CHAPTER FOUR: Year 2015 – Doug
AN: Hey folks, I know this fic is pretty hard going, not many smiles so far… but I promise it is going somewhere, please hang in there! ;)
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"It's just, with the kids and all, Christmas is so busy…"
"Yeah, course."
"And there's the new deli. I mean, Christmas shoppers, they're the best customers you can get, aren't they? Wouldn't be a good start to go shutting up shop in the mentalist shopping week of the year, would it?"
"No, definitely."
"I mean, if I could, Doug, you know I would."
"Ste! It's fine, honestly. It was a stupid idea. The new deli, of course! You can't close it in Christmas week! And the kids, yeah."
"Doug, I'm sorry…"
"No, really. Don't worry. It's no problem."
"But…"
"Listen, Ste, I'm gonna have to go, okay? Leanne is decorating the deli for Christmas and if I don't stop her every inch of the ceiling is going to have mistletoe hanging from it."
"Well, okay, but maybe…"
"Leanne, not there! Sorry Ste, what was that? Listen, I really have to go, I'll call you later, okay? Leanne!"
Doug pressed a shaking finger to the keypad, deadening the call, and stared through the dark, empty shop to the sign he had swung around to say "CLOSED" before he made that call. Stupid idea. Stupid, stupid idea. He shook himself, trying to rid himself of the sound of that guilt-soaked voice as he pottered around, shutting things up for the day. So Ste wouldn't be visiting after all. So what? It was Christmas, for crying out loud! The whole village was in the festive spirit. Yesterday Tony Hutchinson had actually given out free a mince pie to anyone who bought an extra-large Mocha Frappachino in College Coffee! If that wasn't the modern day equivalent of "A Christmas Carol", Doug didn't know what was. What did it matter whether Ste Hay bothered to call down to Hollyoaks or not? He stamped his feet against the biting cold as he locked up the aqua-blue door of the little shop that he now ran on his own, purposely forbidding himself from thinking back to the first day he had pushed the brass key into this keyhole, the man next to him practically levitating with excitement. Why would anyone want a visit from their ex in the middle of all this festive cheer?
"Hey, watch where you're going!" a voice barked as Doug turned from the door directly into a moving body.
"Sorry, I didn't see…" the words died on his lips as he saw who he was apologising to. His mouth hardened.
"Well next time, maybe you should pay more attention," Joel Dexter breathed, pushing his nose right up against Doug's so he could feel the words on his face as well as hear them. "Douglas."
Maybe you shouldn't dress like someone from the goddamn Matrix and I might spot you in time, Doug wanted to shout in his face, but he didn't. He nodded, morosely, and eventually the hot breath spilling onto his skin moved away, the silently screaming eyes looked elsewhere. Doug watched him saunter over to the club and disappear into its depths with a clang of the metal doors. Like a goddamn fucking reincarnation.
Doug kicked roughly at the aqua-blue door that he had just locked.
That's why it all started to go wrong. Joel fucking Dexter. Doug had actually been glad when he returned to Hollyoaks four months ago. Not at first, obviously. At first, he couldn't care less about the stupid Scottish kid who'd followed Brendan Brady around like a bad smell a few years ago. Totally out of the realm of Doug's existence, nothing but a figure that passed by the deli window from time to time, occasionally wrapped around the peroxide, heel-clacking figure of Theresa McQueen. But his indifference had vanished three days after the Scotsman's reappearance when Cheryl Brady tumbled into their haven.
"Hi boys!" Cheryl had cooed, swinging open the door to the deli and spilling inside, shopping bags dripping from her arms.
"Hi Cheryl!" Ste had cooed back, matching the outrageous flirtation in her voice.
Doug laughed. They entertained them, the pair of them. The way they would bend their heads together, little and large, and gossip over the most mundane goings-on like old women at the bus stop. The way they would cackle raucously at each other's dirty jokes. Seeing them like that, it was easy to forget the awful six months when Ste's face paled every time he saw her, mouth clamping shut as if he was forcing himself not to spew. It had been long, the journey back to normality. Full days had passed when Doug believed that Ste's eyes would never be anything but faraway and deadened, that his touch would never be anything but terrified and desperate. Days when he believed that Ste and Cheryl's easy friendship was gone for good. But time healed, Doug had found, and slowly Ste could laugh again. Slowly, Doug didn't have to call his name a second time to pull him out of reverie and into present day. Slowly, cautiously, he and Cheryl smiled at each other again, then giggled at a clever quip, then gasped over a juicy piece of village scandal. That day when Cheryl breezed into their little sanctuary, Doug knew that Ste was almost whole again. And those scattered little moments when Doug happened upon him by chance, dead eyes back again and needing Doug to call repeatedly before he heard his voice, they would disappear forever, some day. Perhaps not soon, but some day. Doug would wait.
"Have I got a treat in store for you!" she squealed.
"Oh yeah?" Ste raised an eyebrow in mock-suspicion. "D'ya think we should be scared, Doug?"
"Definitely," Doug had nodded.
"Well, it's only your favourite events manager is throwing the most outrageously hands-down-fabulous party of the year! Tonight!"
"Really? Where?" Ste asked, seemingly enthusiastic but Doug could detect the hint of reluctance. Ste wasn't really into going out. Not anymore. Part of getting older, Doug supposed, though the thought of getting trashed on some complimentary cocktails still held a lot of appeal for him. Ste was obviously keen not to burst his friend's bubble, though. "What you got planned, male strippers and a beer fountain?"
"Trust me, love, if I had my way," Cheryl sighed. "But sadly, the party is for Joel, and for some reason he felt he needed to specifically tell me that he didn't want the place full of 'some greased-up chippendales'!"
"For Joel?!" Ste's lack of enthusiasm was less well hidden now. His dislike of the barman seemed to be rooted in some old run-in that Doug had a vague memory of hearing about. Nothing that really warranted the lifelong grudge Ste was determined to harbour against him. But that was the ridiculous beauty of Ste – the completely arbitrary, illogical opinions he clung to with an unbridled passion. "What ya throwing a party for 'im for?"
"To celebrating him and Theresa coming home!" Cheryl defended, still good-humoured. "And to celebrate him becoming sole owner of the club!"
"Woah! Sole owner?" Doug felt his heartbeat kick up a tiny notch. Did this mean what he thought? "How did that happen?"
"Well it seemed stupid for me to hang on to two per cent of the place when he owns ninety-eight per cent of it," Cheryl shrugged, looking back at Doug. She grinned suddenly. "Hey, don't worry, I made him promise that it'll still be 'ChezChez' – my name will live on!"
He owns ninety-eight per cent of it. Doug's mind was turning it over. Brendan had sold Joel his half. His last link to Hollyoaks.
Brendan Brady was gone for good. Erased. Forever.
"Cheryl, you better have some really camp cocktails lined up, because Ste and I will definitely be at that party," he beamed at the bouncing blonde before him.
Maybe if he hadn't been so wrapped up in his own elation, he would have registered his boyfriend's sudden silence. Maybe he would have turned around and examined his face and seen the screaming abyss that he was falling into at that moment. But it was a flicker, gone before a second hand ticked past on the clock. When Doug turned around, Ste was grinning impishly back at him.
He waited a few weeks before he did it. To make it less obvious to Ste, maybe. Or maybe just to convince himself that he hadn't been waiting for that, for Brendan to finally be wiped away. Whatever the reason, three weeks passed between Cheryl's unconscious bombshell and Doug kneeling in front of Ste on the floor of the deli, exactly as he had three years ago almost to the day.
The plan had been born that night, in the hazy heat and fuzz of cocktail-induced drunkenness that made him stare at Ste's sculpted face, his familiar fidgety frame, his soft eyes and pink lips messy from the alcohol and filling Doug up with wonder and awe and affection. It was something that had been brushed aside when he came home to find Ste in that shrivelled up state, ragged nail-bitten fingers barely clinging to the ledge. Doug had done what was needed, had gently clung to his wrists to stop him from falling into the abyss, had slowly helped him climb his way back up. Whatever innocent promises and plans had been made in the weeks before were like forgotten ghosts or fairytales, meaningless and unimportant. As three years took Ste along the slow road back towards wholeness, Doug just walked alongside him, never pushing or hurrying, never trying to drag those ghosts and fairytales back into consciousness. But in the liquor-lazy ardour of ChezChez that night, Doug's heart told him it was time.
"You two seem to be getting on well," Joel had said to him that night when Ste went to the bathroom. Doug had been surprised. He and Joel had never really spoken much before.
"Yeah…" he slurred, hazily. A faint smile floated on his lips. "We are."
"I suppose that's good," Joel mused. There was something in the way he said it, something suggesting that he didn't think it was all that good at all, but Doug was too drunk to pinpoint it.
"Yeah, yeah it's good!" he agreed with the words spoken, ignoring the undertone that he couldn't place. He couldn't be bothered with hidden meanings tonight. He was fuzzy and hopeful and happy. "He's almost okay now, you know. We're going to be okay."
Joel sighed, heavy and tired and filled with something sad. Doug could see his eyes following Theresa from across the room. They were gentle when they looked at her, a momentary pause in the silent screaming that they seemed to be full of since he'd come back.
"That's good, too," he told Doug before he moved away. "One of them should be."
Of course, the conversation had slipped out of Doug's memory as soon as Ste's vivid face reappeared, cheeks flushed and eyes bright, shouting something in his ear about the row Mitzeee and Mercedes were having outside the girls' toilet. Doug was barely listening to the words because all he could hear was the almost-carefree, almost-happy, almost-normal voice bouncing over consonants and vowels. Almost okay.
Afterwards, the truth had crashed around him like a tidal wave.
"Will you marry me?" the red words beamed down from the wall behind the glass counter as he unveiled them dramatically three weeks later, laughing and bright, just like last time. Familiar and strange.
"So will you?" he'd asked, barely keeping the tremble of excitement from his voice as he squeezed the words out.
Ste's silence thrilled him for the first few seconds as he drank in the shock on the other man's face with delighted anticipation. The tidal wave started crashing about three seconds before Ste's mouth opened to answer.
"I love you, Doug, you know that I do," he mumbled, his shaking voice barely above a whisper, blue eyes sinking to the shiny sparkling floor. "But I can't promise forever."
Doug felt it suddenly. After three years, he had become numb to it, almost forgetting that it was there. But suddenly the ragged steel knife that sat in his gut, the one that had been lunged into him as he burst into that tiny flat to profess love and apologies and met the shrivelled up shell of the man he loved, the one who's intermittent little jabs he had ignored as he struggled to support the heavy weight of his friend, suddenly it twisted agony into him.
Almost okay. It meant not okay. Fleeting flashes of dead eyes and faraway mind showered his memory. Less frequent. Better hidden. Still there.
Ste was still speaking, floored eyes not seeing the silent gasp on Doug's face.
"You know I can't, Doug," he whispered, shame dribbling from his eyes in big wet tears and falling onto the untarnished floor beneath him. "Just in case."
Just in case.
Doug could feel a dull throb in his left foot now from where he had kicked against the aqua-blue door. Just in case. What a goddamn waste. Maybe if the memory of that hope – that excitement, pushing the little brass key into the lock the very first day – maybe if it didn't still flush his body with warmth like this then he wouldn't have tried so hard to pretend, cupping his hands around the empty air and telling himself that it hadn't leaked away. Maybe he would have been relieved that one of them had finally said it, that the ridiculous game was finished. Maybe the relief he had seen in Ste's face as he realised that he didn't need to pretend anymore wouldn't have hurt so much. Maybe he wouldn't be haunted by the sheer shitty honesty of those words: just in case.
He stamped his feet against the cold and the memory, trying to haul himself back to present day, to the icy footpaths and twinkling fairy-lights and the wafting chatter and music spilling from the Dog around the corner. He pulled his phone from his pocket, Ste's number still glaring up at him from the screen as the last number dialled. Firmly, he hit "Cancel". A few more taps of the keypad had him scrolling through his phonebook to find the number for the loud-mouthed gregarious Liverpudlian that Leanne had introduced him not-so-subtly to last week.
"Hey, Andy?" he said, pressing the phone up to his ear in the deserted street. "It's Doug – Doug Carter. Listen, looks like my friend won't be visiting this week after all, so if you still wanted to get that drink?"
What the hell did he have to lose?