Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first time the King visited the Knightleys’, Andy barely knew him. The second or third time, they knew each other better than they knew themselves. 

That was how it worked with their little group of boys, their Royal Household, their Round Table, forming quickly and very nearly easily. Gary drew you in, moths shooting straight past the warmth and directly into the flame, then wondering how they’d ever thought it could do anything but burn. 

But the first time he’d hung on to that window-ledge- making far more noise than strictly necessary, attempted to pull himself through Andy’s window and instead settling for getting his attention by knocking- using his very literally and very figuratively hard head- Andy was powerless against his sheepishly grinning fire. 

They were fifteen, then, fifteen and totally and utterly teenage. Young and small and naive with way too much self confidence and way too little self control, and Gary King’s grin had been the one of the first in a long line of things about him that had wound its way effortlessly through Andy’s core and yanked violently at his desperate hatred and overwhelming love in not-quite-equal measures. 

The second was his tears. 

Because he had let him in. Of course he had. 

That was the day Gary’s dad had properly, finally left, in his mind, his first January 3rd with a card and nothing else. It was the day that Andy and Gary had become partners, the day Andy swore to him that he would always be there, and Gary had sworn he would never follow through on the stupid shit he thought and said in the blackness of an unfamiliar room at 4 in the morning, to the light of a face he really, really wanted to be familiar. 

Gary swore a lot of things after this, some he kept, many he didn’t, but of the broken promises embedded deeply within them, the shards that held their relationship up in their foundations, these were their first. This was the one that Gary had made the most effort to keep. For Andy. 

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“It’s so weird, though!” 

“It’s hot,” Stevie shrugged. 

“It is not hot,” Andy fake-gagged at the thought. 

“It is cool.” 

He stopped his gagging and shrugged reluctantly. “It’s definitely impressive .”

They nodded in varying levels of grudging agreement. 

“ And weird.” Pete wrinkled his nose. Stevie shrugged again. 

Gary was simply preening in the middle, for the first time in possibly all of their lives where he hadn’t felt the need to speak. He let the Polaroids do the work for him. 

Stevie glanced down at them again and looked away. It felt proper gay to see , let alone if they thought he was staring. He privately thought they looked a little faggy anyway, and so did Gary if he kept on carrying them around, but he supposed when it was with older girls… and it was cool, to his chagrin. The last two had the top of his head cut off anyway, he supposed, and the first one just had him smoking a fag. Or a blunt, probably, he couldn’t tell. But the last, the most egregious…

“Well tell us who it was then!” 

Andy could tell when Gary got anxious when none of the rest of them could; Stevie never noticed a thing. Andy, though, got away with being a little ‘sensitive’ on account of him being massive. He was like a bodyguard. Ollie was always trying to get him to be a wrestler, said there was a ton of money in it, and he could smash someone’s head in half, easy. Gary wanted him to be a professional rugby player, so he was probably gonna end up doing that.

“Nah, that ruins the fun!” 

Stevie had, to his own delight, stolen Gary’s Spot at Their Tree when Gary had gotten up during the preening, and dragged his jam-sandwich-apple-juice-breadstick combo with him. He really wished his mum wouldn’t pack for him. He started on his breadsticks regardless. The others were ignoring their school lunches and lunchboxes in favour of staring at the Polaroids. Apart from Gary who never got lunch- he couldn’t be bothered with that crap. 

“It’s not one of the Mrs, right?” Tiny Pete was ever the stickler. Gary wriggled his eyebrows and said, forebodingly, “no hints.”

“Gary!” Pete said, absolutely scandalised, as though the conversation hadn’t been about Gary fucking a teacher. 

It wasn’t one of the Mrs, Stevie thought, bitterly. It was gonna be Miss bloody Thatcher. Stevie had been crushing on her since year 9, and Gary had had the hots for her about a week after Stevie had said that he had. He, apparently, had no idea why Stevie had been pissed at him for, like, a month after, and had absolutely no recollection of their conversation once Stevie had stopped ignoring him. 

“And I thought Andy would be the romantic!” Gary stuck out his bottom lip patronisingly at Pete until Andy glared at him and he stopped. Andy always got away with that. 

“Mrs Gardener?” Ollie said, after a while. 

“Ew!” Was the response.

“She’s old!” Gary screeched. 

“ Mr Gardener teaches RE!” Was Andy’s protest. 

“They look nothing like her hands,” came up from Pete’s direction. 

Stevie just settled with a shiver and an “Ugh.”

“No, but…”

“ EW! ”

Ollie spent the next few minutes first explaining himself and then trying to make out that he was joking. Then he picked up his stupidly massive mobile telephone and stalked off. Not too far, though, Stevie thought he was probably too interested when they cycled through the next few guesses. It was definitely Miss Thatcher. 

“Alright,” said Andy. He looked a bit pissed off now, Stevie thought, though he wasn’t sure why. He hadn’t told any of them. Why should Andy get told before the rest of them? “Whose hands do they look like?”

Ollie was craning his neck over, he definitely couldn’t see from there. Stevie couldn’t be bothered to. He didn’t care. In the middle Polaroid, he’d noticed, Gary didn’t yet have the wonky SoM stick-and-poke he’d shown off to them on his bicep. He’d started calling Miss Thatcher ‘Mrs Thatched’ way before getting it. Stevie was going to kill him. 

Pete had started sniggering. 

Stevie looked up from packing his lunchbox back in his bag to peer at him, mildly amused as the kid started trying to talk, and immediately dissolving into more giggles. It got annoying fast, as Pete often did. 

“What?” Andy said calmly, before Stevie could whack him. 

He giggled a bit more, but sniffed himself back to coherency. 

“Looks like Mr Shepherd’s” he said, pointing at the hand. 

Okay, yeah- Stevie allowed, looking at the last, very faggy picture, and thinking about the similarities, before he started absolutely cackling- that was pretty funny.

“ Promise me,” he struggled between laughs, “that you’re not fucking Mr Shepherd.”

Gary, giggling too, breathed between laughs, slightly off, but good enough, “promise!”

It set Stevie off cackling again, and Gary relaxed slightly behind him. 

Chapter Text

Gary King was not the smartest man to ever live. He didn’t pretend to be either. Being stupid was a gift to him, he said, it made him all the stronger. Ollie wasn’t the smartest either, and Gary knew it, but that didn’t stop Gary from trying to use it to weasel half his answers. 

“Come on Ol, you’re the smartest guy here,” he was saying, leaning back dangerously on two legs, Mrs Peters having long-since given up regaling the tale of the boy ten years ago who’d died in that very seat. Whining, actually, rather than just saying, he rarely just said anything. He’d elongated words to their maximum, Ollie rather thought. “Just one or two.” Or three, or four. More like the whole side, actually. Gary gave the worst puppy-dog eyes in existence. He’d heard Erica Leakes, who sat next to him in history (and who Pete had a massive crush on) talk about his ‘big bright eyes’; he looked less like a puppy and more like a gerbil getting strangled. He tried really hard not to laugh at them. Once Gary started snickering, though, he fancied it safe. 

“Alright then, O-man.” Ollie rolled his eyes and stopped laughing. There wasn’t much he could do about that name now that the rest of them had cottoned on, but he hated that goshdarned six. He really shouldn’t have let Gary know that he hated it; he always did stuff like this. Gary was holding out his hand like Ollie had already agreed that he’d let him cheat. And, well, hadn’t he?

Gary gave him that stupid freaking grin. He groaned as he handed them over. “Damn! See, you’ve already finished!” Ollie couldn’t pretend that didn’t give him a smile. 

“You gotta help me with Pat though,” he said, to try and knock it off his face. Gary had promised he would, over a month ago, and Pat would be moving classes at the end of the year. Ollie didn’t want to lose his chance with her, even if it meant that Gary would spend a whole other year making fun of him for being ‘almost gay’. Gary had had plenty of girls who had way smaller tits than Patty, but he did this thing where even if you’d disagreed with him a hundred different times, he made you feel like you’d agreed. He’d already ruined Claire for him when he’d said she had a moustache.

“Of course, my second favourite Chamberlain!” That was worse than O-man, and he’d forgotten to pretend he didn’t hate that one too. Stevie hadn’t said it yet though, so he almost counted himself lucky when he flipped him off reflexively (he must stop doing it; his dad would kill him). Gary took no notice. “My gentlemanly wiles and way with women should, of course, be passed to my most deserving. Why haven’t you asked her out yet anyway?” He bulled through an answer that Ollie hadn’t bothered to give. “You gotta be more confident, man!” He’d looked up from his copying, leaning back and smiling encouragingly. Ollie smiled back. “That’s your first lesson! Be more confident! I’m always confident and look how I turned out! The best friends, the best teachers,” he winked, “the best girls!” Ollie groaned and rolled his eyes. “Honestly, O-man. I can get you your crush, or my name’s not The Ki-” He’d held his hand over his chest dramatically and did something that was probably meant to be a bow, but he was back on two legs again and, with the change in gravity, it turned into a pin-wheeling flail that ended up smacking first his hand and then his head on the table before collapsing, undignified, on top of his flimsy, toppled-over, bright freaking blue chair and snapping the leg off with his arse. 

He didn’t wait for Gary’s snicker this time before howling . 

<><><>

“Just,” he said later, walking out of Science as slowly as they could, to avoid the first few minutes of French, “when we’re, like, properly adults… can you stop calling me O-man.”

Gary laughed. As ever, it was bright and high, frequent and dazzlingly infectious. “I promise.” He held a hand above his heart, solemnly, and Ollie huffed as he bowed again, properly low this time, and completely blocking the hall. 

The scrape from the plastic chair would last longer than that promise. 

Chapter Text

Pete was fucked. Pete was really properly fucked. 

He really hadn’t wanted to, but- it was Gary. It had been Gary’s fault.

They’d been at a show, him and Andy (Ollie never went to Anaphylactic Shock gigs) trying not to get near the front, or trying not to blow out his eardrums, or get trampled, or really get noticed by anyone other than the King. That is, Pete was trying not to make it to the front. Andy would have been bullying his way through if they hadn’t got to The Mermaid twenty minutes early with Gary, Stevie, Frankie and Triss, and Andy hadn’t secured a spot there immediately. Pete had been shuffling his way backwards since then. 

Gary had ended with one of his new songs- well new-ish, he didn’t really finish writing any song that took him more than a week to write- apparently about hating Andrew Eldritch. He didn’t really understand the lyrics when Gary showed them to him, apart from the words “Andrew” and “Eldritch”. Gary had hated Eldritch when the they’d first met, (mostly because he wasn’t Gary Marx, as far as he could tell) and then switched to loving him once Patricia Hawkins joined, and the album Floods (or something like that) came out, and now that she’d apparently left, he hated him again. Pete wasn’t completely sure why, even if he had paid attention to the multiple rants. 

The song was deafening, as they all were, and he refused to wear the earplugs Andy had given him on principle, so he sat in one of the chairs that had been pulled up to the side, with his feet pulled up on a table and his hands over his ears, trying in vain to look like he was having a good time, and ignoring the stupid vodka that Stevie knew he hated.

Andy could be screaming out up front, knowing all the lyrics and stomping his feet on the slats, matching shots and vocals with the coolest black-haired, black-clothed lead that Pete was trying in vain to make everyone know that he knew. Pete knew the lyrics too . He just couldn’t shoulder his way through. That wasn’t his fault. 

It was 6 o’clock, and he’d thoroughly missed Blue Peter now, and depending on the fearless leader’s whims, he wouldn’t see any of the reruns either. He was just wondering if his dad had bothered to get tortoise food from the shops or whether that was meant to be his job this week, when he saw Andy pulling Gary to his side for the finish and whispering loudly in his ear and laugh loudly. 

Pete knew a Plan when he saw one and decided he could probably leave now. 

They both turned to him. 

Gary ran drunkenly up and Pete shut his eyes, dragged him off all manic with Andy a step behind as he always was, grinning with that power he got from shows. 

Stevie was always shattered, and his mum tended to drive him and his bass back, so he was left to pack. Ms Prince had always liked Gary- she called him a ‘nice boy’ and gave him his favourite biscuits when he came over. His own dad did not. 

Gary had tugged him ferociously behind the pub and produced… a phone. A mobile telephone. Ollie’s mobile telephone 

“Why do you have that!” Pete whispered, despite the sound of the crowd, going wide-eyed, gesturing wildly. As always, Gary gave no notice. 

“Oh don’t fuss Peter! Look,” Gary started giggling. Peter was fussing. Peter was fussing a lot. “What we’re gonna do, okay, you know Shane,” he did. He shivered, and nodded, “Shane Hawkins, right, and Andy knows his number!” Andy was also giggling.

Gary and Andy had been screaming for the better part of an hour, jumping around, Gary had been playing guitar, and both of them had been drinking. At least Andy seemed a little tired, but Gary looked, if anything, more energetic than he had before the show. 

Pete was confused, “What do you mean?”

“Peter!” He elongated the word, and it made Pete even more wary. 

Andy hadn’t stopped laughing. If anything, he’d gotten louder. “We’re gonna call him!”

<><><>

Shane tried to kill him on Monday. Gary tried to kill Shane, and after Andy gave a helping hand, Andy tried to kill Gary. And so did Ollie, although he made less of an impact. 

Mr Shepherd tried to kill them all. 

He’d always been a crybaby, but Mr Shepherd telling him to keep out of trouble and then giving him a hug…

Mr Shepherd was a good hugger. 

They were back at the tree on Tuesday, four of them moody after two hours detention and fighting with each other and bruises, and the other one completely chipper. Gary was giving a soliloquy. 

“And then we’ll be out, man! We’ll never see him again, yea?” 

And Pete knew it made him sound about ten. He knew it made him sound pathetic and worthless and small, but he needed it- and although he knew, in a vague sort of way, that Gary didn’t really care about what he needed, he thought that maybe… just this time…

“Promise?” He winced at himself (bloody girl) but Gary kept grinning, put an arm over his shoulders as he sat, and ruffled his hair violently, like he always did. 

“Course, mate! Promise.”

Chapter Text

It’d been a year now, and September wasn’t looking to bring him anything new. 

He hadn’t liked 6th form. It was boring and hard and the teachers sucked and the people there were all pricks. 

He didn’t miss it. He was free from school, he’d left, and he was glad. 

It’d just been a year now, and it had been a year that was equally boring. 

His mum kept on at him about paying rent, and Mr P always kicked him out of their pool, the three summer jobs he’d dragged himself through weren’t taking him back, and he didn’t even get to see Mr Shepherd during ‘downtime’ anymore. 

He hadn’t been doing shit, and all of his mates had been getting bloody jobs.  

They’d only been going out drinking on the weekends like feeble old men, and even Andy wouldn’t have more than four or five pints last Sunday, even though he didn’t drive to Uni. Well he might’ve had more than four, Gary had lost count, but he wasn’t nearly as happy about it as he had been last year. 

It was ages to the nearest proper town, and even when they’d finished their shifts or whatever, it was barely ever all of them together. He couldn’t bear another day in the only town closer than a half hour to them with one, single cinema. 

The only thing, the only thing he liked about it any more was that The Mermaid still let him and Stevie play. 

So they’d leave. 

All of them, together. They’d live somewhere in London, maybe, play an actual show that sold actual tickets.

He’d have to get money, first. 

Pete was with his old man, Stevie washing dishes at The Old Familiar, and Ollie and Andy had gone down to Hatfield for Uni. 

Ollie was doing sales for some reason, he couldn’t think of a worse way to spend his time- it suited him- Andy had said he was gonna be something poncy or other, like a lawyer or something. Which was all well and good, he supposed, up until he’d said something like “I want to help people” and then it’d sounded girly as hell . 

Newton Haven was a black hole, he’d decided, so he was getting out, and getting going. And once he’d gotten out, he’d be out.

He’d be leaving this stupid town. He would leave and he wouldn't miss it. He wouldn’t feel nostalgic, and he wouldn’t ever be coming back. 

There were new horizons just waiting. 

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He didn’t forgive him. 

There was no question of that; he probably never would, but he wasn’t angry. 

Not at him. 

Not really. 

He was tired. He was shattered actually, in more ways than one. And Gary’s “sorry” had pulled him back, as none of the rest of their trip had, to the Newton Haven in the eighties where he’d been flippant and funny and a whole lot of a dick, but where, when it had been the two of them, he’d sigh the masks off one by one, in an hour or two, they’d sit in the silence and huddle like he might die any second, like the world outside was an apocalypse and they were the last two on earth. He’d said sorry a lot more back then. 

“I know.”

Gary laid a shaky head on his shoulder, and Andrew let him. He didn’t think he would have, with their past still so important, the top of the list, the first thing he thought of, but he did. He let him. Their past was burning in front of them, the ashes settling in Gary’s hair. 

Gary drew an arm across Andrew’s lap and grabbed at his hand, because he’d always been selfish. He’d always want more. And Andrew would give it to him. 

Steven and Sam were next to them, and with a clear, deep ache, one he hadn’t felt since he’d decided to stop thinking about the ugly gash on his thigh, he thought that they must look like two couples. His hand squeezed Gary’s, tight, reassuringly, unthinkingly, and hoped that Gary hadn’t felt it. Gary squeezed back, and Andrew felt his own relief spill through him like a trolley problem. He was crying now. He thought he might be the last one of them to start. 

“I love you,” Gary said

Andrew swore under his breath, and hoped that Gary had heard it. His words had been muffled in Andrew’s shoulder, but close to his ear, and he could hear that it was as earnest as he always sounded. It was as earnest as any one of his lies, and any one of his truths, and he felt the break in it too, like a sob, like “they told me when to go to bed” , like he really didn’t want it to be true. Like he hated it. 

Andrew hated it. 

But he heard it, as clear as the sky wasn’t anymore, as clear as his eyes used to be: I love you. I will love you. I have loved you. Forever. 

I promise.

“I know.”