Chapter Text
“You’re on fire tonight, kid.” Roger carefully squeezed past him in the cramped space behind the bar. “I think you’ve done more orders in the last half an hour than the others have done for the rest of their damn shifts.”
“Maybe they’ll consider paying me more.” Freddie murmured around the cigarette clamped between his lips, pouring the fourteenth pint of San Miguel that night. “I was supposed to finish at ten anyway, I’m on double time overtime.”
“Why didn’t you finish?” He asked, leaning over him to reach the mint off the counter. “When did you start?”
“I’m supposed to be on earlies this week, six til ten. They don’t have to pay me as much and I have to spend hours cleaning before we open.” He rolled his eyes. “Three people are off, so I volunteered to stay.”
“Christ, it’s like two in the morning!” He laughed. “You’ve been working since six?”
“Eight hours. That’s practically a standard working day.” He cracked his knuckles and handed over the drink, ashing his cigarette on the floor as he smiled at the man in front of him. “That’s three-sixty, sir.” He said sweetly, playing up the charm; once the clock struck two, wallets were usually held with the strings a little looser.
The man handed him a ten and winked at him. “Keep the change, doll.” He grinned when Freddie blew him a kiss and watched as he changed it up quickly, the tip going straight into his back pocket.
“You’re supposed to use the tips jar, you dick.” Roger muttered beside him.
“Why? He didn’t tip you.” Freddie stuck his tongue out. “Anyway, I need the money for roses.”
“Oh, Christ, you’re still on that shit?” He asked, bumping Freddie out the way with his hip.
“No need to be so supportive.” Freddie muttered, moving along the line to take three orders at a time: a double vodka and lemonade, a gin and tonic, and the fifteenth pint of San Miguel. “I just have to remind him that I love him.”
“If you saved up the money you spent on all these fucking roses, you might be able to buy him a ring.” Roger pointed out.
“Yeah, and by the time I’ve done that, he’ll be married and living it up in the south of fucking France or something, I don’t know. He’ll forget all about me.” Freddie stuck his bottom lip out in a petulant pout. “And I am saving! I’m saving for a deposit on the rent on a place in Kensington. I can’t ask him to come back to my parents’ house, can I?”
Roger snorted. “I forget you still live with your parents.”
“Well, I don’t.” He huffed. “My sister got out before I did, and that’s the most unfair thing about it all.”
“I think you need to go for somebody a little more in your league, Freddie.” He chastised.
Freddie dropped a glass in his fury and swore, kicking the shards under the counter. “How much for one of them?” He asked with a sigh.
“That’s a gin glass, they’re eight quid.” He replied.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” He angrily tore the change from his pocket and slammed it down on the side. “Christ, how am I ever supposed to afford to marry him?”
“Calm down, petal.” One of the customers leaned over the bar and sent him a smile. “I’ll marry you.”
Freddie wanted to shout obscenities - he wasn’t his fucking petal, and he didn’t want to marry anybody other than the beautiful boy at the lodge with the hair that turned golden in the summer sunshine, who kept a bottle of lemonade on ice for the days he visited, in between working three jobs to help pay the family’s rent, to save up his own deposit, and to pay the rent on the fucking market stall that he knew was coming to its end. He only wanted to marry the boy whose arms he could fall into, the boy he could sleep against when he was crashing from sleeping two hours a night and eating the scraps they could afford with debt at the greengrocer, the butcher, with the milkman and the man at the corner-
He wanted to marry the man who played with his hair as they lay together on his garden swing, watching the ducks land gracefully on his carp pond; he wanted to marry the man who would lead him up winding staircases to dressing rooms where he’d repair the tear in the knee of his trousers from scrubbing the floor too quickly.
But here he was, a bartender, a washing up boy in the lunchtime kitchen of a run down restaurant, and a clerk on the nightshift behind the counter of a dodgy hotel.
“That’d be far too good of you, darling.” He replied instead, taking the look Roger gave him as a warning; he’d been kicked out of too many jobs for not serving the customers with a smile on his face. “I couldn’t expect you to do something like that.”
“I’m sure I’d break a law with a kid like you.” He leaned across and pinched his cheek; Freddie knew he’d have to scrub his face with the old bristle brush and cold water from the sink. He wasn’t sure they’d managed to pay the bill on time, if his mother’s return to using the fire was anything to go by.
Maybe he’d sleep there tonight, when he stumbled through the door of his house at six o’clock, ready to go again in four hours.
“You’re in a foul mood tonight.” Roger commented idly, pressing a kiss to his cheek to try and make him smile. Once upon a time, they’d had something small together, something young and foolish, and sometimes Freddie found his heart aching for those days to return. “What’s up, kid?”
Freddie sighed and looked down at his hands; they were raw from washing dishes, dry and cracked and sore. One of the cracks in the crease of his finger had started to bleed again, and he hastily wiped the mess he’d left on the side of the glass he was holding, though he was sure nobody would notice at this time in the morning. “Nothing, darling.” He said eventually, with an exhausted little smile. “Just tired.”
“Why don’t you head home? I’m sure you’ve done more than enough for tonight.” He squeezed Freddie’s shoulder.
“Hundred and twenty tonight.” He rested his arms on the bar, just for a second, just to take the strain off his back. “Gotta put it towards the electric. They’re threatening to cut it again. They’ve already cut the gas.”
Roger rested a warm hand over the small of his back, and Freddie could’ve moaned with how good it felt against the muscles, so tight and so painful. “Are your parents not helping?”
“God, they are. Dad’s gone back to Heathrow as a fucking baggage boy, it’s practically crippling him. He can’t take up any more work. Mum’s doing laundry and mending clothes, but she barely scrapes a couple of pounds for each load, otherwise people take their shit elsewhere.” Freddie yawned. “Even Kash has started working in a bakery to try and help us out, even though she’s moved in with her boyfriend. He’s got a good job going, he keeps her happy.”
“Can’t you ask that boy of yours for a hand? It sounds like he’s got more than enough to spare.” Roger suggested.
“Are you crazy?” He stood up again, and his back cracked angrily. “That’s like suicide. I can’t marry a man I’m in debt to, I have to have something stable to bring him back to if I’m going to ask him to do that.” Freddie looked across the bar, a little wistful, and sighed.
“He’s here, isn’t he?” He asked quickly. “That’s what’s made you so sour.”
“No, no-” He bit his lip when he saw Roger’s eyes scan the crowd; they landed on a figure at the back, arms wound around another man.
“Ouch.” He murmured. “Is that-”
“They’re engaged.” Freddie muttered despairingly. “He said, if I can put in an offer before he gets married, he’ll try his best. He doesn’t want to marry him, he loves me.” He sighed. “But I’ve still got about four pounds and seventeen different debts to my name.”
“When’s the wedding?” He asked. “Can’t you just go and talk to them?”
“Like two months. His father hates me, every time I go to give him flowers and we spend a little time together, he yells at Jim for bringing disgrace on his union with Tom.” He sighed. “He calls me doggy. He says I’m always hanging around and begging for scraps. He once said that he’d leave the fish bones on the doorstep for me.” He looked away from Roger, feeling disgraced. “Once he packaged up all the food they didn’t want, the stuff that had gone out of date or was just bad, and he left it out, and I- I took it, Rog, I was so fucking hungry, we ate on it for like a week. But ever since I did that- I think he thinks I’m a joke.”
“What a bastard.” He murmured.
“His whole family are complete bastards.” He whispered. “But I- I still love him.”