#pride network

I was brave and wore my new Pride Network shirt to work today. I haven’t come out to anyone at work, so I was a little nervous. No one said anything, which I’m glad about in a way. It meant no weird conversations. I’m out [as bi], but not like super public about it if that makes sense. I’m not ashamed or anything, more nervous about what people will think or say about me, you know? Anyway, that little act felt like a victory to me today. :)

Mike thinks this would be enough, to sit next to Mark in pubs and clubs and on the Tube. Spring is on its way, along with a sort of boundless optimism that he had been unable to find in himself in winter, when the London skies are as grey as the skyscrapers. 

He misses home, sometimes. He misses the brickworks, the accents, the various words for what in London is just a bread roll. Sometimes he wonders if Mark misses his home, across that wild sea. But London has been good to them, better than they expected; the bookshop has been doing better and better. They have been getting letters from all over the country, requests for books and also donations for the miners, and Mike and Gethin have been busy packing books into innocuous parcels to be smuggled past unsuspecting family members, landlords, policemen. 

Really though, it's enough. He watches Gethin and Jonathan kissing on the stairs, laughing, and ignores the loneliness that howls in his heart. Jeff has found a new man; a Scotsman, an escapee from Dundee, angry and vaguely punkish. David Bowie is as outrageous as ever, and Middle England continues to be disgusted. Life goes on. 

The issue is, really, he tells himself, that Mark has no idea of his feelings. Mark is a firecracker - fury and rage and a sharp tongue, used to being witty as a weapon. He is handsome, far too handsome for Mike's own good really, and his smile could probably melt ice, although perhaps even he is not pretty enough to melt Thatcher's heart. 

This is enough then, to sit on the sofa under the sickle and hammer in his flat, Mark's feet tucked under Mike's legs. Taking the piss out of Eastenders. And if in the night, Mike finds himself moaning Mark's name, twisting his wrist to the thought of them together - well. That's his business. 

This is enough, until it's not. 

It's not for a while but eventually, on a night out, he slurs his heart out to Mark whilst vomiting in a hawthorn bush. Mark grins at him, kisses him on the forehead - a fucking brotherly gesture, for God's sake - but in the morning when they awake in a tangle of limbs on the sofa, same as always - 

"Morning you," says Mark, grinning again. "You're a twat," and kisses him. 

THAT WAS SO FANTASTIC

A HUGE ROUND OF APPLAUSE TO ALL THE QUEENS WHO PERFORMED