Joy and Dave giggle together as they return from a couple of hours drinking at the Fox, leaving before it got too busy and too weird, as it inevitably does.
"Hey! Stephen!" Joy calls as she spots Stephen coming up behind them on the path to their front door, whacking Dave's back to get him to turn around from putting his key in the lock.
"Where's Calum?!" She asks him, with a big grin on her face.
"Here! He's here isn't he?"
"I haven't seen him!.." She starts to say, her face falling as realisation sets in that something isn't quite right.
"He called and said that you were sick?"
"He did?" Joy tries not to show her disappointment in her son on her face but it's not easy when the person he's most obviously lied to is standing right there.
"And he said he was...spending the night here...to...look after you..." Stephen says, his voice getting slower and slower the more he looks between brother and sister. Dave has a weird grin plastered on his face and Joy seems to be trying to maintain some kind of innocent bystander role. "...So I thought I'd bring over some soup..."
Handing the container to Joy, she coos at the thought. "That is so thoughtful and just what the Doctor ordered!"
Stephen looks from Joy to Dave, noting that the man now cannot look him in the eye and seems to have his mouth set in a very straight line.
"And hey, you're the Doctor!" Joy laughs at her own joke, with Dave joining in but the laughter never reaches their eyes, or anywhere near them.
"So, you're not sick," Stephen states, looking directly at Joy.
"Don't sound so disappointed!"
"She had a scratchy throat about five Winter's ago..." Offers Dave, Joy obligingly coughing a little on cue.
Stephen purses his lips and nods to both of them as he turns away, chewing the inside of his lip, wondering which bar to hit up first on his search for Calum.
~~~
"Just because you love me doesn't mean I can't have my way!" Calum warbles in a mix of singing and shouting as he and Michael share one mic.
"Just because you need me doesn't me I don't want to stay!" Michael sings back as they both strum heavily on their guitars on the small stage in the Empire.
Both drunk, full on food and booze, they've been on the stage for about 5 minutes trying to entertain the crowd with the backing of the Empire's usual Thursday night band who, it turns out, Michael has had previous relations with four out of five of them.
Their playing is very rusty but vaguely in tune and their enthusiasm makes up for anything lacking in talent and originality.
It's just as they've emigrated to playing a guitar duet on top of one of the bar's pool tables that Stephen walks in. He doesn't look at them to start, not realising that Calum can even play, if that's what you can call it, guitar. But he soon finds them when he's scanned the rest of the bar and stares in astonishment as his partner climbs back on the stage, kissing his best friend on the lips before they start singing into the mic again.
He leaves as quietly as he arrived, once he's seen enough.
~~~
"Okay, let's go over the questions they're going to ask you at the hearing," Maddie says briskly, opening her folder as she perches on the back of Michael's sofa the next morning.
"Now?" Michael grimaces, digging his head a little further into the cushions to drown her voice out whilst covering up his remaining ear as best he can.
YOU ARE READING
Queer as Muke
Fanfiction"The thing you need to know is, it's all about sex. It's true. In fact they say men think about sex every twenty-eight seconds. Of course that's straight men. With gay men it's every nine." Twenty nine year old advertising executive Michael Cliffor...
