Chapter Text
Roger Angus Maynard knows he en’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but there are a couple unchanging facts he keeps tightly in the front of his mind. Depending on his mood, he plays specific ones on loop, his internal monologue swazzled and sockish like a giant insecure Punch.
The positives, before he gets mopey: he’s good at maths when it’s arithmetic, he’s stronger than anyone expects him to be (and people expect him to be pretty goddamn strong), and he’s cute, in a shy, boyish way; enough to get attention that peters out like the faucet's last attempts at loyalty after he can't pay the water bill.
Then the negatives: he’s awful at anything requiring proper smarts no matter how much Kunik says he's decent at it, he don’t understand flirting for shit, and he (as his mum once so elegantly put it) “certainly knows how to pick ‘em”.
Case in point on that last one – he’s been in love with his best mate since they were in secondary school, and his best mate does not love him back.
And no, it’s not some self-doubt issue or a stupid misunderstanding like Vesuvius and Dalaigh keep saying it might be. The lads say Roger’s a catch, and even if he don’t believe it, he knows he’s at least polite and decent in bed. Roger’s fine, more or less. But Piers, on the other hand, Roger’s known since secondary: Piers Khasar Agnew, son of a lighter and an explosive, handsome even when blown to bits and covered in scar tissue, can’t love anyone.
Roger can tell. From what, it’s hard to explain. When you know someone for long enough, you can read them like a book, and Roger knows how Piers shows displeasure by licking his teeth under what remains of his lips, knows how he can’t stand for too long without his cane, knows how he wears that cloth mask not just to prevent his teeth from dry-rotting but also to prevent himself from scaring small children like that one time when his exposed jaw and empty eye socket made a little boy cry in a Tesco’s. Roger knows that there are plenty of kinds of love, but he’s never seen the one he wants in Piers’s gunmetal eye, much less directed at him. It’s funny, Roger thinks with a tinge of something that isn’t bitterness but isn’t not bitterness, he and Piers are basically an old married couple and Piers still can’t love him. No matter how many times he wakes up to the smell of ham and cheese croissants in their flat because Piers woke up at four in the morning again and went to go get breakfast for the pair of them, no matter how many times Piers falls asleep on his desk in a position that aches just looking at him so Roger carries the stupid overworking twat to his room and tucks him in, no matter the fact that Roger would lay his life down for Piers in an instant and knows in his soul that Piers would do the same even though Piers would never let either of them into that situation, Roger still doesn’t see a hint of love in Piers’s gaze.
It en’t his fault, really, it en’t anyone’s fault. Roger can’t blame Piers for what he lacks, or what the explosion and hospital took away. Doesn’t matter if he ever had it or if he lost it, because if Roger spends his days thinking about should've, would've, could’ve, he’ll lose his mind.
But Christ alive, Roger en’t doing it for the hope that someday Piers might love him back. He’s doing it because Roger Angus Maynard is hopelessly in love with his best mate, and fuck, he’s still Piers’s best mate. He’s got Piers’s favorite coffeeshop memorized and the employees know his order as well as he does because he says the exact same thing each time at eight in the morning – g’mornintwocoffeespleaseoneblackonewiththreesugarsandoatmilkifyouhaveitplease – and every other week he supplements his coffee run with a stop in the cornerstore that carries Tiger Balm because it’s the only pain management ointment that Piers can stomach the smell of since all the others stink of alcohol and then he’ll come back to their flat and give him the coffee and vanish into his room to daydream about holding his hand and kissing him stupid and making sure nothing bad can ever happen to him again. It’s a pathetic way to manage his emotions, he knows, but ignoring it would drive him mad and it’s better than gettin' his fix at the bottom of a bottle. It’s better than ruining what they have right now, he reasons.
Roger Angus Maynard is hopelessly in love with his best mate, and Piers Khasar Agnew cannot love him back. But it hurts like an old wound, not a new one. Roger can survive an ache and a pang every now and then.
That's what love is, innit?