Brendan was sleeping.

It didn't feel right though, somehow. He was an articulate man but the words he wanted were floating away from him like bubbles, bursting into nothing when he reached for them.

Concentrate.

Unnatural. Abnormal.

The words made him itchy: maybe they weren't quite the ones he was after, but they'd do until he was himself again.

His body felt heavy but it wasn't like when he'd had a shedload of whiskey, which was how he usually seemed to get himself to sleep lately. This heaviness wasn't just in him, but around him too. It pressed up from beneath him, and down on him like a great pile of blankets smothering every bit of him. He wondered if he was dead, although there was no sign of the fiery furnaces he'd been shit-scared of as a kid. There was air around him, cool, pleasant, and he made himself think about his breathing. It was slow and shallow, but it was happening alright. Not dead then.

He'd seen someone who was dead though. Last night was it? He wasn't sure how long he'd been asleep. He'd felt a kind of flush of shock at first, then he rationalised it: it wasn't a reunion, it was a memory.

Vincent.

Vincent standing there in nothing but a T-shirt, laughing, and Brendan laughing back at him. The T-shirt was Brendan's and it was comically big on the younger man's slight body. He'd had to borrow it because his own shirt had got torn: they'd heard one of the buttons ricochet off a lamp as they'd fallen onto the bed, hungry for each other. Coulda been made for me, Vincent had said, holding the T-shirt out at the sides and posing. Coulda been made for two of you, Brendan had smiled, and went to him and felt the hot skin of his flanks and breathed in his scent as he held him. This was what he wanted in this moment, he wanted to hold Vincent for a while, show him that this meant something. But he couldn't. Men who had sex with men were... Brendan couldn't finish the thought, so instead he had kissed him roughly, and stripped him again, and fucked him. From behind this time, so he wouldn't see the love in the lad's eyes. He had gone in hard and fast, biting down on Vincent's shoulder until it bled, so when he cried out neither man knew where the line between pleasure and pain had been drawn.

Brendan had pretended to fall asleep then, listening to Vincent quietly dressing. He heard him whisper See you at work Bren, and then to Brendan's astonishment he felt a soft kiss on his mouth. Then he heard him leave.

Brendan knew he had hurt him, but at least he'd kept him there a little longer.

:::::::

Not long after that, Brendan had quit his job running the club in Liverpool. He couldn't ignore any longer the fact that Vincent had started to love him, for fuck's sake, and what's more he had actually said it to Brendan. Brendan had felt a sensation he couldn't put a name to, and it freaked him, and he'd thrown a punch that sent his lover reeling. The look of fear and disappointment on Vincent's face stayed with him. Haunted him. Besides, that tricky bastard Houston who owned the club, had started giving him funny looks and making arch comments that made Brendan's gut convulse with a kind of terror.

Brendan had gone then, back to Belfast. He and Eileen were still together then, even though he'd hardly been home since he'd got the Liverpool job. When he arrived this time it was Padraig's birthday, and when Eileen let him in there was a party going on with their two boys and a few of their friends. There was a home-made banner on the wall: HAPPY BIRTHDAY PADDY. Brendan looked at Eileen, his eyes shining with anger and hurt. Since when's his name been Paddy? Eileen rolled her eyes. No-one calls him Padraig now Brendan, we all call him Paddy. You'd know that if you were here once in a while.

He fought away his temper because he hadn't even spoken to his boys yet and they were both looking at him. He knelt on the floor and gave Declan a couple of DVDs so he'd not feel left out, then held out his present to Padraig, who looked unsure. Christ, Brendan thought, he barely knows who I am. Padraig took the gift, shyly thanked his dad, and retreated to unwrap it. It was a racing car set. The child looked delighted and took it to show the other man in the room, whom Brendan had hardly registered.

It was Eileen's nephew Macca. Not much to look at but a nice enough fella: he had something about him. He was a homosexual, Brendan knew that, but he wasn't one of those that flaunted it; he just seemed to accept that he was what he was and got on with it. Brendan remembered Eileen telling him about when she had found out that Macca was gay. She'd been upset, worried for the lad; wished he wasn't what he said he was. But then she'd found herself defending him when she heard comments in the street, and giving the local gossips a piece of her mind when they murmured the word queer (and worse.)

I'll call you Padraig, Macca said at the party, so you won't forget it when your daddy's away.

Brendan's instinct was to turn on him for his presumption, but he held back when he realised with a jolt that Macca was being kind, that he was taking his side.

:::::::

Other recollections formed in Brendan's mind. The stale smell of cigarettes when his dad bent to kiss him goodbye. The money his dad pressed into his hand or tucked into his shirt whenever they happened across each other in the years after Brendan and his mam had followed the old man from Dublin to Belfast. The back of his dad's hand when Brendan told him where to stick his guilt money.

And he remembered school, where he'd been teased for his accent and at first had tried to change it, to blend in; but then when the mocking continued he'd thought fuck them and made a conscious effort to sound like what he was, a Dubliner. He'd never fitted in at school anyway. Everyone else seemed to have hundreds of siblings: they were Catholics, most of them. Brendan was too, and always would be in his own fashion, even though he felt that their disapproval of him and his fractured family was ever-present. His only siblings were the kids his dad had with that other woman, and his mam was dead against his getting to know them, even though he felt the lack. He did manage to create a relationship with them over time, but it was furtively done, behind his mother's back.

He'd left school as soon as he could but he'd educated himself, reading a lot of books on the quiet. Once, he had recognised himself in a book on psychology: he was a Controlling Personality. But when he got to the bit where it was suggested that this was often 'a mask for insecurity and fear of the self,' he'd stopped. He didn't even take it back to the library, but chucked it in a skip.

:::::::

Then he remembered Stephen. A confusion of images rushed at him: what he'd been through with this young man, and for him. What he'd done to him, the good and the bad. The intensity.

Stephen's beauty.

How Brendan had pushed him away, because he couldn't stomach his own nature and because he feared for him, feared for the safety of the man he... What? Loved? Someone had asked Brendan once if he loved Stephen and he had barely even understood the question. But now that he'd been lying here, in some strange way reviewing his life, his mistakes, his losses, he saw with sudden clarity that this might be one last chance to make amends, to take courage and face a different kind of future.

Perhaps he was coming round. The atmosphere around him felt somewhat lighter and he felt new sensations in his body. His back ached. Was he injured? No, it was surely just from lying down for so long. He remembered being in a fight, but that was nothing, he felt sure he had come through it more or less intact.

The ache in his back was joined by other feelings. His head hurt and he felt a tightness around it which he guessed must be a bandage. His left hand felt sore and constrained: another bandage, he judged, holding a needle in place. So he was on a drip. He inhaled. Definitely in hospital, he could smell disinfectant and floor polish.

Someone's hand was on his right forearm, the fingers holding him firmly but gently, the thumb stroking, stroking. And there was a voice.

Stephen.

Oh God. I don't even know if there is a God, but if there is, please let Brendan wake up. Make him be okay. I'm sorry for what I did, I don't know why I... I'll do anything you want.

What had Stephen done, that he needed to say sorry for? Brendan couldn't remember but had a vague, cold awareness that he didn't want to know. Not now.

I'll sacrifice anything you want, please, just don't let him die. If you let him wake up I promise I'll give him up for good and I'll leave, I'll go away.

Brendan fought with all of the strength he knew he once had, to get himself to the surface, to come back. He willed his eyes to open. Desperate to stop the boy making a bargain with God that neither of them would be able to live with, he spoke, his voice painful and low.

No Stephen. Don't go.