It was three in the morning when Sam was roused from a dream in which he was desperate for a piss, wandering around Manchester searching frantically for a public toilet. The sound which woke him was a hammering on the door, loud and insistent, and when Sam stood up to answer it he realised that he actually was desperate for a piss in the waking world as well.

He pressed his thighs together, holding in the urge to go as he threw open the door. At eye-level, there was nothing to see. Then he looked down to find his Guvnor, balanced precariously on his knees, his camel hair coat fanned out around him almost regally.

Gene breathed in sharply through his nose and toppled forward.

Sam caught him, and Gene abruptly wrapped his arms around Sam's waist, his face flattened against Sam's stomach, holding on for dear life. Sam hadn't worn trousers to bed, and he was spectacularly aware of the Guv's chilly belt buckle pressed against the bare flesh of his right thigh. He shivered, and the hairs on his legs stood up in the draught from the open door.

'Good God, Guv,' said Sam. 'How pissed are you, exactly?'

Gene didn't answer. He simply gripped Sam tighter, his arms and head compressing Sam's bladder dangerously.

Sam walked gritted his teeth and walked backwards slowly, heaving Gene along with him until they were well inside the flat, and then extricated himself from the Guv's death grip. He left Gene in a heap in the middle of the room, and hurried into the bathroom to relieve himself.

When Sam returned, Gene was sitting with his back against the wall, his long legs splayed out before him in an unfomfortable-looking, twisted posture. His eyes were closed. Though from his breathing, Sam could tell that he wasn't asleep.

It didn't seem strange to Sam, somehow, that Gene had rolled up paralytic to wake him from a deep sleep in the small hours of the morning. Even though sleep was elusive lately, and he needed all he could get. Sam perched on the edge of his rickety bed, watching Gene quietly. Waiting for some sort of half-assed explanation. He knew that if he asked, he wouldn't get an answer. Instead he would wait patiently until Gene volunteered the information.

After several long moments, Gene opened his mouth, but not his eyes, and muttered,

'Ellen's gone.'

So this was it. It had finally happened. The great show-down.

'Is that your wife's name, then? Ellen?' asked Sam, absurdly pleased to learn this.

'Course it is, you great fucking nancy,' said Gene. 'I've told you me wife's name before. You know it.'

Sam knew for a certaintly that Gene had never mentioned his wife's name before. But he didn't challenge Gene on this.

'God,' he said instead. 'And she's gone, then?'

'Yes, she's fucking *gone,* deaf aid,' said Gene. 'What part of *gone* do you not understand? It's a one-syllable *fucking* word. Gone. GONE. Ellen. Has. Gone. Fuck it.'

He let out a little burp, and for a moment Sam was frightened he might be sick. He'd never seen Gene vomit when drunk, though it wasn't impossible. In the end, though, Gene seemed to swallow it back down, along with any more insults he might have been holding on the tip of his tongue.

After a minute, Sam asked in a small voice,

'Was it horrible?'

Gene opened his eyes. They seemed clearer than they had any right to be.

'You ask me, Gladys,' he said, in a remarkably steady voice, 'Whether it was "horrible". The answer is "no." No. It was distinctly un-horrible.'

'In what way?' asked Sam, wondering if he was pushing his luck with all these direct questions.

'By "horrible," I assume you imply "Was there shouting? Was there gnashing of teeth and pounding of petulant feet and breaking of the Mam's best crockery that she gave us as a wedding present along with a pair of bloody lace and cotton booties for the three-month-old bump that Ellen hid under an empire-line wedding dress and that never made it to four months or got to wear the fucking booties anyway."'

It was a quiet, slightly slurred tirade, delivered through clenched teeth, but Sam was hammered flat by the hail of personal revelations it rained down on him. And Gene hadn't even finished.

'No, Sammy. Your answer is no. There was no noise. No noise at all. I asked her what there was for tea. And she just stood up and walked out the front door. Found the empty wardrobe and the 'goodbye' note ten minutes later.'

'What'd it say?' asked Sam.

'The note?' asked Gene. 'It said,"Goodbye."

'Short and to the point,' said Sam, wryly. Then he felt awful for his flippancy. Gene, however, didn't seem to mind. He had hauled himself to his feet, and was stumbling in the direction of the kitchen counter.

'This a "kitchenette?"' asked Gene.

'A what?' said Sam.

'A "kitchenette,"' repeated Gene. 'Is this one of 'em? I mean, it's not a whole kitchen, issit? There's no... wall. To separate it from the rest of the scummy little flat. So by my reasoning, it must be a kitchenette.'

'Whatever you say,' said Sam, lying back on the bed and pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes.

He felt rather than saw Gene's dark, solid shape looming over him. He could almost feel the shadow slick its way across his body as Gene approached to stand unsteadily at the side of his bed. When Sam removed his hands and opened his eyes, Gene was holding something out unsteadily towards him.

It was a large, navy blue mug. His favourite mug. Pristinely clean. No ingrained coffee stains or rings of tea scum on the inside rim, though he'd had it since he'd arrived here two years ago.

'Thanks,' said Sam, accepting the mug, only to realise that there was nothing inside of it. 'What's this supposed to be?' he asked, puzzled.

'It's a mug,' said Gene.

'What do you want me to do with it?' asked Sam, still nonplussed.

'Throw it,' said Gene, his voice hard and demanding.

'Beg your pardon?' said Sam.

'Throw it,' ordered Gene, towering over Sam, staring down at him with a gaze as cold and as hot as a shot of whiskey. 'Against that shitty wall over there. Throw it hard. Make it shatter.' Gene's voice was slightly less slurred now. He was sobering quickly.

Sam propped himself up on his elbows. The springs of his bed groaned passionately.

'I don't want to throw this mug,' he said, almost petulantly. 'It's my favourite.'

'You fucking *pansy*,' said Gene, dropping to his knees beside the bed and leaning over to bellow directly into Sam's nearest ear. 'Throw the damn mug!'

Sam was so alarmed by the deafening shout that he threw the mug partly out of reflex. It didn't shatter, as such. But it hit the wall with a resounding porcelein 'clunk,' as the handle snapped cleanly off, both pieces falling heavily to the carpeted floor below.

Gene looked at the broken crockery in satisfaction.

'That's what I was looking for,' he said, and plonked himself down on the bed, almost on top of Sam. 'You got any more?' he asked, taking Sam by the scruff of the neck, but not pulling him up. Just twisting his fingers into the collar of the crumpled blue shirt Sam had worn to bed, and holding the fistfuls of fabric tightly.

'Any more what?' asked Sam.

'Mugs,' said Gene. 'Any more mugs?'

Sam swallowed to wet his throat.

'One,' he said. 'I only had two. One for me and whoever else...' He looked directly into Gene's eyes - his challenging gaze. 'I have plates,' he said. 'And bowls. Cereal bowls.'

Now Gene did drag Sam up, and over to the "kitchenette" counter. He threw Sam against it, releasing his hold on him, and began to toss open the doors of Sam's cabinets, dragging out unmatched crockery of all shapes, sizes and colours and slamming it down onto the counter beside Sam. When he'd removed all he could unearth, Gene picked up the largest plate - a rather attractive white one with a thin silver border, and thrust it into Sam's hands.

'Go on,' he said. 'Chuck that now.'

'This is insane,' said Sam, more to himself than to Gene. 'I have nothing to do with this.'

Gene let out a small, disgusted laugh.

'You have more to do with this than you'd ever guess,' he said in a low, regretful voice. 'Throw the fucking plate.'

Unsure what the hell else to do, Sam set his feet slightly apart, and with a powerful, overarm throw, launched the plate at the opposite wall.

The plate did shatter. Into tens and hundreds of tiny shards. Gene seemed extremely pleased.

'Excellent,' he said. Then he sidled up to Sam until the front of his body was pressed entirely against Sam's own, his hot, whiskey-flavoured breath washing over Sam's face.

He handed Sam a cereal bowl.

'Chuck that next,' he said.

Sam did as he was told. The bowl cracked into three pieces as it hit the wall, and took a large lump of loose plaster out of the wall along with it.

Sam laughed, unsure where his mirth was coming from. Gene barked out a loud laugh himself, and handed him another plate.

One by one, Sam hurled his breakfast and dinnerware at the opposite wall, until his entire crockery collection lay in shards on the carpet beneath the crumbling, dented wall. He was heaving with laughter, hysterical at the destruction of his kitchenware. Gene was clutching his gut, bent double with wracking laughs.

Without warning, he tumbled into Sam, hoisting him up again by the collar, pulling his face level with his own, suddenly serious and boiling with rage.

'You've been dying to leave me for ages, haven't you?' he asked quietly, threateningly. 'Just waiting quietly for the moment you can slip out right from underneath my nose. Dart away like a frightened little rabbit. Be gone before I'd even had the chance to blink.'

Sam's brow wrinkled in confusion.

'No I haven't,' he said. Though if he was honest with himself, there was some truth in the statement.

Gene gave him a long look. The kind he'd give an idiot. And all of a sudden, Sam got it.

'Oh,' he said, lamely. 'I guess so.'

The corner of Gene's mouth turned up in the hint of a smile.

'Precisely,' said Gene. 'And I'm buggered if I'm gonna let you go without one hell of a fight.'

Sam nodded slowly, leaning back against the counter. Now that he'd figured out precisely what was happening, he felt a little more in control.

'Go on then,' he said to Gene. 'Let's have a fight.'

Gene's eyes lit up. He paced around Sam slowly in a circle, like a member of the chorus in an amateur drama production.

'It's not been right between us for ages,' said Gene, pursing his lips and thrusting his hands into his pockets. He stopped pacing and swayed a little on the spot.

Sam looked at him. He felt an overwhelming wash of sympathy for Gene. He was the oak that wouldn't bend and got flattened in the storm. Sam remembered that story from primary school.

'I guess not,' said Sam. 'I guess we'e been growing apart for a while.'

'Guess so,' said Gene, quietly. 'You could have said something. Taken me up on it. Told me how you felt. You could have done that.' Gene wasn't looking at Sam. He was looking resolutely at his scuffed white slip-ons.

'It's not so easy to talk,' said Sam.

'That it isn't,' replied Gene, worrying the toe of his right shoe against the carpet. 'Maybe it's better to fight. Get it all out in the open, though.'

'Sometimes,' said Sam, still uncomfortably aware of his bare legs.

'Hit me,' said Gene, suddenly.

'I'm not going to hit you, Gene,' said Sam. 'You've got to be-'

'Hit me!' Gene bellowed, with the same deafening shout as he'd ordered the first mug thrown.

Sam levelled a forceful punch into Gene's gut. Gene doubled over, coughing.

'You bloody idiot!' he wheezed. 'Don't *hit* me!'

'But you said-'

'Hit me like a *bird*,' he said. 'Like a *bird* would. Slap me. Slap me hard. Across the cheek. The right one.'

'Why the right one?' asked Sam.

'Ellen was left-handed,' he said, speaking deliberately of her in the past tense.

Part of Sam thought that Gene had lost his mind. The other part was fascinated by the development of events. He thought for a minute, then drew back his left hand and gave Gene a whopper of a slap, the flat of his hand impacting with a fierce 'smack' against the rough, stubbled skin of Gene's right cheek.

In the quiet moment after the crack of skin on skin, Sam stood back and watched his bright red handprint blossom on Gene's skin. Gene stayed frozen, his neck bent to the left, his eyes half-closed, his raw red cheek exposed to Sam's stare.

Then he straightened, grabbed Sam's face between his large hands and thrust his tongue into Sam's mouth. Their lips hardly met - it was just Gene's tongue in Sam's open, shocked mouth, intruding, searching, intently exploring. Gene curled his tongue up over Sam's top tow of incisors, licking his palate, making Sam writhe, startled by the shocks skittering up from the roof of his mouth through his brain to the crown of his head.

Sam wrenched himself away, staring at Gene, and his wet, swollen mouth. Gene's lips were drawn back to bare his clenched teeth.

'What the *fuck?*' said Sam, stepping back and crossing his arms across his chest protectively, licking the taste of whiskey off his lips.

Gene stepped closer to Sam, taking his head between his hands agan. Sam yanked his head away again, taking two more steps backwards so that he was now pressed against the wall that had shattered the cutlery.

'There's something else we never talked about,' said Gene, putting his hands flat against the wall either side of Sam's head.

Sam sniffed and wriggled, and then went perfectly still, waiting for Gene's next move. He couldn't decide whether he wanted to duck under Gene's arm or knee him in the balls. Or stay where he was to see how things played out.

'What?' asked Sam, drawing his legs together a little.

'My picky pain of a DI,' said Gene, looking down his nose into Sam's curious, nervous face. 'We never talked about him.'

'What about him?' asked Sam, almost afraid to ask.

'This,' said Gene, and reached for Sam's underpants, dragging them down his legs and taking Sam's cock in his hand, holding it tight in his fist. Sam groaned out loud in shock.

Gene looked ecstatic. Triumpant. As though his horse had come through in the Grand National.

'Don't tell me you never guessed,' he whispered. 'Don't tell me you never knew. All those nights...' his voice broke, but he recovered quickly, '...All those nights I'd rather talk about him than you. All those nights I'd spend with him, rather than sit home watching you watch Corrie, listening to you about your God-awful boring day, eating your fucking fried egg and beans or leg of lamb and peas. If I'd told you about my dreams - about who I manhandled my todger over in the bathroom when I locked the door and wouldn't let you in... If I told you that, maybe I would've been honest, and maybe I could've... I don't fucking know... tried to be a better man... or brought you flowers, or... But you up and fucking left, and all I can think is how easy you've made it now. How easy you've made it for me to have what I want.'

He took Sam by the shoulders and turned him around so that his front was pressed to the wall.

Sam had gone entirely limp. He was astonished by the entire situation. Amazed at the superfluity of new information. Unsure of his own emotions. But his cock was standing rock hard against the cold, scarred wall.

'And I'm gonna show you,' breathed Gene. 'I'm gonna go around to that shitty little bedsit, and I'm gonna hammer the door down, and I'm gonna take him so hard up the arse,' Gene pushed his little finger deep into Sam, pulled it out and pushed his ring finger in. Sam felt Gene's wedding ring cold between the skin of his buttocks. The hard bite of metal slowly warming as Gene thrust his finger into Sam and out again. Over, and over again. Sam's fingers tried to grip the wall, and his right hand encountered a deep dent from the crockery. He worked his fingers in and around the chalky hole, as Gene worked his finger inside of him.

'God,' groaned Gene, pulled out his finger and pushed his cock all the way into Sam. Sam howled in absolute agony, trying to push himself back from the wall, but only pushing himself further onto Gene's cock.

'You fucking bastard!' Sam shouted. 'Get out of me!'

But Gene pushed further into him. He stayed still inside Sam for the longest of moments, letting Sam adjust to him somewhat. Then he pulled out, spat onto his hand, ran it along his cock and pushed back in, this time more easily. Sam's lower body relaxed. He moaned again, a little more in pleasure than pain. And Gene began to ride him.

'Oh bloody hell... this is what a wife should do... Just feel this... Like this? Eh? Look at me... Taking him up the fucking... This is it... Forever and fucking ever... til death do us...' he came, 'part.'

They didn't sleep together. There was no discussion about this. Gene took the bed, sprawled out like a starfish, and Sam took the chair opposite, with no blanket or pillow.

Before Gene fell asleep, Sam asked into the dark of the room,

'Gene?'

Gene gave a grunt.

'Was I the reason Ellen left?'

Gene sighed deeply.

'Don't flatter yourself, Gladys,' he said, and turned over onto his stomach, the bed creaking and crying in pain. 'Don't fucking flatter yoursef.'