At the beginning of it all it's the potentialities that keep Nick awake.
The knowledge, unspoken, unacknowledged, but nevertheless lurking, huge, there - whenever they are together. Just the two of them, in David's office or perhaps his own, shoulders brushing as they stand too close together, infringing on each others' personal space without even noticing that they're doing so, fingers touching a little too long on a document or hands brushing against hands for too many seconds...
Or maybe they're all crowded uncomfortably round the table in a Cabinet meeting, Nick rubbing elbows with Theresa or Ken, looking across the table at those blue eyes which he knew he could drown in, given half a chance... Making a point, trying a new argument, waving his hands emphatically because he knows that David loves his hands and his uninhibited, Continental-style gestures, that he likes to watch and listen to Nick talk. Trying to hold David's attention in any way he can, laughing at his jokes and letting David's happy smile warm him through, like captive sunshine...
… And then Osborne nudges David, or cracks a joke, or makes some throwaway, ridiculous comment, anything to bring Dave's attention back to him, break his focus on Nick, make him forget, for however brief a time...
...Because Osborne knows. Oh yes, he knows. But quite what he knows - Nick refuses to acknowledge that awareness. Refuses to let his mind encompass the shape of it, the existence, the reality.
Because - if he did let himself think about it, about the way David's mouth would feel on his, the taste of him, the touch of his hands, the feel – Christ, yes – the feel of his cock -
No.
To think about it, to dream about it, was to make it concrete. Make it heavy with the weight of its own reality, an inevitability looming across their future, inescapable...
The looming probabilities – all that unfulfilled potential - makes him waver sometimes, shaking with the power of it. The need.
And things change, as they must. Nothing stays the same forever. And when those pushed together by circumstance stand shoulder to shoulder against the hurricane of hate and criticism which is the inevitable consequence of high office...
Nick is sure now. Maybe it was inescapable, maybe there never was any chance of it remaining no more than a possibility, a dream, his and David's own private fantasies, cloistered away and kept to themselves; maybe they could have averted fate. Stepped off the path. Changed the direction of the future somehow. No matter, it's too late now. The potential has become a certainty.
Someday soon he will fall, and David will fall with him.
In the dark of the night, and the most secret part of his soul, where Nick cannot – dare not – lie to himself, he yearns for that fall. Hungers for it. Because for all his knowledge of, and dread of, the consequences, for him and for the others dear to him – his family, his party, his friends – this fall, this fate... Is David. His colleague, his friend, his partner in the great experiment they and their colleagues have begun, the other half of himself in so many ways.
Yes. When it comes, as Nick knows it will, it will be glorious and terrible, and the best thing that's ever happened to him.
No longer potential, but reality.
Nick knew it was getting to be a serious problem when he found himself loitering pointlessly outside his Cabinet office, staring vaguely at the bowl of fruit provided and kept topped up by an aide in a - usually futile - attempt to get him to snack more healthily.
Looking at the fruit made him think of David and his health kicks, his insistence on the benefits of running (for those who didn't possess a hip joint that was more metal than bone), his regret at having to give up his bicycle, his belief in good organic ingredients in his recipes and in a decent, well-balanced diet...
Irritably Nick shook his head and made himself open the door. Why so reluctant to get to work? It wasn't as if –
Oh.
Slowly he sat down at his desk and powered up his PC, allowing the revelation to percolate through him until it had soaked in.
He'd been standing outside, waiting around in that ornate if slightly run-down corridor with its insititutional décor, making desultory, absent-minded conversation with the aides and advisors in the office annexe... because he'd been waiting.
For David.
When had it become a priority to see the man who was officially no more than his boss before he could settle to any work? To swap a few jokes, pass the time of day, maybe even have a good, strong, knock-down-drag-out argument over some piece of Tory policy which would have the Lib Dem section of the government up in arms if it wasn't modified, diluted... recast into something more socially responsible?
That was the only reason why he should be wanting to see David, or speak to him. A good, unexceptional political reason – fight the Lib Dem corner. Make sure that his party's views were heard, that his party's policies were implemented, in however diluted a form...
That, surely, should be his priority.
Except that Nick now knew, as he started working through his e-mails on auto-pilot with most of his thoughts grappling with this sudden new awareness, that those unexceptional, perfectly understandable reasons for seeing David regularly were simply rationalisations.
Excuses.
His reasons for seeing David on a daily basis were both simpler than that, and considerably more complicated.
Emotions were always horribly complicated...
He had to see David every day... Because he had to see David every day. His eyes had to rest on that familiar, aristocratic, good-humoured face, with its astonishingly perfect complexion which he privately rather envied. He had to hear that cultured voice telling those appallingly bad jokes, and see David's endearing, innocent delight in winning a reluctant laugh from him...
Even now, Nick realised, he was smiling. Somehow David could always make him smile.
Anger at his own foolishness flashed through him, and abruptly he pushed back from his desk, coming to his feet to stride hurriedly from his office with his face set and determined. All right then – if he wanted to see David, he'd bloody well see him. He'd check, make sure it wasn't some kind of over-reaction derived from tiredness and frustration, from spending far too many hours arguing with too many hostile MPs, too many closed minds and rigid attitudes, in far, far too many over-heated committee rooms.
And then...
He'd do whatever came next.
The hundred yards or so to the PM's office frequently mutated into something of an extended meet-and-greet with assorted SpAds, aides, civil servants and policy advisers. This morning, to Nick's relief, the hour was sufficiently early that many of them were still getting their first cup of coffee or powering up their PCs rather than occupying corridor space better left empty and unoccupied for those - like him - who wanted, no, needed, to get somewhere else in a hurry.
David was an early bird. He'd be at his desk by now, surely -
The muffled response to his firm knock on the door to the Prime Minister's inner sanctum put his mind to rest on that score, and with his heart in his throat, Nick pushed the door open and went in, closing it carefully behind him.
A shirt-sleeved David, tie already loosened and steaming mug of coffee to hand, was in the process of sitting down at his desk, presumably after arranging his jacket on the hanger behind the door with the painstaking care which had made it into a regular morning ritual. Looking up at his visitor, his face dissolved into a warm, welcoming smile when he saw who it was.
“Nick! Good morning, lovely day, isn't it! Did you see the piece in the Guardian on Michael's school reforms? Sometimes I really, genuinely wonder whether -”
Abruptly he stopped speaking, a slight frown indenting his forehead as he really looked at his deputy.
“Nick? Is, um, everything all right?”
Nick's mouth was dry, but his palms were damp. Vaguely he registered these all-too-physical reactions, signs of the skewed sense of priorities which had so betrayed him. Tentatively, he moved further into the room as David studied him with worried eyes.
“I – um...”
His mouth was so dry! Why couldn't he get the words out? Deliberately he tried to swallow, moistened his lips, tried to speak again.
“I.. er, I've been doing some thinking, David. About our relationship – the way the Coalition is working...”
“Yes.” said David encouragingly. “It's beginning to work well, don't you think? The last two years have been a bit of a roller-coaster, but -”
“A bit!” the words seemed torn from Nick's throat. He approached David, hands windmilling furiously as he tried to turn his confused thoughts into coherent, understandable words. He was a politician, dammit, words were his business, so why couldn't he make any sense out of them now?
“A, a bit? Dammit, David, it's been nothing but a rollercoaster! Losing the local elections – your lunatic right-wing throwing tantrums when you lost AV - and, and then I made things worse by trying to support you, but I – I – it wasn't a political decision, I simply couldn't stand to see you fighting alone – you backing me up over the Huhne mess when you should have thrown us all to the, the...
“I didn't understand why – not till this morning, then I suddenly understood.” Nick shook his head in self-disgust, “God, I am such an idiot – I suddenly knew...”
David had emerged from behind his desk, his eyes still on Nick.
“What did you know, Nick?” he asked, with an oddly hopeful inflection in his voice.
Oh God, not him too? So, he knows – maybe he always has -
Nick shook his head fiercely, refusing to think about the implications of this revelation. He had enough to handle coping with the consequences of his own light-bulb moment this morning.
“No, David, don't – don't encourage this. This – it's all wrong, the priorities are all wrong, we shouldn't be thinking – be doing -”
Looking straight at the Prime Minister, his boss, his rival, his friend, his lov - No. I mustn't - Nick took a deep breath, and plunged.
“We, we have families -”
Then David was standing in front of him, blue eyes alight with an emotion Nick had never seen in them before.
“Don't, Nick. Don't beat yourself up this way... You know how it is with Sam and I, we're still fond, still friends, but that's all. That's the way it's been since before Flo was born. And Sam... saw the way I looked at you a long time ago.”
Nick swallowed. Sam knew? Then – then what of Miriam? What of the woman who had drifted steadily away from him, as he had from her, until now they were little more than two people living separate lives under one roof? They had come to a silent, mutual accommodation for the sake of their children. The boys' happiness was always the priority, they had both been determined on that...
They stayed together. They were friends, perhaps even close friends. But they slept in separate beds, these days, and were content to have it so.
Had Miriam known, in her turn, about him? Had she understood more about him than he had about himself, had she always seen what he'd only just realised, and was that why -?
Ah, fuck! Miriam, you could have said something, amiga -
“Does everyone know about this except me?” he demanded on a spurt of irritation, and David chuckled as Nick flushed and looked away, biting his lip in embarrassment.
“Oh, Nick. Only you could be so carefully blinkered!”
Nick shook his head. “Not deliberately,” he said. “Never that, David. But – but how can we possibly – in the public eye as we are, and the media, and -”
He carried on shaking his head in denial, hearing the misery in his own voice but making himself continue, determined to do the right thing. Get his priorities right.
“No.” he repeated. “We can't.”
David stepped in closer, holding Nick's eyes with his own.
“I've never believed in 'can't',” he said softly, and lifting one hand, he laid it against the side of Nick's face... and leaned in for a kiss.
FIN