Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He fucks her, because of course he does. If there is a self-sabotaging option Adam will take it as sure as the sky is blue and the earth is round. He could blame the adrenaline – he has just ridden a horse for the first time – but this was bound to happen eventually. It’s who he is.

So here he is, barely a week into his new job, naked from the waist down in the barn with his boss. He’s kind of just… standing, not really sure what to do next.

Jem catches her breath and stands, grabbing her shirt and starting to pull it on. Adam doesn’t take the opportunity to look at her tits while her head is inside her top. He pointedly doesn’t think about what that might mean for his sexuality.

The sex wasn’t even that good. It never is, since Eric. Or before Eric, really. The only time Adam properly enjoyed sex was with Eric. He can fuck just as good as he could before; arguably he is better now because he’s started paying attention to his partners – thank you Sex Kid - and he always finishes. But there is just something missing from every interaction that leaves him sort of hollow afterwards.

He has considered that maybe he’s just gay, and what’s missing from every interaction is the presence of a second penis, but he can’t make himself see another man. Rahim had offered, which was certainly an interesting proposition, but Adam couldn’t bring himself to even kiss him.

Eric had kissed Rahim. Adam didn’t want to.

So, here he is, once again fucking every woman who’ll let him, up to and including his new boss for a job he is underqualified for and desperately needs, and feeling just as shit as he did before. Nice one, Groff.

Maybe he should have stayed in school.

“Are you just going to stand there?” Jem asks, and it doesn’t sound like she’s about to fire him, but Adam still isn’t sure.

“Um, no, I am going to…” he looks around for something to prove that he’s a hardworking employee who should totally keep his job. “..muck out Midnight.” He closes his eyes in defeat.

Jem laughs. “Okay, well you should probably put trousers on first, yeah?”

Adam winces and reaches for them. “Right, I wouldn’t do it naked. I mean, I wouldn’t like that. Just having my dick out in front of the horses. I’m not a horse pervert. Or any kind of pervert. I’m just… normal.”

Fuck. That was probably another point against him. He can picture it, a tally in her head. Adam Groff: Fucked in the barn, check. Horse pervert, check. It’s usually three strikes and you’re out, but those are probably bad enough to count as one and a half each. Or, fuck, there’s definitely something else he’s done to make the final one. Hell, he’s probably already on his fifth chance.

He puts his trousers on.

His dad is going to find out about this. He’s going to hear that Adam dropped out of school and instead of the surprise, and maybe even pride he would feel when he heard that Adam had a job, a proper one, he would feel resignation, and disappointment, and not a single sliver of surprise that he’s already been fired. Because Adam is a fuck up and his dad knows it.

And it wasn’t even worth it because Jem is not Eric and the part of Adam that aches for him has not lessened in the slightest.

Maybe he will feel like this forever, he thinks as he pulls on his shoes.

“Right, well then, I have a class starting in twenty, so I better get going. You know where everything is,” Jem says and goes to leave. “And Adam? You’re not half bad at that.”

She is gone before he can react. He is not fired.

With a sense of relief so fierce he feels it burn in his eyes, he goes to muck out a horse.

Jem makes him hug a horse. It’s a profoundly weird experience and his heart is beating so fast compared to the thump thump of the horse’s. Adam isn’t really used to hugs, but he finds he actually doesn’t mind it, and the horse is less scary this close. It feels less unpredictable.

Adam wonders if Eric has ever hugged a horse.

“See?” Jem is saying. “He’s really not that bad.”

Adam rests his head against the horse and wonders if their tummies gurgle like a human’s would. He is content to stand here forever and find out.

After a while he startles back to himself and reminds himself he probably aught to be working. Jem is still there.

“It’s sort of meditative, isn’t it?” She asks. “You can sort of feel your negativity leave in this, like, dark cloud.”

It is, and Adam wants to agree with her. What he actually says is, “We can’t have sex again.” Fuck.

Jem looks a little startled but not angry, which is good, probably. “Um, okay.”

“It’s just, I don’t want- I can’t lose this job. I know I started it, and I shouldn’t’ve, and I’m sorry. Please don’t fire me.” This is all coming out wrong. Why doesn’t he ever think about what he wants to say before he says it?

Jem doesn’t look upset like Aimee used to when he would screw up, but Adam doesn’t think Jem is as expressive as Aimee. Adam thinks maybe no one is as expressive as Aimee. “I’m not going to fire you, Adam.” Jem says, and for the second time that day Adam can breathe again. “I’m sorry, too. It’s not really… appropriate, I suppose, for us to, you know. I’m the boss, I should’ve stopped it.”

Adam shakes his head. “It was me. I kind of keep doing that. Having sex with people I shouldn’t. Or just anyone, really.”

She smiles. “Well, it shows. You’re clearly well practised.” He doesn’t know what to say to that. “That was a joke, Adam. Too soon, probably. Sorry.”

“Oh! No, it was funny,” he covers, badly.

There is a silence. He realises he is still holding the horse and steps back.

“Anyway,” Jem says. “Let’s finish up today. Take Midnight in and brush him down, and then you can go. I’ll do everything else. Bond a little, if you can.”

Adam nods and then salutes her. Why did he do that?

She chuckles and leaves him with Midnight to ‘bond’ or whatever. He clicks his teeth like he saw her do earlier. Calls, “Come on, Midnight,” and Midnight comes.

This horse shit is almost easier than people, and he’s still halfway terrified of the thing.

He’s working the kennels when he asks for time off. He was hoping to ask when he hadn’t just fucked up, and he’s good at dogs and shit, so the timetabling is really working out for him.

Jem looks surprised. “A funeral?”

“It’s not mine,” Adam says stupidly. “I mean, the funeral, it’s not for me. I didn’t really know her. Or meet her. Ever.” Like that would make her more likely to let him leave early.

“I don’t understand, if you never met her then why do you want to go?”

Adam tries really hard to think about his words before they come out. “Because her daughter shouldn’t be on her own.”

Jem smiles. “You’re a good friend, Adam.”

“Oh, I’m not her friend,” he says quickly.

“You lost me again.”

He fumbles for an explanation that makes sense. “I used to be not a very nice person. I think I’m better now, I’m trying to be anyway. Maeve… helped me realise I wasn’t who I want to be. Sort of indirectly, it’s a bit complicated. But I think she’s probably a good person too, and I know she’s got a little baby sister and I don’t know if she’ll even be there, but if she is I don’t want one of her first memories to be her mother’s empty funeral. There should be people. She won’t care who, just… people.”

Jem’s smile is back and he thinks he must’ve said the right thing. “Of course you can leave early tomorrow, Adam.”

He smiles and thanks her and ignores the small part of him that was hoping she’d say no. Eric or no Eric, he’s sure that this is the right thing to do.

He thinks Jem might be his friend. Adam’s never really made a friend on his own before, so he can’t be sure. But he thinks so.

Unfortunately, thinking so is not enough to convince him to go and ask her for help with his tie. It can just sit a bit funny, who cares.

His hands are shaking, and his heart is beating so hard he thinks its probably audible. He can barely hear anything else so it must be. He is going to see Eric in less than an hour.

This is an overreaction, he knows. Eric probably isn’t thinking the same about Adam. It’s just, he can’t seem to make it stop.

“Nice suit,” Jem calls, and she was supposed to be covering his work with the horses today, so she probably switched schedules to see him off. It’s nice of her.

She points out his tie but not his heartbeat, so it probably isn’t actually noticeable to other people. She asks what he’s nervous about.

“I might see my ex today.” The omission is loud in his ears. He can’t even say ex-boyfriend.

She makes the obvious assumption and he doesn’t correct her. Just says “Something like that,” in a tone of voice that has made it into a private joke when he knows the real joke is on him.

“It’s been a while but it still hurts,” is a ridiculous thing to say, but he says it anyway. It’s been barely a few months and there is a chasm inside him that gapes and yearns. He is hollow.

Jem looks for a second like she’s weighing something up in her mind. Absently, Adam notes that he ought to do more of that.

“Is that why you-,” she hesitates. “Why you sleep with so many people?”

Adam nods. “It’s just something I’ve been trying,” he says like it’s new hair dye, or vinegar to remove a stain. “It’s not really working out so well.” The stain is definitely still there.

“I don’t know if that ever really works to be honest. But I’m here. If you want to talk about it,” she offers.

Surprisingly, Adam does. “I think I’m lonely,” he starts. “But not like in a normal way. I’m lonely for just one person and nothing I do makes it go away. I lie awake at night, and its silent, and I hate it, but if its not, there’s a person next to me who is breathing, or snoring, who rolls over or touches me, I hate it more. It is the wrong person breathing the wrong way, and its not the touch I want. But this feeling of loneliness, no matter how many people I give it, I can’t make it stop. I just… feel it all the time.” He can’t stop. “And I touch myself, on my own, like we used to, but it just feels like a consolation prize. All I want is to roll over and see my person lying there, breathing as I breathe, and it’s impossible. I don’t know what to do.”

That all came out a bit of a mess. He shouldn’t have said anything.

Jem pats his tie. “You keep surprising me, Adam.” She makes an obvious show of looking him up and down. “You know, you look great. Why don’t you find this girl who has you all cut up and tell her exactly what you just told me. She’ll fold like a cheap suit, I’m sure of it.”

He won’t, Adam is surer. And reason number one is that he still does not correct her. “What do you mean, surprise?” he asks instead.

“I think there might be a poet trapped in there,” she says.

Adam smiles. “You’re actually not the first person to say that to me,” he says. “I’ll prove you wrong, too, I think.”

He takes a breath. Okay, why doesn’t he just tell her quickly now?

His dad pulls up. Fuck.

He can’t do it in front of his dad.

“Better go,” he smiles. Inside he is screaming.

“Talk to her,” Jem urges.

“Sure,” Adam says, not meaning it in the slightest. Still not correcting her.

And he won’t, because Adam Groff is a coward.

Eric is wearing some kind of fancy scarf instead of a tie. In another world where Adam had his shit together, the scarf is the same colour as his tie because they came together. He is also wearing a blue bicycle helmet and is trying to push a pink flower into a slightly shit floral arrangement that says MUM and looks like it might have been dropped in a bush. Perhaps in that other world, Adam could’ve driven them and the flowers might not be so unkept.

Or perhaps he would’ve found another way to screw them up in that other world. It seems more likely.

“Right,” Aimee is saying. “Otis, Eric, Jackson, and Adam, you can carry in the coffin. Quickly, now. Everyone else, if you’d like to head inside.”

At Adam’s name, Eric looks up like a reflex and Adam can see the shimmer of eyeshadow. He is the prettiest man Adam has ever seen, and the ache inside him twists into something so sharp he thinks he might not be able to say anything at all, or walk, or breathe. Otis says something about the coffin and Adam allows himself to be told what to do, paying more attention to the fact that Eric and Otis have some kind of frost between them that to anything actually coming out of Otis’ mouth. Four blokes carrying one wooden box with a dead mum in it. How hard could that possibly be?

It turns out that it’s actually a lot harder than it looks in Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Whatever is going on with Otis and Eric has Eric sitting next to him at the funeral. It feels weird but once again he is thankful to Otis and royally fucked off at him for the exact same thing. How can he not see how he hurts Eric again and again?

Adam is aware that this makes him a total hypocrite but as someone so removed from Eric’s life he won’t ever hurt him again, he feels he can still be angry on his behalf. He’s pretty sure no one else is going to.

He tells Eric he’s out to his parents, can’t bring himself to admit he’s basically spent the last hour deliberately misleading his boss friend. For all his talk about shame, he can’t let it go.

And then the funeral is over and Eric is gone and Adam is reaching out for someone who is not reaching back.

So he goes to visit his father.

His dad, Adam reasons, has been weirdly making an effort lately, and definitely if it were him in that casket he would feel.. something unpleasant that sits in his stomach as sure as Eric’s absence twists around his heart.

A feeling which quickly hardens into the cold stone realisation that he’s an idiot, has always been an idiot, and that none of this was about him.

How could he be so blind? It was right in front of him the whole time; the steering of conversations, neither of them talking to him about him anymore, both just desperate for scraps of each other.

Adam is once again nothing more than a footnote in his parents’ lives.

Chapter Text

Midnight is a good name for a horse that takes to being disturbed at night so nonchalantly, Adam decides as he leans his body against him. It’s interesting that over the space of a few weeks he’s gone from being so afraid of horses to walking for hours despite the cold weather and the sun setting just to spend time with one. Or maybe that speaks a little more to the wreck that is the rest of Adam’s life that this was the best option for him. He misses the days he could go to Eric’s, the days when he had a right to his time and was welcome in his life.

He misses the way he felt when Eric wanted him.

Midnight snorts and stamps his foot. “Am I annoying you with my dark cloud?” Adam murmurs, stroking his neck in apology. He supposes there is only so much even a horse as big as Midnight can do with so much negativity in one person. Rahim compared him to a horse once. Adam wonders if he had ever met one.

“I had someone special,” he tells the horse. “I think he was the first person I ever really had that was all mine, and I wanted him so much. But I wasn’t… good. At being someone’s person. Never have been, really, but I never cared before. People would come and go; come because I wanted them, and go because I wasn’t what they wanted, and I never cared about any of it. Until him. And for the first time I wanted it to hurt. I wanted everything he had.” He laughs. “I wanted to be hurt if it was him that was going to hurt me. If it meant I got to keep him. But he didn’t want me, not the way I was, and I couldn’t change fast enough. So he hurt me, and then he left, and now all I do is hurt.” He rests his forehead against Midnight so the horse won’t see the tears that have started to burn his eyes. “And now I don’t know who I need to be to be loved. I want to be loved like that again.” He whispers the last part, a secret just for him and Midnight to share. No one needs to know that Adam Groff just wants to be good enough to be loved.

And certainly no one needs to know how bad he is at it.

Eric has sent him a text.

He hasn’t opened it, just stared at the notification for twenty-three minutes. Logically, Adam knows this is a long time to do nothing, but is doesn’t seem like long enough to be ready to open the message.

The noise of the front door opening and closing downstairs startles him back to the present.

“Adam?” his mum’s voice floats up the stairs. “Are you home?”

She knows he is because his coat is hanging by the door and his key is in the bowl. She’s really asking if he would like to talk to her, but he wouldn’t, so he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he opens the text.

I think I get it now.

What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Get what? After weeks of nothing, why send something so vague? It’s almost like he’s being cryptic on purpose or something, if- shit.

Adam has pressed call before he can think about it. The line rings and rings and all he can think is its been twenty-three minutes.

The line clicks on. “Don’t kill yourself!” he blurts.

There is a second of silence. “What?” Eric sounds confused but very normal and not at all like he was in the middle of killing himself.

Suddenly Adam feels very much like he’s just done the wrong thing. This is not an unfamiliar feeling for him. He doubles down, feeling less and less sure. “You- you shouldn’t kill yourself.”

“Noted.” Eric does not sound any less confused. “Is that your only reason for calling?”

Adam bristles slightly. “Is that not a good reason?” he demands.

Eric takes a second to respond. “Is there a particular reason you thought I might?”

“Well I don’t know, you sent me a text out of the blue all cryptic and shit. What was I supposed to think?” he can feel his face getting hot and he can’t escape the feeling that this is all just a game being played and he’s losing.

Eric laughs. “Oh, no, no, I just meant, I think I understand you more now.”

“I don’t really know what you mean.” It’s kind of sinking in that Adam is currently on the phone to Eric and he’s sitting on the hand not holding the phone to try and control the shaking.

“Well, I just think I never properly considered where you stood on the whole coming out thing, and now I think I get it.”

“Okay,” he says slowly.

Eric exhales. “I’m not out to my church.”

That is probably the last thing Adam expected him to say. “But you never said- I mean you always seemed to be- you. I mean, you don’t hide.”

The silence in response tells him he probably said the wrong thing. Again. Fuck.

“Not exactly,” Eric says eventually. “When I’m at church I do hide. I wear boring clothes and no make up and I don’t talk about myself.”

Oh. “I’m sorry,” Adam offers pathetically.

“You know, Abbi said to me today ‘not everyone can fight, and that’s okay’.”

The conversation is raw, and personal, and Adam is so grateful for it, but that reliably destructive part of him reminds him that there are now people in Eric’s life that he does not know and do not know him.

“Do you need to fight?” he asks tentatively.

Eric is immediately defensive. “Do you expect me not to?”

Shit, shit. Disarm. “Uh, no, I just mean, it’s God all about loving everybody and stuff? Even gay people?”

“Well, yes,” Eric concedes, “but, the people there aren’t exactly the most open minded.”

“So it’s them you’re scared of?”

“I’m not scared, I just, I don’t want to lose them.”

Adam swallows. “I think, if you lose them because they don’t like that you’re gay, maybe you need to find another church.”

“I don’t want to find another church, this is my community!” Eric argues.

“But are they your community if they don’t know who you really are?” Adam says, praying he’s saying the right thing. “If you have to dress differently and act differently and not talk about yourself every time you’re there, are you allowing them to be your community at all? If you wear a disguise every time they see you, do they ever really see you, Eric?”

The longer Eric takes to respond, the more certain he is that he should have just kept his mouth shut. “Or not, I mean, you should do whatever makes you happy, you don’t owe them anything!” he rushes to add.

“No, I think I do. Maybe I am preventing them and me from having this deeper connection. From really becoming my community. I think the reason I’ve always felt like such an outsider is because they never knew the real me. I owe it to myself to give it a real chance,” Eric says. “I never thought about it like that.”

Adam pulls his hand from underneath his bottom and sniffs it thoughtfully.

“I think you’ve really grown since you left school,” Eric says.

Or since you left me, Adam does not say.

“I really liked your poem,” Eric says suddenly.

Adam freezes. “What?”

“Rahim gave it to me.”

“Well, he should’ve done that, it wasn’t any of his business. Or yours.” Adam says hotly.

“I think he wanted me to hurt. A little bit. And he knew that it would.”

“I didn’t write it to hurt you,” Adam says weakly, and this whole conversation has veered wildly out of control.

“No, but you did write it for me?” prods Eric.

“I, um, kind of,” Adam responds. “But it was before- I mean, while we were still together.”

“And it was addressed to me,” Eric continues.

“Yes, but it wasn’t- I never gave it to you,” Adam says desperately. He isn’t quite sure what argument he’s trying to make.

“Anyway, I thought you didn’t like poetry,” Eric says.

“No, well, I don’t,” Adam explains. “But you said you liked when Rahim wrote you poems so I asked him to help me understand them. So you could still.. have someone to write you poems,” he finishes weakly.

“That’s really sweet, Adam,” Eric says and Adam can’t breathe at the sound of Eric saying his name.

“I know I wasn’t a very good boyfriend,” Adam begins slowly after a beat, “but I really loved you, Eric. And I wanted you to feel it. I wanted you to know that you were loved.”

Eric makes a sound across the line. “Loved?” he asks softly, open-endedly. He almost sounds hopeful, but scared too. If Adam corrected him now, Eric might go with it. He could have another chance. They could recover.

Adam thinks about how he still hasn’t told Jem. How he still isn’t the man that Eric needs. “Loved,” he lies firmly.

“Oh. Okay then,” Eric says, and Adam knows he isn’t imagining the disappointment in his voice. “Thank you for calling when you thought I was in trouble. Thanks for caring.” He pauses and Adam does not speak. “Bye, Adam.”

“Bye, Eric,” Adam whispers, and with he dial tone he feels his heart breaking all over again.

Adam yells at his dad.

He thought it would feel… more. Better, more satisfying, like a catharsis. Instead he feels wrung out.

He goes back to the farm – hardly goes anywhere else anymore – and sits with Midnight. Midnight, as ever, does not seem bothered by his uninvited visitor, and Adam takes comfort in the fact that at least someone isn’t spending time with him under any kind of false pretences.

Maybe this stupid horse is his best friend.

Or, maybe, it’s the woman standing at the door of the barn watching him sit there and do nothing.

He scrambles upright. “Um, hi,” he says.

Jem comes in. “Hi.”

“I wasn’t doing anything!” he explains hastily. “I was just sitting with Midnight. He doesn’t seem to mind and its good for clearing my head.”

Jem smiles. “He’s good like that,” she agrees. “But the work day is over.”

Adam nods. “I’ll go.”

She reaches out her hand and stops him. “Or,” she offers, “I know something else that might help clear your head.”

An hour and a half later they are drunk.

Not a little bit oopsie-was-that-your-flowerbed tipsy. Properly drunk.

Jem is laughing at something, Adam isn’t really sure what, but it’s very funny. He can’t breathe for laughing too.

His breaths come in gasps around peals of laughter and somewhere they turn into sobs, and then he can’t stop. The tears he’s been fighting all these weeks finally fall and with them Adam finally feels the catharsis he was expecting from his dad.

Figures he’d have to do this himself too.

At the end of it, he feels… not good, but lighter.

Jem has come around to put her arm on his back and he leans into the touch. A simple, platonic, comforting touch.

Adam can’t think when the last time he felt something like that was.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jem asks.

Adam laughs wetly. “I feel like all I do is talk to you,” he says. “One day you’re going to run for the hills from all the shit I spout at you.”

Jem breathes out through her nose in a way that Adam has come to recognise she does when she’s amused. “Actually, I like hearing you talk,” she answers. “You’re much more articulate than you first seem. Sometimes, I think about things you’ve said for hours after we talked. No one I know talks like you do, Adam.”

“Is that bad? It sounds bad.”

“It’s good. You just say what you feel, no sugarcoating it, but it’s never malicious. I wish more people spoke like you.” she shifts slightly. “I also think its probably very healthy to recognise what you’re feeling the way that you do.”

This time Adam is the one amused. “Nothing I do is healthy. I’m probably one of the most self-destructive people you will ever meet,” he disagrees.

Jem doesn’t argue but he takes it more as an agree-to-disagree than a concession. “So you don’t want to talk about it?” she presses.

Adam sighs. “I yelled at my dad,” he begins.

“Okay.”

“And I thought it would make me feel better, finally getting to say everything I’ve been wanting to all these years, but it didn’t feel good, or, or satisfying. I just looked at him and felt so disappointed.” He laughs. Or sobs. He’s not sure. “I’m so disappointed. Which is crazy because that’s all he’s ever been about me, but here we are, I guess.”

Jem hums sympathetically.

“He’s a- a shit dad!” Adam says emphatically, punctuating with an arm thrown wildly in front of them. “He pretended he wanted to spend more time with me so he could get back with my mum.”

“Wow, that is shit,” Jem agrees.

“And he was my headmaster more than he was my dad before then,” he adds.

“Wait, what?” Jem says. “What do you mean headmaster?”

Adam blinks. “I mean he was the head teacher at my school?” he says slowly, not really sure what part she was struggling with. “You know the teacher who’s in charge of all the other teachers?”

She hits him. “I know what a head teacher is, you doofus. I just didn’t realise your dad was yours.”

“You called me a doofus.”

“Um, yeah, I did,” she agrees.

“No one’s ever called me a doofus before.”

“Oh, um. Sorry.”

“No, I actually liked it,” he smiles.

“You liked it?” she repeats.

“Yeah. I think you have to like someone to call them a doofus. It’s not mean like all the other words. Idiot, dickhead, moron,” he lists.

Jem tightens her arm around him. “I do like you, Adam,” she says softly.

“You don’t even know me,” he dismisses with a wet sniff.

“Well,” she concedes, “maybe not completely, but I think I know you pretty well. You wear your heart on your sleeve, you know. You’re like an open book.”

Maybe the alcohol is loosening Adam’s tongue because he says, “There’s a bit I don’t.  A bit you don’t know. A bit I hide, so you’ll never find out.”

She twists to look at him. “Oh yeah?”

He nods. “It’s quite an important bit.”

She considers this for a moment. “Important, huh?”

He nods again. Can no longer speak.

She smiles. “Then I look forward to knowing that bit of you too. Maybe in a day, or a week, or a year from now. Doesn’t matter when.”

God, he’s going to cry again. “Really?”

She reaches around with her other arm and holds his hand. Looks him in the eyes.

“I look forward to knowing you, Adam Groff.”

“I’ve got a new best friend,” he tells Eric. They talk on the phone now, sometimes. It’s not weird. It’s not.

Eric smiles, he can tell from the tone of his voice. “That’s fantastic. Who is it?” he asks.

“Her name is Jem, and she’s my boss. She introduced me to a horse. Midnight. He’s also my friend now.”

“Wow, Adam, that sounds really great.”

He nods even though Eric can’t see him. “It is. How did it go with your church?”

Eric sighs. “I told them. Then I left.”

“You left the church?”

“Not the whole church. Like, not the community. Not yet, anyway. Just the baptism. I asked them to accept me and they couldn’t.”

Adam doesn’t know what to say. “That’s shit,” he offers.

It makes Eric laugh a bit and he takes that as a win.

“Well done,” he says unsteadily, “for leaving. Well done for recognising you deserve better. And for, um, making that happen for yourself when no one else did.” Shit. Was that too far? Probably.

Eric is quiet for a long time.

He hasn’t hung up because Adam can hear his breathing, but he doesn’t say anything.

Eventually, “I’m having a bit of trouble with that, actually,” he says.

Adam startles, not expecting him to talk again. “With what?”

“With choosing which situations to put or keep myself in.”

“I mean, you seem to be quite good at it, from where I’m standing,” he says, tries not to let any kind of edge bleed into his voice. Good enough to leave me when I forgave you, he thinks traitorously. That’s not fair and he knows it.

Eric scoffs. “You’d think. But I think I’m only good at doing just enough to make it look like I am. Meanwhile, the worst of it I just… allow.”

Adam shifts uncomfortably. “Well, I wouldn’t know anything about that,” he denies.

“No?” Eric asks.

“No.” I stayed with you when you hurt me, he yells so quietly in his head. I gave you the power to hurt me again and you did. And I still wanted more. Anything. Anything as long as it’s from you.

Instead he says, “I think the hardest place to spot a… ‘situation’ like that is within the people we want to be more than they are.” He is talking about Eric and him. He is talking about Otis and Eric.

Eric breathes down the line. “You think I can’t see it because I don’t want to see it?” he asks.

Oh God, now Adam is giving advice. How did he get here?

“No,” he says. “I think you can already see it but you just can’t admit it.”

Or, his traitorous brain interjects, maybe it’s worth it.

Maybe you’d suffer anything just to keep them.

Maybe you’ll lose them anyway.

Eric sighs. “Maybe you’re right.”

The chasm inside him yawns and cracks. It feels like pulling open a scab.

Adam says goodnight and curls up to try and stem the bleeding.

Chapter Text

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Adam says looking at Sex Kid.

Sex Kid shifts uncomfortably where he’s standing at the doorway of the barn. His eyes keep darting nervously to Midnight, Adam notices with no small amount of smugness. “I, um, I wanted to talk to you,” he wavers.

There has always been a power struggle between them. When he first met Otis Milburn, Adam had been bigger, stronger, better than Otis and he had had the power. Then, all of a sudden, Eric wormed his way under Adam’s skin and suddenly he was on the backfoot all the time. As Eric’s friend, Otis had the power. But those are both the past.

Now who has it? Adam is not a bully. Otis is not his boyfriend’s best friend.

Otis clears his throat. He says,“I need your advice.” And in doing so, he hands the power right back to Adam.

They don’t stay in the barn. Jem has a little office that she sometimes lets Adam use. She is nowhere to be found today, so Adam takes the liberty of letting himself in and chooses to believe she would be fine with it. Friends do shit like that, right?

“Sit down, Sex Kid,” Adam says. He knows Otis’ name. He won’t use it.

“My- my name is Otis,” Otis says quietly as he sits. Adam scoffs.

They stare at each other in silence for a bit. This part Adam is intimately familiar with; it was common at the dinner table when he was growing up. Whoever speaks first will show the weakest will or the more desperate need. They become the loser.

Adam has had enough of being the loser.

Otis is the one to break the silence. “How did you let Eric go?” he asks eventually.

Fuck. Adam was wrong. He is still the loser.

“What do you- what do you mean?” he stammers, immediately back on the wrong foot.

Otis licks his lips. “I mean you are one of the most oblivious, callous, self-serving people I know, and yet you recognised that he was better off without you, and you let him go. How did you do that?” He is staring at Adam as if he were an optical illusion he can’t quite figure out.

Each word is a blunt knife dragging through Adam’s wounded heart. He feels it as if it were really spilling blood on Jem’s rug.

“You can’t really make someone stay if they don’t want to,” he says quietly.

“Eric wanted to stay,” Otis disagrees.

How does that hurt more than the mean shit he was saying before?

“Trust me, he really didn’t.”

Otis shrugs and turns his attention to his hands on his lap but doesn’t say anything.

“What is this about, anyway?” Adam asks roughly. “Are you just here to make fun of me or what?”

Snapping his head up, Otis hastens to deny, “No, of course not! That’s not why I’m here.”

“Then why?”

Otis looks at the floor and goes quiet for a moment. Then he says, “Maeve is going back to America.”

Adam doesn’t really get what that has to do with him. “You didn’t know she was going to go back? Seems a bit obvious to me.”

“No, she was-” Otis sighs in frustration. “She was going to quit. Stay here. With me.”

Adam is stupid but he’s not that stupid. He can see where this is going. “You were keeping her here.”

Otis nods.

“But you said she was going back,” Adam points out. “It kind of sounds like you already let her go.”

“No,” says Otis derisively. “I’m not strong enough for that. Not good enough. She came to her senses without me, she’s leaving me.”

Adam leans his back against a wall and thinks. “I don’t know what you want me to say,” he says honestly.

“The truth!” demands Otis. “How did you do it?”

The words fill the small office and Adam lets them. Allows them to sit and linger before saying quietly, “I didn’t. I wasn’t strong, or good enough. He left me.”

Otis looks at him and he sees so much of himself in his eyes that for the first time, he thinks there is no power at all.

Maybe there are just two boys, both stupid in love and completely clueless, and neither are good enough for the person they love so they are both wretched and alone.

Adam crosses the admittedly small distance to sit next to Otis. “You can’t let her go,” he starts, “because she is so important that she is a part of you. You can only loosen your grip, a little at first and then a lot. Watch her go and succeed without you, and whatever pain you feel, good. That is the cost of her success.” He looks sideways at Otis Milburn and thinks how odd it is that of all things, this was what would make them equals. “You can hurt in your own time. That’s your business, not hers. Your job now is to never let her know how deep you ache, how harsh it feels, or how sharp. Your job is to let her soar.”

Otis is looking straight ahead of him, but he acknowledges Adam’s words with a slight bob of his head. “It’s more than sharp,” he whispers. “It burns.”

“Mine didn’t burn,” Adam offers. “Mine sort of.. ripped. It tore through me like some kind of creature and took all my insides until there was nothing but empty pain inside me. Now it echoes like a stone falling down a deep crack in the ground and the nerves that are left exposed hurt like nothing I’ve ever felt before.” He’s spent too long awake at night with just his thoughts if he can just spout that shit off with no warning. Good fucking grief.

Otis seems to agree. “You should try writing poems.”

Prick.

Jem is a really good friend because she notices something is wrong almost immediately.

“Adam?” she asks gently. “What’s on your mind?”

Eric is on his mind; when isn’t he? This time, however, it is different. This time Eric is on his mind for a reason. “My, uh, ex called,” he says meaningfully, seeing her eyes widen slightly in recognition. “Says we should meet up and talk? I said yes. It’s tonight,” he adds.

“Wow,” says Jem. “She calls and you go running, huh?”

“It isn’t like that!” snaps Adam, deliberately ignoring how it wasn’t her scoffing comment that raised his hackles but rather the pronoun she began with.

Furthermore, he ignores how easy it would be to correct her.

He could do it a million different ways. Just saying ‘he’ would probably be enough. Or he could whip out a photo of the two of them, heaven knows Adam has enough of them. Or he could start to tell her about Eric without constantly editing everything in his head first; a pronoun or a name shouldn’t take very long to make an appearance, and Jem is smart.

And it’s not like she’d have a problem with it. Probably.

But he doesn’t. Instead he asks her, “Do you think it’s silly to go?”

She scrunches her face a bit in confusion or surprise, Adam isn’t sure. “Why would it be silly?” she asks.

“Because I’m not over it.”

Jem blinks. “Do you want to be?”

Adam isn’t really sure he understands the question. “I don’t want to hurt anymore, if that’s what you mean.”

“Well, there you go, then,” Jem says as if that solved everything.

It did not solve anything, and Adam tells her as much.

She sighs as if Adam is being exceptionally dense. “Look, it seems to me that you’ve tried to get over this relationship and it hasn’t really worked. Am I wrong?”

He shakes his head.

“Ergo, the only logical way to move forward is to win it back. A mysterious spontaneous meeting is a pretty good start, I’d say.”

He supposes that, if Eric did want to get back together…

He shuts that thought down quickly. “That is much, much too dangerous to think about,” he says.

“Why?” Jem challenges. “Because you’re scared to be wrong?”

“Because we broke up for a reason,” Adam corrects. “And I’m not sure things have changed that much.”

She laughs – actually laughs – at him. “Oh, Adam, of course things have changed! You’ve been broken up for, what, months? That is plenty long enough to realise that she preferred life with you than without.” He, Adam burns to correct, but before he can she continues, “Besides, no one is the same person they were yesterday. Things are always different.”

Adam thinks about that for a second. Is he different?

Fundamentally, he is still the same. Must be, or Jem would be saying he and him. But maybe somewhere shallower, he has changed. He thinks more now than he used to. He uses words he never would’ve before and strings them together in long sentences that he dresses up in his head to make pretty. Not poetry, though. Just thinking.

He’s friends with Jem and Midnight now, which he wasn’t before. A girl and a horse. And he tries to imagine the him of six months ago attending Maeve Wiley’s mother’s funeral of his own accord and he can’t see it happening.

Maybe he is changing, just… slowly. And maybe that’s okay.

“Okay, then. Good,” he decides. “I’ll go. And if it is an invitation to try again, I will.”

Jem looks genuinely happy for him, which he finds remarkable given they’ve both fucked and she began their relationship as his boss. “If I have changed,” he says after a second, “then at least some of that is because of you. I- thank you. For being my friend.” It’s a slightly awkward delivery but she looks touched nonetheless.

“Thank you for being mine,” she says back, and for the first time he thinks that even if Eric doesn’t take him back, maybe, just maybe, things might be alright anyway. Eventually.

Eric is wearing uncharacteristically muted clothes, which immediately has Adam worried. He can’t help but think about the conversation they’d had a few weeks ago, where Eric explained that he used plain clothes to hide who he was. The pastel blue and cream of his outfit is a far cry from beige, but is nothing like his usual scream of colour.

He looks up and the smile he greets Adam with makes him briefly forget his name. “Adam,” Eric says, and oh, right, that’s it.

“Hi, Eric,” Adam says and, oh, God, is this awkward?

“Thank you for meeting me. Did you want a coffee?”

He briefly flounders for a response before settling on, “I’ll have whatever you’re having,” which ends him up waiting for a matcha latte with oat milk. He isn’t lactose intolerant or vegan, but he listens to Eric explain that oat milk goes the best with the matcha, which Adam isn’t even sure he’s heard of before, and tries not to let his expression give too much away when his drink shows up and is green.

Judging by Eric’s reaction, he fails.

They find a table and Adam barely lets the silence sit before breaking it. His willpower tends to go out the window in Eric’s presence so he was never going to win this one.

“Is everything okay?”

Eric snaps his gaze up from where he had been studying his drink label and smiles nervously. “Yeah, of course I am.”

Adam shifts in his seat. “It’s just, I was surprised to hear from you.”

“We’ve been talking almost nonstop for weeks,” Eric point out, which Adam can’t actually deny.

Maybe nonstop is a stretch, but definitely at least every day, which now that he thinks about it probably isn’t that usual for exes.

“Fair enough,” he allows. “But everything is okay?”

“Yes, Adam, everything is fine,” Eric says with an indulgent smile on his face. He sips his matcha latte with oat milk and Adam abruptly remembers his own.

He takes a sip too fast and chokes, coughing green liquid down his front. At least he was wearing a dark jumper, he thinks as he dabs at it doubtfully with a napkin.

Not exactly the suave impression he wanted to give Eric, though.

“Everything okay?” Eric asks with no small amusement.

“Probably just choked on an… oat. Or something,” Adam says.

Eric is hiding his face behind his cup but Adam can see that he’s trying not to laugh at him. It doesn’t upset him, though; rather, he feels a tiny bubble of warmth gather inside him and somehow lessen the ache he is so used to living with. Barely five minutes in his presence, and Adam is the lightest he’s felt in months.

“So how is Midnight?” Eric asks before the quiet goes on for too long.

“He’s good,” Adam says. “My dad actually met him the other day.”

Eric’s eyes widen. “What?”

“Yeah, I know. He just showed up at work. I was about to teach a class and he just kind of… stuck around. Joined the class. Even said he had fun.” Adam can still scarcely believe it happened.

“Wow, Adam, that is incredible,” Eric says.

Adam nods. “He hugged me,” he adds quietly.

Eric’s eyebrows shoot up so high they almost fly off his face. He somehow makes incredulous look sexy.

“I know,” Adam says again. “I think we’re going to,” he hesitates at his choice of words before committing. “Try again.”

The significance is not lost on Eric if the way he fidgets with his napkin is anything to go off, which tells Adam that maybe he isn’t entirely wrong about why they’re here. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking on his part, and he’s just boring Eric to the point of distraction.

He certainly doesn’t trust his own judgement there. He wishes Jem was here to help him out. Although, Eric might have a few questions about why he was bring a girl to their coffee not-date. And Jem would likely have some questions about the masculine state of Eric. And now that he thinks about it, it’s probably best she stayed on the farm.

Eric says, “That’s really wonderful, I’m happy for you.”

“Me too, I think,” Adam replies. “I think I’m excited. We’ve both been working on some things and I think maybe the relationship we could build now could be good. I want it to be good.”

Again, he tries really hard not to let a double meaning bleed into his voice.

Eric, it seems, has no such reservations. “There was actually something I wanted to talk to you about,” he says, and Adam abruptly feels his palms start sweating.

“Yeah?”

“It’s, um- I was talking to Otis-” Adam was not aware that he was back talking to Otis but he supposes that’s a good thing for Eric. “-and he mentioned that you said something that helped him with the whole Maeve thing.”

Adam groans and buries his head in his hands. He’s going to fucking kill that stupid kid.

“No, no, not bad,” Eric hastens to say, seeing Adam’s response. “it’s just, he mentioned something about missing people and I just-” here it comes. “-I miss you, Adam.” What?

“I, uh,” Adam doesn’t really respond.

“I know, I pushed you away,” Eric adds quickly, “and I know it’s not fair. I didn’t treat you well and I’m sorry. I’m really sorry for that. I thought I knew better about what I wanted and how I wanted to live, but the truth is I just miss you, Adam. And Otis said something that made me think that maybe you might miss me too, so I just, I wanted to say something. Just in case.”

Since he and Eric broke up, Adam likes to think he has gotten very good at feeling his feelings. This does not mean, however, that he feels even a little bit equipped for the total emotional meltdown he is experiencing right now.

He must leave it too long, because Eric’s face falls and his body language shrinks. “It was a long shot,” he mutters. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. I can go-”

“No!” Adam cries, and Eric pauses in the middle of rising from his seat.

He sinks back down. “No?”

Adam rubs his eyes. “Don’t go; I need to think.”

“Okay,” Eric allows and the silence is back, but this time instead of stagnant weight, Adam feels a temporal current running over him, rushing him.

“You left me for a reason,” is what he says when he has decided how to respond.

Eric winces. “I was too impatient. It was a mistake.”

A mistake. What Adam wouldn’t have given to hear those words at any point over the last few months in this context. Coming from Eric’s lips. But he has to be sure.

“I’m not fixed,” he says firmly. “Just because I’m out to my mum and dad doesn’t mean that I’m yelling it from the rooftops and shit. I don’t make a big thing of it. There are people in my life that still don’t know.” Some people that really should know.

Eric nods like he was expecting this. “Coming out is a journey, it doesn’t all happen at once. I thought I couldn’t be with you unless we were on it together, but I’ve realised that we don’t have to be at the same place for us to be on it together.”

Adam is half convinced that he died choking on that matcha latte and somehow conned his way into heaven. “You’re okay with people not knowing?” he asks just one more time.

Eric hesitates and Adam deflates. That’s a no. He was right.

Then Eric says, “If that’s what you need, then yes. You’re more important to me than whether or not we can make out in the street.” Adam’s brain whites out as he imagines walking home with Eric and just stopping to kiss on the pavement, simply because they can. Eric seems to take his pause for hesitance. “That is, if I haven’t misread this situation completely. If you miss me too.”

If you miss me too, he says, as if Adam is capable of doing anything but.

“I miss you,” Adam confesses, soft and vulnerable, and he is rewarded by a blinding smile spreading across Eric’s face.

“Will you take me back?” Eric asks earnestly.

Adam nods slowly as if he wasn’t about to explode internally.

Eric looks as if he can scarcely believe it. “You will?”

Adam nods again, stronger this time. “I will,” he agrees, and just like that he is back with Eric, who reaches across the table and takes Adam’s hand. The missing part of Adam’s heart slides back into place like it was never gone and every breath comes a little easier.

“I know I hurt you-” starts Eric.

Adam interrupts. “I hurt you, first,” he says. “You offered to love me anyway.”

Eric smiles. “Moving forward, we can make a conscious effort to try and avoid doing that again,” he promises.

Moving forward, Adam likes the sound of that. He squeezes Eric’s hand and brings it up to his lips to press a kiss to it.

His lips on Eric’s skin.

Something in the universe settles.

Jem pounces on him the next morning before he can even put his bag down.

“Well? How did it go? Was I right?” she demands.

Adam’s smile is easy and large. “You were right,” he says, imagining he probably looks like a goof. He doesn’t really care.

She gasps theatrically. “Adam! Tell me everything! Gosh, I don’t even know her name!”

The inadvertent error doesn’t even throw him, he just opens his mouth to correct her when-

A commotion from outside draws their attention away.

She fixes him with a look. “We are coming back to this,” she says firmly before going to investigate.

The day passes quickly and he does not see her again. Every time he gets a spare second, she is called off somewhere else, and before he knows it the sun is setting and he is saying goodnight to Midnight.

“Am I interrupting something?” the unfamiliar familiar voice of his no longer ex- boyfriend floats across the barn.

He turns, smiling, to greet him. “No,” he says, “come and meet Midnight.”

Eric, as ever, is dressed entirely unsuitably for a farm, but Adam finds himself hopelessly charmed by the way he picks his way over. His eyeliner, Adam notices, is electric blue to match his jacket. “Your friend who is a horse, right?” Eric asks.

Adam can’t help but feel pleased Eric remembered. “That’s right. Midnight, this is Eric, who I was telling you about.”

“Oh, dear, he’s definitely heard all the nitty gritty, then,” Eric jokes.

Adam shrugs. “Maybe, but only my deepest most intimate thoughts on it. Nothing scary,” he teases.

Sighing, Eric addresses the horse directly. “I’ve apologised, and I think he’s forgiven me,” he whispers. “I promise to be a better boyfriend moving forwards.”

“We both do,” Adam agrees, his cheeks warmed pleasantly at the word boyfriend. He never quite got over the novelty, before, but now it’s like a whole new thrill all over again.

Eric seems to be waiting for a response from the horse, who is usually quite reserved when giving opinions, so Adam decides its safe to interrupt.

He swoops in behind Eric and grabs his around the waist, swinging him around. “Oh, my God, Adam!” Eric cries, laughing as they spin. “Put me down!”

He has missed hearing Eric yell like that.

He obliges, and Eric turns to face him, panting slightly from the excitement. His face is right there, but Adam is weary of closing the distance.

Once he was sure of his welcome, but now he is hesitant, reluctant to do something that might scare Eric away again.

Eric, however, has no such reservations, as he guides Adam’s face down just slightly and tilts his head to allow their lips to touch.

Kissing Eric is a revelation. Every single thing he’s been missing with all those women, that spark he’d been chasing, is back with a vengeance and it’s all Adam can do to stay upright. He presses forwards into Eric and follows his lips as they move, losing himself in it.

They must travel because Eric’s back hits the barn door and Adam presses him against it, one hand wrapping around his waist to pull his hips snug with Adam’s while the rest of him pushes forward so there is no gap left between them.

He feels Eric’s fingers creep up into his hair and he groans into the kiss at the contact. This seems to encourage Eric because one hand wraps Adam’s hair around his fingers and tugs, just so, and the noise that Adam makes would be mortifying if there was enough blood left in his brain to process it.

Every nerve in his body is on fire and all he wants is to burn in it. A thousand wanks and a million shags with strangers couldn’t come close to kissing Eric like this.

A sudden clang from outside tears them apart and they freeze, panting and looking at the door. Nothing comes of it, but Adam reluctantly untangles himself from Eric anyway. He doesn’t want their first fuck back together to be in this barn.

And God knows this barn has seen enough of him.

Seemingly understanding, Eric straightens his clothes and smooths a hand over his head. “Whoo,” he exhales. “I’d forgotten how intense it is with you.”

Adam agrees from where he is busying himself putting away the horse riding equipment. The quicker he’s done, the quicker they can leave.

Closing the door to the cupboard and securing it, he tosses a “Night, Midnight,” over his shoulder and throws an arm around Eric as they make their way out to the main building.

They’re not halfway when the voice of Jem carries through the still night. “Alright, Adam, don’t think you’re getting away with this a second more. I want-” she comes to an abrupt stop as she rounds a corner and sees them. Adam doesn’t know what they must look like, still dishevelled from the barn and wrapped around each other. “Hi,” she says to Eric a bit uncertainly.

Adam doesn’t flinch. “This is Eric. My boyfriend,” he says, finally, unashamed. “Eric, this is Jem. My best friend.”

To her credit, Jem barely takes a second to catch up. “Well, it is very nice to meet you Eric,” she says, planting a smile on her face. “I’ve heard splatterings about you here and there, but I would love to get to know you properly at some point.”

Adam relaxes a fraction of tension he wasn’t consciously carrying.

Eric is already in action, holding out a hand and brightly saying, “Eric Effiong, it is so nice to meet you.”

Jem shakes his manicured hand with a smile on her face and Adam feels that ache start to seal over as his body blossoms warmth instead.

“Anyway, I’ll let you two get off,” Jem says with a wink at Adam that says her choice of words was deliberate, not just unfortunate. “Adam, I will see you bright and early tomorrow for that report.”

She winks again and Adam briefly reminisces about what it was like to have no friends at all. Peace.

But, he supposes, it was a lot lonelier, something he never wants to be again. Eric smiles at him and his heart bursts with affection in a way he would have never thought he was capable of a year ago.

No, he thinks as they head home. Not such a bad exchange after all. Especially for how the day is brighter and the smells are stronger and everything tastes so much sweeter when Eric is with him. In all his years, Adam has never experienced anything like it; it really is remarkable.

Who knows, maybe he’ll write a poem.