A Very Ordinary Man
Title: A Very Ordinary Man
Author: janescott
Pairing: Peter/Richard
Fandom: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy movie!verse
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 4168
Summary: Fix-it fic for That Scene. At least, it was meant to be. It turns out that Richard has feelings Thanks to i_bleed_magenta and sulwen for the beta, and to red_adam for an awesome Brit-pick.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Fan fiction for fun only. The originals belong to Mr John LeCarre. I'm just playing with the action figures for a while :-)
Richard first sees Peter in 1963, at a club. He calls it club in his head because it sounds a little … better than what it really is: a dingy, off-the-beaten-track pub for … his mother would say degenerates and perverts, were she around still.
He settles at the bar, studying the worn wood and scars and scratches gouged into it over the years by careless punters, weighted by the secrets of men and women living the bulk of their lives in the spaces in between.
Richard has been nursing the same drink for about half an hour now; warm, slightly flat beer. It’s his second but it’s done nothing at all to warm him up or make him feel less … isolated.
He comes here a couple of times a week, just to … just to be around other people he knows are carrying the same secret burden as he is. Once in a great while, he meets someone he likes the look of well enough, and takes them home for a night, or a week (or, in one memorable, still heart-sore case, three years) but Richard is under no illusions about himself.
He’s … ordinary. A secondary school science teacher in his mid-thirties with little to recommend himself to others except perhaps a kind smile on a good day. (“You always do that to yourself, Richard. You’re so much more than you think you are.”) He swallows the dregs of his beer and catches the barman’s attention for a third, distracted at a slight flurry of movement as someone takes the stool beside him.
The barman puts down Richard’s beer and turns to the person beside him.
“Whiskey and water, light on the water,” comes a low, tired voice that Richard swears he can feel inside his very bones.
He turns his head and finds himself being studied. He smiles and tilts his glass towards the stranger - the very attractive young tired-looking stranger who taps his own glass in return, the clink echoing.
“To Fridays,” he finds himself saying, inane and pointless but it makes the stranger smile, his pale eyes lighting up.
“Fridays,” he echoes, smiling and Richard wonders what he can do to hear that rich, deep voice again, or even … he shakes his head and turns back to his own seat, almost missing it when the stranger says, “Peter.”
“Sorry?”
“My name. Er, it’s Peter. Sorry, I’m a bit rubbish at this.”
Richard turns back, grinning openly, already disarmed and in danger of falling over the edge.
“Richard,” he says, tilting his glass again. He doesn’t say, “a bit rubbish at what,” because he’s not that kind of … ass. Peter is young, younger than him, certainly, and his shoulders are tense, his fingertips white where they’re pressing too hard against his glass.
Peter smiles at that and Richard is gratified when he sees the tense lines of Peter’s shoulders relax. He takes a sip of his whiskey and Richard feels himself flushing under the sudden scrutiny of Peter’s gaze. He takes a drink of his own beer and returns Peter’s gaze as calmly as he can, although it feels like his heart is beating so loudly everyone in the bar will be able to hear it.
“So, Peter … what do you do?” It’s on the tip of his tongue to say ‘what brings you here tonight’ but that’s so very close to a pick-up line; to flirting and what-if, what if Peter, who is so very good-looking, isn’t here for that, precisely, what if …
“I, uhm. I work for the British government,” Peter says then, his voice slicing across Richard’s clattering thoughts.
“The government,” Richard echoes. “That could mean anything.” He means it to be teasing but instead Peter turns back to the bar, staring down into his whisky like it has the answers to the universe. His shoulders hunch for a moment and Richard suppresses the urge to reach out and touch, wanting to soothe whatever internal struggle Peter is having.
“Peter?”
Peter blinks, shakes his head and turns fully around on his stool to face Richard. “Sorry. I’m - sorry. I haven’t had the job very long, and it’s - complicated?”
Richard nods at that, even though he really has no idea what Peter is talking about. A government job that’s tricky … well.
“What do you do?”
Peter’s voice brings Richard back to himself and he blinks, momentarily startled
“Oh. I - nothing so interesting. Secondary school science teacher. You know - teaching fifth formers how to blow up bunsen burners, that sort of thing.”
“Sounds hazardous.”
Richard grins at that, nearly laughs out loud. Because Peter - who is twenty-five if he’s anything, and who has definitely caught more than one eye in this dingy bar - is flirting. With him.
He relaxes and when the crowd thins out a bit, they move from the bar to a table near the back of the room.
Later, Richard can’t remember anything they talked about that first night. He does remember that they talked for hours - until the landlord tossed them both out, grumbling about wanting to get home and it’s all lovely that they found each other but could they kindly piss off.
They stand on the footpath outside, in the dim glow of the streetlight, and suddenly it’s awkward again.
Peter looks down the street, half-heartedly looking for a taxi and all Richard knows is that he doesn’t want to say goodnight - not yet.
“Look - I live not far from here. Walking distance. Would you like … coffee? Or tea, or - “ he stumbles over his words then, like a gauche teenager, because suddenly Peter is standing too close for a public street, even though there’s no one around. Richard feels his heart betray him again, and he can smell smoke and whisky on Peter’s skin.
“Or,” Peter says, gravely, “sounds perfect.”
Richard shakes his head and steps back, deliberately slowly. “Come on, then. It’s this way.”
They walk in relative silence, but it’s comfortable. Richard takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, laughing when he catches Peter watching him. Peter says nothing, but smiles back, his mouth curving up and his eyes lighting up before he drags on his cigarette again, the ember glowing like a tiny orange torch.
They reach Richard’s block of flats and he fumbles his keys, his fingers feeling numb, his other senses focused on Peter’s breath, ghosting over the back of his neck, making the hairs raise and making him feel suddenly too big for his skin.
The lift, blessedly, is working for a change, but it creaks and groans, loud in the silent building.
“This is - here.”
His flat is cold and he takes a few minutes, bustling about turning lights on and the heater, glancing at Peter who’s still standing by the door.
“You can hang your coat up by the door,” Richard says, as he moves back to Peter, standing in front of him. Peter’s an inch or so taller than him, but he can look him in the eye easily enough.
“So, did you want some tea, or coffee - “
“No,” Peter says, turning back from carefully hanging his jacket on a hook. “Just - “
Richard smiles and steps right into Peter’s personal space.
Smoke, he thinks as their lips meet for the first time, and whisky.
And that’s how it starts.
He hasn’t been looking for this again. Not for someone who can bring him to his knees with a single look. He’s been careful to avoid it until now, but Peter has a way of getting under his skin, and before he knows it, Richard is arranging his life around another man.
He tries to mind, but finds it difficult when Peter is sprawled out on the bed, his eyes half-closed, smoke curling to the ceiling, idly tracing patterns in the spatters of come on his stomach and chest with his free hand. Or when Peter’s had a long, long day at work - a job he only ever makes oblique references to but Richard knows the general shape of what Peter does - knows that he works for British intelligence - and his eyes are guarded, his fingers stained and smudged black and he curls up in the corner of Richard’s sofa needing nothing more than to know Richard’s nearby; in touching distance.
There are a thousand ways that Peter works his way into Richard’s life and one day Richard realises that he doesn’t know what he would do if it somehow unravelled.
It’s far from perfect. They fight. They fight over Peter’s job, over Richard’s job; over the fact that they can’t really move in together without raising too many awkward questions, and over the fact that once in a while Richard catches the lingering scent of perfume on the air in Peter’s flat.
That twists his heart and his stomach into one knot because what-if, what-if, and he’s gone through that before …
He swallows the knot and the uncertainty because he’s sure that Peter doesn’t look at anyone else the way he looks at Richard. Call him a romantic, nearly middle-aged fool, but there it is, and he would lay it out for the world to see if he could.
Richard’s worst moments are when Peter comes home, kisses him absently and says, “I have to go away for work,” because he never knows how long Peter’s going to be gone, how much of him Richard is going to have to piece back together before he gets that light back in his eyes again.
It could be days, or it could be weeks or months and sometimes Peter leaves again with his eyes still flat and his fingers hesitant sliding over Richard’s skin and those are the times Richard hates the most.
He can’t do anything about those times; can’t tell Peter to stay home, stay safe, stay where Richard can see him because Peter’s work is as much a part of him as the scars that form over the years, a silent road map of Peter’s dedication to what he does.
Richard leaves his own marks, when he can. He’s jealous - irrationally so - of the scars and scratches Peter comes home with sometimes. The longer he’s away, the more marks he comes back with - thin white lines that Richard wants to reclaim for himself - that he wants to write over until all Peter can see on his skin is Richard.
He doesn’t tell Peter this because it sounds a bit mad, even just in his head, but his hands are possessive on Peter’s skin whenever he comes home from being “away” for work and he leaves behind small, oval bruises. They fade over time, of course, but Richard memorises each mark, each pressure point so he can make the same marks over and over again in the same spaces.
He’s getting to a stage in his life - in the middle of his life - where he wants to … settle. Settle down. Buy a house in the country away from everyone and everything and raise horses, or sheep or buy a dog, or … something.
Instead, they shuttle between their flats; both the small, one-bedroomed residences expected of single men who are clearly unusually devoted to their jobs and the things that they don’t, won’t or can’t talk about either fill up the empty spaces or fade away on their own over time.
The worst happens as the 1960s start fading towards a new decade, and Peter is gone for so long that Richard starts to wonder - on the darkest nights - if he’s ever coming back. He kisses Richard goodbye, like always, and Richard resigns himself to weeks, or a few months, of lonely nights, a cold bed and somehow an even colder kitchen.
The longest Peter had been gone before this was about four months and his eyes when he’d come back … Richard vowed at the time that he’d do whatever he could to make sure that look disappeared as soon as he could make it.
This time is so much worse than that. Richard refuses to let himself wonder whether Peter’s … gone, or just gone as the months fade into each other and he has little memory of the year passing, such a long, gray space of waiting and worrying that Richard stops noticing.
When he comes home from school late one day, after a frustrating staff meeting, he nearly falls over his feet - Peter is sitting outside his flat door, his eyes closed, bruised shadows under them and even under his suit Richard can tell Peter is far too thin.
He nearly staggers to his knees with the sheer relief of it - until Peter opens his eyes and Richard has to swallow hard against the hollow pain he sees there.
“Come on,” he says gently as soon as he’s sure of his voice. “Let’s get you inside. You look exhausted.”
He holds out his hand and Peter stares at it for a moment before lifting his arm and touching Richard’s hands with his fingertips. Richard clasps on to the hand as hard as he can and helps Peter pull himself to his feet.
They stand eye-to-eye for an endless moment, eyes roaming silently.
Richard fumbles in his coat pocket for his keys, his heart lodging somewhere in his throat. He gets the door unlocked, and somehow they end up inside, the door safely locked behind them. Richard lets out a long breath he hadn’t been aware of holding, drops his keys on the table by the door and turns back to Peter, who’s watching him with a slight frown.
“Are you … are you all right?” He wants to ask: ‘where have you been? why have you been gone so long? what’s that look in your eyes? how can I take it away?’ but past experience tells him he’ll get nothing from questions like that so he asks the only question he can ask, and he waits.
Peter blinks and slowly shakes his head. “No. No I’m - not. Not yet.”
Richard nods silently and takes a cautious step towards him. Two. Three.
He’s close enough to touch, so he raises his hand slowly, running his thumb over Peter’s too-prominent cheekbone.
“What can I do? What do you need?”
Peter closes his eyes and leans into Richard’s touch.
“You. Just you. And about forty hours’ sleep.”
Richard smiles and traces the path of his thumb with his mouth, gentle, close-mouthed kisses along the line of Peter’s cheekbone.
“Well. I think we can manage that.”
It takes them a while to settle back into their old routine - weeks of silent negotiation and one blazing, spectacular row that has Peter slamming out of Richard’s flat only to return a day later full of apologies and a gasping, grasping need that Richard gives into because god, he needs he same thing.
Peter’s hands are everywhere on his skin, digging and scratching at him and Richard pushes back - giving (he hopes) as much as he’s getting until they’re both sweating, come-spattered and tangled in filthy sheets.
They lie in silence, the room darkening around them, but neither move to switch on lights, or pull curtains across silent glass now reflecting the glare of streetlamps.
Peter smokes one cigarette after another, mechanical. He’s reached out at some point - Richard has no idea when - for an ashtray that he’s settled on his chest, rapidly filling it up with crushed-out butts.
Richard is sprawled out on his stomach, half-hypnotised by the curls of smoke rising to the ceiling. He half-thinks he wouldn’t mind a cigarette but he also doesn’t want to move; his bones feel languid and almost fluid under his skin and he knows that as soon as he moves, that wonderful, light feeling will disappear.
He dozes on and off, with Peter reaching out once in a while to touch what he can reach: Richard’s upper arm, the trace of a fingertip over his shoulderblade, a small scratch of nails at the back of Richard’s neck.
“Well,” Peter says eventually. “All right.”
He doesn’t elaborate, and it’s not a question, so Richard doesn’t reply. He mutters something inaudible into his pillow and finally drags himself half-upright. “God, I’m filthy,” he says, looking down at himself and wrinkling his nose.
“Mm. Positively decadent.” Peter’s mouth quirks up into a half-grin which Richard feels obliged to kiss away - far more gently than at the start of this … rapproachment when everything was teeth and nails and the need to mark.
Richard moves the ashtray and Peter grumbles but heaves himself up with an obvious effort.
He stretches and rolls his shoulders, his hair nearly falling into his eyes. “Not bad for an old man,” he says, unable to contain the wide, teasing smile taking the sting out of his words.
Richard swats him on the shoulder, feeling a ridiculous mirroring grin on his own face.
“Shut up. And this old man has school tomorrow. Help me make myself decent.”
After that things are good, for a while. They’re … steady. Richard likes steady. He can predict it. And whatever work trouble Peter was in when he was … away … has led to him staying in London for an undefined, extended period and Richard can only be thankful for that.
He tells himself that he can breathe easy, because he knows exactly where Peter is pretty much all the time and that’s all he’s ever wanted, really. He ignores the small knot in his gut, and the little voice in the back of his head telling him that this can’t possibly last.
He’s a scientist for god’s sake. All right a science teacher, but a rational man either way. And rational men do not give in to their instincts, however true they might ring in the middle of the night, when Peter turns to Richard, murmuring in his sleep and reaching out.
When the ball does drop - when the cataclysm happens - it’s been so long that Richard is completely unprepared for it.
It had felt like a normal Thursday. He had brought marking to Peter’s and they were going to have dinner. Like nearly every Thursday. Only this Peter is someone Richard’s never seen before. This cold … stranger saying terrible, awful things. It’s like falling through breaking ice and not being able to find your way out again.
Richard wants to shout, and to yell, to make Peter say anything do anything that’s not this cold, cruel stranger. He’s confused and oh so very hurt. He asks if there’s someone else but by then, Peter’s … retreated. He’s still there, sitting there while Richard strips the wardrobe of his spare shirts, tossing them haphazardly into a suitcase. But he’s as mentally absent as he is physically present and Richard wants to do nothing so much as shake him - anything to get a reaction that’s not … this.
He feels oddly like a wave, crashing against an immovable, implacable boulder, and in the end he does the only thing he can: he leaves.
He goes home, retreating to his own cold, empty space. He moves automatically - switching on the heating, drawing the curtains against the night, putting the kettle on the stove and switching on the gas. He sits at the table and waits for its loud, reassuring whistle. He makes himself tea, still on autopilot; drinks it then retreats even further: to the bedroom.
It feels, oddly, like Peter’s just away for work - like he’s going to be waiting outside Richard’s flat, his eyes bruised but his face lighting up nonetheless and Richard has to remind himself - over and over again - that this ending is permanent. That Peter has ended them.
He doesn’t know what to do. He wants to call Peter; to shout at him, and to fight for him like he should have, like he wants to now. But he’s too …. wounded. It feels as though someone has casually stuck a blunt knife into his chest and twisted it, just to see his reaction. He finds himself gasping for air at odd times as the pain of it all threatens to undo him completely.
He gets through the rest of the school year somehow - the school year of not-Peter, and tries to talk himself into taking a holiday, even though he feels an irrational need to stay in London - to stay where Peter can find him because surely this can’t last, it can’t -
Richard finds it grimly ironic that now he finds the sentimental streak in himself that Peter always accused him of not having.
He becomes a summer hermit; only leaving his flat when he absolutely has to, for food, or supplies. Otherwise he stays in, reading nearly obsessively and lingering in the shadows as much as possible.
His rational half scorns him for this display; and he scolds himself ruthlessly for it. It’s not enough to stop him, but it’s enough for him to put an effort into shaving and putting on a clean shirt before he leaves his flat.
Later, he will be ashamed of this episode, this display, acting like nothing so much as a lovesick adolescent.
He doesn’t know right now how how else to act.
School begins again, and Richard realises, shocked, that it’s been nearly a year since Peter … since he left. Richard closes his eyes as the somewhat orderly rows of boys dutifully scratch at a written test with their pencils, the dull sound almost soothing. He tests himself tentatively: is the pain still there? Is it as bad as it was?
Yes. And yes.
He finds, though, even as he has to swallow hard against it, that he’s finally given up hope of Peter coming back. Of coming home one day and finding him outside Richard’s flat.
Hope fades, but pain … pain is more stubborn than hope. He would have thought it the other way around. He glances at the clock as the bell rings for the end of the day.
“All right, all right you lot - tests on my desk, please no exceptions. I’m feeling generous today, so no homework from me for the weekend, but be prepared to work come Monday. Now get out of here.”
He sits back and tries not to gasp too much through the chorus of ‘yes sir’ ‘thank you sir’ that accompanies each boy as they carelessly thump the papers down on his desk before flying to god-knows-what teenage boy adventure for the weekend.
He gathers the tests up and sorts them methodically into alphabetical order before tucking them into a folder and then his briefcase. He exchanges a few meaningless pleasantries with a few other teachers he encounters in the corridors and then - he’s free.
Two whole days looming before him; nothing but an invisible blunt knife and an absence of hope for company.
Of course, this is the very day he finds Peter waiting for him outside his flat.
At first, he thinks he’s somehow hallucinating - that he’s conjured this … vision out of thin air, but then Peter speaks, says something completely meaningless, it doesn’t even matter because -
Richard rolls on to his back, his heart racing and his chest heaving. He glances at Peter, who’s eyes are closed, but he can see Peter’s pulse, battering away at the tender skin of his neck like a prisoner trying to break free.
“This, um - I mean - “ he fumbles to a stop as Peter opens his eyes.
Richard rolls to his side, propping his head on his elbow. “I rehearsed so many things that I was going to say when - if - you ever came back. And now I can’t remember any of them, and I’m still not sure I can trust my eyes, or - anything else, but you’re -”
Richard gestures with his free hand and collapses back on to the pillow.
“You’re here,” he says, finally when Peter moves, straddling Richard’s hips. “You’re -”
“Home?” Peter offers, the single word wavering into a dangerous, weighted question.
Richard searches Peter’s face, his eyes, tries to find his own recent, deadening pain. This, he knows, could all happen again. Peter could leave, could devastate him absolutely.
The dangerous thing, for Richard, is that he now knows - he’ll let him.
“Home,” he echoes, tracing one finger along a thin scar on Peter’s neck before resting on his still triphammering pulse.
“Well. All right.”
Author: janescott
Pairing: Peter/Richard
Fandom: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy movie!verse
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 4168
Summary: Fix-it fic for That Scene. At least, it was meant to be. It turns out that Richard has feelings Thanks to i_bleed_magenta and sulwen for the beta, and to red_adam for an awesome Brit-pick.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Fan fiction for fun only. The originals belong to Mr John LeCarre. I'm just playing with the action figures for a while :-)
Richard first sees Peter in 1963, at a club. He calls it club in his head because it sounds a little … better than what it really is: a dingy, off-the-beaten-track pub for … his mother would say degenerates and perverts, were she around still.
He settles at the bar, studying the worn wood and scars and scratches gouged into it over the years by careless punters, weighted by the secrets of men and women living the bulk of their lives in the spaces in between.
Richard has been nursing the same drink for about half an hour now; warm, slightly flat beer. It’s his second but it’s done nothing at all to warm him up or make him feel less … isolated.
He comes here a couple of times a week, just to … just to be around other people he knows are carrying the same secret burden as he is. Once in a great while, he meets someone he likes the look of well enough, and takes them home for a night, or a week (or, in one memorable, still heart-sore case, three years) but Richard is under no illusions about himself.
He’s … ordinary. A secondary school science teacher in his mid-thirties with little to recommend himself to others except perhaps a kind smile on a good day. (“You always do that to yourself, Richard. You’re so much more than you think you are.”) He swallows the dregs of his beer and catches the barman’s attention for a third, distracted at a slight flurry of movement as someone takes the stool beside him.
The barman puts down Richard’s beer and turns to the person beside him.
“Whiskey and water, light on the water,” comes a low, tired voice that Richard swears he can feel inside his very bones.
He turns his head and finds himself being studied. He smiles and tilts his glass towards the stranger - the very attractive young tired-looking stranger who taps his own glass in return, the clink echoing.
“To Fridays,” he finds himself saying, inane and pointless but it makes the stranger smile, his pale eyes lighting up.
“Fridays,” he echoes, smiling and Richard wonders what he can do to hear that rich, deep voice again, or even … he shakes his head and turns back to his own seat, almost missing it when the stranger says, “Peter.”
“Sorry?”
“My name. Er, it’s Peter. Sorry, I’m a bit rubbish at this.”
Richard turns back, grinning openly, already disarmed and in danger of falling over the edge.
“Richard,” he says, tilting his glass again. He doesn’t say, “a bit rubbish at what,” because he’s not that kind of … ass. Peter is young, younger than him, certainly, and his shoulders are tense, his fingertips white where they’re pressing too hard against his glass.
Peter smiles at that and Richard is gratified when he sees the tense lines of Peter’s shoulders relax. He takes a sip of his whiskey and Richard feels himself flushing under the sudden scrutiny of Peter’s gaze. He takes a drink of his own beer and returns Peter’s gaze as calmly as he can, although it feels like his heart is beating so loudly everyone in the bar will be able to hear it.
“So, Peter … what do you do?” It’s on the tip of his tongue to say ‘what brings you here tonight’ but that’s so very close to a pick-up line; to flirting and what-if, what if Peter, who is so very good-looking, isn’t here for that, precisely, what if …
“I, uhm. I work for the British government,” Peter says then, his voice slicing across Richard’s clattering thoughts.
“The government,” Richard echoes. “That could mean anything.” He means it to be teasing but instead Peter turns back to the bar, staring down into his whisky like it has the answers to the universe. His shoulders hunch for a moment and Richard suppresses the urge to reach out and touch, wanting to soothe whatever internal struggle Peter is having.
“Peter?”
Peter blinks, shakes his head and turns fully around on his stool to face Richard. “Sorry. I’m - sorry. I haven’t had the job very long, and it’s - complicated?”
Richard nods at that, even though he really has no idea what Peter is talking about. A government job that’s tricky … well.
“What do you do?”
Peter’s voice brings Richard back to himself and he blinks, momentarily startled
“Oh. I - nothing so interesting. Secondary school science teacher. You know - teaching fifth formers how to blow up bunsen burners, that sort of thing.”
“Sounds hazardous.”
Richard grins at that, nearly laughs out loud. Because Peter - who is twenty-five if he’s anything, and who has definitely caught more than one eye in this dingy bar - is flirting. With him.
He relaxes and when the crowd thins out a bit, they move from the bar to a table near the back of the room.
Later, Richard can’t remember anything they talked about that first night. He does remember that they talked for hours - until the landlord tossed them both out, grumbling about wanting to get home and it’s all lovely that they found each other but could they kindly piss off.
They stand on the footpath outside, in the dim glow of the streetlight, and suddenly it’s awkward again.
Peter looks down the street, half-heartedly looking for a taxi and all Richard knows is that he doesn’t want to say goodnight - not yet.
“Look - I live not far from here. Walking distance. Would you like … coffee? Or tea, or - “ he stumbles over his words then, like a gauche teenager, because suddenly Peter is standing too close for a public street, even though there’s no one around. Richard feels his heart betray him again, and he can smell smoke and whisky on Peter’s skin.
“Or,” Peter says, gravely, “sounds perfect.”
Richard shakes his head and steps back, deliberately slowly. “Come on, then. It’s this way.”
They walk in relative silence, but it’s comfortable. Richard takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, laughing when he catches Peter watching him. Peter says nothing, but smiles back, his mouth curving up and his eyes lighting up before he drags on his cigarette again, the ember glowing like a tiny orange torch.
They reach Richard’s block of flats and he fumbles his keys, his fingers feeling numb, his other senses focused on Peter’s breath, ghosting over the back of his neck, making the hairs raise and making him feel suddenly too big for his skin.
The lift, blessedly, is working for a change, but it creaks and groans, loud in the silent building.
“This is - here.”
His flat is cold and he takes a few minutes, bustling about turning lights on and the heater, glancing at Peter who’s still standing by the door.
“You can hang your coat up by the door,” Richard says, as he moves back to Peter, standing in front of him. Peter’s an inch or so taller than him, but he can look him in the eye easily enough.
“So, did you want some tea, or coffee - “
“No,” Peter says, turning back from carefully hanging his jacket on a hook. “Just - “
Richard smiles and steps right into Peter’s personal space.
Smoke, he thinks as their lips meet for the first time, and whisky.
And that’s how it starts.
He hasn’t been looking for this again. Not for someone who can bring him to his knees with a single look. He’s been careful to avoid it until now, but Peter has a way of getting under his skin, and before he knows it, Richard is arranging his life around another man.
He tries to mind, but finds it difficult when Peter is sprawled out on the bed, his eyes half-closed, smoke curling to the ceiling, idly tracing patterns in the spatters of come on his stomach and chest with his free hand. Or when Peter’s had a long, long day at work - a job he only ever makes oblique references to but Richard knows the general shape of what Peter does - knows that he works for British intelligence - and his eyes are guarded, his fingers stained and smudged black and he curls up in the corner of Richard’s sofa needing nothing more than to know Richard’s nearby; in touching distance.
There are a thousand ways that Peter works his way into Richard’s life and one day Richard realises that he doesn’t know what he would do if it somehow unravelled.
It’s far from perfect. They fight. They fight over Peter’s job, over Richard’s job; over the fact that they can’t really move in together without raising too many awkward questions, and over the fact that once in a while Richard catches the lingering scent of perfume on the air in Peter’s flat.
That twists his heart and his stomach into one knot because what-if, what-if, and he’s gone through that before …
He swallows the knot and the uncertainty because he’s sure that Peter doesn’t look at anyone else the way he looks at Richard. Call him a romantic, nearly middle-aged fool, but there it is, and he would lay it out for the world to see if he could.
Richard’s worst moments are when Peter comes home, kisses him absently and says, “I have to go away for work,” because he never knows how long Peter’s going to be gone, how much of him Richard is going to have to piece back together before he gets that light back in his eyes again.
It could be days, or it could be weeks or months and sometimes Peter leaves again with his eyes still flat and his fingers hesitant sliding over Richard’s skin and those are the times Richard hates the most.
He can’t do anything about those times; can’t tell Peter to stay home, stay safe, stay where Richard can see him because Peter’s work is as much a part of him as the scars that form over the years, a silent road map of Peter’s dedication to what he does.
Richard leaves his own marks, when he can. He’s jealous - irrationally so - of the scars and scratches Peter comes home with sometimes. The longer he’s away, the more marks he comes back with - thin white lines that Richard wants to reclaim for himself - that he wants to write over until all Peter can see on his skin is Richard.
He doesn’t tell Peter this because it sounds a bit mad, even just in his head, but his hands are possessive on Peter’s skin whenever he comes home from being “away” for work and he leaves behind small, oval bruises. They fade over time, of course, but Richard memorises each mark, each pressure point so he can make the same marks over and over again in the same spaces.
He’s getting to a stage in his life - in the middle of his life - where he wants to … settle. Settle down. Buy a house in the country away from everyone and everything and raise horses, or sheep or buy a dog, or … something.
Instead, they shuttle between their flats; both the small, one-bedroomed residences expected of single men who are clearly unusually devoted to their jobs and the things that they don’t, won’t or can’t talk about either fill up the empty spaces or fade away on their own over time.
The worst happens as the 1960s start fading towards a new decade, and Peter is gone for so long that Richard starts to wonder - on the darkest nights - if he’s ever coming back. He kisses Richard goodbye, like always, and Richard resigns himself to weeks, or a few months, of lonely nights, a cold bed and somehow an even colder kitchen.
The longest Peter had been gone before this was about four months and his eyes when he’d come back … Richard vowed at the time that he’d do whatever he could to make sure that look disappeared as soon as he could make it.
This time is so much worse than that. Richard refuses to let himself wonder whether Peter’s … gone, or just gone as the months fade into each other and he has little memory of the year passing, such a long, gray space of waiting and worrying that Richard stops noticing.
When he comes home from school late one day, after a frustrating staff meeting, he nearly falls over his feet - Peter is sitting outside his flat door, his eyes closed, bruised shadows under them and even under his suit Richard can tell Peter is far too thin.
He nearly staggers to his knees with the sheer relief of it - until Peter opens his eyes and Richard has to swallow hard against the hollow pain he sees there.
“Come on,” he says gently as soon as he’s sure of his voice. “Let’s get you inside. You look exhausted.”
He holds out his hand and Peter stares at it for a moment before lifting his arm and touching Richard’s hands with his fingertips. Richard clasps on to the hand as hard as he can and helps Peter pull himself to his feet.
They stand eye-to-eye for an endless moment, eyes roaming silently.
Richard fumbles in his coat pocket for his keys, his heart lodging somewhere in his throat. He gets the door unlocked, and somehow they end up inside, the door safely locked behind them. Richard lets out a long breath he hadn’t been aware of holding, drops his keys on the table by the door and turns back to Peter, who’s watching him with a slight frown.
“Are you … are you all right?” He wants to ask: ‘where have you been? why have you been gone so long? what’s that look in your eyes? how can I take it away?’ but past experience tells him he’ll get nothing from questions like that so he asks the only question he can ask, and he waits.
Peter blinks and slowly shakes his head. “No. No I’m - not. Not yet.”
Richard nods silently and takes a cautious step towards him. Two. Three.
He’s close enough to touch, so he raises his hand slowly, running his thumb over Peter’s too-prominent cheekbone.
“What can I do? What do you need?”
Peter closes his eyes and leans into Richard’s touch.
“You. Just you. And about forty hours’ sleep.”
Richard smiles and traces the path of his thumb with his mouth, gentle, close-mouthed kisses along the line of Peter’s cheekbone.
“Well. I think we can manage that.”
It takes them a while to settle back into their old routine - weeks of silent negotiation and one blazing, spectacular row that has Peter slamming out of Richard’s flat only to return a day later full of apologies and a gasping, grasping need that Richard gives into because god, he needs he same thing.
Peter’s hands are everywhere on his skin, digging and scratching at him and Richard pushes back - giving (he hopes) as much as he’s getting until they’re both sweating, come-spattered and tangled in filthy sheets.
They lie in silence, the room darkening around them, but neither move to switch on lights, or pull curtains across silent glass now reflecting the glare of streetlamps.
Peter smokes one cigarette after another, mechanical. He’s reached out at some point - Richard has no idea when - for an ashtray that he’s settled on his chest, rapidly filling it up with crushed-out butts.
Richard is sprawled out on his stomach, half-hypnotised by the curls of smoke rising to the ceiling. He half-thinks he wouldn’t mind a cigarette but he also doesn’t want to move; his bones feel languid and almost fluid under his skin and he knows that as soon as he moves, that wonderful, light feeling will disappear.
He dozes on and off, with Peter reaching out once in a while to touch what he can reach: Richard’s upper arm, the trace of a fingertip over his shoulderblade, a small scratch of nails at the back of Richard’s neck.
“Well,” Peter says eventually. “All right.”
He doesn’t elaborate, and it’s not a question, so Richard doesn’t reply. He mutters something inaudible into his pillow and finally drags himself half-upright. “God, I’m filthy,” he says, looking down at himself and wrinkling his nose.
“Mm. Positively decadent.” Peter’s mouth quirks up into a half-grin which Richard feels obliged to kiss away - far more gently than at the start of this … rapproachment when everything was teeth and nails and the need to mark.
Richard moves the ashtray and Peter grumbles but heaves himself up with an obvious effort.
He stretches and rolls his shoulders, his hair nearly falling into his eyes. “Not bad for an old man,” he says, unable to contain the wide, teasing smile taking the sting out of his words.
Richard swats him on the shoulder, feeling a ridiculous mirroring grin on his own face.
“Shut up. And this old man has school tomorrow. Help me make myself decent.”
After that things are good, for a while. They’re … steady. Richard likes steady. He can predict it. And whatever work trouble Peter was in when he was … away … has led to him staying in London for an undefined, extended period and Richard can only be thankful for that.
He tells himself that he can breathe easy, because he knows exactly where Peter is pretty much all the time and that’s all he’s ever wanted, really. He ignores the small knot in his gut, and the little voice in the back of his head telling him that this can’t possibly last.
He’s a scientist for god’s sake. All right a science teacher, but a rational man either way. And rational men do not give in to their instincts, however true they might ring in the middle of the night, when Peter turns to Richard, murmuring in his sleep and reaching out.
When the ball does drop - when the cataclysm happens - it’s been so long that Richard is completely unprepared for it.
It had felt like a normal Thursday. He had brought marking to Peter’s and they were going to have dinner. Like nearly every Thursday. Only this Peter is someone Richard’s never seen before. This cold … stranger saying terrible, awful things. It’s like falling through breaking ice and not being able to find your way out again.
Richard wants to shout, and to yell, to make Peter say anything do anything that’s not this cold, cruel stranger. He’s confused and oh so very hurt. He asks if there’s someone else but by then, Peter’s … retreated. He’s still there, sitting there while Richard strips the wardrobe of his spare shirts, tossing them haphazardly into a suitcase. But he’s as mentally absent as he is physically present and Richard wants to do nothing so much as shake him - anything to get a reaction that’s not … this.
He feels oddly like a wave, crashing against an immovable, implacable boulder, and in the end he does the only thing he can: he leaves.
He goes home, retreating to his own cold, empty space. He moves automatically - switching on the heating, drawing the curtains against the night, putting the kettle on the stove and switching on the gas. He sits at the table and waits for its loud, reassuring whistle. He makes himself tea, still on autopilot; drinks it then retreats even further: to the bedroom.
It feels, oddly, like Peter’s just away for work - like he’s going to be waiting outside Richard’s flat, his eyes bruised but his face lighting up nonetheless and Richard has to remind himself - over and over again - that this ending is permanent. That Peter has ended them.
He doesn’t know what to do. He wants to call Peter; to shout at him, and to fight for him like he should have, like he wants to now. But he’s too …. wounded. It feels as though someone has casually stuck a blunt knife into his chest and twisted it, just to see his reaction. He finds himself gasping for air at odd times as the pain of it all threatens to undo him completely.
He gets through the rest of the school year somehow - the school year of not-Peter, and tries to talk himself into taking a holiday, even though he feels an irrational need to stay in London - to stay where Peter can find him because surely this can’t last, it can’t -
Richard finds it grimly ironic that now he finds the sentimental streak in himself that Peter always accused him of not having.
He becomes a summer hermit; only leaving his flat when he absolutely has to, for food, or supplies. Otherwise he stays in, reading nearly obsessively and lingering in the shadows as much as possible.
His rational half scorns him for this display; and he scolds himself ruthlessly for it. It’s not enough to stop him, but it’s enough for him to put an effort into shaving and putting on a clean shirt before he leaves his flat.
Later, he will be ashamed of this episode, this display, acting like nothing so much as a lovesick adolescent.
He doesn’t know right now how how else to act.
School begins again, and Richard realises, shocked, that it’s been nearly a year since Peter … since he left. Richard closes his eyes as the somewhat orderly rows of boys dutifully scratch at a written test with their pencils, the dull sound almost soothing. He tests himself tentatively: is the pain still there? Is it as bad as it was?
Yes. And yes.
He finds, though, even as he has to swallow hard against it, that he’s finally given up hope of Peter coming back. Of coming home one day and finding him outside Richard’s flat.
Hope fades, but pain … pain is more stubborn than hope. He would have thought it the other way around. He glances at the clock as the bell rings for the end of the day.
“All right, all right you lot - tests on my desk, please no exceptions. I’m feeling generous today, so no homework from me for the weekend, but be prepared to work come Monday. Now get out of here.”
He sits back and tries not to gasp too much through the chorus of ‘yes sir’ ‘thank you sir’ that accompanies each boy as they carelessly thump the papers down on his desk before flying to god-knows-what teenage boy adventure for the weekend.
He gathers the tests up and sorts them methodically into alphabetical order before tucking them into a folder and then his briefcase. He exchanges a few meaningless pleasantries with a few other teachers he encounters in the corridors and then - he’s free.
Two whole days looming before him; nothing but an invisible blunt knife and an absence of hope for company.
Of course, this is the very day he finds Peter waiting for him outside his flat.
At first, he thinks he’s somehow hallucinating - that he’s conjured this … vision out of thin air, but then Peter speaks, says something completely meaningless, it doesn’t even matter because -
Richard rolls on to his back, his heart racing and his chest heaving. He glances at Peter, who’s eyes are closed, but he can see Peter’s pulse, battering away at the tender skin of his neck like a prisoner trying to break free.
“This, um - I mean - “ he fumbles to a stop as Peter opens his eyes.
Richard rolls to his side, propping his head on his elbow. “I rehearsed so many things that I was going to say when - if - you ever came back. And now I can’t remember any of them, and I’m still not sure I can trust my eyes, or - anything else, but you’re -”
Richard gestures with his free hand and collapses back on to the pillow.
“You’re here,” he says, finally when Peter moves, straddling Richard’s hips. “You’re -”
“Home?” Peter offers, the single word wavering into a dangerous, weighted question.
Richard searches Peter’s face, his eyes, tries to find his own recent, deadening pain. This, he knows, could all happen again. Peter could leave, could devastate him absolutely.
The dangerous thing, for Richard, is that he now knows - he’ll let him.
“Home,” he echoes, tracing one finger along a thin scar on Peter’s neck before resting on his still triphammering pulse.
“Well. All right.”