Chapter Text
The club is – well, it’s fine, mostly. It’s populated with far too many straight people, and more thumping bass than Bill has experienced since he'd stopped doing molly. He'd go home if he could, spend midnight in bed with Withers (who'd probably sleep through the fireworks to be honest, a warm solid weight in the middle of Bill’s chest like Bill’s very own thundershirt), but unfortunately, he's promised that he’ll stay.
If it was just Jock that he'd promised, he might have even left anyway. He loves Jock, despite his best efforts, but he doesn't owe him, not like he owes Mike. Jock is the one that Bill sees more days than not, but Mike is the one that Bill knows he can never let down. Not after everything that Mike’s done for him.
So he stays until midnight. He does shots with Jock, and Pat and Jim, and then Jock again, he dances to the music that he's sure would be good if he liked this sort of music (and fine, maybe he gets the appeal as the bass vibrates through him and leaves no room for anything else), and as they approach midnight he lets Jock throw an unnecessarily large arm around his shoulders and give him a little shake.
“Alright ladies and gentlemen, it’s thirty seconds to midnight, and you know what that means!” shouts Mike over the speakers. “Go ahead and get that special someone close, and give ‘em a big kiss for those of us stuck in little booths right now instead of out there with you! It’s going to be a new year in ten… nine…”
They’re up near the front of the crowd, and Bill can see Dave, forcing his way forward to get up to the DJ booth. Jim and Pat are only a little ways away, wrapped up in each other, so genuinely in love that Bill can’t even find it in himself to find it gross. Jock is hot and solid against him, smelling vaguely of sweat and whatever overly masculine deodorant he wears, and Bill, despite every single bit of this night that goes against what he normally wants, finds that he’s actually rather glad that he’s here.
“Four!” Mike and the crowd are chanting around him, and fuck it, Bill joins in. “Three! Two! One!”
“Twenty-fucking-twenty-five!” Jock shouts in his ear, smacking an extremely wet kiss to the side of Bill’s head. Dave has completed his journey across the room just in time to fling himself up into the booth at Mike’s side, and Bill laughs at the sight of Dave grabbing Mike by the face to kiss him firmly on the mouth, even as he reaches up to wipe the evidence of Jock’s kiss from his temple.
It’s been a long time since he’s felt this happy, he realises, surrounded by these absolute fucking lads that have so firmly and determinedly wormed their way into his heart. Even now, covered in sweat and god knows what else, he’s drunk enough to shove the urge to get home and shower to the back of his mind, to live in the moment instead of thinking about the entire routine he’ll need to do to get himself clean before he can go to bed.
Mike and Jock and his therapist may, unfortunately, have been right. It is good for him to switch his routine up every once in a while, even if he’ll never admit it to them out loud.
“More drinks!” shouts Jock in his ear, and then Bill is being dragged back to the bar, steered around Reg and his tall blonde girlfriend, whose tongues appear to be so far down each others’ throats that it’s a wonder either of them can breathe.
They get their drinks, and by the time they turn back Reg and his girlfriend are gone, leaving a clear spot at the bar that Jock is quick to grab.
“Right,” he shouts at Bill over the music. “Prospects?”
Bill snorts. “We’re at a club for heterosexuals, James,” he says, rolling his eyes. “I’d have better luck back at Oasis.”
“Pat?” asks Jock, and Bill nearly chokes on his gin and tonic.
“Tonight?” he asks, nodding toward where Pat and Jim are entirely wrapped around each other on the dance floor, one of Jim’s hands just barely high enough on the small of Pat’s back to be decent. And besides, Bill’s been firmly sticking to his one night only rule ever since the last time he’d been foolish enough to break it.
“Point taken,” says Jock. “Johnny?”
Bill really does choke that time. “Excuse me?”
Jock shrugs. “He’s fit, he’s gay, you two have that… thing.”
“Thing?”
“Your fuckin’... vibe, I dunno,” says Jock unhelpfully. There's a small redheaded woman on the dance floor that he’s making eyes at, and Bill can already tell that he won’t be getting any more information out of him about what the fuck he means by that.
He’s not even sure Johnny is here tonight. He thinks he’d caught a glimpse of a twink with shiny blond hair for a moment earlier, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, even in a primarily heterosexual place like this. Regardless: “We do not have a vibe, McDiarmid, for fuck’s sake.”
On the dance floor, the girl has been approached by someone who must be her girlfriend, or at least her date for the evening, because now they’re kissing, and Jock turns away in disappointment.
“Not Johnny then,” says Jock. “How ‘bout Eoin, is Eoin here?”
“Eoin’s in Ireland,” says Bill, a touch too quickly, and Jock raises an eyebrow.
“That only answers half the question.”
“I think the sea in the way answered the other half before I had to,” says Bill.
“So you’re saying if there weren’t a sea in the way–”
“I’m saying that I’m going home,” says Bill, pushing himself away from the bar. Whatever low level of attraction he may feel toward Eoin, there’s no point dwelling on it, not when it’s so clearly a lost cause – and Bill doesn’t particularly want to think about Paddy Mayne right now anyway, not when he’s had such a pleasant night. Besides, Eoin is only twenty-two, which is far too young as far as Bill is concerned. “Someone's trying to get your attention, by the way.”
He nods toward the dance floor again, and Jock’s gaze follows his toward the redhead he’d been looking at before, who has stopped kissing her partner and is now looking back toward Jock. Their eyes meet, and she gives him a little wave.
“I think they like your vibe,” Bill says dryly.
“Shite,” says Jock, glancing from one woman to the other. “Best not leave them waiting.”
“Best not,” says Bill. “Go on, I’ll be fine.”
Bill doesn't have to tell him twice. He watches as Jock gets pulled into the crowd by the two women, throws back the last of his drink, and turns and heads to the coat check.
It’s bitterly cold outside, but it feels soothing against Bill’s overheated skin, at least for now. He tugs his wool peacoat a bit closer around him and starts in the direction of the tube, but he doesn’t make it far. Someone’s been sick all over the sidewalk, and he only barely stops himself from stumbling into it, his own stomach lurching in sympathy at the sight. He could step out into the road to avoid it, but he steps into the little alley beside the building instead, which is dark and blissfully quiet, and smells clean enough beside the faint scent of cigarette smoke.
Bill had smoked for a few years in his early twenties in a desperate attempt to break away from his upbringing, and while he’s mostly quit now, he always finds himself craving one when he’s had a few drinks. The smell of smoke grows stronger the further into the alley Bill gets, and when he emerges on the neighbouring street it is to the side of a slim blonde man who must have been at the same event as Bill, leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette with shaky fingers.
He’s handsome, even if his mullet and moustache combo is a bit trendy for Bill’s taste, his clothes existing in that vaguely alternative style that leaves one unsure of whether the man in question is actually bisexual or just trying to hide that he has rich parents by only buying his clothes at charity shops.
Based on the septum ring and the glitter covering most of his face, Bill’s willing to take a gamble on bisexual.
“Mind if I get one?” Bill asks, because if Jock can go home with two women then Bill can certainly at least give it a shot with one man. And besides, Bill’s got a bit of a history with having breakdowns in alleys, he thinks he might owe it to the universe to make sure that’s not what’s happening here.
“Hm?” asks the man, jerking his head to the side from where he’s been seemingly staring into nothing. “Christ, yeah, sorry. Bit lost in my thoughts there.” His accent is posh enough that Bill starts doubting his original conclusion, but he figures that if nothing else, at least he’ll get a free smoke out of the conversation.
He fumbles the pack from the pocket of his impressively tight trousers and holds it out to Bill along with his lighter.
“There’s only three left,” says Bill, finding that it feels rude to take one when he has so few.
“It’s fine,” says the man, vaguely waving his other hand – the one holding his half smoked cigarette. “I’m trying to quit anyway.”
“How’s that going?” asks Bill. He places the cigarette between his lips and lights it, taking a long, slow drag.
“Bought this pack yesterday,” says the man with a self deprecating little grin. “May have been a bit anxious the past few days.”
“That at all related to why you’re outside the club looking like a kicked puppy at…” Bill checks his watch “...twelve-twenty on New Year’s Eve?”
“Christ, is it really only twenty past?” asks the man, lifting his wrist to look down at his own. It’s much nicer than Bill’s, but it looks vintage; it’s possible that this man is bisexual and has rich parents.
“Plenty of party left,” says Bill, handing back the lighter, letting the tips of their fingers brush as he does. He supposes he could be convinced to go back in with the right promise of what might happen after (or during – the bathrooms had been single stalls with locking doors).
“I don’t think I’m going back in,” says the man. “My ex is in there.”
“Ah,” says Bill. “That's a fun coincidence.”
“More of a mistake,” mumbles the man, gazing down at the ground.
“You came here together?”
“It’s been a few years. Thought maybe he’d changed.”
“Sounds like he didn’t,” says Bill, trying not to take a disrespectful amount of interest in the pronoun.
“Yeah, it was stupid of me.”
“That is stupid,” Bill tells him, and finally the man’s eyes flick up from the pavement to land back on him.
He stares for a second, and then his face splits into a surprised grin.
“You’re sort of mean, you know?” he asks, taking another drag off of his now nearly spent cigarette.
“I’ve heard that before,” says Bill. “You don’t seem to mind.”
“Turns out mean is sort of my type, I think,” says the man, tossing aside his cigarette butt and holding out a hand. “I’m Elliot.”
“Bill,” Bill says, taking Elliot’s hand in his. “Are you flirting with me while your ex is just inside?”
“I was considering it,” says Elliot. “Should I not?”
“You can if you want to,” says Bill, holding Elliot’s gaze along with his hand as he lifts his own cigarette back to his lips. It’s been a while since he’s done this, flirted in person, or with anyone who wasn’t intentionally scheduled and easily forgotten. It feels good to be wanted outside of the carefully curated box of desire, and Elliot’s hand is big and warm in his own, his handshake firm and promising all sorts of things. “But won’t he come looking for you?”
“Doubt it,” says Elliot. “Told me to fuck off when I tried to talk to him about his feelings, so.”
“A man after my own heart,” says Bill with a sharp little grin, leaving Elliot to work out whether he’s being serious or not. “I’ll suck you off in the alley if you like.”
“Oh,” says Elliot, brows shooting up toward his hairline as his cheeks turn scarlet. He is, as it turns out, even prettier when he blushes.
“Joking,” says Bill, even though he hadn’t been, really.
“We could–” Elliot starts, but he stumbles as he tries to take a step toward Bill, ending up catching himself with a hand on Bill’s shoulder. “Christ, sorry. Too many shots on an empty stomach.”
It isn’t until he says it that Bill realises just how many hours it’s been since he’s eaten too, and if – as he’s fairly sure it is – the hookup is already guaranteed, they may as well build up some stamina first.
“Come on then,” says Bill. “I’ll buy you some breakfast.”
There’s a little twenty-four hour spot not too far away, and they seem to make it in just before the late night rush. Bill’s sure that in an hour it’ll be packed wall to wall, but for now they get a little table in the front window, the benches cracked red vinyl, the whole place having a distinctly American feel.
It’s only once they’ve both ordered a cup of coffee that Bill realises he’s not quite sure how to do this. It’s not a date of course, not really, but it’s still more than he's used to. He’s spent the last year meeting up with men from Grindr, having already prepped himself before, getting what he needs out of it and then kicking them out or going straight home. He doesn’t do small talk, and he certainly never shares a meal first.
“So what brought you out tonight?” asks Elliot, stirring a frankly horrific amount of cream and sugar into his coffee.
“It’s New Years,” says Bill flatly, lifting his own mug of still black coffee to his lips.
Elliot snorts in amusement. “Yeah, I know that, thanks. I just meant–”
“I know what you meant,” says Bill. “The DJ’s a friend of mine.”
“Really?”
“Why, does that surprise you?”
“Sort of,” says Elliot with a shrug. “You just don’t seem the type to hang around with DJs.”
He’s right, regrettably. When Mike had first told Bill that he’d started DJing, Bill’s first reaction had been to laugh. “The friendship came before the DJing, unfortunately,” he says.
“How’d you meet?”
Bill opens his mouth, then closes it again, trying to figure out how to tell as little of the story as possible. Date or not, Bill has no intention of getting into his time in Egypt with a complete stranger.
“Got introduced by a mutual friend,” he says. “How about you and the ex, how’d that happen?”
“It’s… complicated,” says Elliot, returning his spoon to his coffee in a clear attempt to simply have something to do with his hands. “Guess he’s not my ex, really. Just some guy I was in love with.”
It’s so obvious that it still hurts him, even as he avoids Bill’s gaze so completely, eyes fixed on his already thoroughly stirred coffee. And yet, even amongst that pain, he says the words so casually, as if being in love is the easiest thing you can do. Bill’s only been in love once in his life, and even now, a year after it had so thoroughly fallen apart, he thinks that if he tried to talk about it it might kill him.
“So you weren’t together, then?”
“We were… I think if you’d asked him he would’ve said it was friends with benefits,” says Elliot. “I don’t know, he wasn’t ready for a relationship and I wasn’t ready to come out, and I guess I figured that by the time I got over my shit that he’d have got over his too.”
“But he didn’t.”
“He did not, no,” says Elliot with a weak little laugh. “It’s fine. I’m glad I have closure now, at least sort of. But that’s enough about me, really,” he adds quickly, and Bill recognizes a deflection when he sees one, he's got plenty of practice with them himself. “Tell me about you.”
“Not much to tell,” says Bill. “Grew up in Scotland, traveled a bit after I turned eighteen, moved here.”
“Surely that can't be it.”
“The only bits that are worth remembering, yeah.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“Meaning I'm not sure this is exactly the setting to discuss my divorce or my parents’ cult,” says Bill, surprising even himself. He hardly even talks about this sort of thing with his friends, but he supposes there’s some sort of freedom in sharing it now, with someone he’ll never see again after tonight. He lifts his coffee cup to his lips again, and raises his eyebrows challengingly, daring Elliot to say something judgmental – or worse, overly sympathetic.
“Why not?” he asks instead, somehow being far more casual about the information than Bill ever would have expected. “I mean, it's one thing if you don't want to talk about it, that makes sense, but…” He shrugs vaguely. “I don't mind if you do. And besides, it's just after midnight on New Year's and I’m at a diner with a stranger, who do you think I'll tell?”
He has a point, really, though Bill’s not sure he really does want to talk about it regardless.
“I'm gay and I was raised Mormon,” he says after a moment. “I think you can probably fill in the gaps yourself on that one.”
Bill Fraser was born during a thunderstorm.
His mother took it as a sign, convinced he would be a difficult child, and so when he proved her wrong there was very little fanfare surrounding it. No matter how good he was, no matter how dutiful and obedient, she was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. So Bill learned to walk quietly, to pretend his gait was just the same as all the other kids, even with one foot bare.
He’s thirteen when God first speaks to him.
They’re simple commands to begin with: when you get home from school and it’s just you and your little siblings, lock and unlock the door five times in a row, just to make sure it really catches, so that no one breaks in and kills you all. Flip the light switch eight times when you enter a room and three times when you leave to check that the electricity isn’t faulty. See how close you can get your hand to the flame on the stove to make sure that your pain response still works.
It does still work, and it keeps working all the way to the hospital, and he tells the doctor and his parents both that he tripped and fell. He knows the doctor won’t understand, and he’s not ready to tell his parents yet, not when, for the first time in his life, he has something that’s truly his.
The older he gets, the stranger the demands grow, and slowly, he begins to learn the difference between a command and a test. The church teaches him that God will test his faith with temptations of sin, and so he knows that when he looks at the other boys in the change rooms at school and wonders what it would feel like to touch them, to have them touch him in return (to have them hold him down, and wrap their hands around his throat until he is gasping for air), he knows that these desires are not real. He knows that God is giving him more and more difficult tests, because He has chosen Bill for something special with these messages that He sends to him, and He must judge whether Bill is worthy of it.
It’s not as if Bill is a terribly solitary person. He doesn’t let the messages from God overtake his life, no matter how often they threaten to. He has friends (though he is of course only close with the others from the church), he plays on the school cricket team, and he learns not to turn the light switch on and off when there are people around to bother with it. He learns to let that fear of an electrical fire live under his skin and make his whole body buzz with the energy of it.
Maybe, he thinks sometimes, the electrical fire is already here, living inside of him, left behind by the lightning on that night he was born.
His tests, he learns, are different from those of the other boys. They talk of their desire for women, of the peer pressure to go to parties and drink, and they are praised for their strength in resisting these temptations; alcohol is a tool of the Devil, and intercourse exists only as a means of procreation. Not once do any of them speak of the urge to step out in front of traffic when the light is red, or to kneel at the feet of their youth group leader and beg him to do with them what he will.
Maybe, Bill thinks, these tests are simply too shameful to even be voiced aloud. Maybe they are just something he has to learn to fight alone. He does not want to die, he knows that much. There is no forgetting the wave of terror he felt the first time his body tried to take him into the road of its own accord, only to be stopped by the outstretched arm of a passing stranger. And as for the other desire – test, he reminds himself, not a real desire – he has never allowed himself close enough to find out. He knows what happens to men who desire other men. He knows he will not allow it of himself.
There is another thing that will not leave his mind once it enters, of course. Another test (desire?) that repeats itself over and over and over like a song stuck in his head, sometimes so loudly that it drowns out everything else.
It makes sense that he would develop feelings for her, he tells himself, when he is a boy and she is a girl. It makes sense that he would fall in love with her, even.
It’s the Sunday after he’s turned sixteen when he hears the joke from one of her aunts after church.
“So,” the aunt says with a grin, glancing between the two of them, “when should we be expecting the engagement announcement?”
Her voice is light, teasing, but it echoes in Bill’s ears as if she had screamed it.
“So when should we be expecting the engagement announcement?”
His friend flushes and waves her off, and Bill says – something, he’s not sure, honestly. He’s sprinting away to the bathroom before anything else can be said, the laughter of the aunt following him all the way there.
“So when should we be expecting the engagement announcement?”
It’s not the first time that the topic has been mentioned, of course. They’re a boy and a girl, their parents are best friends, they’ve grown up together; he’s spent his whole life being asked if he just likes her, or if he like likes her. Being sixteen means he’s actually old enough to get married now though, and so it’s gone from a vague possibility to a real potential life choice, and she had blushed at the question, which means that maybe that’s what she wants.
“So when should we be expecting the engagement announcement?”
Bill can’t stop thinking about it.
“So when should we be expecting the engagement announcement?”
It repeats in his head on a loop, the phrase bouncing around, over and over, like the screensaver on a DVD player that Bill can’t find the remote to. Day after day, it’s all he can think about, as if eventually it will perfectly nestle itself into the corner of his brain and suddenly make everything make sense.
It’s not like getting married is a sin, not like suicide or sodomy or any of the other tests that plague him every day. It’s a good thing, it’s natural, it’s something, for once, that he should want, and so therefore it must be God steering him in the right direction. At last, his tests are over, he thinks. At last, he knows what he’s supposed to do.
They’re sitting at his kitchen table one afternoon, working on their English homework, and suddenly, with no warning at all, it gets to be too much. The words tumble out of him before he can stop them.
“We ought to get married.”
Her head jerks up, her eyes wide, her freckles slowly overtaken as the flush spreads across her cheeks.
“What?”
“We should–” Bill tries to repeat, and for how eager the words had been to come out the first time, now they’re sticking in his throat. “Shouldn’t we?”
“Bill Fraser,” she says, somehow horrified and delighted all in one. “Are you proposing to me over our Shakespeare essays?”
“If I profane with my unworthy hand…” Bill quotes weakly, and she laughs.
“Unworthiest,” she corrects. She’s right, of course, in more ways than she knows. “Of course I’ll marry you.”
“Grand,” says Bill. He’d thought the nausea might go away if she said yes, but it’s only growing stronger.
“You’ve asked my da, right?” she asks, and really it’s a miracle that Bill’s lunch is still staying where it is.
“Oh,” he says. “Right. Yeah, I’ll do that.”
They get married in the summer, two weeks before school is set to start again. It’s mostly their parents’ friends there, people from the church – only other Mormons, obviously. Bill’s not sure he even registers most of it, but the next thing he knows he is getting asked to make a promise to God. The next thing he knows she’s his wife. The next thing he knows, they’re in a car leaving the temple as Mr and Mrs Fraser.
His wife's brother – his brother-in-law, he supposes, and it is somehow even more absurd to him that he is someone with a brother-in-law than it is that he is someone who has a wife – is behind the wheel, because they’re old enough to be married but they’re not old enough to drive themselves to the hotel that their parents have booked for them for their wedding night.
They’re holding hands, though Bill can’t quite feel it. It’s August, he reminds himself, so it’s not as if it’s cold enough out that he would be going numb, but the harder he tries to focus on the feeling of her hand within his, the less he seems to be able to do it. He’s fairly sure that his brother-in-law is talking to them – he’s grinning when Bill glances up at his reflection in the rear view mirror, loose and easy and handsome. He must be saying something about the night ahead of them, because he’s laughing and Bill’s wife is making some sort of offended noise that seems to drill straight into Bill’s brain and echo around in the empty space between his ears, but he cannot for the life of him make out a single word.
He’s gripping her hand too tightly, he realises all at once, but he cannot stop, the ringing in his ears growing louder and louder and louder until he thinks he might go deaf from it.
Then she says his name, and suddenly the ringing is gone. Everything is gone; Bill is simply no longer himself. He watches as if from a distance as he shakes his head and forces a smile.
“Sorry,” he murmurs so only she can hear. He’s sure he’ll feel better soon, now that the stress of the wedding is over. He’s doing what God wished of him, and the satisfaction that accompanies that is sure to follow. “Big day.”
She squeezes his hand back and leans over to rest her head on his shoulder, and Bill might be surprised that he doesn’t start at the sudden contact if he felt like he were full of anything but cotton fluff. As it is, he barely feels it at all.
“Just a side of fruit?” asks Elliot, once the waitress has taken their orders. “Aren’t you hungry?”
“Sure,” says Bill.
“But you're not eating?”
“I'll eat later,” says Bill. “After.”
“Why wouldn't you–” Elliot begins, and Bill can see the exact moment he processes what Bill is doing. His cheeks turn charmingly pink again, an embarrassed little smile at the corner of his mouth. “Ah.”
“Don’t do this much, do you?”
“Not with cis men, to be honest,” says Elliot. “Had a couple partners at uni but nothing that stuck, and really only with women and nonbinary people. JC was the only– sorry, now it feels weird to bring him up.”
“It’s not like this is a date,” says Bill, unable to hide his own amused smile at the ex’s name. Even if Elliot doesn’t have rich parents, he’s more than willing to bet that someone named JC does. “Talk about whatever you want.”
“When did you get divorced?” asks Elliot, in what must be another desperate attempt to change the conversation, because as soon as the words leave his lips he winces. “Sorry, is that insensitive to ask?”
“It’s fine,” says Bill. “I was twenty when it started, twenty-one by the time we were done.”
“Twe– how old were you when you got married?”
“Sixteen,” says Bill.
“Sixteen?”
“Like I said. Mormons.”
When asked by his therapist years later about the time between his sixteenth and eighteenth birthdays, Bill will remember very little.
He had moved in with his wife and her parents; she was the youngest of three, the only child left in the house, and even with Bill’s older brother gone on his mission, there were still four of his younger siblings shoved into three bedrooms and his youngest brother in the crib in their parents room.
They did not have sex often, not after the failed attempt on their wedding night. Bill made excuses of course – excuses for not wanting to, excuses for being able to perform on the rare occasions they tried; he did not want to risk their educations by having a baby too soon, he tells her, as if the very thought of being a father weren’t the most terrifying thing he could imagine.
He knew that’s what he was supposed to want, that all his friends from the church were jealous of him for having found a wife so soon. They talked, of course, the way boys did, and Bill did what he could to brush it off. What happened in the bedroom was nobody’s business, he would tell them, and he wouldn’t clarify that it was barely his own business either. That on the rare occasions that anything happened between the two of them, he would find himself slipping away somewhere so far from himself that he hardly remembered it at all after they were done.
It was not just that which the other boys were jealous of either. “Now you won’t even have to go on your mission,” one of them told him wistfully one day, and Bill didn’t correct him about that either. Didn’t tell him that he’d spent every moment for as long as he could remember desperate for a chance to get away, to spend two full years out of the town that felt like it squeezed a little more air out of his lungs every day.
In the end, they decided to go together.
It was not a traditional mission, of course, not since they were married already, but neither of them had plans to go to university, not with Bill’s job in the church already guaranteed through his step-father. The messages he received from God were growing more frequent though, and louder, and Bill knew he had no other option. He had been born into this, had been told his entire life that this was his responsibility, to the Lord and his family and the church, and he could not bring himself to give up the mission now, not even when the church assured him that he could.
They were sent to Egypt. Cairo, to be specific, and suddenly the two of them, who had never gone further than Edinburgh, were learning Arabic and researching the symptoms of heatstroke and packing up a suitcase each so they could go and spread the word of God, five thousand kilometres from home.
And so there are memories here and there, of course. Vague snippets, bits of conversation. He knows that he graduated, remembers how to speak Arabic itself even if he does not quite remember learning it. He knows that he and his wife slept in the same bed every night, and knows that she did not laugh at him the first time he told her about his fear of fire. He knows that sometimes, when God’s voice got so loud that Bill could hardly hear anything else (though he still had not told her about the commands themselves), she would even flick the light switch for him, on and off and on and off until he was sure that it was working the way it was meant to.
There were all of these pieces, but Bill’s first clear memory after the wedding goes like this:
The flat is tiny. A single room and a bathroom, a small fridge, a hot plate. White walls, white sheets, white gauze hanging around the bed to keep the bugs out. It’s early August, swelteringly hot, and all Bill can think when he sees the canopy hanging, is how quickly it could all go up in flames.
She comes to a stop behind him, wrapping her arms around his middle, leaning to the side so she can press her cheek to his shoulder, too small to hook her chin over it. She murmurs that it’s perfect and Bill’s throat feels so tight that all he can do is nod.
They stop outside after their meal. Elliot pulls out his pack of cigarettes and lights the last one, taking a long drag before holding it out to Bill in silent offer. Were it anyone else, Bill wouldn’t accept it, but he’s still fairly sure this will not be the last germs that they share this evening, so he takes it between his fingers and brings it to his lips.
Elliot’s eyes linger – on Bill’s lips or on his fingers, Bill isn’t sure, but they linger all the same. Bill exhales slowly, letting the moment drag on, the air heavy between them. It’s one of his favourite parts of a hookup like this, one of the things he’s missed about meeting people in person. There is a silent agreement between them, a knowledge of what’s to come, but neither of them will acknowledge it just yet.
“I should be getting home soon,” says Bill, handing the cigarette back, making sure his fingers brush Elliot’s when he does. “I’ll need to take my dog out before I go to bed.”
“Ah, of course,” says Elliot. He pauses thoughtfully, clearly choosing his words carefully, and then continues. “Don’t suppose you’d like some company on your walk?”
“On the walk?” Bill lets his eyes drift downward, keeping them locked on Elliot’s lips for a second, then two, before he darts them back up.
Bill had really only said it to fluster him. He knows that Elliot wants him, but he doesn’t expect him to do anything about it here, on the side of the street where anyone walking by could see. He’d known Elliot would take it as the invitation it is, had expected maybe another blush or an embarrassed smile; he did not expect for his eyes to flick down to Bill’s own lips, for him to follow the glance with a step forward, and the step forward with a hand on Bill’s cheek. They’re eye to eye (rather novel for Bill, who’s used to being at least a few inches taller than his partners), and all he’s able to think before Elliot leans in to kiss him is that his eyes are the exact shade of grey of a thundercloud.
Then his eyes are fluttering closed, and Bill, who has never been interested in any form of PDA in his life (at least not outside of one particularly memorable night in Cairo), is too caught off guard to do anything other than let himself be kissed.
It’s been a long time since anyone has kissed Bill the way that Elliot kisses him, slow and sweet and without expectation. It’s not that Bill doesn’t like kissing – quite the opposite, if he’s being honest – but Bill’s usual standard of hookup tends to leave very little room for foreplay or heavy petting. He appreciates the anonymity of an app – or even better, cruising without so much as exchanging a word – but as Elliot’s tongue brushes his bottom lip, he’s forced to admit to himself that he’s missed this too. His hand is big and warm where he cradles Bill’s face, and his lips are soft, and Bill thinks he could easily lose himself in this if he allowed it.
They are still in public though, and while the street is quiet, Bill knows that could change at any moment. He pulls away rather than letting Elliot deepen the kiss any further, and when it takes Elliot a second to open his eyes again, lips still gently parted, Bill does not stare.
“Don’t suppose you’d like some company to bed?” murmurs Elliot, stroking his thumb gently over Bill’s cheekbone, and Bill can’t help but smile.
“I’d been wondering when you’d ask, to be honest,” he says. “You can’t stay the night though.”
“That’s fine,” says Elliot, quickly enough that Bill’s fairly certain he’d been hoping Bill might say otherwise, but he doesn’t push for it.
“Come on, then,” says Bill, jerking his head in the direction of the tube station. “It’s not too far.”
“One last thing,” says Elliot, and before Bill can protest there’s an arm around his waist, pulling him in for another kiss, deeper and hungrier than before.
The bit of Bill that doesn’t like to be perceived (more than just a bit, if he’s being honest with himself, which he doesn’t prefer to be but which his therapist seems to think is necessary) wants very much to push him away, but his hands land on Elliot’s chest just as Elliot sucks Bill’s bottom lip into his mouth and drags his teeth across it, and he doesn’t quite manage it. The self-consciousness still resides there in the back of Bill’s mind, murmuring to him that he shouldn’t be doing this, that someone could walk by and see, but far louder than that is the sensation of Elliot’s hands gripping onto his hips, his tongue already soothing the spot on Bill’s lip that his teeth had bitten into.
Bill’s hands tighten on the flimsy material of Elliot’s shirt, and he opens his mouth to him, drinking in the pleased groan that seems to come from the very depths of Elliot’s chest.
When they break apart it is with matching breathless sighs.
“Clearly not too out of practise then,” says Bill, and Elliot laughs self-consciously, ducking his head to hide his pink cheeks.
“It’s not as if kissing women is so different,” he says. “But you’re also not– well.”
“Ah,” says Bill, smirking at the realisation. He can tell that Elliot thinks he’ll mind, but if anything, Bill finds the thought of taking him home after he’d been that close to hooking up with someone else rather hot. “That would explain the glitter then, you don’t exactly seem the type.”
“The–” Elliot starts, before realising what exactly it must mean and raising a hand to scrub at his face. “Christ, has that been there this whole time?”
“It certainly has,” says Bill, smile widening, lifting a hand up to brush away a bit on Elliot’s cheekbone. “How far did you two get before your big fight then?”
Elliot’s cheeks, already flushed from the cold and the kissing, seem to turn even redder. “Not that far,” he mumbles, still looking down at his feet. “Bit of grinding on the dance floor.”
“Oh aye, grinding on the dance floor, making out in the street, but you draw the line at letting me blow you in a perfectly secluded alley?”
Elliot lets out a soft noise of amusement. “I knew you weren’t joking,” he says.
Bill shrugs. “S'pose you’ll never find out now,” he says. “Are you coming or not?”
“Lead the way,” says Elliot.
They fall into a routine in Cairo. They had lived together in Aberdeen of course, but not like this. They’d been in her parents’ house then, not a space of their own, and his wife sets about trying to turn the little studio flat into a home. She takes him to buy fresh flowers every week, and puts up art, and cooks him his meals and kisses him on the cheek and doesn’t complain when he finds yet another, weaker excuse not to have sex with her.
Bill wishes he could care. All he can think about is the mesh death trap hanging above their bed.
The worst bit is, he knows she wouldn’t mind if he took it down. She has never judged him for his nervousness before, has never laughed at him like his older brother or the boys at school. The longer he goes without saying anything though, he worse he knows she would feel if he brings it up, and the harder it becomes to get the words out of his mouth, until he resolves to simply keep pushing them down forever, along with his doubts about God (how could a good and benevolent being send him such conflicting messages, and trust someone as weak and scared as Bill to know which are tests and which are commands), and his worries about the ethics of mission itself (doors shut in his face, looks of scorn from the people he walks by on the street who recognise him for what he is in his pressed white shirt and name tag, people only choosing to convert when it is clear they have in some other form lost their way) and his thoughts about the men they see around Cairo (sweat glistening on golden tanned skin, dark hair appearing above necklines and on exposed calves, hazel-gold eyes that seem to look into Bill’s very soul and pick out his sins one by one).
If he only keeps blaming it on the hanging net, perhaps he can pretend that it’s the only thing suffocating him.
Were this a regular mission (if Bill had not listened to the Lord’s call when He’d told Bill to propose to his wife two years ago), there would be no moment he would be permitted to spend alone. All day every day he would be with his mission partner, from breakfast to dinner, no contact with his family save for an occasional email.
The contact with his family is still minimal, but not because of the mission. He knows he should feel guilty about it, knows that he owes his parents for raising him and clothing him and teaching him about the power of God’s love, but the longer he spends apart from them, the more the dread builds up within him at the thought of returning. No matter how hard he tries, he does not miss them.
He does not miss his mother’s screaming, nor this step-father’s silence. He does not miss the weekly dinner he had shared with them, and his older brother’s advice to him about his mission trip – always used as a not-so-subtle form of bragging about how his own had gone. He does not miss his wife’s family either, with their leading questions about starting a family, as if they are not barely more than children themselves.
And yet, as the time goes on, he’s forced to recognise that he does not want to be here either. He does not know if it’s the city, or the flat, or his wife, or if it’s only that he does not want to be around himself anymore. He forces himself to follow his routine though, as if maybe, if he does everything just right, his life will just slot into place around it. He just needs more structure, he tells himself, as if every day of the mission is not structured from the moment he wakes up to the moment he falls asleep. They wake up, and his wife makes them breakfast, and they knock on doors and spread the word of God until the sun goes down.
The only break from this schedule comes on Fridays, when they have their preparation day for the week. They do their laundry and their shopping, and they write their emails to their family, and sometimes Bill fails to find an excuse not to have sex so they do that too.
He’s taught himself to perform, at least most of the time, to fight through the fear and anxiety and every once in a while he can even convince himself it’s only excitement at the idea of properly starting a family together with the woman he loves.
It does not stop the wave of relief he feels each month when she tells him that she’s started her monthly courses again.
One Friday, just after a year into the mission, his wife wakes up sick.
“Stay in bed,” Bill tells her, stroking her hair back off her sweaty forehead as a good husband should, ignoring the way his skin crawls at the thought of having been lying in bed with those germs all night. “I’ll do the shopping today, you just take care of yourself.”
She tries to protest, but she’s quickly interrupted by a loud, hacking cough, and that’s enough for Bill to insist. He makes her a cup of tea and takes an extra shower before he heads out for the day.
And then, all at once, Bill is more than fifteen feet away from his wife for the first time in over a year.
It should feel wrong, of course. Even though they have permission to be apart the way they might not be were they a regular mission team, it’s not exactly encouraged. They are united in their mission as well as their vows, and Bill’s sheer, bone-deep relief at being without her feels as much like a betrayal of God as his thoughts about men.
And yet, he feels nearly giddy with it. He wanders through the shops far slower than usual, looking at things that he knows he can’t afford only for the very joy that comes from the act of looking. He talks with the vendors – laughs with them, even – and it’s not until his face starts hurting that he realises he’s not sure how long it’s been since he smiled.
It’s September, and it’s still 27 degrees out, and he can feel his nose burning in the sun and his shoulder aching from the weight of carrying the extra bag, and between one breath and the next, he forgets how his lungs work.
It’s almost funny at first. His throat tightens; he tries to suck in a breath, but no air comes. For as suffocating as the dry Egypt heat can get, never has it actually stopped his inhaling. He cannot quite wrap his head around it, this strange pressure on his chest, the ringing in his ears, just as it had after the wedding.
It is not his wife’s voice that snaps him out of it this time though. He is jerked back into his body by somebody’s shoulder colliding roughly with his own. Finally he sucks in a rattling breath, though it does nothing to soothe the aching just under his sternum. He must be sick with whatever his wife had come down with that morning, he thinks vaguely, stumbling out of the center of the pavement where he’s been standing for God knows how long, only aware of the desperate need for somewhere dark, and quiet, and cold.
The alley he ducks into is sheltered from the sun, the walls on either side of him muffling the hustle and bustle of the market. The heat still lingers, but not quite so intensely as it had out in the direct sunlight. Bill tries to breathe normally, but it feels as if he’s sucking in mouthfuls of sand, throat burning, head growing fuzzy. He sinks down, and he must have dropped the shopping bags because the next thing he knows he’s squatting down with his back to the wall and his hands in his hair, entire body trembling. Each painful breath grows faster and faster, echoing in his ears so loudly that he does not hear the crunch of footsteps approaching.
He hears the man’s voice though: gentle, kind, and unquestionably English. Bill has never, he thinks, not in his whole life, felt quite so happy to hear an English accent.
“Goodness, my dear,” says the man, “are you quite alright?”
Bill doesn’t know if the sound he lets out is a laugh or a sob. All he knows is that when the man kneels down beside him and places a broad, comforting hand on his shoulder, Bill’s body moves despite himself. He turns, and he buries his face in the man’s chest, letting the sobs wrack through him without so much as a glance up at his saviour’s face.