[AN: ugh. I really don't like this, and it's still heckas gappy, but here it is, anyway. it contains... very non-explicit sex scenes. oh wait, yes, and also, everyone has been so nice on here, good god. bless you all!]

'I've got the devil in me.'

'You could have said, Vyvyan. I might need to ask him a favour, later.'

'Nah.' Vyvyan dangles his arms between his knees, staring down at the pavement. In his peripheral he can see Mike's feet, a few inches off the ground, kicking idly against the wall.

The bus is either late or not coming.

'It's what my mum used to tell me.'

'She's deranged, your mother. Isn't she.'

'S'pose so.'

'What's got you hung up on it? I didn't think you believed in religion, anyway.'

'I'm just filling in the time.'

Vyvyan hunches over a bit further and looks down the street. There's litter in the gutters and grime spread over the cobbles. It's like home, really – the council estate where he grew up, chasing birds and kicking old cans for fun. Smacking Tommy O'Connell's head into the hard pavement, scraped knees either side of the boy's torso, the rushing in his ears drowning out the sound of the other kids yelling. Pulling the fraying skin off his knees on the walk home, trying to wipe the blood off on the dewy grass before his mother could see and start a tirade.

Why must you be like this, Vyvyan.

Your father would never have put up with this, Vyvyan.

You're stupid, Vyvyan. This when he's eight and it's two days after his birthday, but his mum forgot because she was drunk or working too hard and he never knew how to tell the difference between the two. And she's not yelling, she's not even trying to be spiteful. She's resigned, and that's what hits Vyvyan the most. That she believes it.

I do love you, Vyvyan, she had said three days after that, because Vyvyan's been putting a real effort in, to make her happy. Because he likes her, no matter what people say. No matter what fucking Tommy O'Connell says, laughing with his chest puffed out and a smirk on his face. Fucking Tommy O'Connell who's crying and the older boys are trying to hold Vyvyan's fists back because Tommy's got two split cheeks and loose tooth and Vyvyan's going to aim for the nose, next.

The council estate where he'd hugged his mother, once, when he was eighteen, when she read aloud that he'd been accepted for the university grant, the only one applicable to him, that he could move out in the winter. He thought he'd be able to get away from the memories, but council flats all look the same, don't they.

'Can you read, Mike?'

'Can I read what – a bike? A fish? Can a man read a sausage, Vyvyan?'

'No, Mike. Words.'

'Oh. Yeah, I can, but keep it to yourself.'

'I got a letter this morning.'

Mike's not really paying attention. He's shielding his eyes from the sun and peering at the window across the street. He looks oddly small with his coat collar popped, and Vyvyan mildly wishes he had thought to bring his own jacket. It's still on the bed with the letter, the one from the university that had taken Vyvyan four times reading to gain even a rough comprehension.

He's failing.

He's failing his classes. Great, he'd enthusiastically thought. So what, who cares, but he does care. He wants to get out of this shithole some day. He wants to cut up bodies and make a ton of cash. He wants to stick it to his mum so she'll see that he's not a fuck up, that he's good for something. He wants to exceed every expectation she's ever had of him until she regrets it, saying all those things. Until she really regrets it, and the guilt keeps her up at night. He wants her to beg him. He wants her to love him. He just wishes she would be proud.

But he's failing.

Vyvyan sighs. The end of the road is empty. The bus isn't going to come. He doesn't know why they expected it to, it hasn't done this route in nearly three years, now. 'I don't think I can read,' he says lightly.

'You can,' Mike murmurs, still staring at the window. 'I've seen you.'

'Yeah,' Vyvyan laughs. 'Can't get anything past you, Mike.'

'What do you mean, then, Vyv?'

'I meant…' Vyvyan picks at the scabbing around one of his forehead stars. 'I can't read the time.'

'Aha! Well that's a different bottle of cat. I can teach you, Vyv. Look.' Mike shifts a bit closer, shaking his watch from his sleeve and holding it out for Vyvyan to see. He points.

'You see this little hand, here? That tells you the hour. Now, when it was back here, that's when the bus was supposed to come.'

Vyvyan had severed the leg through the femoris back at the morgue, and having it propped out of the window on the drive home seems to have crusted over the blood seeping from the top. Vyvyan is on his way to the front door, tapping his fingers against the jagged bone point, when someone clears their throat by him.

'You're this one, then?'

'Hey?' Vyvyan looks up and the postman shoves something in his face.

'This'll be the bad news in writing, mate.'

'What bad news?'

'Yer house.' The postie gestures. 'S'being demolished tomorrow. Didn't they tell you?'

'No.' Vyvyan drops the leg and takes the envelope, ripping the edge off and pulling out the sheet. The print is small and there's a lot of it. Vyvyan squints. 'Are they really?'

'Afraid so, mate.'

'That's brilliant!' Vyvyan grins up at him. 'You mean this whole street, just gone?'

'Naw, didn't you read that, mate? Just yours, innit.'

'Just…' Vyvyan murmurs, and scans the page again. 'Can they do that?'

'Look, I haven't got all day, have I? I can knock off in a few.'

'Uh, right.'

The letter still doesn't make much sense. He can pinpoint a few words, but together it just looks like a mass of black.

Well, he thinks, looking over at their mess of a building. If that's the case, bet I can beat them to it, and he picks up his leg, kicks at the door, and braces himself for impact.

Later, when there's more rubble than walls left standing and Vyvyan's draped himself over the couch, trying to breathe in some air not filled with grit, Rick's head pokes into his vision. His hair's gone white with drywall, chips falling onto Vyvyan's face when Rick makes a sharp movement.

'Do you know what time?' Rick asks. Vyvyan's just tired enough not to act horribly offended that Rick is speaking to him. He hums questioningly instead. 'What time, what time?'

'I don't know what you're on about.'

'The demolition, Vyvyan. What time did the letter say?'

'Mike's got the letter.'

'Yes, but you read it.'

Rick is shying back slightly, like he's half-expecting a physical retribution, but his chest is still buffed in mock-authority. Vyvyan licks across his teeth slowly, thinking.

'I didn't read that part,' he says lowly.

'Didn't or can't? Ha!' Rick snorts. When Vyvyan is silent, he frowns. He shies back a bit more. 'What?'

Vyvyan beckons, and Rick leans forward again. Vyvyan grabs him with both hands and drags him bodily over the top of the couch, slamming Rick into the ground and letting the momentum carry him to his feet.

'I'm going to bed,' he says, and steps over Rick's body.

They move house, and Rick gives him odd looks. Not all the time, but sometimes. It sets an almost permanent tension in Vyvyan's shoulders. He tells himself it's only because it's not pity that he's letting Rick get away with it, but some corner of his mind recognises Rick's expression as curious, and a bigger part of him would rather ignore it altogether than bring about whatever answer Rick is looking for.

'Do you know what this says?'

Rick waves the paper in Vyvyan's face. Vyvyan flicks his cigarette up with his teeth until it smoulders a hole into the paper and Rick whips it away.

'Vyvyan! For heaven's sake, would you listen. What does this say?'

'It says piss off.' Vyvyan seats himself on the stairs and takes a long drag.

'Very funny, but no.'

'I'm a big poncey squib who loves kissing people on the bottom.'

'I do not! I… well,' Rick squirms a bit, 'only if they're— No, Vyvyan! It says Rick. See here? Rick Pratt, esquire.'

Vyvyan scoffs.

'It is a term fashioned to denote when something is belonging to me, and I've written a poem about it that I think would benefit you to read.'

'I'm not reading that. Piss off.'

'Look.' Rick dangles the paper in Vyvyan's face again, just out of reach from the cigarette. The letters all shift on the page, jumping, and Vyvyan looks away. 'Why don't you ever want to read my poems?'

'Because I hate them.'

'And I suppose you hate me then, do you?' Rick puts his left foot forward, bracing his hands on his hips.

'Yes. I do. Now leave me alone.'

'Is that it, then,' Rick begins, and stops. He stares at Vyvyan and Vyvyan stares back, brows creased and smoke creeping from his nostrils. Rick's got his odd expression again, some half-caught idea ticking over in his head. Vyvyan can see the dumb git trying to digest it. 'If you…' Rick starts, and then stops again. He hums to himself. 'Okay,' he says.

'Okay, what.' Vyvyan rolls his eyes. 'Okay you're going to piss off now?'

'Well I can't ruddy well do that with you blocking the staircase now, can I! I tell you, the things I have to put up with in this house.'

Vyvyan shrugs and stays put, and Rick paces the front room for a moment before grabbing Vyvyan's shoulder and climbing over him. Vyvyan grabs his foot on the way and Rick crashes into the stairs, kicking out at Vyvyan's head but not making contact before crawling up the rest of the way.

Vyvyan finishes his cigarette and eventually follows suit, sitting down at the desk he had dragged over from Rick's room about a month previous. He picks up the pocketknife in the corner and begins tracing over his name that'd he'd carved into it yesterday. It looked good, although the 'N' was a little mangled because he hadn't been sure which way it went.

When the evening sun finally lowers across the back of Vyvyan's neck, leaving the room in a dusky darkness, Rick storms in with a notebook that he slams onto the desk.

'This,' Rick proclaims, uncapping a pen and stabbing it down at the page, 'is the letter R. It stands for Rick. You can tell, because…' He draws a straight line on a blank area of the page. 'There's a line here, and then it curves around from the top and goes out. Like… like that.'

Vyvyan grits his teeth and looks up at Rick. Rick's jaw is set, and his stance seems awkward.

'I know what an R looks like,' Vyvyan says.

'Well, good!' Rick throws the pen down onto the desk. 'And it would pay you to remember it next time you try to ignore my labels and eat my food.'

'I was only doing it for a laugh.'

'It certainly didn't have me laughing, mister.' Rick hesitates for a moment, then crosses his arms tightly, tucking his fingers under his arms. 'I read your letter, by the way. The one that… well, it says you're failing your classes.'

Vyvyan doesn't say anything, but he's on the verge of breaking both of Rick's arms.

'You're not authorised to start prac placements, unless you resit the exam.' He pauses. 'But they're going to let you, you know.'

Vyvyan shifts his head slightly, listening. He'd been meaning to ask Mike about the rest of the letter, but he couldn't bring himself to actually show it to him.

'They're offering you the class over the summer session, so you can sit it again before placement calling. That's a few months from now.'

He hesitates again, and Vyvyan thinks he must be about to come out with something incredibly stupid.

'They'll give you more time if they know. If you tell them.'

'Tell them what.' Vyvyan levels his eyes with Rick, feeling his lip begin to twitch in anger.

'Nothing,' Rick says quickly. 'Stop eating all my food you fat pig,' and he storms off.

Vyvyan grabs the page Rick had written on and tears it off, crushing it in his fist. On the page beneath, printed in large block letters, is the alphabet. Vyvyan tears that out, too, but folds it and leaves it in the top drawer of the desk.

The summer holiday begins. Rick sings loudly for the first hour until Vyvyan biffs him with a bat, but Vyvyan stills hears him humming from time to time. The guys soak up their freedom, sitting in the back yard or the lounge room, concocting a new game involving fold-up chairs pool cues. Vyvyan joins them for the first few days, but feels no peace. His mind is constantly droning, pulsating against his temples, something like guilt licking up his ribs every time he thinks more than a few minutes into the future.

He skitters around the house, grinding his teeth and kicking things and not thinking about anything.

'I think you should go in to campus,' Rick tells him one day, and Vyvyan rams his hand into Rick's face and says, 'fuck you.'

He sits on the stairs that night, biting at his cuticles and turning his last cigarette in his fingers. He knows a lot already, but it's not enough to get by, and the thought of being seen on campus makes him physically ill. But he wants it so badly. It's enough to quash the illness, thoughts of being able to cut into someone's body, truly. To be able to see the actual organs and not just photos of them. To touch them and move them about and hell, he doesn't even care if it saves them or not but he sure as fuck is living for the day when he can look at someone and think I've held your heart in my hand. He likes the idea of that power. It's the only thing he can remember ever really wanting. The only sense of passion he's ever felt. He wants it, the scrubs and the scalpel. He wants to cut and rip and feel confident, know exactly what he's doing. He wants to stop feeling guilty for looking at Rick and dreaming of pulling his chest open.

He eventually goes in, and for the first time in his life borrows books from the library. He'd thought about stealing them, but they're all thick and heavy and the only bookshop Vyvyan has ever walked into doesn't stock them. He'd lost his ID card the first day of having it by trying to break into someone's house with it and a bunch of drunk mates, so in the end he swipes Rick's card to do the deed.

After he's offloaded them onto his bed, he runs three laps of the block, piggybacks Neil to the corner store and back, and then shakes out the last of his restless energy by kicking out the stair railings. When he feels calm enough, he sets the first book open on his desk and takes out the notepad.

He gets two words in and can't make out the rest. He tries moving the book closer and further away, and tries following the line with his finger but the words are too small and they make his eyes strain.

When he's left with a worse headache than a hangover and no new knowledge to show for it, he throws the books around the room and smacks one onto the desk until a split forms with a heaving croak. Then he kicks the books underneath his bed with the rest of his greatest disappointments in life and leaves the room. He can hear SPG squeaking something after him but he pays no attention.

On Friday of the week after, he finds a pile of cassettes spread across his bed. Clinical Anatomy is scrawled across the tag on the first two he picks up, then Functional Histology on the next three. He reads over them slowly, noting the order of them all, and then kneels on the floor. He yanks out the rubbish and dirty clothes from beneath his bed until he finds at least three of the textbooks, placing them on the bed and smoothing out the warped pages. He sorts through the tapes until he finds letters that match up and places them on the corresponding book. He does the same for each one, and then drags his bed away from the wall to find the last book, cover bent badly, covered in dust and SPG's fur.

'Blimey.' He shakes one of the tapes, just to have audible proof. It rattles in its case. When he thinks he's stared at them hard enough to discern they're real, he didn't make them up, he gets to his feet and crosses the landing to Rick's room.

Rick has his back turned, setting the arm down on his record player. Soft trumpets start up over the crackle of the record and Billy Fury begins to croon softly for a moment before Rick sings obnoxiously over it. Behind Rick, close to the door, a cassette deck is sitting. It's near a power point, but the plug is curled on top of it. Vyvyan grabs it and carries it back to his room, shutting his door against Rick's off-key wailing.

He plugs the cassette deck in, roughly shoving one of the tapesinto the compartment and opening the corresponding book. An old codger's voice starts up in a steady drone. 'A New Approach to Dissection of the Human Body chapter four. The disposition of the abdominal viscera can be more easily understood if the student visualises...' Vyvyan skims over textbook's pages until he finds a section he'd scribbled a line next to. He fast-forwards the tape. '—Most marked in those organs lying directly under the diaphragm,' the codger says.

'Oh,' Vyvyan says under his breath, following with his finger.

He's gotten through a bit and thinks he might even be retaining some of it when Neil calls them down for supper. Maybe an hour after that, Vyvyan trudges down the stairs.

'Someone's stolen my new tape deck,' Rick says loudly at the table, without looking at him. 'My new one that mummy and daddy bought me. And I don't even care, you know?' He looks around at Neil. 'You know why I don't care, hippy? Well, do you?'

'Oh, like, you're being really loud, Rick. It's bringing down my aura.'

'It's because I spat in it,' Rick continues. 'Yeah, I did, you know. More than once. So I don't even want it back. I hope whoever took it has a great time with my gobby tape deck. So how's that.' He snorts and looks down at his supper. 'Neil.' His brow crumples. 'What the devil is this?'

'It's the most amazing story, Rick. I was like, outside, yeah? In that burnt out patch where Vyvyan lit that fire that time that kind of looked like the face of the blonde Nolan sister—'

'Is there anything else to eat?' Vyvyan asks, yanking the fridge open. There's a dried up piece of spongy something with a big black 'R' on it. Vyvyan prods at it a moment and then reaches past for the roughly biscuit-shaped thing with fur on it. Rick's watching him when he turns around. 'You've got something in there, if you want it,' Vyvyan says. Rick nods at him, and Vyvyan shrugs uneasily and wanders over to turn the television on.

Sometime in the next few days, Vyvyan finds a library receipt sitting on his desk that has written on it in permanent marker, CHECKED OUT FOR SEMESTER.

He studies. He pulls his hair out. He fucking hates it.

Rick is in the kitchen. He's put out his dancing mat and is doing some kind of twisted star-jumps in time with the radio.

'Radical,' he huffs when the song winds down. 'The energy of the people!'

'Rick,' Vyvyan says. He pushes past the hesitation that threatens to build, smacking his paper down on the table. 'I bet Mike five quid that you were too stupid to read this, so do us a favour and prove me right, yeah?'

Rick's eyes flare. 'I am not stupid!'

He puts his hand squarely on Vyvyan's chest, pushing him back from the table, and takes a seat in front of the paper. Vyvyan crosses his arms and listens to Rick reciting the first paragraph, then Rick stops abruptly.

'Biro!' He clicks his fingers in Vyvyan's direction. 'Get me my biro!'

'Uh…' Vyvyan looks around the room. 'Which one?'

'The red one, Vyvyan, the red one. God, must I do everything in this household. Look, it's over there on the bookshelf. Off you go, hurry.'

Vyvyan collects the pen, but only so he can test his aim by spinning it at Rick's head. It collides with a solid noise but Rick only grunts and continues scanning the page.

'You can tell Michael,' Rick says eventually, 'that you've won your bet. I can't read this.'

'Knew it,' Vyvyan smirks but feels it falter slightly.

'It doesn't make sense.'

Vyvyan drops the pretence. He'd worked so fucking hard on that paper. 'Doesn't it?'

'Well, sort of.' Rick hunches over the paper, uncapped biro in hand. 'This part is good, but it should really go over here.' He draws an arrow. 'This is spelt wrong, and this, and this, and…' he trails off for a while, scribbling. 'I've put in the punctuation that matters,' he murmurs, eyes skimming the page. 'This part needs work.' He draws an asterisk. 'It's all right, altogether. If you… tell Mike to fix it, I can read it again.'

'I'll tell him,' Vyvyan says quietly, and takes the paper when Rick offers it.

The dynamic starts to shift.

The lads begin to act nicer toward Vyvyan and he hates it.

Neil shows up in Vyvyan's doorway one night without promoting to lend him his lucky gonk, with a packet of Polos that he can keep, and then wishes Vyvyan good luck with whatever he's writing – which happens to be nothing.

Mike intercepts Vyvyan outside the bathroom and presents him with a digital watch, 'kindly donated by Stanley Heddock, but he doesn't know about it, so best to avoid him, yeah?'

And Rick… Vyvyan doesn't know what's going on with Rick, except that it doesn't feel like charity when Rick is acting so submissive about it all.

Vyvyan is frustrated and tired out of his mind when it happens. His fingers are in Rick's mouth, prying his teeth open, and he's yelling 'that was my cornflake' with more aggression than is really warranted.

'I'm sorry,' Rick says around the fingers, and he sounds so fucking docile, he's such a lying bag of shit that Vyvyan can barely stand it. He's just tired, he's so tired. His limbs feel heavy, knee jammed in between Rick's thighs, chest slowly drooping in to touch as his weight wavers.

'I'll kill you,' he says near Rick's jaw, shifting up slightly.

'You can,' Rick says in a rush. 'I don't mind.'

Vyvan's fingers are still pushing on his tongue, and it's so warm that it's sending Vyvyan to sleep against him.

'If I kill you?'

'No. If you…'

Vyvyan's head snaps into focus and he becomes aware of his hand, his knee, his thick breathing onto Rick's neck and slow movements. He pushes himself back abruptly and his weight wavers again.

'No.' He shakes his head aggressively, rubbing at his eyes. 'God, no.'

'I mean, but…' Rick's hands come up, settling briefly on Vyvyan's shoulders and leaving as quickly as they came. 'I want,' he says, swallowing around the word, and it echoes in Vyvyan's ears.

I want, I want, and Rick is watching him, mouth still open, saliva on his chin from where Vyvyan's fingers had dragged over it.

'No,' Vyvyan grits out with the greatest resolve he muster.

Rick's breathing is coming out unsteady, loud in the sudden silence. He licks down at the spit on his chin.

'Okay,' Rick says quietly.

It feels.

So.

Good.

'Yeah,' Vyvyan says, as a statement because he can't bring himself to pose it as a question. Because he needs to make sure but he can't ask.

'Yeah,' Rick responds, and that's enough. Vyv knows he's in pain, and Rick's teeth are gritted but his pupils are still blown, his eyes wide. His hands are moving over the duvet, gripping, because he'd demanded he be on his back, so he could see, and Vyvyan almost likes it like this, with Rick's scrawny legs around him, pale and tense. Rick's knuckles are going white and his chest is surging. It looks like he might hyperventilate.

'If it's too—'

'No,' Rick cuts him off. Vyvyan thinks about telling him to breathe. Thinks about maybe touching his face. Thinks about the line of Rick's sternum and tries to count the ribs. 'Can I hold your shoulder?'

'Yeah. You don't have to ask. It's fine… you can…' Vyvyan groans and braces himself a bit better on one arm. With the other he guides Rick's hand to his chest, then up to his shoulder. 'Whatever you want,' Vyvyan breathes. 'Anything.'

Rick digs his fingers in, skin catching underneath his nails. With his other hand, he touches Vyvyan's stomach, taut, moving. Vyvyan presses his palm to Rick's ribs in return, counting over the costae verae, the spuriae, the fluctuantes, such a thin piece of skin separating Vyvyan's fingers from them.

Rick's hand moves up to meet his other, running over Vyvyan's trapezius, pressing strongly, and Vyvyan can feel it in his throat. He swallows and the hand moves again, down to his sternocleidomastoid, above his clavicle.

'I can remember,' Vyvyan says and he pushes harder. Rick makes a non-committal noise. The vastus muscles in his thighs are gripping tight, the lateralis and intermedius holding Vyvyan in and he grins. 'The muscles, I can remember them.'

'Great,' Rick says, and the air leaves his lungs abruptly when Vyvyan takes him hand.

Rick's thumbs come together at Vyvyan's throat, almost forming a full circle, and Vyvyan feels like he's choking. He's not sure he's ever been so overwhelmed with joy.

It all crashes down on him afterward. The elation flees almost immediately and Vyvyan feels drained and guilty. He looks down at his palm and thinks he's going to be ill.

Rick is breathing somewhere behind him, and the sound makes Vyvyan's blood pump hot through his ears, a thinly repressed rage seeping through his bones.

'We can't do that again.'

'Just wash it off,' Rick says tiredly.

'No.' Vyvyan holds his hand away from himself. He stares down at his bare feet, curling his toes against the wooden floor. 'You have to get out. Now.'

'But—'

'Now.' Vyvyan wants to push him, kick him and grab under his throat, pressing on the jugular until the blood rushes up and Vyvyan can feel the heat radiating from it. He can't. He can't bring himself to touch him. He can't even bring himself to look. 'Get out.'

'Okay,' Rick says quickly. Vyvyan listens to him moving, picking things up, 'I'm not—' Rick says when he's near the door, and stammers. 'I'm not sorry,' he says.

Vyvyan sits until his shoulders begin to shake from the cold, then he wipes his hand roughly against the sheets, piles the blankets up, and sets fire to them.

He's fully dressed and with a carefully constructed smirk on his face when Neil bursts in to inform him that his room's on fire.

Vyvyan doesn't go out of his way to avoid Rick, but he's built up an air of disregard. He's correcting his karma, calming himself in Rick's presence, minimising his input into conversations when he's around. He had thought it might throw Rick off, but Rick just develops some form of fixation.

He's suddenly always there. Lurking. He does it in purpose, eventually doing everything in his power to rile Vyvyan up. He insults him and undermines him, pinches the back of his neck when he's trying to watch the television, flicks Vyvyan's forehead start when he gets close enough. He pushes the papers around on Vyvyan's desk and sings Cliff Richard loudly at his door when he's trying to sleep and he spits in Vyvyan's tea, a huge gob that dribbles down his chin into the waiting cup.

Vyvyan does his best not to react. He curls his hands into fists until the skin is tight and aching and closes his eyes. He spends more time at the library than ever before, listening to his tapes and falling asleep between the aisles. He loses track of time, of when he last ate. In his disorientation, he loses a part of who he is, unsure how to act around Rick when he knows that it's violence the sissy prat is looking for.

The lads notice. Neil tries to teach him some girlie breathing exercises that Vyvyan ends up doing at night time, feeling like a twat, but relieved that his chest is relaxing in increments. Mike asks him what's up and he just says lowly that he's turned a new leaf. Mike shrugs and mentions something about serotonin levels.

It's fine for a while, Vyvyan's passivity seems to amuse Rick, but it carries on, and Vyvyan begins to spend more and more time away from the house. Rick's getting angry. He's always been a self-obsessed twat, but Vyvyan supposes that even when he was beating the shit out of Rick, he was at least paying attention to him. Indifference, Rick can't seem to stand. He's frustrated and tense and snaps at everyone, visibly dispirited, and Vyvyan doesn't know if this fact gives him some off-hand sense of pleasure or not.

'Where is SPG?' Vyvyan roars. Rick appears at the top of the stairs, looking smug.

'What was that, Vyvyan?'

'You smarmy insufferable ponce, you give him back.'

Vyvyan's already stalking up the stairs, but Rick raises an eyebrow and says a decisive, 'or what?' anyway.

Vyvyan grabs him by the collar, pushing him back and against the wall. The force hoists Rick up a few inches, until his pointed shoes can't quite touch the floor. The angle Vyvyan is leaning at, his weight securing his arms against Rick's chest, fists up under Rick's chin, holds Rick in place.

Rick's breathing becomes abruptly laboured, but he doesn't try to detach Vyvyan's fingers from his collar. He reaches out, instead, and settles his hand firmly on Vyvyan's shoulder. His fingernail brushes the skin on Vyvyan's neck.

'Don't, Vyvyan says, and drops Rick when the sensory memory runs up his spine. Rick's knees buckle and he curses, sprawled by Vyvyan's feet. He's looking up, chest heaving as he catches his breath.

'You said—' Rick chokes out.

Vyvyan clutches at his tri-hawk. 'Give him back.' He starts back toward the stairs.

'Just hit me,' Rick calls after him. 'Just put it back to normal. Like it was before. Anything, Vyvyan!'

'But we're all virgins, anyway,' Neil drones.

'That's is a dirty lie,' Mike says loudly, newspaper crumpling down in front of him.

'I'm not a virgin,' Rick says, and when Vyvyan's head whips up, he's staring directly at him.

'Pull the other one,' Mike laughs.

'No, I mean it.' Rick shrugs and looks down at his cereal. He's been pushing the same four cornflakes around for a good ten minutes, not that Vyvyan's been paying attention. He lifts one idly to his mouth and crunches down on it. 'It was a recent development.'

Neil sits slowly, eyes wide. 'You didn't tell us this, Rick.'

'Well I'm not likely to march on in here and say, listen, hippy, I've just popped my cherry and don't you forget it, now, am I?'

'No, but—'

'There you are, then. And I'd rather not talk about it, if you please.'

'Hang on, hang on.' Mike puts his hands down flat on the table. 'You're going to give us no details and expect us to believe this poppycock?'

Rick shrugs again. 'Believe what you like, Michael, but I did.' He crunched on another cornflake.

'I think he's serious,' Neil says. Mike whips his head around to stare at Vyvyan.

'And Vyv? What do you think about this?'

Vyvyan can see Rick in his peripherals, watching carefully.

'I don't know, Mike.'

'Are you all right? You're not sporting your usual bloodthirsty appetite today.'

'I'm just…' Vyvyan gets to his feet. 'Studying. The exam's coming up.'

'That's no reason to study,' Mike says.

'Well,' Neil starts up again. 'Some of us are virgins. I mean, not necessarily me, you know, but like, some of us could be.'

Vyvyan catches Rick as he's about to leave the house, pulls him by the wrist to the basement door. Rick complains and Vyvyan shoves him in, closing the door behind them.

'Stop,' Vyvyan says.

'Stop what. I did have somewhere to be, you know.'

'Stop being a cocky prick.'

Rick lowers his head slightly, licking his lips.

'What do I have to be cocky about?'

'About…' Vyvyan can feel his breathing speeding up, and he feels wrong-footed all of a sudden. 'You're… You're maddening.'

'Am I?' Rick asks and steps forward. Vyvyan pushes him back but Rick's grip on his jacket pulls him along. 'I don't know what you want.' The smile falls from Rick's face. 'I be nice to you, I be horrid, I just can't figure you out. I can't figure out what you want from me.'

'I don't want anything from you,' Vyvyan says lowly, and moves to pull Rick's hand away but Rick settles his other atop it, holding the three of them against Vyvyan's chest.

'I don't know what to do to make you want me,' Rick enunciates slowly. 'Again,' he adds.

'I never wanted you to begin with.'

'I think you did.' Rick pushes his thumb into Vyvyan's knuckles. Vyvyan's not sure what it's meant to achieve but it makes him acutely aware of Rick's body. 'I think you still do.'

He grabs at Vyvyan's throat, pressing his nails in as deep as he can and pulling. A heat flares up and Vyvyan can't tell if it's the blood or the pain but when his senses snap back in he can feel Rick's mouth at his, not quite touching, but there.

'Fuck,' Vyvyan croaks, and pushes his hand up between them to wipe at his neck. It comes away wet and he smudges it over Rick's face, gripping his chin and pressing his mouth to Rick's. He's got Rick's pigtails locked between the fingers of his other hand and he uses it to push him closer, to get deeper. He's biting and he can't stop, caught in a heady rush, the taste of iron in his throat.

Rick grabs the elbow between them and Vyvyan's not sure if it's meant as a hint or not but he lets it drop, anyway, pushes his palm against Rick's denims and rubs. Rick huffs and he's stopped kissing but that's all right, because he's still responding and Vyvyan, he— he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. He just wanted to tell Rick to back off and be on his way but his anger feels so strong and his blood is running so hot.

He bites down again, hard, and Rick keens. He gets Rick's flies undone with one hand while the other is still gripping those fucking pigtails, pulling Rick's head back at an awkward angle and he hopes it hurts.

'You want to know what it's like,' Vyvyan says under his breath. 'I'll show you. Then fuck off.'

He tugs Rick at a steady pace and breathes in all his air until he's sure Rick must be hardly able to breathe. He knows when it's accumulated this time, knows Rick's twitch, the spasm of his fingers, and he spins him roughly when Rick comes, pushes him against the wall and tells himself to calm down.

'Now you know,' he says, and stalks out, breaking into a sprint past the front door.

He goes to the pub where the bartender asks him about the blood on his hand and his mouth and he tells him to shut up before he fucking finds out.

He's utterly pissed when he gets home and Rick watches him from the couch, smirking. Fucking smirking.

'Good show, was it?' Vyvyan says, with a mock bow. 'Glad to be of service to you.'

'Settle down, Vyvyan,' Rick says calmly.

'Fuck off, you fucking wanker. I fucking hate you. Why don't you… Why don't you just…' He steadies himself on the bannister. 'Correct all my spelling,' he spits.

'Okay,' Rick says. 'I will.'

'Yeah, all right.' Vyvyan nods and all the fight goes out of him. He stumbles upstairs and falls on his bed, fast asleep before he even remembers he was going to have a wank.

Neil is pottering about the kitchen, returning periodically to the stove where he's stirring something. He'd told Vyvyan it was oats, but he's said that in the past and it's turned out to be cardboard or paper or, on one occasion, PVA glue. Vyvyan's been watching with his head in his hands, trying to soothe the throbbing in his head.

'Neil,' he says quietly. Neil's head twists around and he seems so suddenly receptive that Vyvyan almost wishes he didn't say anything. 'Can you help me.'

Neil's mouth opens, closes, and opens again.

'Yeah, Vyvyan. Yeah, of course. What is it? Wait, this isn't a trick, is it? This isn't like last time when I had to be the piñata for that birthday party you were throwing because I didn't even see anyone else there but you and I know it wasn't your birthday because I know when all of your birthdays are because you're my friends and I have it written down on my calendar and I bet you don't even know when mine is because—'

'Neil,' Vyvyan says. He rubs his fingertips against his temples, either side of his forehead stars. 'Can you read this for me. Out loud.'

'Okay.' Neil sits across from him, taking the paper and beginning in a slow drawl. It usually wears on Vyvyan's adrenaline, but he's finding it almost soothing today. Almost. 'Do you actually understand all this?' Neil asks when the page stops mid-sentence. He sounds in awe, although he does over most things.

'Not really.'

'I think I get it, though, because—' Neil springs to his feet, hunting around for the salt and pepper shakers and some discarded cutlery. 'I can show you, if you'd like.'

'Go on, then,' Vyvyan sighs. He glances at his watch, noting that both hands are nearing the top, which means lunch. He knows that much.

'Right, so,' Neil begins, and starts to narrate his movements of the cutlery. Vyvyan is surprised to find it makes sense, even with Neil's awful mispronunciations and nicknames of the Latin terms he'd forgotten. 'Like, do you get it?'

'You really are a modern day genius, you know, Neil.'

Neil leans back a bit, a slow smile spreading over his face. 'Am I?'

'No.' Vyvyan picks up the fork and stabs it into the table. 'That was good, though,' he manages to say, with difficulty. He can't quite get the thank you out of his mouth. 'Is lunch ready?' he says instead.

'Yeah! Are you going to eat it?'

Vyvyan shrugs. 'I'm game if you are.'

'Yeah, yeah. It'll be like, bonding time, right?'

'Sure.'

'Golly.' Neil smiles at him. Behind him, on the stove, the saucepan begins to rattle and something grey oozes over the top. 'Golly,' Neil says again, getting to his feet. 'This is nice, isn't it?'

Vyvyan rests his head against the table and groans.

'Here.' Rick passes over the paper to Vyvyan. 'I took it. I've, um… corrected the spelling. Like you asked.'

'Ponce,' Vyvyan says, without any real heart. The page looks cleaner, but it still swarms when Vyvyan tries to read it. He sets it down on the desk, looks over the organised mess, books and pencils and a world so foreign to him not long along. So out of comprehensive read in his childhood. In his fucking childhood.

Rick is about to leave when Vyvyan speaks, rubbing at his eyebrow, not quite sure where the words are coming from.

'My mum always called me stupid. She said I either did it on purpose or I was a complete dunce. I thought I was, for all those years.'

He waits out the silence, and then turns his head when it presses in too tightly. Rick is watching him, face relaxed and neutral.

'I don't care, though,' Vyvyan says. He wishes Rick would touch him. Or just… say something.

'It's called dyslexia.'

Rick waits for Vyvyan's nod, and quietly leaves the room.

'My turn, my turn!'

Rick is leaning over the back of the couch, scanning over the textbook laid out on Mike's lap.

'Oh, I've got one!'

He rounds the couch, situating himself squarely in front of them. Two fingers rise to his mouth and he mimes smoking, smacking his lips on the exhale.

'Oh my,' he says. 'I smoke thirty packs a day and I've got diabetes and my blood pressure is just through the roof.'

Vyvyan folds his hands behind his head and observes. This has been going on for near an hour now, and they've progressed into the more complicated regions of the book. It's the weirdest game of charades Vyvyan's ever experienced.

Rick clutches his side suddenly and keels over, crying out. 'Oh, it hurts, it hurts!' He gestures toward Vyvyan.

'I hope you're not pretending to have a heart attack,' Vyvyan sighs. Rick glares at him.

'No, spotty, but I'm ruddy well close to it. My lifestyle choices have overwhelmed me and now my chances of living out a long, happy life are getting slimmer by the second. Help me, doctor!'

Vyvyan leans forward, linking his fingers together. 'Here's what I'm going to do, Rick. I'm gonna perform a coronary artery bypass on you. First, I'm going to cut open your leg and take out the saphenous vein and strip the valves from it. Then I'm gonna stitch that up, crack open your chest, stop that prissy little heart of yours and graft a bypass on your coronary artery.'

'Bypass…' Neil murmurs.

Vyvyan swipes his hand up and down.

'This is the artery. I'm going to take the new one and graft it onto the bottom and the top, so the blood can flow through there instead and relieve the pressure.'

'Wait just a second.' Rick shakes his finger at Vyvyan, stern frown on his face. 'You mean you are just going to take some of my leg away and leave it? How will I ever walk again? You are so selfish, Vyvyan!'

'Steady on,' Vyvyan says. 'Haven't you ever heard of vasculogenesis, stupid? Your leg will grow new tributary vessels to replace the vein. This is simple stuff, Rick.'

Mike stands up, suddenly, clapping Vyvyan on the shoulder.

'Brace yourself, lads,' he proclaims to the room. 'This boy is ready.'

Rick appears at the doorway, arms crossed tightly high up on his chest. He's brimming with tension, Vyvyan can see it in his stance.

'Good luck,' He says quietly. Vyvyan spins in his chair and squints.

'You look nervous.'

'No need to sound so accusing, Vyvyan. I'm nervous on your behalf, you prat.' Rick cautiously enters the room and sits on the bed. His shoulders relax slightly.

'Oh.' Vyvyan is on the verge of biting back a scathing remark, but he's in a good headspace and he wants to keep himself in it. Calm. Collected. So fucking close to being able to cut up a body.

'Do you know everything?' Rick's voice sounds slightly breathy, and Vyvyan thinks he may not have been lying after all. He may be legitimately nervous.

'Yeah.'

'Can you show me? For my peace of mind.'

Vyvyan's eyebrows knit together and he gives Rick an incredulous look, but he comes to stand in front of him, anyway. He takes Rick's arm, turning it and pressing his finger to the pale middle. 'These are your extensor carpi muscles, your flexor carpi, your brachiordialis just up here.' He traces his finger upward. Rick watches, breathing through his nose.

Vyvyan works his way up, tapping over Rick's shoulders, around his neck, touching Rick's Adam's apple and feeling him swallow. 'Laryngeal prominence,' Vyvyan murmurs.

You're going to pass,' Rick says softly.

'Yeah, I know.' Vyvyan sort of half-smiles. Rick's got his head tilted up toward him and Vyvyan can see that his skin is starting to clear up, and his hair's been washed. He might even become a proper adult someday. Imagine that, Mister Pratt, all grown up. Suits that fit and hair combed to the side. Vyvyan wonders if he'll ever turn out like that. It all seems so close, suddenly.

Rick is blinking slowly at him. Not yelling, not frowning, not spouting girlie tears, just sitting. Sitting and blinking and waiting. Waiting for… For Vyvyan to walk back into this room this afternoon and say he did it, he passed, he's going to be a surgeon. It's written all over Rick's something, something like belief. Something like…

Vyvyan exhales and the force of it lifts Rick's fringe slightly from his head.

'You really think so, don't you?' he asks. Rick nods, like it's nothing, like it's a stupid question because of course he does. Of course he does.

Christ, of course he does.

And in his head, his mother says, why must you be like this, Vyvyan? She says, you're stupid and I love you and you've got the devil in you and it creeps over Vyvyan's organs and settles in his chest and waits, for years and years and years. You've got the devil in you. And at school they made him write it down, in classes about a religion that no one adhered to, that they memorised in convenience and discarded just as quickly. The Lord tests the righteous, but the wicked and the one who loves violence His soul hates. Again, Vyvyan, write it again. What's wrong with you, boy? Can't you see it? Write it, write it, you wicked, blasphemous boy. And his mother, at home, not looking at him, smoking out the window and shaking her head like a holy pretender, saying, 'oh, I do wish you'd try, Vyvyan,' and asking why, why, why.

'Yes,' Rick says, and it comes out abruptly loud in the quiet space of Vyvyan's room. Vyvyan's shoulders twitch. 'You'll do fine.'

Vyvyan nods rapidly, and he wants to touch Rick's face, he wants to touch it so badly. And Rick would let him. When did Rick start letting him do things.

'I have to go,' Vyvyan says, and then, 'don't— you're— I— you're okay.'

A smile spreads on Rick's face, wide, showing his teeth.

'Yeah,' he says.

He's allowed one hour for multiple choice and two for short answers. He tries to make his writing legible, spells as best he can, only thinks of one word at a time so he can see what he's doing.

He thinks of the stories that Mike told him, hypothetical situations based on different diseases. He thinks of the dead bird he'd found once with embossed bones and remembers listening to the tape, trying to find out what caused the abnormality. He thinks of Neil and his pepper shaker, his nicknames for the Latin terms. He shifts through his catalogue of every bone and muscle in the body, the information flowing in a way he never expected of himself. He thinks of Rick's hands touching his throat.

Thinks of Rick's hands.

Thinks of Rick.

'Fuck,' Vyvyan says. The front door is still open behind him, spilling light up the stairs. Rick trips on the last one, but Vyvyan's grip on his jacket keeps him upright. Vyvyan walks him backward until they're at Rick's room. His foot comes down on the record player and something snaps off, catching beneath Vyvyan's sole. Rick doesn't look down.

'Did you pass?' he asks.

'I'm gonna do it properly,' Vyvyan says, spreads his hand across the back of Rick's head and pulls him in. Rick is receptive, but tense, standing stiff. Vyvyan lifts at his elbow until Rick's sweaty palm settles against his arm. Rick is salivating, trying to swallow. He's nervous, Vyvyan thinks, and moves to mouth at the underside of Rick's chin.

'Vyvyan, did you pass?'

'Yeah,' Vyvyan breathes. 'I think so.' Something jolts up his spine, making his nerve endings ripple. 'I'll show you. I'll show you properly. Yeah?'

'You mean?' Rick says, and Vyvyan waits for the next word before he realises it's a question.

'I'll jerk you off. Not in a gay way.'

'No, of course not.' Rick swallows against Vyvyan's mouth. 'Okay.'

Vyvyan's already got Rick's trousers down partway, one of his hands holding Rick's waist beneath his shirt. He tugs him out, pulling with less aggression this time, thinking about it. Rick swallows at every odd interval but Vyvyan still ends up with half of Rick's saliva in his mouth. He doesn't care, he likes it. He's going to be a surgeon. He's going to kiss Rick. Anything could happen, on this day.

'I can,' Rick is mumbling. 'Too. For you.' He's got his hands on Vyvyan's belt but they're not getting far. Vyvyan unhooks it with one hand, like he learnt to do when he was drunk and didn't want to wake up through the night losing blood circulation to his legs.

Rick tries to mimic his movement but he's slower and sporadic, constantly stopping to readjust his grip. It's novice and it's heaven. When Rick comes, Vyvyan pushes off his half-hearted hold and wipes his hand across Rick's trousers under the guise of helping them back up. He does his own denims back up, trying not to think about it too much, trying to brush off the phantom memories of hatred and shame. He doesn't feel that. He doesn't. He wants it.

He flops onto his back on Rick's bed, folding his arms behind his head.

'You don't want me to—'

'I really think I passed,' Vyvyan says, to change the subject.

'I'm happy for you.' Rick comes to sit by his feet, back against the wall and eyes closed. 'You probably think I'm not, but I am.'

'Yeah.' Vyvyan looks over at the window, feeling his heart beat erratically in his chest as his lungs signal to him to breathe more. 'I think you're happy. I think I'm happy.'

Rick exhales through his nose. It's heavy and consistent enough that after a while, Vyvyan thinks he may be dozing. Then he asks softly, 'Did you tell them?'

'I don't see why they'd believe me.'

'They test you for it. They'll know.'

'Will they.' Vyvyan lets his eyes close before the afternoon sun can drop into the window's range and blind him. He feels Rick's hand come to rest on his bent knee, and hums lightly.