and you can blame @angelfruittree for this one. Also this clip of greg davies reminiscing about being drunk on a school trip in his teaching days
As he goes to the hotel room door, John's thinking that if this is another twelve-year-old with sick cupped in the bowl of their hands, he's yelling for Jack. He's just not dealing with it two nights in a row, and his roommate shouldn't get a free pass just because he has good sleep hygiene.
(And John's not bitter --- no, no, not at all. He's fine with it that Jack had tucked himself in to his twin at around nine thirty and was snoring twenty minutes later; meanwhile it's getting to one o'clock in the morning and John is still wide awake, trying to bore himself to bed by reading a book he'd borrowed from the common area downstairs. It's nothing special, a mass market paperback, and it's in French, which he doesn't speak, so it definitely has potential in this arena.)
It's not a twelve-year-old at the door.
'Hey,' Gale says. He's holding a bottle of wine that looks sourced from the kiosk downstairs. He holds it up. 'Drink?'
'Sure,' John says, after a moment, and lets Gale inside his and Jack's room.
A minute later, he's watching Gale uncork the bottle expertly using nothing but the room key with a distinct sense of unease. Gale doesn't drink. Or, that is to say --- he doesn't drink anymore --- John knows the whole sorry tale about his dad, only ever drunk or angry or both, dependent on the bottle since his early teens when he first started drinking with his father, the pattern repeating with Gale for a while, and now Gale lives on the east coast, and Lee Cleven is dying protractedly of liver failure back west.
'I think me 'n' Marge are over.'
'Oh.' John's shoulders relax.
Gale sends him a look, but Gale and Marge should have broken up months ago, and no one knows it better than the two of them. It had been the one reservation John had had about signing on to accompany this class trip to Paris, knowing that they would both be on it too, pretending everything was fine even as they sniped one another to death in the most romantic city in the world. She'd been so mad at him today that she hadn't even stuck around after they sent the kids off for a precious hour of independence, marching away and leaving the trio of male teachers standing stupid in her wake. Jack vanished shortly afterwards too, so John and Gale wandered about the Latin Quarter just the two of them. John got him an ice cream.
Even the kids had been making comments about it. Never to either Gale or Marge's faces, but John had caught snatches of their jokes here and there, and one or two brave souls --- knowing John's social circle at school --- had asked him for a lowdown.
He shrugs in apology, and takes the bottle. He doesn't worry about grabbing the hotel tumblers: it doesn't seem like that kind of visit. And wine is cheap here. He swigs.
'Do you wanna talk about it?' he says, handing the bottle back.
Gale shakes his head with the bottle at forty-five degrees to his mouth.
'The fuck are you two doing?' rumbles Jack Kidd from the twin by the window.
'Nothing, Jack, go back to sleep.'
Instead, Jack rolls haltingly out of bed and stumps across the room to the dingy ensuite. 'Fucking hell,' he says, when he reaches them and catches sight of the wine bottle they're sharing back and forth. 'You guys do understand that you make up half the responsible adults in this building, right?'
'Buck and Marge broke up,' John says reflexively, feeling like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
Gale glares at him, but Jack just sighs. 'Don't drink the whole thing,' he says eventually, and goes to piss. John barely notices him when he returns to bed a few minutes later: his back is to the bathroom, and Gale's throat is beautiful when he swallows.
'I remember wine being worse,' Gale says.
John snorts delicately. 'We're in France, Buck.'
It's easy to forget, sat together cross-legged on an outdated geometric carpet, in a room that smells of cigarettes and, the closer you get to the windowless bathroom, vaguely sulphuric. An EXIT sign glows green above the metal-armed fire door.
They should be out walking along the Seine, John thinks sadly, but maybe they can sneak out together once they're further into this merlot.
'So. How's your evening been?' Gale asks him mildly.
'So so. Jack took his bath. Watched his news. I've mostly been laying around, to be honest. Oh, wait, I've been reading a bit of French literature actually.'
'Louis de Bernières is English,' Gale tells him, his eyes straying to the paperback nearby, cracked spine-side up to the ceiling.
'What?' John grabs the book to check, and then promptly flings it away in disgust. 'Unbelievable.'
'I've got some Proust in my room, if you want.'
'Mm. Nah. I'd rather talk to you anyway.'
'Might be poor company,' Gale says.
John blows air through his lips, puffing them out to full pout. 'Don't give me that.'
The open self-deprecation is telling. John scrutinizes him for a moment, taking in his tense muscles, the way he's fiddling a little at his throat: a silver chain rests there that has been familiar to John as long as he's known him. It's weighted down by something --- it forms a triangle drop rather than a shallow scoop across his collarbones, but whatever the pendant is, it disappears deep into his shirt. There's a slight protrusion near the middle of his sternum, where cleavage would start on a woman.
John forms a diagnosis, and sets himself to the necessary treatment of prattling. On and on, about nothing in particular --- how annoying Jack is to room with; everything they've all seen and done of Paris so far; missing his dog, his apartment --- and Gale slowly grows calmer. He laughs a few times, that gorgeous little huff he makes, mostly breath with a little voice slipped in, and no chest noise at all.
'Not sure you should go there, Bucky,' he says, when John references the betting pool that the PE department have going about whether Alex Jefferson and Della Tucker will be going steady by the time of the flight home. John's been keeping them updated via the group chat.
'I could win twenty bucks,' John objects, and Gale huffs out another laugh that makes John's whole body feel warm.
John's always been good at looking after Gale. Even since the moment they met, when Gale had come at him in the staff room already halfway to anger, a beautiful new colleague who was inexplicably mad at John for doing his share of their job honing young bodies and minds. 'Are you Mr Egan?' he'd asked, panties all twisted because John was trying to get a baseball team going at the school, and he kept taking kids out of Gale's sixth period French class to go to the away games. He'd said more in one go then than John has heard from him in all the years since --- maybe combined --- ranting about the importance of the kids' A2 level and the inanity of team sports generally and John's belligerent incompetence for not reaching out to him before --- John remembers it all now very fondly. During a pause for breath he'd asked him to get dinner, and Gale had been so surprised. He'd said no almost before he'd registered the question.
'Okay, well, I'm going to get dinner, and you can come or not,' John had said. 'But I'd like you to come. I'm enjoying this conversation.'
Gale had hesitated, but had followed him out, and it was the best date John had been on since he and Paulina broke up a year ago. He went home giddy. He dreamed about it, and how it might have gone if Gale hadn't declined dessert.
The next morning he went to lurk charmingly around the languages buildings at recess and ran into Marge Spencer. Deputy Head of Gale's department. His second in command. Polyglot. Perfection. Life partner.
'Glad you decided to come, Bucky,' Gale says now, in a cheap Parisian hotel room, causing John's stomach to flip.
'Ha, yeah, can you imagine if Jack was your only recourse?'
'I'm still awake,' Jack grits out, with his pillow mashed over his head. Gale covers his gummy grin with a hand, very cutely.
Uh oh, John thinks, recognising the want rising steeply out of his gut. He'd felt it earlier too, watching Gale twist his pink tongue around a scoop of rich white ice cream as he tried to get it finished before they ducked into Shakespeare and Company. What is John here, maybe one glass deep? That's definitely as intoxicating as the sight of Gale eating une glace à l'italienne, maybe slightly less. And it's only just shy of the danger zone. Maybe Jack had been right, maybe drinking with Gale like this was a bad idea. Wine is always a bad shout if he wants to keep it in his pants.
'You know,' Gale says slowly. 'There's more'n one way to make twenty bucks.' He's looking around for John's bag. John passes it to him without comment and lets him peer inside.
'What did you have in mind?'
Gale retrieves the mostly full capsule --- John's been trying to quit smoking and goes through the big packets like --- well, like cigarettes. He makes a small noise of protest when Gale upends the plastic bottle and spills the hard rectangular tablets out between them.
'You're paying for that,' he says. 'It cost me like four euros.'
'Ante up,' is Gale's only response.
John stares at him, and then at the small pile of 'chips' Gale has dealt him. Gambling is another sad chapter in Gale's history. Fuck. What's the play here? Is it no play?
'Not much of a poker player,' he lies.
'I'll teach you,' Gale says.
'You'll teach---,' John can't help the start of an exclamation, but he controls himself. 'Okay, that was a lie. I know how to play, obviously. I just don't know whether---,'
'We're not playing for money,' Gale says easily.
John swallows and wets his lips. 'What, ah, what are we playing for?'
Gale frowns at him, but with a compressed smile on his face that suggests he knows the trend of his thoughts and is delighted by them.
'Oh,' John says. 'Oh yeah.'
He's weak. He folds faster than any of his hands have ever done.
And they do have fun. They have a lot of fun. They drink the whole bottle. It's not irresponsible; it's only five units each. They're comfortably tipsy, bantering back and forth while John gets himself absolutely fleeced by a genuine card shark.
Well, maybe Gale is drunk. His tolerance has to be shit after what, eleven, twelve years sober? He's certainly extremely loose; he keeps flopping all over the place when he laughs. His face is bright and open with happiness, no guile left in him to keep his joy tamped down. But he's still fiddling with his neck, which is driving John a little crazy.
'No, no, I don't want your chips,' he says, at some point, flush with a rare win.
Gale pauses. 'What do you want?' he asks, and John has to be imagining the rasp in his voice.
'Take off your damn neck chain.'
Because John knows what the pendant is: his mother's rings --- rings that John also knows Gale's been thinking of more as Marge's for about two years now.
Gale meets his gaze. Slowly, maintaining eye contact the entire time, he reaches up to pull the loop over his head. He wears it long: it doesn't need unclasping.
'Anythin' else, Bucky?' Gale asks mildly. He places the chain in a silver pool on the floor, rings buried under the coil of the links.
Fuck. What else can he ask for that isn't massively incriminating? Gale is dressed for bed; he's barely got anything on as it is. John's gaze skims down him, taking in the old top he's wearing, so tired and thin to barely consititute a layer on its own; the slender wrist that usually sports his dad's old watch; a beltless waist; he doesn't even have socks, which is insane on these carpets.
Jack is asleep --- potentially awake --- not ten feet from them. This might be madness. But god, John's gonna have to just fucking ---
There's a sound in the corridor. Both of them jump, heads turning in tandem.
'A laugh?' John says resignedly. 'Yeah, I think so.'
Gale looks vaguely alarmed. He's tired, rumpled, flush with drink. He's wearing a ratty band t-shirt and plaid pajama bottoms. Mr Cleven is pretty far out of the building right now.
'I'll get it,' John says. As a PE teacher, he gets a considerable amount more leeway on his appearance. 'Hang tight.'
He takes a moment to rake a hand through his hair and check his clothes before unlatching the door. They must hear him coming out there, but he's still in time to glimpse one of the kids make a break for it while the other two freeze in place.
'Nash!' he shouts after the coward, then turns to Helen Canning and Robert Rosenthal, who are both eyeing him with anxious trepidation. 'Go on then, you two, what's the big idea?'
'We were looking for Miss Spencer, sir,' Helen says innocently. She's already thirteen, John remembers, and way too smart for her own good. 'I have women's troubles.'
There's no way, John thinks, if only because Robert --- Rosie, he knows the other kids call him, but he, John, Should Not Do That --- looks like it's the first he's hearing of it --- and he flinches when Helen elbows him. Jogging him into playing along, John thinks grimly. He wants to fold his arms, but he refrains.
'Okay just. Just wait there. Mr Kidd,' he calls over his shoulder, hoping not to involve Gale at all. 'Mr Kidd!'
'Jack,' Gale adds his own call helpfully, in a too-loud voice.
Jack makes a complaining noise, and there's the sound of his bedding shifting around him.
Sparing a quick warning hiss for Gale, John asks, 'where's the sanitary stuff?'
There's a pause, and then Jack lets out a garbled question which might be, 'what?'
'On th' table,' Jack slurs.
'Thank you,' he says. 'No, Gale, don't---,' he starts away from his position, intending to beat Gale to the location. The fire door begins to drag along the carpet and the kids, who maybe thought he didn't mean for it to close, or who more likely are just nosy shits --- catch it to hold it open. Without the barrier of John's body protecting the room, they can see most everything inside.
'Hey,' lilts out Gale's voice --- it's how he's been talking for the past hour, but John's only just now noticing how debauched it sounds. The Y-shaped tail of the greeting goes on for far too long. 'You two here to play Five-Card-Draw?'
John bolts a stare at him, which makes it worse. Gale, conceding defeat in the race to the sanitary items, has returned his butt to the floor to complete the circle of his crossed legs, and has slung himself back lazily on his elbows. Christ, is that a nipple visible through the threadbare weave of his shirt?
John lunges for the door, just to block any fresh attempts at getting middle schoolers to gamble. Helen and Rosie --- Robert --- look at him with wide eyes.
'Was that Mr Cleven?' Robert asks.
'No. Yes. He's sick,' John blurts.
'What's he doing in your room, sir?' Helen Nash asks him laughingly. 'I thought he was sharing with Miss Spencer?'
'Here are your pads!' he says more emphatically, tumbling additional products into her arms. 'Do you know what you're doing with those or do you need --- Mr Cleven, what are you doing?''
'I was just coming over to borrow something,' Gale is mumbling, nonsensical, trying to fit himself back into the doorframe. In a fit of misguided decorum, he has apparently put on John's shirt over his own. John realises with horror that it's the same garment that John wore earlier today. It's red --- unflatteringly, memorably red --- there's no way the kids won't --- and yeah, uhuh, there's the look. Smug and satisfied. They've noticed that it's John's.
'And I haven't given it to you yet,' John says cheerfully, trying to nudge him back inside. To the kids, he says desperately, 'you should both be getting back to bed.'
'I thought you said he was sick,' Robert says instead. 'What's he borrowing?'
'I don't know how to use a pad,' Helen simpers.
'Oh,' Gale says. 'Sure, Helen, let's---,'
The door down the hall opens, and Marge appears. Her golden head is covered in a pink silk wrap.
'What on earth is happening out here?' she says dangerously, and John reflexively shoves Gale so badly he actually stumbles back this time and cracks into a wall.
'Shit, are you okay? I mean sugar, oh calm down, Helen, I meant sugar---,'
Suddenly, Jack is shouldering past him. 'I'll deal with this,' he snaps. 'You two just stay in here and don't come out.' He closes the door.
John and Gale look at one another, utterly disgraced, and then they're laughing, hard. Gale's hanging off him, it's so funny.
'You okay?' John asks him, holding him up. 'I didn't mean to push you like that.' He tries to tilt Gale's head back with a faint, foolish touch to his chin.
'M fine,' Gale murmurs. 'Let's sit.'
John makes for the floor, the place their cards and chips are strewn, along with the small, incriminating pile of Gale's neck chain --- but Gale goes for the bed. He sits first on the edge, and then he scoots himself back against the wall, and then he fidgets down onto one elbow, and then it seems he's lying down completely over the top of the hideous coverlet.
John stares momentarily at the ornate, looping design over the back of one of the discards.
'There room up there for me?' he asks in the end, his tone trying for casual.
John hasn't even slept in it yet.
'Come on, come up,' Gale says. He sounds a little sleepy. 'Got somethin' I wanna tell you.'
That's not an invitation anyone could resist. Heart pumping more than the simple relocation requires, John gets on the bed. Gale shifts closer to the wall, but it's still tight with their shoulders jostling. Eventually John shifts an arm round Gale, only intending for the ball of Gale's shoulder to rest more comfortably in the hollow beneath his clavicle, but to his shock Gale turns into him so he's mostly on his side, pressing the soft front of his body to the profile blade of John's. John doesn't release him: He strokes idly at the dip just before his bicep begins.
We're good enough friends for this, right? he thinks. I'm not making anything strange?
'It's about why we broke up,' Gale says, as if his last sentence wasn't a lifetime ago.
John sighs. 'To be honest, I think I know it all already, Buck.'
John keeps them cinched together as he ticks off his fingers. 'You want to get married, she keeps telling you later. She wants kids, you're not sure. She's maybe deathly allergic to your cat, but neither of you are one hundred per cent on that because she's never been able to stay at your place more than a week at a time --- which I know I've told you is an answer in and of itself. You hate staying over at hers because she has the same interior design taste as your mother. She finds you vaguely misogynistic in a way that's definitely getting better but is also tiring for you both. She thinks the romance languages are for hacks and we should all be learning Mandarin --- should I go on --- ?'
Gale kisses him, and the end of John's sentence becomes an unintelligible smear. It's a moment of pure iridescence between them. Gale pulls back far too soon, as if now he wants to explain himself, but John only takes a second before he's giving chase and sweeping his mouth away from him again. His return kiss is much, much longer than Gale's was. He pulls Gale half on top of him, dragging one crooked leg across his middle.
'Now you know it all,' Gale whispers to him, when they part.
John nods, breathless, and cranes back in.
It can't be much time that passes --- John still has all his clothes on --- but it feels like a turn about the sun. And it's long enough that Gale is sitting on top of him with John's clothed cock doing it's best to follow the crease of the other man's ass through his plaid. His hands are bracketing Gale's hips when the door opens again.
'Jesus fucking Christ,' says Jack Kidd at the threshold.
Thank the lord: the kids aren't with him.
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