Chapter Text
“Izzy Hands.”
“Ah, wonderful, so I do have the right number!”
“Bonnet? What the fuck are you calling me for?”
“Don’t hang up! Please don’t hang up. I know we didn’t part on the best of terms-”
“I literally handed my entire job over to you, you twat.”
“Yes, but-”
“How is that not good terms? Should’ve just told you to fuck off.”
“But you were mad!”
“I was hurt, you stupid fuck-”
“Stop being mean!”
“Stop being a fucking idiot!”
Izzy pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath.
“Izzy?”
“Yes.”
“I thought perhaps… I might return the favour? The cafe’s kind of a shambles without anyone there to look after, well, the administrative side of things-”
“Exclusive say in the day to day runnings. No interference with any of my business decisions. No complaining if I redecorate.”
“What?”
“Those are my terms, Bonnet. You’re offering me a job, right?”
“... Right. Well, uh, woo hoo!”
Izzy hung up.
*
Roach woke one summer afternoon to Izzy crawling onto the bed beside him. It was too hot to get under the blankets, but Roach rolled over anyway, pillowing his face on the fuzz of Izzy’s chest. He rubbed his cheek up and down the hair there and sighed contentedly.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” said Izzy, “we’ve got to head out in a bit.”
Roach responded by nuzzling in further and winding an arm around Izzy’s waist.
“S’too fuckin’ hot for this,” Izzy grumbled.
“Now you understand how I suffer in your winters,” murmured Roach, “this is nice. It is weather for basking. I feel like a lizard.”
“Mmm.”
“Your boobies are the rock on which I bask.”
“Romantic.”
The two of them stayed like that for some time. Izzy drifted, never quite falling asleep but managing a light doze, comforted by the quiet wuffs of Roach’s breath across his skin.
He’d had time to get used to this. Had it forced upon him, those couple of weeks after he’d quit. It turned out that ignoring the bone deep exhaustion he’d been pushing through for as long as he could remember wasn’t good for him in the long run, and he’d crashed hard. He didn’t even think a human being was capable of sleeping as much as he’d slept in those weeks.
The passage of time during those days were marked with bleary-eyed wake up calls from Roach, sliding into bed beside him after work, bringing him cups of sweet, minty tea. Sometimes, not quite ready to sleep yet, Roach would sit by him and sing softly, words in a language Izzy didn’t recognise.
“The woman in the song is called Fadma, in Tamazight,” Roach had said, sitting up in bed while Izzy nestled into his side. Izzy was already dozing off at the time, from the feeling of cool fingers carding through his hair.
“Fadma,” he’d echoed, tasting the name on his tongue.
“She loved a very beautiful man. But the man loved another, and it hurt her terribly. She felt betrayed by her own heart.”
“What did she do about it?” whispered Izzy.
“She gathered her courage, and she recited a poem publicly, so that he would understand how she felt. She killed him - not… not the stabbing kind, but the spiritual kind. She killed him from her heart, so that she could dance again.”
Izzy hadn’t known what to say to that. Instead, he’d reached up for Roach’s hand, grabbing it and kissing his palm.
“She is remembered in our stories as someone who shows bravery.”
“I hope I can do her name justice then,” Izzy had whispered.
“Ah,” scoffed Roach, “you willingly fall asleep around me. That is bravery enough, little man. One of these days I think you will wake up with a new tattoo.”
Izzy had tried to reply with “you wouldn’t dare,” but sleep was pulling him under once again, and it came out as an incomprehensible string of syllables.
“Sleep, you silly man. Rest. You can be brave again when you wake.”
Izzy had fallen asleep many times to the sounds of Roach’s singing.
And now, managing the cafe, Izzy discovered a completely new kind of tired. He’d never thought he’d enjoy the feeling. It was different nowadays, the post-shift crash. It was the kind of tired you could fix with a nap, or a hot bath, or having Roach sprawl on top of him, compressing the ache out of his muscles. He hadn’t realised it was possible for tiredness to be something to take comfort in, when there was the promise of relief and quiet at the end of the day.
There was room for him to think now, room for him to actually read his collection of books, and take Roach to the record store so that they could argue over different AC/DC pressings, and complain about each other’s terrible taste, and cause so much of a scene the scrawny boy at the counter politely asked them to leave. There was room for Roach to jump the fence into someone’s backyard so that he could steal a handful of purple flowers and wave at the cat in the window, threading all but one into his hair and saving the last to be tucked safely behind Izzy’s ear. There was room for Jim’s new solo show, Frenchie’s new EP, and coffees they made for the taste and not just as a last ditch attempt to stay awake.
There was so much more room in his life, and Izzy always felt a little pang of regret when he thought about it.
“What are you thinking about?” said Roach, “it is like I can hear gears in your head spinning around.”
“I should’ve done this earlier,” said Izzy, “I was so fucking stupid, trying to hold on to - to all that. You’ve picked a bit of a dud, when it comes to decision making.”
“What can I say, I am attracted to idiots,” said Roach, raising himself up on one elbow so that he could kiss a line up Izzy’s chest, up to his neck.
“When Edward hurt his knee, did you tell it to hurry up and get better?”
“What?”
Izzy stared at Roach, who was kissing his way up Izzy’s jaw now. He planted one last kiss on Izzy’s lips, then pulled away.
“When your friend was injured. Did you tell him to get better faster?”
“You can’t just tell someone to get better faster.”
Roach stared at him flatly. Izzy stared back for several moments before it clicked.
“Oh.”
“Yes, oh. Come on, we are going to be late.”
*
Izzy had to grudgingly admit, Stede’s suggestion of a book club fixed a lot of problems. The Tuesday crowd at QAR tended to be a handful of stragglers anyway, people who had nowhere else to go, who just wanted somewhere to sit and exist without being harassed. People used to mention to Izzy that it would be nice to have somewhere to go where drinking wasn’t part of the environment. Izzy usually told them to go talk to someone who didn’t own a fucking bar.
But Stede didn’t particularly want to open six days a week anymore, and Izzy was going slightly stir crazy with too little to do, hovering in the cafe until Pete told Roach in no uncertain terms to get his boyfriend a fucking hobby.
So.
Book club.
They arrived just on time, which for Izzy, felt like arriving late. Roach had dithered while he pawed through the growing pile of clothes he had at Izzy’s place, finally settling on a crocheted, tasselled crop top - blue with little white flowers worked into the design. Izzy had to admit it looked very nice on him.
Robbie was already lingering outside the cafe when they arrived. They had a bag over their shoulder with some knitting needles sticking out of the top. They’d also shaved their head.
“Feel it!” they said, angling their head towards Izzy, “it’s fuzzy!”
Izzy blinked at them, bewildered, but put his hand out anyway.
“It is,” he said, “well done.”
“Thanks!”
Roach held the door open for them. Robbie bounded in and immediately began pushing tables out of the way, rearranging the chairs in a big circle around the centre of the room.
“Can I have a milkshake?” they called as they worked.
“No,” said Izzy.
“What flavour?” said Roach, already getting the milk out of the fridge.
Izzy sighed and went to get the leftovers Pete had boxed up from his shift. He set those out while Robbie chattered at them about their classes, by now accustomed enough to Izzy’s lack of response to know he wasn’t ignoring them.
Right at seven o’clock, Jim and Oluwande arrived together. Jim’s t-shirt proudly reminded everybody that they’d had their clit pierced at Spanish Jackie’s, and at some point Oluwande must have stolen his beanie back off Roach, because there was no way two separate people would choose to buy a bright orange monstrosity like that.
“Interesting choice,” said Jim, holding up their copy of Midnight Cowboy.
They met Izzy’s eyes and the two of them nodded briefly at each other. If anybody would be the one to understand why the book was Izzy’s favourite, of course it would be Jim.
“Yeah, I like that you chose a book where the main character’s autistic,” said Robbie. They were now nursing a bright blue milkshake, piled high with marshmallows.
“The - hold on-” Izzy stared at them, “autistic?”
“Yeah! Joe’s autistic, right? That’s why he keeps practising his facial expressions in the mirror and figuring out how to have conversations by copying people? You know, like that earthling bit?”
“That’s just-” spluttered Izzy, “that’s - everyone-”
“Maybe we can save this discussion for when everybody else arrives,” said Oluwande, exchanging a look of disbelief with Roach.
A few others arrived then - former regulars at QAR, the quiet ones who tended to stick to the upstairs tables, people even Izzy didn’t know all the names of. Lucius and Fang as well, fashionably late and heralded with Lucius’ proud declaration that he hadn’t read the book yet.
He arrived with a letter though, one he slipped into Izzy’s shirt pocket with a small smile.
“What’s this?” said Izzy, tearing the envelope open.
He unfolded the piece of paper to find the words BYE BITCH! written in an elegant, looping cursive.
“I’m jumping ship!” said Lucius, giving him a mock salute, “Stede needs an assistant and uh, don’t get me wrong, I love coffee, but-”
“No no, I understand completely,” said Izzy, “I’ll just make sure I let Bonnet know how much of a tab you’ve racked up over there so he can withhold it from your pay until you’ve worked it off.”
Lucius stared at him open mouthed until Izzy’s eyes crinkled at the corners and an honest-to-god smile lit up his face. He continued to stare as Izzy flipped him off and went to put some tea on, chuckling to himself at the joke he’d made.
“I told you,” said Fang quietly, winding his arms around Lucius’ waist, “he’s only an insufferable prick when he’s stressed.”
“Yeah, it’s just… weird seeing it,” said Lucius, “I guess he’s downgraded into a mildly annoying prick.”
“I can still hear you, you know,” called Izzy.
“Good! I said you’re an annoying prick, Izzy!”
“Takes one to know one.”
“What are you, twelve?”
Izzy gave him both of his middle fingers at that, and, confident that he’d won, Lucius went and took his spot next to Fang.
It was nice, Izzy decided. He hadn’t realised how wearing it was on him, having to shout to be heard, having coloured lights playing havoc with his vision and music blaring in his ears night after night. It was pleasant just to sit, and even if he didn’t really talk all that much during the book clubs, it was nice to pour tea and listen to other people talk.
Wee John and Frenchie (and Frenchie’s guitar) were the last to arrive, showing up together in a move that surprised exactly nobody except Izzy, apparently. So it turned out he didn’t notice everything.
“Trust Izzy Hands to pick the most elder gay book of all time,” snorted Frenchie, opening the book to a page he’d marked, “d’you wanna tell us why you picked it?”
“Not really,” said Izzy, taking his spot beside Roach and doing his best to feign nonchalance.
“C’mon Izzy, there’s got to be some explanation there,” said Wee John.
“Educating the kids on the gays of history?” said Frenchie, wiggling his fingers.
“Sounds about right. Respect your elders!” laughed Lucius.
“ Shut the fuck up, you twat, ” snapped Roach, noticing the way Izzy tensed beside him.
Lucius spluttered with laughter for the space of a moment before Fang lay a hand on his wrist.
“I think what Roach is trying to say is, uh, when something’s important to you, it can be a bit scary to share it with other people,” he said kindly, winking at Izzy, “so maybe go a bit more gently there, sweetheart.”
Izzy turned bright red at that, and his face twitched in an echo of his old scowl.
“S’fine Fang, I don’t need protection from the likes of Spriggs.”
“I am sorry though, wrong time for a bit of teasing,” said Lucius, shrugging his shoulders and offering a sheepish smile, “but uh, can we just - can we talk about the fact that Roach is calling people twat now? I think that’s kind of an important detail that we glossed over there.”
Roach and Izzy both opened their mouths to respond to this, but then the bell rang as the door opened again. They looked over in surprise to see Stede and Edward standing there, in matching Hawaiian shirts.
Stede lingered in the doorway, looking a little put out as he scanned the room. Gone were all of his well matching fancy frills, all replaced with prints and little sculptures, origami, stolen flowers in mismatched glass jars. Robbie seemed determined to go for some sort of record for the most tiny knitted frogs hidden around a cafe..
The thing was, Izzy had realised that his own interior decoration capabilities were not much better than Stede’s, so Roach had taken to asking everyone who came through the door to contribute something to “making the place look a little less shitty.”
The resulting effect was chaotic, but Roach seemed to like it. That was good enough for Izzy.
Not, apparently, for Stede Bonnet.
“Some, ah, interesting interior decoration decisions here,” said Stede.
“I can change all your passwords in the span of about a minute,” said Izzy flatly.
“Right!” said Stede, holding up his hands in surrender, “of course. Looks fine.”
Edward lingered just behind Stede, looking pointedly away from Izzy.
The two of them hadn’t really spoken since he’d left. Izzy was glad, in a way - in those early weeks, everything had still been raw and terrifying. There was grief there, heavy and aching in his chest, at the possibility that he’d ruined his longest, his only friendship beyond repair.
Edward wouldn’t meet Izzy’s eyes, keeping his gaze fixed on the opposite side of the room. The room was suddenly quiet, the air tight with tension as everyone waited to see who would make the first move.
“Would… anyone like some tea?” called Roach.
“Oh yes, I’d love a cup,” said Stede, not bothering to hide his relief, “and so would Edward.”
“Yeah,” said Edward, letting himself be led to a couple of the empty seats, “thanks.”
Izzy silently went to help Roach pour their drinks, adding Edward’s usual splash of milk and his seven fucking sugars. Roach stood close to him, making sure they were touching somewhere at all times, arm to arm, elbow to elbow. He went to pick up the cups but Izzy took them instead.
Roach gave him a questioning look, which Izzy answered with a silent nod.
He took both cups over to Stede and Edward, who had situated themselves in between Frenchie and Lucius, who quickly swapped seats with Fang because, in his words, he spent too long taking Stede’s notes nowadays anyway.
“Well! I’ll have you know I actually read the whole thing and took notes!” said Stede.
“Yeah,” said Edward, “spent the last few nights ignoring me for it, actually.”
“Oh yeah? What about you?” said Lucius.
“I… listened to the audiobook before bed.”
“Perfectly fine way to read a book,” said Frenchie, “how’d you get through it all that fast?”
“Double speed.”
“You are a wonder,” said Stede fondly, while Frenchie and Fang stared at Edward in confusion.
Edward looked better, Izzy decided as he brought him his tea. Like he’d been sleeping regularly, for one. There was a dusting of something sparkly over his eyelids and high on his cheekbones, and his hair had been braided away from his face. The fact that he had the mental energy for it spoke volumes.
“Here,” said Izzy, handing Stede his cup first, then Edward.
“Thanks,” said Edward softly, still not looking at him.
He took a sip of the tea, then shut his eyes. His cheeks darkened a little in embarrassment, but Izzy knew when to back off. He resumed his place by Roach’s side.
“Right!” said Roach, “well, does anyone have any thoughts to share? Any passages you found particularly… relevant?”
“I thought it was interesting,” said Robbie slowly, “I mean aside from the autistic thing, I’m, you know, one of the younger ones here. And this was written in the… sixties?”
“Sixty-five,” nodded Izzy.
“Right. So it was just interesting to me that I felt like I recognised everything that was happening here. You know, growing up and knowing something’s different about you but it’s something you don’t really have words for yet. When you meet someone one day and it’s like… I dunno, in another life you might have hated each other, but you still want to stick with them because you recognise them, and they recognise you. Sometimes you don’t necessarily meet other queer people, you discover them, you - you point at them and go there you are, I’ve been waiting for you and you don’t even know what you’ve been waiting for , but you just know -”
Robbie trailed off, staring at the floor.
“You know?” they finished quietly.
“We do,” said Stede, “it’s… comforting to know, in a way. That it’s always been like that.”
There was a murmur of agreement from around the room, and Izzy felt warmth spread through him, fragile but comforting. He’d never really stopped to consider what it was about Joe Buck’s naivety that spoke to him, when his own life had been anything but sheltered - nor Rico’s abrasive but desperate attempts to keep the one friend he’d ever managed to make. Only that their story had compelled him to read those pages over and over, keep them by his bedside to pore through… until now, apparently. When some kid from the drag bar found the words for him.
“I’ve got a section I noticed, actually,” said Edward.
Izzy felt a pang of unexpected fear slice through him. He hadn’t even expected Edward to be here, and now he felt oddly exposed.
At the same time, he hadn’t heard Edward sound this nervous in decades. His hands were shaking as he opened his copy of the book to a page that he’d marked out.
“One couple,” he read, “boys of college age, one white, one brown—sat in the middle of the floor holding hands, but it wasn’t so much an interracial romance as a marriage of two shades of despair; they were joined at the hands but not at the eyes; each of them frowned into some distance of his own.”
Izzy’s hand found Roach’s sleeve and gripped it tightly, as Edward looked up, finally looked him right in the eye, and gave him a shy smile.
“They’re not even the main characters, but I just thought… I never thought about it that way. That two people could… find each other. Because they needed each other, and the world was kind of a shitty place. But not necessarily because they were good for each other.”
Izzy swallowed thickly at the way Edward’s dark eyes shone at him. Looking right at him, for the first time in so many years.
“A tragedy,” said Izzy quietly, “that it had to be like that.”
Edward wrinkled his nose comically.
“Yeah, but that’s the book, isn’t it? Fucking depressing.”
“Edward-”
“I listened to the book the whole way through, actually. Had to keep up with Stede. Ending fucking sucks.”
“ Edward!” snapped Izzy.
“I mean it works for the book! Don’t get me wrong there. But, you know, don’t get too stuck into the shit you relate to. It’s a whole book about people looking for each other, but uh, I dunno if you’ve had a look around the room lately Iz, but you’re kind of surrounded.”
For a brief moment, Izzy wanted to slap the smug half-smile off Edward’s stupid face. But the moment passed. His temper was harder to hang on to nowadays. Now that he didn’t need the anger to fuel him anymore.
“I can’t believe you finished the whole fucking book,” Izzy groaned instead, “I didn’t even fuckin’ invite you here.”
“Whatever, Iz, my boyfriend owns the place.”
“Your boyfriend’s a twat .”
Edward threw his book to the floor then. He got up and stormed over to Izzy, who stumbled to his feet too, disregarding the way the chair screeched across the linoleum.
“You wanna say that to my face?” growled Edward.
“Your boyfriend’s a-”
The rest of Izzy’s sentence was muffled when Edward pounced on him, wrapping him in a tight hug. Izzy squawked into his shoulder, but then Edward’s hand came to rest on the back of his head, reassuring him as he squeezed him tightly.
“I missed you, you stupid bastard,” whispered Edward.
Izzy felt his face grow hot as he wrapped his arms around Edward as well and sighed into the fabric of that ridiculous Hawaiian shirt of his. He squeezed Edward hard, then pulled back to look at him.
“I missed you too. Fucking asshole, wouldn’t even look me in the fuckin’ eye- ”
“I’m sorry Iz.”
“I’m sorry too.”
Edward leaned down and touched his forehead gently against Izzy’s, and Izzy’s breath hitched in what might have been a sob, but might equally have been a relieved laugh.
Then reality came crashing back, and he leaned tentatively to the side to find everyone in the room staring at the two of them. Not staring, that wasn’t quite right. Frenchie was currently cupping his cheeks, Lucius had the biggest I-told-you-so grin on his face he’d ever seen, and Wee John looked like he was about to cry.
“Oh, fuck off, all of you,” said Izzy, though there was no heat behind the words.
“Nope,” said Lucius, “you’re stuck with us now.”
Izzy shook his head and laughed, in spite of himself. Stede was smiling at them too, his eyes creased at the corners and full of a depth of love and fondness that seemed somehow to extend even to Izzy.
“The book club?” he said, his lips twitching with amusement.
“Fuckin’... don’t want to dig into that depressing shit right now,” said Izzy, “we can continue it next week. Spriggs can make sure he’s read it by then.”
“I won’t,” grinned Lucius.
“Well, uh, in that case. Frenchie?” said Edward, “d’you think you could-”
He turned around and discovered that Frenchie was already unpacking his guitar. The room dissolved into a cacophony of scraping and shouting as everybody rearranged themselves around him, as he perched himself on a table and began to pluck out a few familiar notes.
“George Michael?” said Wee John, “gay.”
Frenchie poked his tongue out at him.
Roach pulled Izzy into his lap, securing him in place with his arms and hooking his chin over Izzy’s shoulder.
“Quite a decision, little man. Giving up the opportunity to make everyone talk about your favourite book? I would be annoyed.”
Izzy turned his head to the side and pressed an awkward kiss to Roach’s jaw.
“I don’t think so,” said Izzy, “I think… I think I just want to be happy tonight.”
He felt Roach’s arms tighten around him.
“Good choice,” he said, as people began to sing along with Frenchie, “excellent choice.”
*
