Archive of Our Own

"Can I have a word, miss?"

Sandra sighs and lights up another cigarette from the butt of the last, regarding the Caffrey kid silently through the smog around her head until he drops his eyes from hers, shuffling uncomfortably from foot to foot and cramming his hands into the tight pockets of his jeans, trying to look casual. He does it with a lovely, gawky sort of unconscious grace, and she can't help wondering if...

But that would be stupid, wouldn't it? Lightning doesn't strike twice and all that.

"Alright, Danny La Rue, bugger off so I can go home."

He glances at her then, extraordinarily long eyelashes and a mouth that doesn't seem to know how not to be downturned. "I promised Billy, miss. He couldn't remember your house number, he wanted me to give you a letter."

Out his hands come again, one closed around a tatty-looking folded envelope. It's the third week he's tried and there's something about his dogged insistence that's sort of charming and entirely heartbreaking.

"You remind Billy Elliot he's got better things to do with his time now now than waste it bothering me," she says, with a fierceness bordering on shrill, and Michael shrugs crookedly with just one shoulder and tries to smile.

"I told him you said that last week and he says you don't know what you're on about. Please will you read it? I promised him."

That's what does it, that sudden deep ache of understanding. She wants to tell the kid I miss him too, but it wouldn't be the same and it wouldn't be fair to say, not even in some clumsy effort to make him feel less alone. Missing Billy and missing the first time she's felt a sputtering spark of hope in years are tangled together so tightly she'll never pick them apart. It's easier just to close them away together and move on, like packing away knotted Christmas lights and pretending there's nothing wrong with them – but Michael's gone and made everything real again, and now she feels like she needs an overdue cry in a hot bubble bath.

"Alright, give it here." The smile that breaks over his face then is brilliant and beautiful with relief. He doesn't belong here any more than Billy did, in their scruffy trainers and hand-me-down parkas and broken screwed up families. She wants to say something helpful and comforting, but it's impossible – she doesn't know him, she hasn't helped him, for all she's aware he could be a rotten little shit with no talents who's destined to end up on the dole with everyone else in this sooty little town – and she cocks her head at the door until he gets the message and wanders off without another word. He carries himself like a dancer in a way Billy never did outside of classes and she wants to call him back, offer him a chance, a kind word, anything, but then Debbie's there with her coat zipped over her leotard and tutu and the moment's passed.

"What's Billy sending you letters for?"

"I don't know, love. Carry this." She thrusts a bag at Debbie until she rolls her eyes and hauls it behind her to the door.

"That Michael's dead weird. Susan says Keeley says her uncle George says he wears girls' clothes."

Sandra's furious suddenly, not really knowing why she's so upset but unable to stop herself snapping, "Well, so do you!" even though she's aware how nonsensical the words sound even as they're coming out of her mouth. "Shut up and stop dragging that on the floor, for Christ's sake."

It's not a fair sort of anger, she guiltily admits to herself later, but when is anger ever fair? She lets Debbie pick a video after tea even though it means missing her soaps, and half-watches it with her hand stroking gently through Debbie's hair. It's not her fault all the training in the world isn't going to make her any good. It's not her fault Billy appeared and twisted things up just when the both of them were ready to quit for good. Bloody Billy Elliot. The letter in Sandra's dressing gown pocket feels like it's burning a hole there and she knows she won't be able to resist reading it forever, but for now it can stay where it is.

"I think there's some ice cream left in the freezer if you want some?" she offers, grumbling at the clicking in her knees when she gets off the couch, and Debbie smiles up at her from the floor where she's practicing splits and stretches they both know she'll never have to use.

Dear Mrs Wilkinson

Hello miss. How are you. London is dead weird, I can't get use to this much green grass and trees and that. You always think about London like massive buildings and loads of traffic but not here. Edward the 8th was born in this house someone said and I think Queen Victoria lived here too and so did Edward the 7th. Whys there so many kings called Edward? People keep calling me William here. Theres a boy called Simon who I punched once (its a long story) and one time he tried to call me Will and I looked at him like who the f do you think you are and he has not tried it since. Everyones quite nice here but posh people still act like if your not posh you need fixing.

Anyway miss I wanted to write and say I know you said I would forget you when I came here but I have been here 2 months now and I still think about you all the time so sorry but your wrong. It would be like forgetting my Dad or Tony or Michael or forgetting my Mam. Just because someones not around doesn't mean they don't matter you know.

Yours sincerely

Billy Elliot

Seeing people dance should be boring by now, surely. It's everywhere, not only in classes – people practicing positions under the table in maths, girls contorting into weird stretches while reading Just Seventeen on break so there's never a second of wasted time, some over the top show-offs who come pirouetting into the dining hall every day just because they like being watched. It's not boring. Somehow, everything feels even more fascinating now after a year than it did on the day he started.

There's an older lad who'd been assigned to look after Billy when he was new and still goes out of his way to check up on him, even though Billy's sure he's got better things to do with his final year before upper school, and he tried to explain it to him once, halting and embarrassed and feeling like an idiot although it was too late to stop talking. "It's cos you're involved now," Alex told him, correcting Billy's arm position where he stood at the barre and looking critically at their reflections until he was happy. "Aye, better. Battements glissés just like I showed you and mind your hip this time. It's cos you know the work we all put in. When you're new you think it's magic, all them lassies floating about in tutus. Now you know the tricks behind the illusion."

"It's even more like magic now." He glared at his reflection as he worked, annoyed at never quite being able to stop it showing on his face as a slight frown when he was concentrating. "Like understanding it and that, knowing how hard it is and they still look like they're floating." He heard Alex laugh behind him and accidentally on purpose battement-glisséd him gently in the shin. "Don't take the piss, I'm serious."

"I'm no taking the piss, it's just nice hearing you say it. We'll make a dancer of you yet, wee man."

Lingering in the hallway now, late for lunch but distracted by familiar sharp laughter and the flash of a grand jeté sailing past the open door, Billy watches Alex rehearse his solo and feels a different sort of hunger settle in him, consuming and painful. He moves like animation, like something from Fantasia, gliding and soaring in superhuman ways Billy used to feel he'd never be able to do in a million years of training. These days he thinks maybe it's not so out of reach after all.

"Prepare," he mutters to himself, ducking quickly away from the door then in case anyone overheard and decides to have a go at him for lurking round like a creep. That exasperated, encouraging voice in his head used to be Mrs Wilkinson – now it's Alex too, and his teachers, his friends, even Tony, although Tony's weird and likes to hide his encouragement in blistering insults. Far too many to let down now.

Besides, Alex says there needs to be more dancers from north of Oxford and the third year lad from Liverpool just got assessed out.

There's this thing with Billy now, some steady kind of confidence and an irrepressible happiness that feels so alien to Tony it's almost frightening.

He doesn't know what it's like any more not to have the peculiar stink of coal lodged in his sinuses, or grime caked into the creases of his nose and knuckles no matter how many times a day he washes. He's picking at a missed smear of it now, trying to dislodge it from the side of his nail with the corner of a coaster but only managing to bend and fray the cardboard. The blare of football coming from the little telly in the corner of the club distracts him only briefly, a goal that misses by inches and the rising and falling ooohh from the crowd, and he sits back in his corner with the dregs of his pint and wishes he were anywhere else but here.

"We're not that different, you know," Billy said to him the night before, side by side in their single beds again for the first time in nearly a year. He's growing like a weed, nearly as tall as Tony and already broadening in the shoulders like some fucking cartoon character. If I'd put a quid on that lanky little bastard growing muscles like He-Man I'd be richer than god Tony said once, teasing but hating the twinge of bitterness that crept into his voice anyway – then Billy started laughing, bright and infectious, wingnut ears turning red like they always used to do when he was embarrassed, and it was like he'd never changed at all.

"The fuck are you talking about, prancing pony?"

Tony sensed movement then and turned his head to see Billy twisting onto his side, dim and bluish in the shadowy light of the moon coming through the thin curtains.

"I dunno. Simon says that's how it seems. Like dedication and that. Moving away from home to do what you wanna do."

"Yeah, well, going where the pits aren't closing is hardly fucking off to dance round London like a sissy, is it?"

"You could get another job. See if Dad can get you in at that warehouse with him."

"I reckon Dad got the last job going for a fifty mile radius. There's no chance, kidda, this town's fucked."

After a while, Billy quietly asked, "Do you think Dad's gonna be alright on his own?" and Tony sighed, long and slow, wishing he had an answer.

Tonight in the club is meant to be some kind of leaving do, a proper send-off, but nobody's really in the mood. Billy was there for a while and everyone stared at him like he was some exotic new exhibit in a dingy dilapidated zoo even though most of them have known him from birth, but he disappeared to go and drink stolen cider in the park with Michael and now it's just like every other night: gloomy, fraying tempers, drunken fights. He overhears a bit of a conversation, some knobhead thinking he's clever making some kind of lame joke about using Billy as a new fairy on the club Christmas tree, and yells across the packed tables, "Our Billy could knock your fucking lights out, man," until his dad puts a hand on his arm and he subsides, sinking back in his seat and scowling down at the smudge of fingerprints all over his pint glass.

It's weird how much he hates it here without ever wanting to leave.

Somewhere during this evening of laughter and stories and poisonous-tasting gin Michael found hidden under the kitchen sink they ended up sharing the one remaining swing that's not been broken by bored drunken louts kicking the park to bits, standing on it chest to chest as close as books on a shelf and racing up to meet the sky on clanking rusty chains.

Then Michael found one final scrap of bravery after he chickened out of the swinging and settled sideways on Billy's lap. He could feel the blood rising in his cheeks, a shivering sort of apprehension spreading through his stomach, and he clutched tightly at the chains to limit the contact between them because that made it okay, right? That was just thinking creatively and sharing the space. It wasn't like they were cuddling or anything, right? But then Billy started fiddling with the zip on Michael's coat, curling his arm right round Michael's back and over his hip to reach it, and he didn't know what to think any more.

It's a chilly night and they're beaded with a rain so fine it's more like mist, but it's alright. It's nice. Drifting gently back and forth, spinning head resting tentatively on Billy's shoulder, Michael quietly asks, "Billy, are you a queer now?" and Billy sort of laughs and says, "Does it matter?"

Then Michael says no because, either way, it doesn't.

He opens the old jewellery box every day like a ritual to look at the narrow gold wedding band, the only thing he hadn't been able to bring himself to pawn even for Billy's sake. He wishes every time that he hadn't let the rest of her things go, enraged and desperate with a grief that feels like drowning at how much the memories are fading. He can barely remember her face now, and when he does more often than not he realises he's remembering the exact fall of hair and smiling eyes in one of the photographs downstairs.

Tony caught him once, barging into the room with a half-formed question that died on his lips when he saw the open box and the ring hooked around Jackie's little finger. "Sorry," he said hastily and tried to back out of the room like he'd found him doing something else entirely, but Jackie muttered, "It's okay, son," and Tony hesitated, then quietly closed the door and came over to sit on the bed beside him.

"I didn't know."

"Where did you think the money came from?"

"The collections? George's fucking benefit concert, I don't know, Dad, shit. Her things."

"I'd do it again," he said, with a a stubbornness that had to come out more angry than he meant it to cover up the unsteadiness of his voice, and after a moment Tony put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently as he got up to leave.

"She'd have wanted you to sell the ring as well if she thought it'd help."

It's just another relic now, like his father's boxing gloves and Tony's record player and a scrapbook of Billy's photographs and school performance programmes that he'd started keeping for Jenny's mum and somehow hadn't wanted to stop filling up after she died. The house feels dead too, cold and silent with nobody in it, and he wanders from room to room breathing in the memories and every day telling himself he'll look into getting it sold tomorrow.

Billy's never got used to the silence of the dorm at the weekend. In the first year the place was rowdy, thunderous with laughter, teasing, endless chatter, the excitement of finding out the stranger in the next bed liked Star Wars and the Clash and realising this wasn't all going to be about navigating a strange, scary new maze of classical music and weird French words. Over time the numbers dropped, kids got too homesick or couldn't keep up or their bodies simply grew wrong and they were asked to leave, so now the weekends are strangely quiet with only a few of them left rattling around while everyone who lives close enough goes home.

Lights out at ten feels awfully early in the summer when the twilight in the window seems as bright as noon against the silent sleeping house – but now, almost Christmas, it's been dark for hours already and Billy feels the exhaustion settling in his limbs so that even reaching down to take off his socks feels like too much of a job. Instead he drops bonelessly backwards onto his bed, arms hanging off the sides and legs dangling. Silence roars in his ears like a storm, broken suddenly by Simon's quiet laughter.

"Get under the covers, you'll freeze."

"Tired."

"Fair enough."

Billy hears shuffling, the soft sounds of shifting fabric, the creaking of springs, and turns only his head to look across the space between them at Simon, bundled up in a vaguely hilarious set of pyjamas that make him look like a grandad, dragging both his own blankets and those of the next empty bed over himself. "You're always cold," he teases. "You wanna try living in Everington when there's a gale blowing off the sea and your windows don't fit properly."

Simon raises an impeccable blond eyebrow at that, although Billy suspects he's concealing a grin behind the covers he's pulled up over half his face. "You ought to try living in Surrey, where all our windows fit and we can afford to heat our houses to a level fit for humans."

"No thanks. Tory prick."

"Bent bastard." Simon's affected accent is a startlingly good impersonation by now, after four years of practice, and both of them crack up like they do every time. It's the strangest of all private jokes, one that made Billy feel hot with shame at first until he finally realised that this boy was not only incapable of holding a grudge but, unexpectedly for a rich brat who got everything he wanted, who owned a fucking horse all of his own, seemed unable to feel anything at all except earnest friendship and genuine good cheer. "You do know you're welcome to stay over the summer?"

"Not sure me and your dad are gonna get along any better now than we have any other time we've met."

"He's alright once you get to know him." After a moment he adds, "Which is exactly what I've told him about you, too," and something about the words, or the brilliant smile that appears on his face when he's saying them, makes Billy feel oddly nervous.

"My leg's stiff," he says, needing to change the subject. He's not worried – he realised very early on what was a pain to be concerned about and what was simply tiredness – but it's an annoying sort of ache that he can't quite reach by stretching no matter which way he bends. He's got his leg in the air and his foot flexing back and forth when he hears Simon get out of bed, feels the lurch of his own mattress as he sits down and the press of warm fingers into his calf and, suddenly, the weirdest sensation in his stomach of falling.

"Where? Here?"

"Sort of there." He swallows, wishing he'd remembered to fill the water glass he always keeps beside his bed but knowing he wouldn't have drunk from it anyway because that would have meant moving away from the careful dig of fingers exploring his tightened muscle. "Sort of, when I move like that, it's—"

"Here?"

"Yeah."

Carefully he watches Simon's face, ready to flick his eyes away as soon as there's any chance he might be caught looking. It's a very calm realisation, one that doesn't feel sudden at all but more like a thought that was always there and never quite acknowledged, something lurking at the very brink of his awareness that's only just being coaxed out now by the tingles and flooding warmth making the hairs on his arms stand up. So Tony was right, then. No. Fucking hell, no.

"No," he says out loud, and Simon's eyebrows raise again. He bites his lip. The deep press of his fingertips hesitates, and then it's gone.

"No," he echoes softly. "Sorry."

"No, I never meant no, I meant—" His words crack in two and fade away when Simon looks at him, and this time when he puts his hand on Billy's bare leg it's higher up, above his knee, and he does it with such a look of studious determination on his face that Billy knows he'd be falling apart laughing at any other time – just not now, not when there's something prickling between them and making it hard to dredge up any words to say what he means. "I just fucking hate it when my brother's right," he says viciously, and moves in for the most awkward kiss of his life, not that there's been much to compare it to. His leg's still draped over Simon's thighs, it's a terrible angle, Simon's twisted in a way that must be uncomfortable and somehow Billy's holding his pyjama shirt so the fabric's all bunching up behind his neck, but any attempt to make it better only seems to blur into a bigger tangle: limbs colliding as they try to brace on the mattress, clinking teeth, a strange embarrassing sucking sound when one of them takes a breath and dislodges the kiss, a knee between his thighs that comes distressingly close to pinning his balls to the bed.

"Good Lord," Simon mumbles against Billy's chin, and it's such a bizarre, posh-boy reaction to being kissed that they both start laughing, some uncontrollable combination of awkwardness and hysteria and breathless, exhilarating pleasure that makes Billy's heart race like crazy, and Simon's too if the crashing pulse in his wrist is anything to go by, fluttering hard against Billy's palm where he's wrapped it tight around him in a missed attempt at clutching his hand. "We can do better than this, surely?"

"I dunno. I'm not exactly an expert, like."

"What do they say at school? Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse."

"Fucking hell, how long have you been waiting to use that line on someone?"

He'd be embarrassed about the throb between his legs if he couldn't feel Simon's cock pressed heavily against his thigh as well. As it is, it just seems sort of rude and pointless not to put his hand on it since it's there anyway. Simon goes very still at the touch, sucking in a shocked breath and then laughing it out, suddenly managing to find a way to settle their limbs around one another that doesn't feel so precarious and pressing himself closer into Billy's palm and wandering fingers.

"I swear," he says, so bright in the eyes and cheeks it looks like he's been fucked already, "this was not my intention when I came over here."

"You want me to stop?"

"You want me to kill you?" He pushes Billy's hand away and lunges in to kiss him again, better this time, slipping a hand behind his head to hold him there while Billy stays sprawled on the bed like a starfish, wondering why he doesn't instinctively know what to do with his arms. It feels like the sort of thing that should come naturally but there are too many options, hold his face or touch his hair or run hands down his back or go straight for the bum and press him closer there, closer where they've managed to find a strange, shivering sort of rhythm between then. It becomes a frantic hybrid of all the options, skittering his hands all over the stupid pyjamas, feeling the sinuous twist of muscle under the cotton and eventually finding bare skin at the base of his spine that's damp with sweat and hot as hell under Billy's stroking fingertips. Simon squirms and arches, ticklish or turned on or both, and stutters words into Billy's mouth that he can't hear but understands anyway as they move and press and shudder to the most teenage of ends: There. Yes. Don't stop.

"It wasn't my intention either," Billy murmurs after. The way they're curled together means his lips are pressed to Simon's temple, like a kiss that won't end, and the words feel as though they're going to soak right through to his brain without bothering to reach his ears first. "But, you know."

"I know."

"Yeah."

Strange, soft little breaths of words, no real content and yet with more real meaning than any conversation would ever manage. Billy feels his hand being turned over in Simon's, the brush of a fingertip across the lines on his palm and the freckle on his thumb, and doesn't want to move even to change his wet shorts before he falls asleep in them. His head feels woolly with exhaustion and a warm, dozy sort of peace, but this, everything, this heavy heat of a body in his arms, this scent of someone else's sweaty hair so close to his nose, is so new and curious and somehow not at all terrifying that he doesn't want to close his eyes and risk falling asleep just yet.

"What were you saying about your brother?" Simon asks. "More to the point, why would you bring up your brother when you're trying to kiss someone?"

It makes him want to laugh and cringe all at once, and there's this strange sense of spitting rage too that feels like it's settled somewhere deep down ready to be excavated and examined later when he's on his own. "Just, I spent like fucking years telling everyone it's not just poofs who do ballet, and it's stupid them saying it's for sissies when they've got no idea how much it kills sometimes, you know? And now. Just." He falls silent before he can say and now it looks like I am and I'm fucking never gonna live it down because it sounds weird, it sounds like fucked priorities, and besides he's pretty sure he doesn't fancy Demi Moore any less just because he's spent the last ten minutes ramming his crotch against another lad's.

"You won't tell anyone, will you?" Simon says suddenly. The way they're lying means his face is hidden, but he sounds uncomfortable and his fidgeting fingers have stilled in a tight grasp on Billy's wrist.

"Course not," he murmurs, tilting his head to press a kiss to Simon's cheekbone that makes him smile and breathe out shakily and resume the slow stroking across Billy's hand. He can't help thinking about Michael now, those very same words on that miserable Christmas back in Everington, and how this is the sort of thing that manages to spread like spilled water anyway no matter what you do or don't say about it. He'd never told anybody about Michael and yet everybody seemed to know within a day.

He wonders what Michael would say about all this if he knew.

Then he wonders why the strange pang in his stomach feels so much like guilt.

It's never going to be a friendship, but at least he's stopped looking like he's chewing on a mouthful of wasps any time he knocks on the front door and she offers him a cuppa.

"We'd like to invite you to Billy's final school performance," he says, and she smiles behind her mug at how stiff and formal he always sounds when he has to mention anything at all to do with ballet. He's proud of his son, she knows he is, but it's a world he struggles to understand and even seven years after it was forced upon him he tiptoes around it like he thinks it might be full of landmines or bear traps. "He's sent us four tickets, and since Tony's split up with Sheena we thought you and Debbie might like to come instead."

"He's a tip, Jackie – you never tell a woman she's your second choice." This time when his face falls and his ears turn red she can't hide her laughter and it bursts out, throaty with smoke. "Give over, I'm only teasing. What's he doing?"

"Des Grieux?" he says cautiously, and looks relieved when she nods encouragingly at his pronunciation. He didn't speak to her for five months that time she couldn't help laughing at him for not saying Don Quixote properly, which bothered her more than she'd ever admit to anyone. "It's a thing with a girl from that. A, um, pas de deux."

"Look at you, you'll be speaking French like a pro in no time."

"Do you have to?"

"Sorry." She starts laughing anyway, that awful uncontrollable snorting stifled kind that only ever happens when it really really shouldn't, but when she realises he's smiling too, bemused and self-deprecating, she lets it spill out all the way to the kitchen to boil the kettle again.

Checking out people's shopping is about as soul-sucking as it gets, but she's been doing it long enough now that it doesn't really need that much thought any more. Instead she lets her mind wander all over the place, memories and plans and scary, thrilling ideas for the future, only interrupting herself every now and then to say, "Nine pounds nintey-six please," as tonelessly as an automaton.

Then a pack of Wrigleys lands on the counter in front of her and a voice says, "What time do you get off?"

She's all prepared to snap at whoever it is for being a presumptuous dickhead, but her glare explodes into a smile when she sees it's Billy, with Michael sniggering somewhere behind him. It's hard to hug someone when there's a shop counter between you but she gives it a damn good go and he laughs into her hair, squeezing her until she shrieks and slaps him on the shoulder. "You wanker, Billy, you said you were coming tomorrow!"

"I thought I was til I checked my ticket this morning, lucky I did."

"I'm off at six, meet you down the Hare?"

She's in the pub by five past and finds them in the corner by one of the leadlight windows looking out towards the sea. Michael's sitting nicely, one leg crossed over the other at the knee and his foot tapping along to the Take That on the jukebox, but Billy's sprawling like he owns the place, arms spread wide over the back of the bench he's sitting on, midway through a laugh that's making his throat tremble above his open collar at something Michael's saying. For a moment she lingers almost out of sight with her half of bitter, watching them – these friends she made out of necessity when jealousy told her to stick close to where all the attention was going, who turned out to be truer than any of the giggling girls she knew – until Michael spots her and grins, pulling out the chair next to him and tilting it so Billy's propped foot falls off.

"I was just telling Billy your mam and his dad's getting dead close these days," he tells her, and Debbie groans and hides her face in her hands.

"Will you shut up?"

"To be fair it's probably about time they both got some," Michael says, smirking. This time Debbie and Billy's protests are in unison and he breaks up laughing, raising both his hands in surrender or apology. "I'm only saying, like."

"Don't. Anyway, my mam's moving to Nottingham with me."

"Uni," Billy says after a moment. "Dr Wilkinson. Christ." It's not disbelieving or derogatory the way so many other people have been saying it. Instead it's more like wonder, and it's there in the way he's looking at her as well, warmth in his eyes and the ghost of a smile tilting the corners of his mouth. "And Michael in London. Look at you both having normal lives."

"I dunno if they're normal," Michael says. He starts to stack coasters like a playing card castle, nimble fingers topped with flaking navy polish on the nails. "Not for round here. They won't be boring though."

"And Nottingham's really close to London. Closer than here, anyway."

"A pact," Billy says suddenly. He drinks vodka and lime now because it's not as bad for him as beer, another thing his idiot brother calls him names for – at least he did until that day last summer, Debbie's birthday party, when Billy sidled over to Michael and put an arm around his waist, slid a hand into the back pocket of his jeans, and kissed him on the jaw, all without looking away from Tony. If I did stuff like this it'd make me a poof, he said, while Michael took his cue to play along and twined his arms around Billy's neck, laying a trail of kisses against his pulse there. What I drink doesn't mean nothing. Tony's face was amazing, slack with shock, and he made some excuse to rush out of the living room while Michael and Billy near pissed themselves laughing and got back to helping Debbie rearrange the furniture like nothing had happened. He's holding his glass up now, ice cubes and neon cordial gleaming in the light from the window, and Debbie and Michael lift theirs as well, his with a disgustingly chewed plastic straw sticking out the top and bobbing about. "Once a term at least we meet up. London or Nottingham or anywhere between. If we can't all be at home together at least we can be somewhere. You in?"

"In," she says at once, and Michael says, "Yeah, in." Their glasses collide between them and they drink to it – to taking the best of home with them, wherever they are.

"So what feels more like home now, Everington or London?"

Bleary with vodka, Billy watches him across the sticky pub table and frowns as though he's considering the question so hard it's giving him a headache. When he speaks finally it's with a strange sort of care, forming the words slowly so they don't slur. "Well, you're here now," he says, half-hiding a suggestive smile behind another shot and only making it seem filthier somehow – and Michael laughs, of course, like he always does now at this strange game of flirt chicken, calls him a twat and goes to get another round in. He got over his thing for Billy years ago – a thing he soon realised was less about being in love with him and more about how he'd sat there while Michael put lipstick on him and just carried on talking about careers like it wasn't weird – but the memory of that first awakened crush still lingers and mingles with this friendship, the best and most precious of his whole life, so that even though he knows they're only kidding around when they say this stuff there's always an odd sort of blurring of lines that makes him feel silly and shy for a few minutes any time they meet up after not seeing each other for a while.

Billy's quiet when Michael returns, drawing his fingertip through a little spilled puddle of drink on the table. He says, "I know I never would've had it as good as this if I never left, but Everington's always gonna be home even if I move halfway across the world," and surprise hits Michael's stomach the way it does when you slip on ice or miss a step on a staircase. It's probably coincidence, but it's a funny one considering what he's been trying to find the words to say all night.

"Are you moving halfway across the world?" he asks casually, looking not at Billy's face but at his hand instead, reaching his own out as well to draw out wet little trails from the puddle like a child drawing a crayon sun. He senses movement in his periphery and looks up then, finding Billy's eyes intent on his. "Did you nod or shake or shrug or what? I wasn't looking."

"Shrugged." He does it again, and sinks one of the shots from the tray. "Got an offer to dance in New York but–"

"You are shitting me."

"No I'm not."

"Billy, man, I'm going to New York, that's what I've been trying to tell you all night!"

It's like fate or something. Billy's grin is huge and delighted and he makes some over-expressive drunken theatrical double hand gesture of what?! "You could have told me earlier, what've you been fannying about for?"

"I dunno." He knows exactly why. It's that day in 1984, that same day Billy found him dressing up in Marie's old clothes for the first time and was too distracted by his audition to care. I think you shouldn't bother, Michael had said. I'd miss you. Billy probably doesn't even remember and would never be selfish enough to say the same to him, but in some crazy way that's worse. It's not a crush any more but that doesn't mean it's not love, and the idea of testing it with an ocean between them wouldn't stop twisting him up inside. "Wasn't sure what you'd think."

"Are you mental? Come on!" He hands Michael his rum and coke and clinks their glasses together with a poorly-judged aim that makes both their drinks slosh over and wet his cuff. "Tell me what's going on. Tell me now. Tell me everything."

He wishes he had a better story to give, one like Billy's that was all about blinding talent and relentless determination, but as he explains about St Martin's, friends, friends of friends, contacts, offers, everything, it kind of feels as though their breaks aren't all that different after all: being in the right place at the right time, knowing the right people, stepping into a void with no way of predicting how long the bridge there will hold or whether it'll hold at all. There's a flickering curl of excitement building as he talks, partly for this chance to finally do something with his life but even more now there's the possibility he won't be alone out there. He tries to imagine what it'd be like, Billy dancing and him running round like a nutter after some maniacal fashion diva trying to learn enough to fight to the next ladder rung. Maybe they'd share a flat. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Hanging hopes on maybes is never wise. Billy's made a soloist and stays in London after all, but he comes to the airport to see Michael off and kisses his cheek the way he always does, the way he's done every single time they've said goodbye since they were eleven.

"You'll be brilliant," he says, quiet and sincere against Michael's ear as he hugs him so tightly it's almost painful. "Do it for Everington, hey? Someone's got to brighten that place up."

"I reckon you already did that like a decade ago."

"Then do it with me."

He's got nothing to his name but a couple of suitcases and a terrifyingly minuscule bank balance, and now the hot aching threat of tears buzzing in his nose, but when he finally pulls away – Billy turns it into a joke, clinging to him so Michael has to prise him off finger by finger, making him laugh even as he's trying not to howl – he heads through the doors feeling better than before, alone but nothing even close to lonely. He knows New York is never going to feel like home now, but if home's just a phonecall with Billy away then it's got to be the next best thing.

This thing between them comes and goes. The day Simon gets promoted from understudy to Prince is the first time they've touched in years and the urge for it hits all at once: something sparks in their first rehearsal, a tension and heat and hunger that he can feel unfurling in the pit of his stomach, something burning vividly in Billy's eyes every time they meet his own. It's not distracting, it doesn't get in the way of learning the steps – they're better together than they've ever been with other partners and everybody in the room can see there's some wild, exhilarating kind of magic beginning to happen here – but he murmurs my flat when they're done and they barely make it through the door before Billy's hand curls soft around the back of his neck in a way that doesn't at all foreshadow the ferocity of the kiss he lands on Simon's mouth. They've not bothered to shower or even change, just threw jeans on over their practice clothes in their haste, and the fabric beneath is still damp with sweat and clings infuriatingly to Billy's legs until Simon's swearing like a sailor and trying not to let Billy's laughter set him off as well.

"Why can't we ever take this seriously?" he finally asks, and Billy grins and does some kind of trick movement that manages to pin Simon to the bed beneath him even though they're both still tangled up in tights that won't come down.

"I dunno. You just make me laugh."

He pretends to struggle for a while, mostly for the pleasure of feeling Billy hold him down. "Take me seriously."

"You and your shit lines again, fucking hell."

"I didn't actually mean it like that but please, feel free." Then Billy's laughing again and, really, the laughing is just as much a part of what they are as the hands fumbling with his dance belt.

Everybody is there, and he doesn't know who to hug first – his dad, who's prone to cry at these things nowadays and looks beside himself; Sandra, almost staggering trying to carry a bunch of flowers that's bigger than she is; Tony and Debbie, who look at him guiltily and pretend they haven't just been chatting each other up; or Michael, jetlagged as hell but still grinning, leaning exhausted against his boyfriend's chest. They all attack him at once, even Joel whom he's never actually met before, and Billy laughs, squeezed and smothered breathless, wincing under the thunderous back-slapping he suspects is coming from Tony, who only really feels comfortable with affection if there's a bit of manly violence involved as well. There's someone missing, of course, there always is, but back in his dressing room her last letter to him is carefully closed inside the pages of the ballet manual he stole from Everington book bus during the strike, to be read like a ritual before every performance the way some of the other dancers say a prayer. Please know that I was always there with you through everything, and I always will be. I am proud to have known you and I'm proud that you were mine. Always be yourself. I'll love you forever. The words are as familiar as his own name by now and the paper is soft and creased with age, smudged here and there with the ghosts of long ago tears, his and hers both. In all the ways that matter she's there as much as anyone.

The booth in the bar they all go to is overcrowded, but squashing up is sort of nice, sort of weirdly nostalgic, like being back in the Hare on quiz night or in the miners' club on New Year's Eve. Michael's sitting just to Billy's right, the full length of their thighs pressed close together. He's holding Joel's hand under the table and Billy smiles and looks away from what still seems private somehow even though he's heard everything about everything in obscene, unwanted detail over the crackly transatlantic phone line. To his other side is Simon, still jittery with adrenaline and talking rapidly across the table to Debbie and his parents. He wonders for a moment what Simon would do if he tried to hold his hand under the table but the idea makes him want to laugh. Whatever they are is fine as it is, perfect in its imperfection. It doesn't need a name or mushy gestures or public acknowledgement or any kind of promises. It's just another connection that works, like every other connection around the table.

He tilts his head back to rest against the corner of their booth, listening to all the conversations at once with his eyes closed and hearing them as a jumble of memories and taunts and chatter, like snapshots of a set of knotted lives that he wouldn't know how to untangle even if he wanted to. He feels movement beside him, then the warm weight of a head on his shoulder, and there's a smile in Michael's voice when he murmurs, "If you're going to sleep I am too." A strange, faraway memory filters through then: the old park swing in Everington, rust flaking off chain links, Michael's breathless giddy laughter muffled in Billy's scarf as they soared and sank and soared, and a rising flutter of something warm and unsteady that he'd passed off as the effects of drink for longer than he really should have.

He means to say do you miss home? but somehow the words come out as, "Are you happy?" which, tonight, is a question that doesn't feel like it needs answering at all.