Chapter 9: Chapter 9
The last of the tea, stewed and tannic, washed down the final forkful of egg. Jimmy felt pleasantly bloated, the grease from the bacon and sausage a heavy, comforting anchor in his gut. He watched Gaz mop up a stray bean with a triangle of buttered toast. There was a contentment here, in this greasy spoon under a brightening sky, that felt monumental. He propped his chin on his hand.
“My turn. Gym aside. Work aside. What do you actually do for fun? When you’re not… you know.” He let the implication hang, a secret smile playing on his lips.
Gaz leaned back, the chair groaning under his weight. He patted his stomach, a satisfied thump. “I’m a simple bloke, me. Gym. Work. Rugby. And movies. That’s about it.” He fished in his pocket and pulled out a worn leather wallet, extracting a laminated card. “Got an unlimited cinema pass. I go as much as I can. Just me, a giant bag of Maltesers, and a screen the size of a house.”
“What sort of movies?” Jimmy asked, genuinely curious.
A different light came into Gaz’s eyes, a focused, analytical spark Jimmy hadn’t seen before. “Right. Okay. Don’t laugh.” He leaned forward, his elbows on the sticky table. “Christopher Nolan. The bloke’s a fucking genius. It’s not just the big ideas, right? It’s the structure. The way he plays with time. ‘Memento’ – that’s the one with the bloke who can’t make new memories, yeah? Told backwards. You’re solving the crime as he’s forgetting it. Mind-fuck. But a beautiful one. Then ‘Inception’ – dreams within dreams, time slowing down the deeper you go. The music, that BWAAAAAM sound, it’s like a physical thing. ‘Interstellar’? The bit with the waves on that water planet, where every minute down there is years up top. That scene where he comes back and watches the messages from his kids, grown up without him…” Gaz shook his head, a look of pure awe on his face. “Fucking wrecked me. And ‘Tenet’! Going forwards and backwards through a fight scene at the same time. I’ve watched the behind-the-scenes on that about twenty times. How do you even choreograph that?”
He talked for a solid five minutes, dissecting timelines, practical effects versus CGI, the use of sound. It wasn’t a fan’s gush; it was a craftsman’s appreciation. Jimmy listened, rapt. This was a Gaz he’d only glimpsed when he’d talked about rugby—a deep, obsessive interest in how complex systems worked.
“You should do a podcast,” Jimmy said, smiling. “Seriously. ‘Gaz on Nolan’. I’d listen.”
Gaz grinned, suddenly looking almost bashful. “Piss off.”
“No, really. Maybe… maybe we could watch some of them together sometime?” Jimmy ventured. “The ones I haven’t seen. I’ve only seen the Batman ones.”
“Yeah?” Gaz’s eyes lit up. “Absolutely. Can do a marathon. My place. Well, the van’s a bit tight, but I’ve got a decent tablet.” Then he pointed a thick finger at Jimmy. “But. You have to find me a book. One I’d actually enjoy. That’s the trade.”
Jimmy’s mind raced. A full novel, dense with prose, would lose Gaz in ten pages. He needed a gateway. He grinned, a plan forming. “Deal.”
Gaz slapped the table. “Right. Food’s settling. Let’s move.” He summoned the waitress with a raised hand, insisted on paying despite Jimmy’s weak protest, and left a surprisingly generous tip.
They walked back to the van through the quiet village. Gaz drove them to a public car park a few streets from the main drag, feeding coins into the meter until it whirred and displayed a generous ‘6:00’ in green LEDs. “Paid for the day. No rush.”
The village high street was a mix of charity shops, a greengrocer’s, and a handful of more specialist places. Gaz gravitated immediately to a dimly-lit second-hand shop with ‘ANTIQUES & CURIOS’ painted in faded gold letters on the window. The bell above the door jangled as they entered. The air was thick with the smell of old paper, beeswax, and dust.
Jimmy expected Gaz to be bored. Instead, he moved through the cramped aisles with a quiet, focused attention. He picked up a heavy, tarnished brass compass, turning it over in his hands. “See this? The lid’s broken, hinge is shot. But the glass is original, no cracks. Someone’d pay thirty quid for this if it was cleaned up.” He pointed to a stack of old wooden chairs. “Those are ladder-backs. Early 20th century. Worth something if you re-cane the seats, but it’s a skilled job. Fucking nightmare.”
“How do you know all this?” Jimmy asked, trailing behind him, fascinated.
Gaz paused by a display of mismatched china. His broad shoulders seemed to slump slightly. “My dad. He had a place like this. Bigger, out Essex way. Proper antiques, not just junk. I spent a lot of weekends there as a kid. He’d show me how to tell real oak from pine, how to spot a fake dovetail joint, what marks to look for on the bottom of old pots.” He shrugged, putting down a chipped vase. “Liked it. It was quiet. Just him and me, sorting through other people’s old crap.”
“What happened?” Jimmy asked softly.
Another shrug, bigger this time, a physical dismissal. “He ran off. I was about fourteen. Think he met someone through the shop. A dealer from up north. Just decided he wanted a new life. Sent a postcard from Blackpool once. That was it.”
The casual brutality of it hung in the dusty air. Jimmy didn’t know what to say. “And your mum?”
Gaz let out a long, tired breath. “Mum’s… well. She’s had mental health trouble her whole life. Not really diagnosed, never managed. Bad days, she wouldn’t get out of bed, wouldn’t speak. Good days, she’d be buzzing, cleaning the house top to bottom at three in the morning. No consistency. No help. When Dad left, it got worse. I became the adult. Cooking, cleaning, making sure she took whatever pills the doctor gave her that year. By the time I was seventeen, I was a coiled spring. Getting into fights, getting arrested. She kicked me out in the end. Said I was too much like him. Too volatile.” He looked at Jimmy, his expression bleak. “Probably right.”
“So why the van?” Jimmy asked, his voice barely above a whisper. “Why not get a proper flat when you started making money?”
Gaz was quiet for a moment, running a finger through the dust on a dresser. “I dunno. Think I was worried about feeling stuck. And lonely. In a flat, you’re just… there. In the van, you can go. If a job’s over Essex way, I can park up near the site. If I fancy the sea, I drive to the sea. Very little to maintain. No lease, no landlord. Just the engine and the threat of it getting nicked.” He offered Jimmy a weak smile. “Suited me. Until recently.”
Until me, Jimmy thought. He didn’t say it. He just reached out and placed his hand on the small of Gaz’s back, a firm, warm pressure. Gaz leaned into it, just slightly. The touch said everything Jimmy couldn’t formulate: I understand. You’re not alone in it now.
They bought nothing from the antique shop but carried the ghosts out with them into the cool air. The next shop was a surprise, crammed into a narrow space between a bakery and a newsagent’s: ‘PANEL BEATERS – COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS’. The window was a mosaic of brightly coloured plastic sleeves.
“No way,” Gaz chuckled. “You into this shit?”
“It can be brilliant,” Jimmy said, pushing the door open. The interior was even tighter, walls lined with white boxes, a few spinner racks, a glass counter displaying more expensive, sealed issues. The air smelled of fresh ink and aged paper.
“I just figured,” Gaz said, stooping to avoid a low-hanging mobile of Iron Man, “proper book people would look down on it.”
Jimmy laughed. “Some do. It’s snobbery. Comics and graphic novels have evolved. They’re not just superheroes in tights. They’re memoirs, historical fiction, horror, crime… anything.” He glanced at Gaz. “You ever watch ‘The Boys’?”
Gaz’s face lit up. “Fuck yeah! That show is brutal. Proper funny, too.”
“That’s adapted from a graphic novel,” Jimmy said, pulling a thick, grim-looking trade paperback from a shelf. “And the comic is even more gross, more violent, and more politically savage than the show.”
“No way,” Gaz breathed, taking the book from him and flipping through the pages. He paused at a particularly lurid splash page, his eyes wide. “Jesus. Homelander’s even more of a cunt here.”
“Obviously,” Jimmy said, grinning,
“I knew the MCU shit came from comics, and they’re fun. Sometimes.” Gaz offered, handing the book back.
“Sometimes,” Jimmy echoed, his tone turning serious. “And sometimes it’s a crime against humanity what they do. Take the ‘Secret Invasion’ storyline from the comics. Paranoia masterpiece. Skrulls, alien shape-shifters, have been replacing people for years. No one knows who to trust. The tension is unbearable.” His voice rose with passion. “And what does Disney do? They make that piss-weak, boring-as-shit show with a plot you could write on a napkin. A fucking travesty.”
From behind the counter, a balding man with thick glasses and an ‘X-Men’ t-shirt nodded vigorously. “Preach, brother. They neutered it. Took all the teeth out.”
Gaz looked back and forth between Jimmy and the shop owner, a slow smile spreading. He was watching Jimmy in his element, fired up, confident. It was a turn-on.
Jimmy, after a brief conversation with the owner about independent publishers, went to the ‘Literary Graphic Novels’ section and selected a pristine copy of ‘Watchmen’. He paid for it in cash, slipping it into his own bag without showing Gaz.
They wandered further, finding a small, municipally-funded local history museum in a converted Victorian house. It was free to enter. Inside, glass cases held flint arrowheads, Roman pottery shards, a rusted Civil War musket ball. Maps showed the village’s growth from Saxon hamlet to Victorian railway stop to its current dormant state. Jimmy was mesmerized. He read every placard aloud in a hushed, fascinated tone, connecting the dots between geological shifts and parish records.
Gaz, who would have given this place a cursory glance and left five minutes later, found himself captivated by Jimmy’s fascination. He watched Jimmy’s soft face animate as he explained the Enclosure Acts, saw his eyes gleam at a display on a local witch trial in 1612. Jimmy’s passion was a lens, making the dusty artefacts vibrate with forgotten life. Gaz started asking questions, not to feign interest, but because Jimmy’s answers created a story he could suddenly see.
“So this field, where the industrial estate is now,” Gaz said, pointing at a map, “that was all common land? Where anyone could graze their sheep?”
“Exactly!” Jimmy said, thrilled. “And then it got walled off, privatized. People lost their livelihoods. It’s all right there.” He tapped the glass. “History isn’t in kings and queens. It’s in whose sheep got to eat where.”
They spent over an hour in the quiet, hushed rooms. As they left, Gaz slung an arm around Jimmy’s shoulders, pulling him close. “You’re a fucking nerd,” he said, his voice full of affection.
“You listened to every word,” Jimmy retorted, leaning into the embrace.
“Yeah,” Gaz said simply. “I did.”
The sky had cleared to a pale, watery blue. A sharp, salty wind whistled in from the sea. “Right,” Gaz declared. “How about some time at the beach? Need some proper air. And ice cream. Doesn’t matter how cold it is, a beach demands ice cream.”
The beach was a narrow strip of grey-brown shingle, sloping steeply down to a churning, steel-grey sea. The wind was stronger here, snatching their breath, whipping Gaz’s short hair into spikes. They walked along the promenade, shoulders hunched, until they found a wooden kiosk that was miraculously open. Gaz ordered a 99 with a Flake for each of them.
The ice cream was artificially smooth and sweet. They ate in silence for a minute, watching the brutal, repetitive crash of the waves. The cold was biting, but it felt clean. Cleansing.
“Today’s been…” Jimmy started, then faltered, the wind stealing his words.
“Yeah,” Gaz finished for him. He bumped Jimmy’s shoulder with his own. “It has.”
A gust caught them, spraying fine, icy mist from the wave tops. Gaz turned, using his bulk as a shield. “C’mere.” He pulled Jimmy against his chest, his back to the sea. Jimmy’s face was buried in the damp wool of Gaz’s jumper. He could feel Gaz’s heart, a steady, powerful drumbeat against his cheek. Gaz’s arms encircled him, holding him tight. It was protection. It was possession. It was home.
Jimmy wrapped his own arms around Gaz’s waist, clinging on. The world shrank to the two of them, the smell of salt and Gaz and vanilla ice cream, the sound of the wind howling past Gaz’s shoulders. He had never felt so secure, so unequivocally wanted, in his entire life.
After a long moment, Gaz loosened his grip just enough to look down. Jimmy tilted his head up. Gaz’s lips were cold when they met his, but the kiss was deep and searching, warm on the inside. It tasted of sugar and sea spray.
A violent shiver racked Jimmy’s frame, breaking the kiss. His teeth chattered. The cold, held at bay by the kiss and Gaz’s body, now rushed in. The wind cut straight through his thin cotton jumper.
“Right, you’re freezing,” Gaz said, his voice rough with concern. He stripped off his own wool jumper, revealing a tight, damp rugby shirt beneath.
“Gaz, no, you’ll be–”
“Shut it,” Gaz said, bundling the heavy knit over Jimmy’s head, manhandling his arms into the sleeves. It was huge, warm from Gaz’s body, and smelled intensely of him. But it wasn’t enough. The wind was winning. Gaz wrapped a solid arm around Jimmy’s shoulders, pulling him tight into his side.
He scanned the high street with a plumber’s assessing eye. “Charity shops. Come on.”
The first one yielded nothing but moth-eaten cardigans. The second had a hideous nylon puffa jacket in acid green. Gaz steered him out without a word. The third, at the end of the row, was larger. Racks of coats lined the back wall. Gaz marched over, his focus absolute. He rifled through them, his big hands dismissing anything flimsy.
He pulled out a heavy, charcoal-grey woollen pea coat. “Here. Try this.” It was slightly broad in the shoulders but the length was perfect. It was solid, well-made. For himself, he found a black waxed cotton jacket, battered but sturdy. The price tags were modest. He paid in cash, not letting Jimmy see the total, and helped Jimmy into the coat right there in the shop.
Outside, Gaz appraised him. The coat gave Jimmy a defined silhouette, smarter, older. “Fits you. Looks good on you. Proper.” Gaz tugged the collar straight.
“Thanks,” Jimmy mumbled, the wool already holding in precious warmth. They walked past a hardware store. Gaz ducked in, emerging two minutes later with a tartan-patterned picnic blanket rolled under his arm. “Future planning,” he grunted. At a small deli, he bought two hefty sausage rolls, steam fogging the paper bag, and two cups of rich, dark coffee.
He led Jimmy away from the village, up a gentle, grassy, gorse-dotted slope that climbed above the beach. They reached a flat outcrop of worn limestone, a natural bench overlooking the endless, heaving grey of the sea. The wind up here was a constant, battering force, but the view was staggering. Gaz spread the blanket, weighting the corners with stones, using a slight dip in the landscape for shelter. They sat, shoulders pressed together, and ate.
The sausage rolls were delicious, the pastry flaking, the meat inside peppery and hot. The coffee was invigorating and bitter. For a while, there was only the sound of eating, the wind, and the distant boom of surf.
“So,” Jimmy said, brushing crumbs from his new coat. “Before me. What was… that like?”
Gaz took a long sip, staring at the horizon. “Complicated. Messy. Not like this at all.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Had a girlfriend. Sarah. When I was twenty. Three months.”
“To make sure?”
A sharp nod. “Exactly. And I was sure. Very sure it wasn’t for me. She was lovely, but… nah. Then there was a lad. Mark. Met at a mutual friend's house party. Was super secret. His idea. Back of his car, quick, dirty, never his place. Felt like shit afterwards. Then there was… fuck, a married guy. Paul. Met him on an app. Same deal. Sneaking around. His wife thought we were gym buddies.” Gaz’s jaw tightened. “I came to assume that’s what it was. Secrets and shame and getting your dick wet in the dark. Hated online dating. All the profiles, trying to sell yourself. Felt artificial.”
He turned to look at Jimmy, his slate-coloured eyes earnest in the flat afternoon light. “You were the first guy I met… naturally. Who looked at me like you wanted more than just a quick shag behind the lockers. And I realised I wanted to give it. Wanted to do everything with you. Properly.”
Jimmy felt the confession settle in his chest, warm as the chocolate.
“What about you?" Gaz asked. "Was it really no one before… all that?”
Jimmy scoffed, a soft, bitter sound. “Two dates with a girl called Chloe when I was eighteen. We held hands. It was like holding a damp fish. Then a two-month ‘thing’ with another girl, Beth. We kissed. It was flat. Like licking a wall. I thought it was me. That I was broken. Too boring, too anxious, too… shapeless.” He stared at his hands. “I fully expected to spend the rest of my life with just my hand for company. An expert wanker, dying alone, found by my mum surrounded by cum rags and regret.”
Gaz’s hand found his, lacing their fingers together on the tartan wool.
“I do have to give Tom a tiny, microscopic bit of his due,” Jimmy continued, his voice low. “However fucking twisted his method was, he… showed me my own sexuality. Quickly. Clearly. There was no ambiguity with him. It was horrible, in many ways, but it was a fact. Of course that doesn’t excuse any of it. He didn’t give a shit about me. But… maybe we wouldn’t be here, right now, if it wasn’t for that bastard.”
Gaz let out a long, controlled sigh. The wind caught it, tore it away. “I can’t disagree with that,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “But I still want to pummel his face into mush. Fucking Homelander style. Just… reduce it to paste.”
Jimmy chuckled, a dark, dry sound. “I agree. Wholeheartedly. But we have to keep that particular fantasy in the fantasy realm. I have no desire to be a prison wife. Visiting hours are rubbish, I hear.”
This made Gaz look at him. A sudden, intense stillness came over his large frame.
“What?” Jimmy asked, the shift in atmosphere as palpable as the drop in temperature before a storm.
Gaz paused, his gaze locked on Jimmy’s face. He swallowed. “Okay. I want to ask you something. But you can’t laugh at me. It’s stupid, but I want to ask it.”
Jimmy saw the raw vulnerability in his eyes, the slight tremble in his lower lip he was trying to control. He kept every sarcastic response buried. “Go on,” he said softly. “I won’t.”
“Would you,” Gaz started, then cleared his throat. “I mean, if you don’t, it’s fine. Absolutely fine. But I just wanted to ask if… er… fuck.” He paused, took a deep breath that seemed to fill his entire chest. “Would you be my boyfriend? Like properly, officially.”
Jimmy couldn’t keep the smile from breaking over his face. It wasn’t a laugh; it was a sunrise, involuntary and total, transforming his features.
“I told you not to laugh, fucknuts!” Gaz wailed, the vulnerability shifting instantly to a comic, over-the-top distress. He covered his face with his hands.
“I am not laughing, monsterdick,” Jimmy shot back, his voice choked with emotion. He pulled Gaz’s hands away. “I am over-fucking-whelmed with happiness.” He looked directly into Gaz’s worried eyes, his own completely steady. “Yes. I will be your boyfriend.”
A flicker of hope, then playful suspicion. “Sorry, what was that? I didn’t quite catch it.” A smile fought its way onto the corner of Gaz’s mouth.
Without a word, Jimmy stood up on the rocky outcrop. He cupped his hands around his mouth, turned his face to the vast, indifferent sea, and yelled with every ounce of his being: “I WILL BE YOUR BOYFRIEND!”
The wind stole the words, flung them into the tumult of grey water and sky. Gaz’s laugh was a burst of pure, unfiltered joy. He reached up, grabbed Jimmy’s wrist, and pulled him back down. Jimmy landed flat on his back on the blanket, the air knocked out of him. Gaz was over him instantly, propped on one elbow, his other hand cradling Jimmy’s jaw.
He didn’t speak. He kissed him. It was deep, a claiming and a surrender all at once. His tongue swept into Jimmy’s mouth, tasting of coffee and certainty. He pulled back just far enough to murmur a single, rough word against Jimmy’s lips: “Good.”
Then he kissed him again, slower this time, pouring a profound, wordless ache into it. His hand slid from Jimmy’s jaw down his neck, over the rough wool of the new coat, coming to rest on his chest, feeling the frantic heartbeat beneath. Jimmy’s hands came up, one tangling in Gaz’s short, wind-tousled hair, the other gripping the tough fabric of the waxed jacket over his broad back. They stayed like that for a long while, the world reduced to the taste of each other, the scratch of wool and waxed cotton, the cold air on their heated faces.
Another shiver, involuntary and deep, ran through Jimmy. Gaz felt it. He broke the kiss, his forehead resting against Jimmy’s. “You’re cold again,” he murmured, his breath warm. “Time to get back.”
He helped Jimmy up, folded the blanket with brisk efficiency, and gathered their rubbish. They walked back to the van in a new, profound silence, their gloved fingers linked. The simple, declarative truth of it hummed between them, a shared frequency shutting out the wind, the creeping dusk, everything.