Billy lay on the sofa. The TV was on, but Billy had turned towards the back of the couch, his forehead against the cushions, his eyes closed.

“Billy?” Martin shut the door behind him and edged into the room. There was a full cup of tea on the floor in front of the settee, but when he touched it he found it was cold. The remote lay beside it. It didn’t seem likely to Martin that Billy had deliberately tuned the TV to Hollyoaks, so he flipped through some channels and found Poirot instead. Billy sighed when he turned the programme over, so he was a) not dead, and b) not asleep.

That was good. This was some kind of crash, then, of a deeper, more insidious cast than the ones he had had before. Martin could deal with that. No questions, no pressure. He leaned down to stroke the chocolate-brown curls away from Billy’s forehead, which creased in a frown under his palm. “I’m so glad you’re okay. I’ve been so worried.”

But no, that was not a conversational tack he could afford to take at this point. He could feel it open up the lids of all the boxes of his own fear and dismay. If he let his own feelings out at this point, they could easily turn to anger, and anger wouldn’t help either of them.

Getting up from his crouch by the coffee table, Martin took the cold tea to the kitchen to make a fresh pot. A fine blue fug and a suspicious warmth hung over everything in there. On the cooker, a blackened saucepan made a creaky pinging noise. It was full of what looked like charcoal, the centre of a little galaxy of swirling smoke. The ring under it was bright red, also giving out the tiny distressed sounds of metal that’s been too hot for too long.

Martin grabbed a tea towel to shield his hand and switched the cooker off, appalled. At some point this morning Billy must have tried to cook himself porridge, only to go back into the sitting room, sit down, and find himself unable to get up again to switch it off. That settled it, once and for all. Decision made.

When he brought tea and chocolate biscuits back to the sitting room, it was to find that Billy had not moved an inch, so Martin shook him by the shoulder, adding an insistent tug to the action to give the other man the idea. “Sit up.”

Billy’s eyes squeezed more firmly closed and his mouth hardened, but Martin wasn’t having that. He pulled again. “Sit up, come on.”

Gracelessly, begrudgingly, Billy swung himself round to face the room and sat, his shoulders hunched, his face concealed by his swinging hair.

“Good,” said Martin and picked up one of his hands, pressing the teacup into it. “Here. Drink the tea.”

Billy sighed again, a noise half of anger, half despair, as though Martin was asking more from him than he was capable of achieving. As though it was unreasonable to expect him to endure this pressure and swallow fluids at the same time. But he drank and kept it down. Some of Martin’s frantic worry eased.

When he had pestered Billy into eating a chocolate biscuit, Billy’s eyes opened and strayed to the television, where Poirot was being sent to a health farm on the advice of Miss Lemon. Martin wasn’t sure if he was actually seeing it, or just focussing on the most rapidly moving thing in the room, but it was still progress.

He sat next to Billy and took Billy’s right hand in his own, rubbing his thumb gently across the knuckles. It took a while, just sitting shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, companionable, watching David Suchet walk like a penguin through one of Agatha Christie’s more improbable whodunits, but eventually Billy’s head turned fractionally towards Martin. From the angle of his head, his gaze had settled on their clasped hands.

“What happened?” Martin asked gently.

“I don’t . . . I don’t know why you’re here.”

“I’m here because I love you. I was frantic with worry—you disappeared and I couldn’t get through to you. Your side have been worrying. You didn’t turn up for practice and that wasn’t like you. They thought something terrible had happened. So did I. Where were you yesterday? What happened?”

Billy tried to say something, his face creasing with the effort, but it was too much for him. He shook his head and gave up. Martin wanted to shake him, yell at him to buck up, it couldn’t be this hard, but he didn’t think that would help. Billy was just processing very slowly at the moment and perhaps two questions at once were too much. He tried again.

“Where were you yesterday?”

“Somewhere on the road,” Billy slurred. “I was walking home from Hunstanton, but I needed to lie down, a lot. It was farther—farther than I thought. I wasn’t . . . I went the wrong way.” His eyes filled with tears, and he pulled his legs up onto the sofa cushions, so he could hug himself around the knees. “I think I got lost. It took so long. I didn’t know which way to go.”

Martin launched himself to his feet, his own distress coming out the only way it could. When he pulled his hand away from Billy’s, Billy flinched, tucked himself in tighter.

“You walked home? I thought you went on the minibus, with the rest of your side?”

“I wanted to see you.” Billy’s voice was flat, unmodulated, all the more desolate for it. “So I stayed. In the dark. I’m sorry.”

Martin’s mind swung with sickening speed back to the disastrous conversation with Rolf. Could Billy have been there? Outside the ring of firelight, in his black coat and his black-and-blood-red face, if he had kept those bright clear eyes of his averted, he would have been all but invisible.

Shit. Shit. Martin had mentally cast himself in the role of rescuer, champion, healer, and nurse, but this was much worse. He was actually present in the role of bastard, villain—the one who had caused this meltdown with his own cowardice in the first place. “Shit,” he said, and clutched at his newly shorn hair, while he fell face-first into a morass of guilt.

“I’m sorry.” Billy apologised a second time for being devastated, let down, rejected, and denied. “I didn’t want to cause you trouble. I understand you don’t want to see me anymore, and I won’t make things hard for you. I’m sorry I’ve done—” he waved a hand towards himself and then towards the kitchen, as if to indicate his current nonfunctioning state “—this. It wasn’t to make you feel bad. You weren’t supposed to see. I don’t understand what you’re doing here.”

Billy turned sideways, trying to hide himself in the cushions, defend himself from the pressures of a world that was too much for him, and Martin couldn’t bear to watch it. He sat down abruptly, drew Billy into his arms, and pressed Billy’s face instead into the hollow of his shoulder. Here was a better shelter. Here was someone who would do more than just passively shield him. I will stand between you and everything, he thought, his chest aching with the knowledge that that would never be possible. That all he could offer would not be enough.

Hard on the heels of that thought came the knowledge that Billy had trusted him to do that very thing, and he had royally fucked it up like the utter coward he was. He wanted to curl himself into Billy and hold on, drowned under his own regrets, but that at least he would not do. One of them had to pick them both up, mend all of this, and it was only right that it should be him.

“I’m sorry,” Billy muttered again, the sound of it muffled by Martin’s shirt.

“Don’t apologise to me!”

“I’m sorry.”

Martin did give way to the desire to shake Billy, just gently, at that. “No, please,” he begged, with his eyes watering, having to fight with his own body to get the words out. He had never understood better what Billy felt like during these episodes of his—it was like he was clinging by his nails to the edge of an abyss. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I didn’t mean what I said to Rolf—what I said to all of them. I was being a coward. I didn’t mean it.”

He breathed carefully, trying to slow down his heartbeat, to keep his voice soft and soothing, but he couldn’t help the words coming faster, tripping over each other in their haste to be said.

“If you’ll take me back, there’ll be no more hiding, I promise. I promise. Oh God, Billy, I’m so sorry. I want you to know I would never have said anything like that if I’d known you were listening. That doesn’t make it any better, does it? But I mean, I would never have hurt you like that intentionally. I didn’t mean to. I know that doesn’t make a lot of—”

Billy tried to curl away from him, hearing the anger, the accusation in his tone. Martin was only angry with himself, but that was too complicated for Billy to understand right now. He heard anger, he must have believed it was anger at him. Martin’s fear, love, and contrition didn’t seem to be getting through at all.

Billy’s lip wobbled and fresh tears dampened Martin’s neck. “I’m sorry!”

“Hey, hey, hey . . .” Now Martin was crying too, in sympathy and guilt. What a horrific thing this was that Billy was battling. How all encompassing and how poisonous. It pressed between them like a wall, stopping Billy from hearing Martin’s concern, blocking Martin’s love from passing through, from doing any good.

It occurred to him suddenly, catastrophically, that he might lose Billy over this, and the tearing, floor-opening pain of that put all his fears over his father and everything else into perspective. God, please no. Anything but that.

But he didn’t deserve to have his feelings considered right now—didn’t deserve to panic and beg Billy for a forgiveness that was a huge decision. Billy was currently not capable of deciding to switch the oven off before the house caught on fire. Forcing him to think about whether or not to forgive Martin right now seemed unfair.

Martin tried again for calm reassurance, for a kind of solidity where Billy could find his feet. “You’ve done nothing wrong. Nothing at all. I love you. You are the most beautiful, most talented person I’ve ever met. I think you’re wonderful, and I want to stay with you forever.”

No reaction, positive or negative. He couldn’t even be sure Billy was still listening. He felt like a cartoon character, run out over a deadly drop, his legs still pinwheeling, but he couldn’t stop running for fear he would fall.

“I know I’ve been a shit,” he admitted. “I know how it’s bothered you for a long time, and every bloody time I went my own way and pleased myself and didn’t think about what you wanted. It’s not like that was the only time I disappointed you. It was just the worst. But, Billy, it was also the last, I promise you that.

“I want to tell everyone we’re together. I want everyone to know, and if they don’t like it, then fuck them all, right? As long as I’ve got you. But I don’t ever want you to have to go through this again. You’re never coming home to an empty flat where you lie here helpless, not even drinking while you set the place on fire around you because no one’s here to look after you. It’s not happening again, do you hear me? If Dad tells me he never wants to speak to me again, if I never get another job, that’s fine. You’re what’s important. I’ve seen that now. I promise. I promise you, Billy. I love you, and I always will.”

Billy made a strangled, disbelieving noise and clutched so tight at Martin’s shirt that he could hear the seams creak with the strain. Scrambling up into his lap, all long coltish legs and spidery arms, Billy wrapped himself tight around Martin, his face still buried in Martin’s neck. Moving under his own power. That was an improvement. Martin managed a watery smile and leaned back into the cushions, running his hands reassuringly up and down Billy’s back, feeling the rigid muscles begin to soften and shake.

Slowly, beneath the reassuring caress, Billy turned heavy again, sagged into Martin’s embrace until he was lying as lax as a sleeping child over Martin’s supporting frame. “I’m sorry,” he said at last, his voice washed out, drowsy, but without the undertones of frantic despair it had carried earlier. A voice of reason. “I don’t like to be made invisible.”

You don’t like to be visible either, Martin thought ruefully. But that might well be true of both of them. Why else would they have both chosen to spend their every leisure moment pretending to be someone else?

“I know,” he said. “I know. I went away, and I felt like such a bastard because I know I should have told the truth to them, and I especially should have been proud. I am proud that you’re with me, Billy. It’s not going to happen again, I promise you. We are official now, you and I. I am going to tell Bretwalda at the next show, and if they don’t like it, they can go fuck themselves.”

“Really?”

“Really really.” Martin sniffed back his own tears. “And I’m going to hold your hand when we’re out on the street. And if anyone objects, I’m going to set my army on them.”

Billy huffed a tired little laugh at that into the bare skin of Martin’s neck. It made him warm all over.

“Yeah? Even though I’m . . .” Billy half raised a hand and let it fall. “I’m like this? Even though I’m so . . . useless and—”

“You’re not useless,” Martin said firmly, beginning to tremble with relief. It almost looked as though the crisis had been averted, although the situation was still not exactly normal. He couldn’t be sure if he had been forgiven, but Billy seemed to be recovering, and his own uncertainty was unimportant beside that. “But you are really tired, springbok, aren’t you? Do you want to go to bed?”

The thinning clouds darkened again. “I don’t know!” Billy growled, upset.

Martin shoved them both upright. As Kaminski had said, Billy was stable enough once he was up—it was not his body that was to blame for any of this. But clearly he’d been expecting too much to ask for a decision, even one so easy as sleep versus no sleep.

He got them all the way to the bedroom. The glass of water Kaminski had mentioned was still there on the side table, still full, so he lowered Billy to a sitting position on the side of the bed, told him to drink it, and watched to make sure. Tomorrow he was going to make a doctor’s appointment and take Billy to it. Because yes, he loved the guy even when he was a surly, weepy mess on the sofa, but it hurt to see Billy in such misery. Surely there had to be some kind of medicine for this? This whole disaster could have been so much worse, but that didn’t mean he wanted anything like it to ever happen again.

Billy had only managed to pull on pyjama bottoms after his shower, so it was easy to roll him into the duvet. Martin unzipped his own jeans and unbuttoned his shirt, catching sight of his paperback on his own side of the bed, the sock he thought he’d lost poking out of the top of the laundry basket. He stripped to his boxers and slid in next to Billy, gathering him in his arms. Billy was still quiet, withdrawn, but he curled like a small animal into Martin’s warmth, so trusting and needy that Martin was charmed all over again.

This is not the time to force him to make decisions, he thought, and pressed a tender kiss on the nape of Billy’s neck. But nor is it the time to leave him alone. “I’m going to be moving in,” he said, slow so that Billy could object if he wanted to, but sure so that Billy need not marshal himself to ask. “I’m going to take you to the doctor tomorrow. In a couple of days we’re going to be TV stars. Then in a fortnight at the Cambridge show I’m going to tell everyone in Bretwalda we’re together. How does that sound for a plan?”

Billy huffed again and turned to hook both arms around Martin’s shoulders, to rest his head back in what was obviously the place that had been designed for it between Martin’s shoulder and his neck. “Mmm,” he said. “Okay.”

Thank God, Martin thought, almost impatient for it now. Impatient to prove he was worthy of being forgiven. Thank God.