Archive of Our Own

—

Henry is used to nightmares. For years, they’ve been typical—having to play the organ for Sunday service starkers, realising at the end of term that he’d routinely forgotten to attend one of his classes and is terribly behind. But the tent introduces two decidedly new themes to his nightly repertoire: baking nightmares and sexuality crisis nightmares.

The first is perfectly understandable. He has dreams that he forgot to turn his oven on, or he left the flour out of his sponge batter, or his choux pastry didn’t rise, or his custard split, Prue Leith scraping the soggy bottom of his pie with a fork and pursing her mouth in that disappointed way she does. The scary vicar from his parish who once scolded him for not ironing his shirt properly (you look like someone tossed you in the spin cycle, boy, he’d said somberly) abruptly replaced with Paul Hollywood in a ruffled old-fashioned judge’s wig, pounding a gavel and saying underproved! He wakes regularly in a cold sweat, terrified something is burning.

But he supposes this turn of events is to be expected, given that he is an exceptionally anxious person in a baking competition. But the other nightmares…those are entirely unwarranted and all together unwelcome.

Well, perhaps not entirely unwarranted. Henry has long suspected that if he were to pause for three seconds and think about his romantic and/or sexual future, he might know, deep down, that a conventional marriage to a woman would not suit him. And it would not suit him for the same reasons he used to get weird tummy aches when looking at the packaging of his grandfather’s green Doan’s backache pillbox, which depicted a faded black-and-white photo of a handsome shirtless man facing away from the camera. Spending Easter Sunday at his nan’s house, he used to sneak off in his pinchy shoes and open the medicine cabinet just to look at this box of ‘80s painkillers and squirm around in shame. And he’s not an idiot, he could reasonably deduct what this meant about him, even at age ten. He just chose not to think about a future that did not suit him, or what an alternative to that unsuitable future might be. He focused on nicer things, like organs and baking and matching his ties to his dress shirts he now, after that memorable scolding, irons.

But then he goes on Bake Off, and everyone is gay. Sandy is a famous lesbian. Noel is…Noel, and Henry is not sure what that means, but he knows it’s not strictly heterosexual. Amelia identifies as “queer.” David is unmistakably, dazzlingly gay in a way that is glowy and spectacular, and he has a beautiful Bulgarian boyfriend he shows everyone pictures of, fawning without an ounce of shame.

Michael, too, is gay. More mistakably and less dazzlingly so, which makes him harder to look at for some reason. Perhaps it’s the same logic that makes horror movies scarier if the actors aren’t airbrushed Hollywood clones. Michael has a slight speech impediment and is always covered in batter and chocolate, and he cries every other time they film, so Henry prefers looking at David, instead, because he can without his eyes burning. It seems fine because David demands people look at him. Because he is handsome and glorious and wears rainbow vests with cheesy pride slogans that show off his exceptionally toned and tan arms. Henry used to think it was only okay to be gay if you didn’t announce it (and as long as he wasn’t gay, personally), but David is so charming and likeable and in his thirties that he somehow makes announcing it seem cool.

Henry could perhaps forgive himself if he was having sexuality crisis nightmares about David, as David is the sort of fit who could send any guy into a sexuality crisis. But unfortunately, he is actually having sexuality nightmares about Michael.

They are also not really nightmares as much as they are uncomfortably intimate and sometimes wet (or not wet but sticky, technically) dreams that might as well be nightmares because it’s a nightmare to wake up wet (sticky) thinking about a real live actual boy who is not thirty and is not dating a beautiful Bulgarian but is human and lisping and covered in chocolate and batter and probably crying. It’s a nightmare to honest-to-god fancy a gay guy who is perfectly ordinary and entirely human. It means that instead of wilfully ignoring the issue as he’s been doing the last twenty years, he has to actually think about what it means that he wakes up panting and soaked twice a week from fading images of Michael doing something relatively and embarrassingly unscandalous, like touching Henry’s arm.

He vastly prefers the Paul Hollywood-in-a-wig dreams, if he’s honest.

—

Two appletinis in, the secret Michael swore to keep in order to preserve his dignity suddenly seems more comedic than it does mortifying, and before he can stop himself, it’s spilling right out: “I have to tell you something so silly,” he says, reaching across the table to squeeze David’s wrist, shouting to be heard over Rita Ora. “But you have to promise not to judge me.”

David sips his drink, leaning in and looking intrigued. “Ooh? I’m not promising anything with an opening like that.”

Logic tells Michael he should reconsider, but the appletinis tell him something else entirely. “Fine!” he caves, as if David had been twisting his arm. “I am the teensiest bit jealous of you,” he admits.

David’s eyes take on a kindly warmth, like he’s used to hearing this from gay men slightly younger than him, and he puts a hand under his chin to frame his face Vogue style. “The fate of many men before you,” he says coyly. “Blame my genetics. But really, Michael, you of all people have no reason to be! You’re perfectly cute, and you’re a great baker. What’s there to be jealous of?”

Michael spills out onto the sticky table between them, groaning. Rita Ora sings oh, heaven knows I’ve tried, and he’s drunk enough to feel like she is singing directly to and about him. “That’s the silly part,” he admits, glasses smudged as he peers up at David through the layer of damp opacity. The multicoloured bar lights glow around him, and he looks like some sort of Patron Saint of Homosexuality through the fogged lenses, which is perhaps why Michael continues his confession: “I’m not jealous for any good reason, like, you’re gorgeous or probably going to win the whole thing—I’m jealous because Henry fancies you.”

David’s mouth falls open, and his eyes sharpen with a sudden gleam, wicked and conspiratorial. “Okay, first of all,” he says as he recovers himself. “He does not. But more importantly—is this your way of telling me you would prefer it if he fancied you?”

Michael puts his face in his hands and nods miserably, cat officially out of the bag. “I know, I know, it’s so ridiculous. He’s a baby. He’s like the babiest. I’m cradle robbing to even think about it, but I just want to—” he lets go of himself in favour of making a motion in the air with his hands intended to resemble a cat (the one out of the bag) systematically unraveling a loo roll with its claws. “His tie.”

“Oh, my god,” David crows, sitting back and clapping, looking so pleased with himself that the air of saintly decorum is decidedly shattered. “You are so funny. He’s less than ten years younger than you, that’s nothing, I know guys my age married to seventy-somethings.”

“Gross! Don’t make me feel like a hag!” Michael wails. “You and Nik are the same age. You couldn’t possibly understand.”

David snorts. “Babes. Age doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, and you know it, you’re deflecting so you don’t have to own up to the fact that you just said you wanted to—” he mimics the cat with a loo roll motion, somehow making it significantly more salacious, “with our dear Henry. Elaborate.”

“Fine,” Michael concedes for the second time that night, making a big show of downing the rest of his appletini in a violent gulp. “He’s just. He’s so—Henry, who could blame me? Who hasn’t dreamed of turning out a straight-laced squeaky-clean little church boy?! Actually, don’t answer that,” he says. “I don’t want to hear your thoughts on it.”

“Hm, a corruption kink,” David breezes, which makes Michael gasp.

“I said I didn’t want to hear it! Anyway! It doesn’t matter because if he is gay, which I’m not entirely certain he is, he’s gay very specifically for you. I catch him ogling you every time I ogle him. You are awakening something in that boy.”

“Then you should thank me,” David says with a shrug. “It’s not like I’m interested or available for him to test any new theories with. That leaves you wide open for church boy experimentation.”

Michael makes a face. “Oh, I love being a consolation prize,” he says, unable to keep the distinctly bitter note from his voice—it’s not David’s fault, he’s being perfectly reasonable and couldn’t possibly know he struck a nerve, as Michael served that exact role all throughout his awkward, chubby adolescence many a time. Being passed over for something better is a sore spot. “Yippie.”

David’s gaze softens again. “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant—I’m safe for him to fancy because I couldn’t possibly fancy him back, so it’s like—not real, right? I used to do it all the time, when I was younger, get obsessed with married teachers or straight guys at the gym…and to be honest, I actually don’t think Henry fancies me at all, I think he sort of admires me in a gay big brother way.”

“Well, he sure looks at you all starry-eyed,” Michael offers. “And he’s always touching you. He certainly doesn’t touch me.”

David swirls the ice from his cocktail around in the Tom Collins glass sagely, chin tilted up. “See, that’s promising! Why wouldn’t he touch you?”

“Because I’m a hag!”

“Shut up, no, he wouldn’t touch you because he’s worried of what he’ll do—he won’t touch you because it’s real.”

“That is a very optimistic reading of the situation, thank you for your vote of confidence,” Michael snorts, feeling viciously transported back into the emotional state that plagued his sixth form with such power that he briefly wonders if there is something weird in these appletinis. “But I think it’s more likely that he just doesn’t want me like that.”

It’s David’s turn to snort. “Listen—if he is gay, which, let’s be real, he is. Those ties? Please. Anyway, if he is gay, then he’d be mad to not want you. Look at you!” David gestures quite generously to the whole of Michael, from his flushed face to his Converse splayed under their table. It makes Michael, who is also not immune to David’s charm, squirm a little. “If I was a repressed, fresh-faced church organist coming to some personal revelations about my sexuality, I would be positively in love with you. I wouldn’t even be able to look at you. So, in the meantime, I’d be clinging pathetically to me as, like, a training wheels fake crush.” He fishes an ice cube out of his glass and pops it into his mouth before crunching it thoughtfully. “Just food for thought, from your local aged and therefore wizened friend.”

Michael sucks in a breath, pursing his lips and considering this angle. He’s been strategically telling himself the thing with Henry could never happen for myriad reasons, chiefly that Henry is not interested and that it would be inappropriate and pushy to put himself out there to a guy who isn’t even attracted to him. But if, in the unlikely chance he’s wrong about that… “So what, you think I should, like. Make a move?” he says lamely, wincing at the words, which feel very first year of uni.

“It couldn’t hurt,” David says. Then he grins, waggling his eyebrows. “Or I could do some reconnaissance for you. Utilise my position as Henry’s new best friend.”

Michael considers whether it will help or harm his case to have David in his court, then decides he’s not in a position to be turning down any sort of wingman. Historically, his approach to flirting has been so noncommittal and comedy-focused that men don’t always realise that’s what he’s going for until they’re snogging. This has worked with types willing to take over the second his tongue is in their mouth, but he cannot imagine Henry doing anything but panicking. The Henry Situation, if he does choose to pursue, will need to be approached with full certainty that there’s interest but also with the type of slow-moving sensitivity reserved for nervous horses. Michael, who is not particularly good with moderating his energy or emotions, isn’t sure he’s cut out for that. But David? He’s never once seen him flustered, come collapsed custards or claggy cakes. “Fine!” he cries for the third and final time, throwing up his arms in defeat and piloted solely by appletini. “See what you can do with him.”

—

One minute they’re discussing the best raising agents for a no-knead bread, and Henry’s heart is doing normal things while he beats eggs with David’s voice in his ear on the phone, and the next, David is saying, “So…I happen to know you fancy Michael,” and his heart is ricocheting into his throat, shattered china and yolk suddenly everywhere.

“I”m sorry—what?!” he sputters, cheeks aflame, phone screen suddenly sweaty and slick where he has it pressed between his cheek and shoulder. He catches it just before it slides out and lands in the egg mess. Then he adjusts his grip miserably, deciding it’s futile to attempt denying this fact to an apparent psychic. “How did you—am I that obvious?!” he squeaks. David’s laughter is kind and not at all maniacal, but he’s still laughing, which makes Henry bristle. “Seriously David—does Michael know?”

“Not at all,” he assures. “I didn’t even know for sure, I only suspected, but you certainly confirmed my suspicions. But don’t worry your pretty little head, you’re not terribly obvious. I only knew because…well, let’s call it a hunch.”

The relief doesn’t come yet. Henry clumsily unrolls a massive wad of paper towels and tries to mop his kitchen floor with his foot after fishing out the largest fragments of shattered bowl and dropping them in the rubbish bin. “You made me break one of my favourite dishes,” he pouts.

“Aw, I’m sorry,” David says, sounding like he means it. “I’ll buy you a new one. But we have more pressing issues to discuss, like the fact Michael very much fancies you back, and you should do something about it.”

Henry snorts, assuming David is joking because boys like Michael can have whoever they want, probably, and wouldn’t need to settle for weird fumbling with someone as chronically awkward and inexperienced as him. “Don’t,” he says. “I hate practical jokes.”

“Henry…babes. He told me.”

“Really?!” he asks, imagining some vague expression of not-hatred that David misinterpreted as affection. “What exactly did he say?”

“Woe is me, I fancy Henry, in those words, to start. He got tipsy and went on and on about how he wants to corrupt you and do unspeakable things to your ties. Cross my heart.” It comes out so sincere that Henry is forced to consider that it’s not some elaborate prank. Something like dizzy, elated hope almost swells in his chest before it’s promptly popped, deflating with a rude noise inside of him. He wrinkles his nose at the wet, eggy paper towels in his hand. “Even if it were true,which seems unlikely,” he says, “I have no idea what to do, given the chance, to even act on the supposedly mutual fancying. I haven’t even ever kissed anyone! I held hands once with a girl in choir when I was ten, and it made me so nervous I was nauseous for the whole weekend.”

“Erm, you were ten, and she was a girl. You’re gay, right?” David posits, like that changes everything.

“I—don’t know. Yes. Probably,” Henry answers awkwardly through a wince. “It seems that way.”

“Well in that case, maybe it will be different. Plus, I don’t really see our Michael as the ‘moving quickly,’ type, personally,” David offers. “In fact, he might have mentioned he found your palpable virginity charming.”

“Palpable virginity? He said that? In those exact words?”

“No, of course not, he just said he thought your whole thing, you know, was sexy. He just likes you, okay? I think he’d be happy to go at your pace.”

A boy! A real-life, actual, dizzyingly attractive boy likes him. Supposedly. Maybe. A boy likes him, and he hasn’t even let himself jack off to gay porn lest it make his condition worse. He only has a nebulous understanding of how that sort of sex even works, which makes this whole prospect as terrifying as it is titillating. Henry does not like being bad at things. “My pace, meaning, glacial,” he says bleakly. “Or, I don’t know, maybe actually kissing a guy would activate some perverse sleeper agent side to me, and I’d pounce on him and scare him away.”

David does not seem to find this potential catastrophic and catcalls over the phone. “That’s the spirit. And you don’t have to do anything right away—you could just feel the situation out, with this new knowledge in mind. Like, let it be known that you know he knows.”

“Does he know you told me?”

“...No, and I don’t think he’d appreciate the frankness, to be honest? He did ask me to do some recon, and I was planning something more subtle, but then we’d been talking an hour, and you’d mentioned him, like, twenty-five times. I could hear the sweet little heart eyes in your voice and decided to go out on a limb, and here we are. I saw it, I said something—see it, say it. Now we just need it sorted, which, alas, I can’t do for you.”

Henry’s guts twist up, both mortified and weirdly gleeful to be gossiping with David about his (still nonexistent but perhaps not for long) love life. “So I am obvious.”

“Only to someone looking for it,” David says lightly. “Anyway—I think you two are precious. I expect a wedding invitation when it gets serious.”

“I’m hanging up now,” Henry says, but this time, that bubble of hope refuses to pop. It remains stubbornly lodged between his lungs, not allowing them to inflate all the way.

Determined to not go into this blind, he gives up on what he’s baking and decides to lock himself in his room to watch some gay porn instead. The research is both enlightening and a little worrisome, because it turns him on so much he stops focusing on the logistics and helpful techniques and just ends up slack-jawed and shaky from imagining Michael on his knees, sucking his prick with his distractingly pink mouth, glasses fogged up from humidity. He comes hard and then feels horribly guilty because he learned nothing about the fine art of fellatio in the process—just that he likes Michael a lot, which he already knows. Which David knows, apparently.

In the cold post-orgasm light, he starts to doubt their whole conversation. Surely, surely David is mistaken—it just seems positively absurd that someone like Michael could want someone like him enough to say something about it out loud at a bar to a friend. Stuff like that doesn’t happen to Henry, he is a socially anxious, sexually repressed church boy with the social skills of a home-educated twelve-year-old and the sexual charisma of a sea cucumber. And Michael is social and funny and sexy. He is good at being gay and presumably good at gay sex. He and David laugh at all sorts of lewd jokes and innuendo that Henry can scarcely understand. Even if Michael somehow convinced himself he did actually want to try his luck with Henry, he’d get bored, wouldn’t he? The novelty would wear off quickly once he realises Henry is a hopeless novice at blowjobs and doesn’t know what to do with his tongue when kissing.

By the time he goes to bed, his mind is racing. He tosses fitfully until he finally drifts off into a nightmare where his shortcrust is too crumbly, his meringue disc for pavlova cracks in the oven, and Michael gives him a sad, pitying look before disappearing into a throng of tourists on the Tube when Henry asks him out to drinks. He wakes up in a cold sweat, David’s matter-of-fact see it, say it, now we just need it sorted! echoing on a loop in his head.

Still half-dreaming, he reaches for his phone.

—

“What did you do?!” Michael asks on set between takes when they’re having their noses powdered because it’s a particularly sweltering day in the tent, they’re all so shiny that they’re positively reflective, and none of the chocolate will set.

“Nothing! What are you even talking about?” David asks, so cool that Michael almost buys his innocent act. But his smile is too sly, and Michael is not an idiot.

“To Henry! You did something, I wouldn’t say he’s flirting with me, necessarily, but he’s—” Michael struggles to actually describe the change in behaviour because someone else might not have even noticed the minute changes, like Henry texting him at odd hours, inching nearer to him, laughing at his jokes, standing in such a way his body language is…open, inviting instead of stiff. “Henry-flirting.”

David’s eyes are so twinkly it should be illegal. “Okay, I have noticed that. Get a room, actually.”

“What did you do?!” he repeats, but they’re being whisked back to their stations before the technical challenge, which is reliably Michael’s least favourite challenge, so he’s suddenly too worried about that to be worried about the other thing. Which he’s not even worried about, really. He’s mostly just thrilled. Dizzy from all the eye contact and shared laughs and once, early this morning, a playful hip-check as they walked across the dew-sparkling lawn while the birds sang very romantically overhead. Despite his sordid past of rejection coupled with the uncertainty that this even counts as flirting, Michael flirts back. He is good at flirting, actually—he’s much better at chemistry and theoreticals than at actual relationships, so he’s in his element.

Still, he tells himself not to get too excited, too early. Even if Henry has caught feelings, it doesn’t mean he’s ready to act on them. But another week goes by with each hour in the tent charged, each break between bakes laden with little jokes, the two of them sitting sardined together into a single chair during their breaks, Henry smelling very good, like posh cologne and vanilla extract. Before long, Michael is grudgingly willing to admit that he’d been wrong about Henry. He is definitely gay, and it isn’t David he has a crush on. Which seems too good to be true, and maybe it won’t last, but it at least seems, for the time being, like it’s going somewhere.

Until, of course, Michael goes and mucks it all up like a technical challenge.

They’re texting, and it’s getting a little obscene. Henry starts the obscenity: I’m so tired of practicing next week’s signature, I’m just baking something for fun tonight—is that crazy?

Maybe a little crazy, Michael fires back, grinning at nothing like a stupid, silly, in-love person. What are you baking? Need someone to come over and taste test? ;)

Okay, so maybe he’s the one who starts the obscenity, actually. But he has precedent. You want to taste my Chelsea buns? They should be hot and sticky, Henry replies, which—well. Michael groans and flops into bed in his PJs, palming over himself where his prick is thickening between his thighs. There is just something so shocking and delectable and maddening about little buttoned-up Henry making sex jokes about tasting buns, Michael can hardly stand it.

And maybe he gets carried away. Maybe this is supposed to just be a hollow flirtation and borderline sexting dynamic that never ventures beyond those allotted constraints, and he should know better than to push. Maybe Michael is destined to be the consolation prize, forever. Lusted after in someone’s mind but so rarely cherished, touched. Because when he dares to text you know…we should really set up a time to actually hook up instead of just talking about it all the time :) But Henry decidedly does not text back.

He thinks about it, though. The three dots keep popping up and disappearing, and Michael waits three, five, ten whole minutes before typing, shit i’m so sorry… have I been misreading this??? It would be very much like me to take something seriously that was meant to be a joke. If it was a joke I’ll back off. Then, for good measure, he adds: I didn’t mean to make things weird!!! just so he doesn’t explode.

Fucking finally, Henry’s message comes: Oh god no not a joke. I’m just freaking out. But it’s not your fault. I am such an arse.

Michael is not sure how to respond to that, so he decides on: You have an arse (very cute chelsea buns) but you’re not an arse.

Then his phone rings, vibrating so hard he nearly drops it on his face in his enthusiasm to answer it. “I violated a boundary,” he announces quickly before Henry can stammer anything coherent out, desperate to smooth over any weirdness before he loses him forever. “I take full responsibility.”

“You really didn’t,” Henry insists. “I just—” a wordless sound of frustration, and Michael is forced to realise that despite what David told him, age does matter, at least a little bit. Henry is young. He sounds young. He sounds like a uni student stressing over a test because he is a uni student, and maybe this whole thing feels like a test. “God. Michael, I so want to, really badly. Hook up for real, I mean. I think about it all the time. But I…there’s just some stuff you need to know about me before we. Do that, I guess.”

Michael sucks in a shaky breath. “Did you kill someone?” he asks, mostly joking.

It’s worth it for the indignant squeak. “Of course not! I’m trying to be serious and forthcoming and mature here!”

“I know, and it’s very sweet, I appreciate it. I’m being an arse now, sorry.”

“You have very cute Chelsea buns, too, by the way. In case you were wondering,” he says, gravely and with no humour, which just makes Michael like him even more because he can easily picture the sombre delivery, tie knotted as high up as possible. He patiently waits through a pause, a sharp intake of breath before Henry speaks again. “Okay, so…do you want to, like. Go out for drinks? Or even a walk around a park, like right now? I would rather tell you this stuff in person than over the phone.”

“Aren’t you in Durham?” Michael asks, though he’s already pulling train timetables up on his laptop and wondering what he should wear.

“We can meet halfway, somewhere.”

“Halfway between the midlands and Durham?” Michael snorts. “Wow, a hot date night.”

“I’m trying to be romantic!”

“It’s working, actually, just—you tell me a place, and I’ll be there to witness your murder confession.”

And it's good to laugh together, a fused crackle that at least temporarily dissipates the tension. Michael carries the sound of that laughter with him as he goes to meet Henry, prepared to have his heart broken, because that’s how it usually goes. He has a very long train ride to consider things and decides, ultimately, that whatever happens is worth the heartbreak.

—

See it say it sorted, see it say it sorted, Henry repeats to himself on the ghastly trip to the middle of nowhere Yorkshire at a non-optimal time of day for getting back to Durham if he needs to get back, which he probably does if he wants to go to class tomorrow. Soon the words lose all meaning, but they still provide him with a soothing rhythm of sorts as he stares at the row houses and sprawling green countryside whizzing past the windows. He knows it’s absurd, he is on an absurd mission and doing absurd things, but he’s positive he will chicken out and miss his opportunity with Michael in its entirety if he doesn’t barrel ahead. So, expensive, lengthy, badly timed train ride it is.

He almost backs out when he sees Michael standing outside the pub in a grey mist waiting for him, because he is so ridiculously attractive and out of Henry’s league that this whole thing seems ridiculously far-fetched. But then he catches Henry’s eyes and waves and bolts over, and suddenly they’re hugging, and Michael is real and solid and human and hot, and Henry must get it sorted. He came all the way out here to do it, he can’t back down now.

They order ciders and sit inside, under a charming wall covered in what appear to be decks of playing cards speared with thrown pocket knives. “Do you think there’s a chance we’ll be murdered here?” Michael asks conversationally, sipping his cider and settling into the booth. “I feel a little out of my element. Good thing you’re a murderer and can defend us, right?”

He says it quickly, his cheeks quite violently pink, and it’s only then that Henry sees past his own jitters long enough to realise that Michael is nervous, too. “Hate to disappoint you,” he says. “But we’re in Yorkshire, so there’s a very liminal chance of murder. And… I did not bring you here to tell you about my secret life of crime.”

“You could never disappoint me,” Michael tells him, reaching across the sticky table to briefly squeeze his wrist. It’s so electric that it knocks all the wind out of Henry’s lungs, and he can’t do anything but sit there, smiling and sweating. “So,” Michael prompts eventually. “What did you bring me here to confess?”

Henry takes a deep, ragged breath before downing nearly half his cider. It’s only 4.0%, though, so he hardly feels braver, just a touch headachey. “Erm,” he says. “Okay. I’m just gonna say it. You…might be unsurprised to know that I’m a virgin. And I don’t know at all what I am doing. I have interacted with zero Chelsea buns in my life, save for the ones I have baked.”

Michael looks entirely unfazed. “Is this supposed to be, like, a turn off for me?”

“It’s not?” Henry asks.

Michael waves a dismissive hand and takes a sip, leaving a few bubbles on his upper lip that Henry would reach over and thumb off if he had even an ounce of game. “Not at all! You said the word unsurprised, and you were right! Listen…I like you, Henry, a lot. Because you’re smart and funny and a million other things completely unrelated to how many guys you’ve blown or whatever.”

Henry feels himself going red, suddenly very aware they’re at a strange pub in a strange suburb with knives everywhere. “That’s another thing,” he admits, gaze flickering down to the table where he traces over a pair of lovers' initials carved into a spiky heart. “I didn’t even really know, for sure, that I was gay until the show. Until you.”

It feels massive, laid out there like that. Not just we’re two gays guys flirting, but you made me realise I was a gay guy, which is somehow different and weightier and more embarrassing than the alternative. “Okay,” Michael says. “This is a very big moment for my ego, actually, I don’t know if I’ve ever turned anyone gay.”

Henry makes a face. “I’m sure you have, I’m sure it happens all the time. I’m sure Jaime has had naughty dreams about you ever since he got booted from the tent.”

Michael’s laugh wheedles into a shriek at the end. “Stop! Not poor sweet Jaime!”

“I’m dead serious,” Henry insists. “I was poor sweet Henry, and then I met you and…well. Here we are.”

“Please tell me you had naughty dreams about me,” Michael jokes, which makes Henry choke on his cider, which makes Michael realise it wasn’t a joke at all. “Oh, wow. Well, I hope you know this now means you’re legally obligated to tell me about them in extreme detail. We could even get an airbnb and try our hand at acting them out.”

Henry’s face must blanch, because Michael’s falls. “Oh, no, I did it again. You were so sweet, you brought me here to talk to me, and I’m being all lecherous again.”

“You’re not lecherous,” Henry insists, chugging more cider and rubbing his face with his hands. “I just…I really need you to know, I guess, that I want to do stuff with you, but I’ve never done stuff with anybody. Like, at all. Not even kissing. So there’s a chance I will be, like, incredibly bad at it, or that I’ll get nervous and freak out, and we’ll have to stop. And I guess I just…I really want you to consider those possibilities before we actually move the sex stuff out of the text chat and into an airbnb.”

Michael’s very pink face crumples, and his glasses fog up, he’s crying a little, which is not unusual at all for him but still makes Henry’s heart stop with nerves. I upset him, I hurt his feelings, I— his brain shuts off entirely as Michael moves from his side of the booth to Henry’s, sandwiching in close so their legs brush. “Okay, first things first. We don’t have to do anything yet.”

“But I want to do things,” Henry grits out. “I don’t want you to not touch me, I want you to touch me knowing I might, like. Suck at touching you back.”

Michael slides a hand onto his thigh then, and there’s a layer of denim separating them, but it still feels like fire on fire. Henry’s breath stops entirely, his stomach dropping as Michael gently traces a seam. “Okay. In my experience—which might be less experience than I think you’re imagining, by the way—even if you don’t know what you’re doing, if you’re really attracted to someone, and they’re really attracted to you, the sex is great. It’s not like baking where there’s a series of, like…skills to perfect? So it’s possible you’re overthinking it. I don’t think someone can be bad at sex if there’s real chemistry there.”

“Erm,” Henry says, stupid and empty-headed because Michael’s hand is still very much on his thigh. “That’s…good to know.”

“Also. Even if we start out slow, and it’s great, but it feels like too much, and you need to back out—that’s not a deal breaker for me. Not even close. I like you. That’s not going to change anytime soon.”

They look at each other. They’ve talked. Henry wonders if this counts as sorted, and decides it doesn’t matter—he’s done waiting and kicking himself and waking up in a cold sweat, Michael is here, he’s next to him, touching him, and his hand feels so good on his thigh, better than Henry’s own hand on his own prick, and that's some sort of omen that maybe he won’t be a complete failure at sex. “I might come in two seconds,” he says very quietly, unable to look Michael in the eye as he says it.

Michael makes a little gasping sound and squeezes his thigh. “I might, too,” he breathes. “Honest to god.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, then. Are we doing it?”

Henry is nodding emphatically, anxiety be damned. “Yeah, I think we are.”

—

There are a number of perfectly darling airbnbs in York, but they choose the cheapest and closest that isn’t a room in someone else’s family home. Upon arrival, Michael balks ever so slightly. “This sort of looks like a murder house,” he says, eying the long, untamed tendrils of ivy swallowing nearly everything but the quaint white door. The yard is populated by a number of chipped and faded statues, gnomes and fat birds and grimy saints and what appears to be a headless jockey, which is a bit ominous.

“If you squint, it’s almost a Secret Garden vibe,” Henry offers optimistically, making a shutter with his fingers to peer through.

“Are we really going to have sex in the murder house slash Secret Garden house?” Michael asks, really hoping the answer is yes, because he has been half-hard in his stretchy skinnies for so criminally long that he’s worried he’s going to get arrested for indecent exposure if they keep wandering much longer. “I am somewhat ashamed to admit that, for me, it only adds to the mystique.”

“Thank god, me, too,” Henry says, sounding relieved as he gingerly fumbles with a porcelain fairy that’s hiding the key on the porch. “Ew, cobwebs.”

In moments, they’re inside, collectively beheld by hundreds of reflective glass eyes gazing from hundreds of dusty porcelain faces. “Oh. My. GOD,” Henry barks, covering his aghast face with a palm.

“I think our superhost is a haunted doll collector,” Michael manages to get out, doubled over against the arm of an ancient sofa draped in lace with laughter so fierce he has a stitch in his side. “I cannot believe,” he wheezes, “that all these little ladies are going to bear witness to you possibly losing your virginity.”

“LIke hell they will!” Henry yips, and they spend the next ten minutes carefully moving every doll so that she is decidedly facing the wall or the back of a bookcase, instead of creepily staring.

“It is a massive testament to how into you I am that I’m still turned on,” Michael observes, adjusting one particularly horrific baby doll’s bonnet after it nearly slides from her curls. “But if you’d rather watch horror movies tonight instead of fucking, I would totally understand.”

There is suddenly a fist in his t-shirt, and he’s being tugged across the thick, overly plush old-person carpet towards Henry, who is looking at him with an expression of utter terror in his eyes. For a split-second, Michael thinks Henry is saving him from some new monstrosity—a giant clown statue or plummeting chandelier a la Phantom of the Opera, but then, their mouths collide, and they’re kissing, and he forgets where they are almost entirely.

Henry tastes like cider and uni, his lips soft, his stubble rough, and Michael is humming with pleased shock as they make out against an antique china cabinet. He did not see this coming, but he has zero complaints. After a few minutes, Henry pulls away gasping, eyes all glittery and two spots of colour on his cheeks. “Oh my god, sorry,” he says, like he has something to be sorry for. “I just. I didn’t want to watch horror movies, I wanted to kiss you, and if I didn’t do it, I was in danger of never doing it, but I’m sorry if I did it badly, or—”

Michael silences him with another press of their mouths, carding fingers through Henry’s hair, feeling his neck out, smoothing fingers down his sides to make fists in the beltloops of his chinos. “I could not tell, even a little bit, that it was your first kiss,” he purrs into Henry’s stunned, slack mouth. And it’s a tiny white lie, he can tell now that he’s shaking and red-cheeked and doesn’t know what to do with his hands, but that makes it all the better, and maybe David was right, and Michael does have some sort of corruption kink. “You’re a good kisser,” he promises.

“Really?!” Henry says, looking delighted. His palms finally drift down to Michael’s waist.

“Yes,” Michael says, decidedly taking his glasses off and pocketing them before stealing more of his very good kisses as he steers them both clumsily down the hallway, which seems to be decorated in Dolores Umbridge-style kitten plates. “What new fresh hell do you think the bedroom has in store for us?”

“Erm…my guess is more dolls,” Henry sputters, gaze climbing all over Michael hungrily, flitting from the speeding pulse point in his throat to his mouth to his tented skinnies and up the too-tight shirt he wore on purpose and back to his mouth again. “But I’m hoping not.”

Michael forgets to look. Suddenly, they’re in there, and the light is slammed on, there’s an enormous king-sized bed, and they’re capsizing onto it, Henry licking his mouth open with shocking confidence. He’s moaning and opening up to it, and his hands are everywhere, even skating over those very cute Chelsea buns. Michael feels like a teenager, blind with the same mindless horny desire he remembers from locker room grinding sessions under the guise of wrestling. It’s actually embarrassing how turned on he is, or it would be embarrassing if he had the capacity to be anything other than turned on. Michael is thinking about pulling back long enough to ask, is this okay? Too much? Are we going too fast? when Henry rolls him over onto his back and straddles him, grinding purposefully into his hips while their tongues lap madly. So, he’s probably fine.

“Sorry,” Henry says at some point, voice so breathless that Michael almost doesn’t even hear it. “I thought maybe this would happen, the dam would break, and I’d actually, just, erm, attack you,” he says, nipping down Michael’s neck.

“No need to apologise, I am very much in favour of being attacked,” Michael breezes, taking advantage of the momentary breather to untuck Henry’s starchy dress shirt and get his hands up under it onto fever-hot skin. “Oh,” he says, eyes fluttering, Henry’s mouth open and sucking with abandon on his throat. “You feel so good, by the way.”

Henry detaches from him wetly to crow out a frantic laugh capped in, “Do I?” before kissing him again. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Have you given much thought to what you’d like to do?” Michael asks, skimming his nails down Henry’s sides in the confines of his shirt. “Or what you’d like me to do to you?”

Henry turns very crimson at that. “I guess I’d prefer you to take the lead on that since you are comparatively the expert.”

“Happy to,” Michael says, grinning and squeezing and lifting his hips. “Starting with—how do you feel about me taking off my trousers? Because they’re so tight, and it’s driving me crazy. But that would mean I was at least half-naked, and I want to make sure that feels within your capabilities before just, you know,” He makes a lewd motion in the humid air between them. “Whipping it out, so to speak.”

Henry’s eyes are hazy, and he licks his lips, which seems like a good sign. “To be honest, I’m way less nervous about you being naked than I am about getting naked myself, so, erm. Please feel free to—” he mimics the motion and blushes, so Michael starts to unbutton, gasping lightly at the release of pressure.

He is nothing special to look at by his own standards, but he watches Henry closely as he reveals himself, tracking his speeding pulse and fluttering lashes as he works the denim down his hips along with his clingy pants. He is very hard and wet with precum, and he maybe possibly trimmed his pubes with an electric razor before boarding the train because it always makes him look a bit bigger and tidier, but it becomes entirely clear to him in this moment his prick could look like anything at all, and Henry would be having this reaction, this is the first time he’s seeing another man’s prick in a sexual context. He swallows thickly, eyes glazing over. “Wow,” he says. “I’m. God. Just wow.”

“Like it?” Michael singsongs, uncharacteristically confident because how could he be anything but with Henry drinking him up like that. He kicks his jeans off the bed and starts to touch himself slowly, tantalisinging, wondering why he never thought to bed a virgin before this, when it is so wildly ego-boosting.

“You’re really beautiful,” Henry says earnestly, which is just about the nicest thing any guy has ever said about Michael or his prick. It makes him squirm and blush and twitch in his own hand.

“Do you want to touch me? Or just watch?” he asks, thumbing through the clear bubbling slick at the crown, astounded by the way Henry is just rapt, all his nervous frantic energy coming to roost in utter stillness at this one moment, like time has stopped. Henry swallows again, Adam’s apple bobbing and pupils blown as he says the single hottest and craziest thing Michael has ever heard: “I—I sort of just want you to, like. Put it inside of me,” he says weakly. “That’s a thing people do, right?”

Michael’s brain fritzes, and he sees static in sudden waves, he has to just lie there for a second, panting and squeezing his prick. “Oh my god, you are a minx! A minute ago, you said you didn’t want to be naked yet!”

“I don’t know! I’m sort of losing my mind right now, I’m not at my most logical or sensical or anything.”

“And it’s very attractive,” Michael confesses. “I love how all in you are, just—fucking like that. It is very much a thing people do, but usually not their first time before they do anything else. And I didn’t bring condoms, or lube, actually, because I wasn’t planning on us actually hooking up in a murder Secret Garden house or any house at all.”

“Oh, okay,” Henry says uncertainly, blushing like he’s just messed up and hasn’t said the hottest and craziest thing Michael has ever heard, and that won’t do, so Michael scrambles up to kiss him, show him how good he is, how remarkable, how mind-blowingly hot.

“But listen—there are similar things we can do without the condoms and lube. Though they do require you being at least sort of naked. We can turn the lights off, if that will help.”

Henry nods, the lights go off, and they get under the covers where he very cutely shucks his chinos and shirt while Michael lies there stroking himself, hoping he can last long enough to take charge like he’s being asked to. But after they’re both naked and tangled up and making out and slow-grinding, he gets a hold of his heart and his body, and it helps. He can feel Henry feeling his way through this, learning how to angle his head when they kiss, experimentally palming up Michael’s sides, chest, biceps. “You have great arms,” he murmurs at some point. “I’m always looking at them when you’re mixing things in the tent.”

“I used to think you were looking at David,” Michael admits, their mouths so close together that their lips keep brushing even when they’re not kissing. “And I wouldn’t have blamed you.”

“I did look at him…but only because I admired how, like. Comfortable he is with being gay. I wanted to be like that, so I could be the sort of guy who just…kissed you.”

“Suprise and congrats, you are the sort of guy who just kissed me,” Michael reminds him before kissing him deep, levering onto his elbows and knees over him. “Do you trust me?” he asks.

Henry nods, eyes wide in the dark. “A lot.”

“Good. Roll over,” Michael demands. “On your stomach, Chelsea buns up.”

—-

Everything is wonderful and hazy, and Henry is feeling drunk from just kissing Michael and rutting their pricks together, he cannot ever remember why he was so anxious in the first place. Gay sex is not rocket science. It’s not even baking, Michael was right, it’s so natural, so easy. He surrenders, rolling over and baring himself, prick throbbing between his thighs as he arches his hips towards Michael, silently begging. He knows they’re not actually going to fuck fuck, but he’s ready for that, open to it, so hungry and desperate that he feels like there’s nothing he’d say no to. He’s never felt so free in his goddamned life. It’s exhilarating. Terrifying. Wonderful.

Michael spits in his palm and touches himself, and then, so suddenly, his steel-hard and burning hot prick is rubbing against Henry. The backs of his thighs, then between them, then higher as he shudders and cries out and angles himself expectantly, Michael’s prick bisecting his cheeks, rubbing warm and needy against his hole. “Oh my god,” he says before making sounds so unlike him that he hardly recognises his own voice. He is moaning so sluttily, and he doesn’t even care. It’s insane that this feels so maddeningly good, it’s not even real sex. He can’t believe it’s not real sex. All his nerves are on fire, Michael’s weight is surprisingly solid dragging across his back, his mouth open on his shoulder, kissing and chewing, and then, when he thinks there’s no way it can get better, Michael’s warm hand finds him, reaching around him to stroke his prick.

A truly superb combination of sensations, Henry’s brain provides him with, because that’s how his brain works. This must be where the word “sensational” comes from. But luckily, instead of saying something so stupid aloud, all he can do is groan and whimper pathetically into his pillow while he fucks Michael’s fist, trapped so wonderfully and absolutely between his hand and his prick, his arm and his hips. Contained, held, and oh, oh—“I’m going to finish,” he grits out, and then he does. Spilling into the sheets and over Michael’s fingers before collapsing bonelessly back into sweaty sheets.

Michael is about to roll off him and check on him, but from the haze of overwhelmed pleasure, Henry has at least enough sense to grab his very nice arm and hold him in place. “If you want to come on me like this, you can. Like, use my body. Ice the Chelsea buns.”

Michael bounces against him in a gale of sputtering laughter. “Only if you never say that ever again.”

“I can’t make any promises,” he says weakly, wiggling his arse, feeling entirely not embarrassed about it now that he knows how hard it made Michael, which is remarkable because “not embarrassed” is something he thought he’d never feel. “C’mon.”

It doesn’t take long. Michael huffs as he rides him, hips snapping so sexily, moving in ways Henry half-recalls from the fading vestiges of his sexuality crisis nightmares. Only they don’t feel like nightmares anymore, that’s for sure. Michael gets his teeth in him when he comes, a sudden jerking motion followed by a hot, sticky spill before he goes limp and crushes on top of him. They lie there like that for a moment until Michael says conversationally, “My glasses are in my jeans, so forgive me if I’m seeing things incorrectly, but is that…a massive stuffed giraffe?”

Henry rolls him off, and they spend the next few minutes sitting side by side naming all the plush animals they just scarred (their ringleader very much is a massive giraffe) until the come gets too tacky, and they make their way to the bathroom, which is wallpapered in what appear to be vintage postcards exclusively from Yorkshire. “This is cute,” Michael says, lathering his hair. “Like, a little frightening and old-ladyish but cute. I forgive her.”

“You weren’t deflowered in front of a giraffe,” Henry reminds him, though he is mostly joking. He has grown enormously fond of their airbnb in the last few hours.

“I intend to deflower you in front of that giraffe in at least three more ways,” Michael breezes, rinsing his hair. “So get used to it.”

“How was I?” Henry finally asks, unable to contain his curiosity any longer. “You finished and seemed like you were having a pretty good time, but I just have to ask, for my recordkeeping, how did I measure up?”

Michael beams, and kisses him hard. “Brilliant. A+. Star baker—best sex I ever had, despite the setting, so, do with that what you will. I told you, experience hardly matters when there are more powerful forces, like pheromones, at play.”

At long last, Henry feels remarkably snug: sexuality crisis no longer a crisis, he decides. Sorted.