches himself on his hands, breathless. Then the trembling starts. And the giggles.

“Wow,” Greg says.

“Yeah. Whoo-ee.”

Greg giggles harder – his body shaking with it. “Really? ‘Whoo-ee’?”

“Hey. Shut up,” Alex replies, swatting ineffectually at Greg’s arm. “I’ve not brain got.”

Greg laughs. “Ha! Good.” He carefully pulls out of Alex, and they both wince. Haltingly, they both manage to disentangle Alex’s legs from Greg’s neck and shoulders, aches and pains slowly making themselves known, until the two of them are mostly dressed – albeit missing a button and Greg’s belt having gone missing – sitting or leaning against the stone crypt.

“Hey, Greg?”

“Mmm?” Greg replies, still coming down from his glow. And his heart rate steadying.

“Truth or dare, Greg?”

Greg’s mouth twitches, and he leans over to bump shoulders with Alex. He runs his fingers down Alex’s arm, tracing into the hollow of his elbow, enjoying touching him even more now. Finally he reaches his watch, and lifts it up so they can both see it.

“Well, it’s been twenty minutes, or something, so – truth, Alex. I choose truth.”

They share a smile, and then a kiss – just a brief, delicate one that Greg feels all the way to the ends of his silver hair.

They’re so close, and Alex whispers his question onto Greg’s lips. “What are you doing next Sunday?”

Greg smiles, his mouth twitching with that same devilment from earlier. “Well, Alex, if I’m very lucky… you.”

Alex’s grin is brighter than the moon.