Title: Cold
Author: rebecca thecountergoddess
Fandom: The Young Ones
Pairing: Rick/Vyvyan
Rating PG
Disclaimer: Not my boys. Unfortunately. Tragically. Devastatingly.
Summary: Why Vyvyan doesn't wear a winter coat.

Vyvyan Basterd doesn't feel cold. Minus five degrees centigrade outside, the night bus is ten minutes late and he's the only one of four people waiting under the overhang at the stop not wearing a coat. While his housemates burrow their hands further inside their pockets -- consumed with retaining warmth -- he keeps himself entertained by watching the cars tear past them on the road and daydreaming about pile-ups.

The last winter coat he remembers owning was when he was five years old: a short navy wool number with missing buttons. His mum used it to mop up the puke and piss that stained the floor of their flat after a night with one of her boyfriends. He couldn't recall another after that one -- he'd probably been deemed unworthy of the three quid it would cost at the thrift shop.

Rick slides next to him on the bench swathed in his tweed overcoat and fingerless gloves, all wrapped up and still shivering. Like the prissy, stuck up cunts from prep school who'd looked down on Vyvyan because his hair was never washed. Because his uniform was bought second-hand and frayed in places. Because his mum sent his tuition in weekly parcels of pooled stolen pence pieces and crumpled fivers, all for the sole purpose of keeping her young son as far away from her as possible for as long as possible. A few years later, those pence pieces were replaced by personal cheques from the DES and, sometimes, his social worker's pocketbook. This because it was easier to keep paying for a ward of the state to stay in school on holidays than it was to find a foster family that could handle ten-year-old Vyvyan and his volatile chemistry set. Twelve-year-old Vyvyan and his affection for explosives. Fifteen-year-old Vyvyan and his spiked hair and body piercings.

Typical that in all the cash that had been sent in his name over the years, not one of those fuckers had ever gotten around to buying him a winter coat. Now, he didn't need one. He'd adapted. There was probably some explanation for the phenomenon buried in one of his medical texts, but he'd never bothered to look. Vyvyan Basterd doesn't feel cold, because he's always cold. He sleeps in his clothes and boots, drinks enough lager to put down a small army, but he can never manage to get warm. Not that he even notices, really.

"Aren't you cold, Vyvyan?"

He looks over at the sociology student, arms wrapped around himself and practically bouncing on the bench. Normally pale and sallow, Rick's cheeks are blush pink with cold, his lips almost purple.

"No," he replies, turning his gaze down to the sidewalk, poking at a fish and chips wrapper with his boot. Minutes later, he glances over and finds a pair of blue eyes still staring at him, incredulous.

"What?"

"Well, don't you ever get cold? I mean, I don't even think I've ever seen you wear long--" the long fingers brushing his arm just below the sleeve of his t-shirt is startling. The tingle it sends up his shoulder and neck is disturbing. The pulse that swims through his brain at the sensation is enough to make him cuff the back of Rick's head hard. The current passes from his knuckles to his housemate's skull, knocking him to the pavement.

"I'm fine, Rick," he blurts out, staring down at his suprised housemate.

"All right," the trembling anarchist sighs, climbing back on to the bench several inches away from his housemate. Apart from sucking his bottom lip between his teeth, he seems relatively calm now, unaffected by the bitter cold that surrounds them. Unlike Vyvyan who is now hyperaware of both the cold and the warm body next to him. The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck are poker-straight. Every nerve ending sparking to life. Seventeen years of physical adaptation to environment gone to shit.

Puff wasn't satisfied until he'd ruined everything, was he? Sneering, Vyvyan kicks the wrapper into the path of a passing car.

Where the fuck's he supposed to get three quid for a bloody coat?