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ONE: JAFFA CAKES AND TEA BAGS (EMERGENCY RATIONS FOR THE HOMESICK TRAVELLER)
Liam probably can’t sleep slumped over on the counter, but fuck if he’s not going to give it a damn good go. He doesn’t regret coming over to the UK to study—UT Austin wasn’t far enough away from his parents, so why not add another 4,900 miles or so to the distance—but between the rigorous educational program and working the maximum number of hours his student visa will allow, he feels like he’s barely had time to breathe since he arrived, let alone relax. Which means that even this stupidly hard counter looks soft enough to at least attempt a quick nap on.
And then the bell over the door chimes as it swings open, and suddenly, Liam is wide fucking awake.
The guy currently approaching the counter is an absolute smoke show. The turquoise of his hair would be bright enough on anybody, but contrasted against the man’s dark skin, it’s practically neon. He has rich, sparkling eyes and a mischievous grin, and he’s clutching something weirdly lumpy and hastily wrapped in brown paper in his well-manicured hands. Liam thinks he should have more questions about the parcel—and he probably will in a minute, given that it’s his literal job to ask them—but right now, he’s pretty focused on remembering how his knees are supposed to work.
It’s not like Liam’s been celibate since he got here. He wouldn’t go so far as to say he had a weird reverse Love Actually experience when he first arrived in the UK—though his accent has, in fact, done him more favours than he would have expected given the general disdain he’d thought folks held for Americans abroad—but he certainly hasn’t had any trouble finding someone to keep his bed warm, every time he’s been looking for that.
He’s not hard up, is the thing. There’s no reason a stranger—even an extremely attractive stranger—should be giving him awooga cartoon eyes but, like, with his dick. But here he fucking is.
“Hey there.” So maybe he’s leaning into the accent a little. Fucking sue him. “Can I help you with something?”
The guy’s eyes light up as he lays the parcel down between them on the counter—and now Liam can read the note hastily scrawled across it: ‘EMERGENCY RATIONS FOR THE HOMESICK TRAVELLER’. “I very much hope so…” His eyes drop to Liam’s chest, and Liam isn’t sure if he’s imagining things, but it sure feels like his gaze lingers a little too long. “Liam. I have to get this to my dear friend, who is currently wasting away on your side of the Atlantic with no access to the important things in life. Terrible business.”
Liam pulls out a customs form. “‘The important things in life’ being…?”
“Jaffa cakes and proper tea, of course.”
“Of course.” Liam grins, pushing the form across the counter along with a pen and a courier bag. “Well, I’ve got no idea what that first thing was, but I think I remember seeing a tea bag or two back home.”
Turquoise’s penmanship is loopy and careful, a far cry from the message scribbled across the plain paper wrapping. “I’m sure that’s true, but we can never be too careful about these things.” He signs the form with a flourish, handing it back to Liam as he puts the package inside the now-addressed bag. And if Liam’s eyes drop immediately to the name printed below the signature line, that’s his business.
Percy. He hasn’t quite gotten used to some of the weirdly formal British names he sees on people he considers way too young to have them; somehow, though, this one fits this guy. He gets the parcel weighed and paid for, distantly noting that it’s off to someone in New York with such a long name that Percy has had to cram it into the name field, and then hands over a copy of the tracking number.
“That should be picked up tomorrow. Was there anything else I can help you with?”
Percy looks him up and down for a long moment. “Not today, darling—but I’m sure we’ll see each other again.”
Liam sure as hell wouldn’t complain if they did, but he knows the chances are pretty slim. After all—how many times does someone need to send an international parcel these days?
TWO: A DOZEN JARS OF MARMITE (TO SHOW YOUR NEW ROOMMATE WHO’S BOSS)
It’s less than a week before he sees Percy again.
His hair is no longer turquoise, but instead a rich sort of maroon, and when Liam’s gaze drops to his hands—which are currently wrapped around a concerningly large box—he finds Percy’s nails are painted the same colour. It makes something inside Liam ache; that part of him that’s still stuck in Austin, trying desperately to make sure he looks every part the heterosexual jock and compartmentalising the hell out of anything that happens inside the oppressive walls of his bedroom. It’s not like he doesn’t feel free to be who he is here, but still—there’s out, and there’s comfortable. He’s still figuring out the latter.
“Back so soon?” Liam asks, mostly as a way to stop thinking about any of that, and Percy’s grin stretches wide as he glances up at the question.
“Liam, darling.” And Liam knows that’s just how the Brits talk to each other, but he lets himself enjoy it for a moment anyway. “I was hoping you’d be in here. This one’s quite heavy, you know.”
“Would it be lighter if someone else was working today?” Percy just laughs as he places the box on the counter with an alarming thud, apparently treating that as a rhetorical question. Liam hadn’t meant it to be. “Where’s this one off to, then?”
“Oh, same place.”
Liam blinks. “Now, I’m not gonna disparage my employer—but the last one can’t have arrived yet, can it?”
“It’s still winging its way through the US postal system.” Percy shrugs. “But the last one was sent before a roommate was added to the mix. Apparently he’s being a little slow to warm up, which is a shame—Hazza’s a bloody delight.”
“So you’re sending him something to get the roommate on side?” Liam glances down at the box, frowning when he reads the message scribbled there. “Or—”
“Or, indeed.” Percy claps his hands together. “The most important part of living with someone is compromise, don’t you think?”
Roommates, Liam knows, can be pretty hit or miss; he got lucky with his current one, a tall Māori guy who keeps referring to his time in the UK as his “OE”, which Liam is given to understand means ‘overseas experience’ and is, in his opinion, a pretty fucking grandiose way of describing pouring pints in a London pub for a year. “Absolutely.”
“I knew you’d understand.” Percy holds out a hand across the box, and Liam only hesitates for a moment before taking it. His handshake is warm and firm, and lasts longer than Liam would have expected. “Pez. Like the sweets.”
“Liam. Like the… Hemsworth brother, I guess?”
“Better him than Gallagher,” Percy—Pez—says seriously. Liam reaches for the box, and then swears under his breath when he realises just how fucking heavy it is.
“You realise this is going to be expensive as hell to post, right?”
Pez’s mouth twitches at the corner. “I do. But I’m afraid I’m committed to the bit at this point.”
THREE: A HOT WATER BOTTLE WITH A CROCHETED COVER (SOMETHING FOR YOU TO CUDDLE, SEEING AS THE NEW ROOMMATE IS BOTH TRAGICALLY HOT AND TRAGICALLY HETEROSEXUAL)
He doesn’t see Pez for over a month.
Which is fine. It’s fine. He’s a customer—a stupidly hot customer, but still. He’s just a guy Liam has helped send a couple of packages overseas, and that’s it. There’s no reason for Liam to be obsessing over him. There’s no reason for him to be hoping to see a flash of bright hair when he’s aimlessly scrolling through Grindr, either, but here he is.
So maybe—maybe—when the bell over the door chimes and announces Pez’s arrival, Liam’s heart actually, physically skips a beat. It’s so fucking fine.
This time, whatever Pez is holding is practically… normal-sized. It’s a brightly-coloured mystery until Pez gets a little closer, and then it resolves itself into something crocheted out of sparkly pink yarn.
“Another present for your friend with the crappy roommate?”
“You remembered.” Pez leans on the counter, his dark eyes bright and fixed on Liam’s. “The roommate is not, in fact, terrible. Misunderstandings on both sides have now been resolved, and it turns out he’s quite lovely; the two of them are getting along famously. However, while he’s gorgeous and intelligent, he is also deeply heterosexual, which means Hazza is now suffering for an entirely different reason.”
And Liam has never met this friend of Pez’s, but he’s suddenly awash with sympathy. Gorgeous, intelligent, and deeply heterosexual? Yeah. Liam can fucking relate to being obsessed with someone like that. “Well, that sucks.”
“Indeed.” Pez brandishes the item in his hand. “Hence, the gift. Something for Henry to cuddle, if engineering some sort of ‘there was only one bed’ situation and letting nature take its course from there isn’t an option.”
Liam takes it, only realising after Pez has handed it over that it’s heavier than he expected, and he lifts the flap to find a hot water bottle tucked inside. “Oh, that’s cool. Where did you find the cover? I haven’t quite figured out how to manage the London chill yet.”
Pez raises an eyebrow. “I made it, darling.”
“You…” Liam turns it over in his hand. There are a couple of lumps if he looks really closely, but all in all, it’s fucking impressive. “Is that why you haven’t been in for a month?”
Pez doesn’t reply until Liam looks up; when he does, it’s to find a barely suppressed smirk. “Miss me, did you?”
“I mean.” Liam grins. “Everyone else comes in here to post, like, books. Not the most disgusting food this country has to offer and homemade crafts.”
“They’ll revoke your visa if they hear you talking like that about Marmite, you know.”
“How do you know I wasn’t talking about the tea?”
Pez presses his hand to his chest with a theatrical gasp. “You wouldn’t dare malign our Earl Grey.”
Liam can barely get through the transaction without laughing, but he does. When Pez is almost at the door, he turns with his hand on the handle, and Liam is only about seventy percent sure he managed to tear his eyes away from Pez’s ass in time.
“I’ll try not to leave it so long next time, hmm?”
He’s gone before Liam can come up with a suitable reply.
FOUR: GIANT FOX PLUSHIE (GRIEF IS WEIRD, POPPET, BUT YOUR DAD WAS EVEN WEIRDER. HE WOULD BE SO PROUD OF YOU FOR YOUR AMERICAN ADVENTURE. I KNOW I AM.)
The next time Liam sees Pez, he almost doesn’t. He’s basically hidden behind an almost four-foot tall stuffed fox, bright red and beady-eyed, that Pez is carrying in front of him as he enters the post office. Liam doesn’t know how the hell he can see where he’s going.
“You’ve really outdone yourself with this one.”
When Pez finally makes it to the counter and deposits the plushie on the floor, his expression is uncharacteristically serious. “Any chance you can make sure this arrives by the fifteenth, lovely?”
“Um.” Liam leans over the counter, trying to figure out where the hell he’s going to find a box big enough for it. “I mean, anything’s possible, but it’s probably going to be expensive as hell.”
Pez waves a hand. “I’m not worried about that. I just need this to arrive on time.” He looks at Liam, a frown creasing the space between his eyebrows. Unfortunately, it’s adorable. “This is the first time I haven’t been with him on the anniversary of his dad’s death, and I just want to make sure he doesn’t feel entirely alone.”
“Oh.” For all that Liam’s feelings about his own parents are complicated, that complication was introduced by them; they’re still his parents, and he can’t even fucking imagine. “Do you have the straight roommate’s phone number? Maybe he can help, I don’t know, be a support system?”
Pez stares at him. “That’s—why didn’t I think of that?”
“I’m sure you would have.” Under Pez’s sudden scrutiny, Liam can feel himself blushing. “You’re a smart guy.”
“And you’re a very empathetic one.” Pez tilts his head to the side. “An underrated quality, if you ask me. I will get my hands on the straight roommate’s number, and I’ll commandeer him onto team Help Henry Through His Grief. But as I have no use for this ridiculous stuffed toy, I’m still sending it. Let’s call it a back-up option.”
Liam finds a box and calculates a price for an international express courier.
Pez doesn’t even blink at the eye-watering figure.
That’s terrifying.
FIVE: A LARGE CYLINDER FILLED TO THE BRIM WITH CONDOMS AND TRAVEL LUBE, WITH A BLANKET FOLDED AND RESTING AT THE BOTTOM IN A DELIBERATELY PHALLIC MANNER (THE ROOMMATE ISN’T AS TRAGICALLY HETEROSEXUAL AS PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT, I HEAR. DO TRY TO AVOID ANY CHAFING, WON’T YOU, DEAREST?)
For the first time since the first time he came into the post office, Pez has actually wrapped what he’s sending. Which is good. Efficient, even. It’s just—
“That’s a penis,” Liam says flatly. “You want to courier a penis.”
“Not an actual one.” Pez shudders. “Goodness, darling. Not to kink-shame, but if nothing else, that seems like the sort of thing customs would have a policy against. Admittedly, I haven’t checked specifically. Call it a hunch.”
“So, what then?” Liam eyes the package—the parcel, god—clutched in Pez’s hand; the curved cylinder, the bulge at the bottom. “Have you found the world’s most intimidating dildo? Is this meant to make the straight roommate feel bad, or something?”
Pez’s smile turns sharp and delighted, and Liam seriously considers just dropping to his knees right here. He’d be fired, but fuck, it might actually be worth it. “Well,” Pez says, leaning in with the air of someone who has the hottest gossip in town, “as it turns out, the deeply heterosexual roommate is, in fact, not heterosexual at all.”
And there’s a fucking plot twist Liam didn’t see coming. “Your friend’s hot enough to turn straight boys now?”
“Oh, he always was.” Pez’s expression shines with pride. “Our first year at Oxford, one night with Henry turned many a bright-eyed lad from ‘just once to get it out of my system’ to a fully paid-up member of the queer community.”
Liam frowns. He doesn’t quite know when he became so invested in these people he’s never met, but he’s in it now. “And you don’t think that’s gonna be awkward once they get it out of their systems? Don’t they live together?”
“Oh, this is different. This isn’t a quick shag of sexual enlightenment.” Pez sighs. “There are feelings.”
“Aww. Well, good for them.” Liam glances down at the—incredibly phallic—item still sitting between them. “That still doesn’t explain this, though.”
“Ah, well. I said it wasn’t a quick shag of sexual enlightenment, but there’s still plenty of that happening. This is just a whole lot condoms and lube, and a sex blanket to try to protect some of their surfaces.”
Liam’s sure he’s going to regret asking. He does anyway. “A… sex blanket?”
“Durable, machine washable, means you don’t have to strip the bed when you’re still in the post-coital glow.”
“Huh.” Apparently he’s behind the times; Pez says this like it’s something everyone knows about. He tries really hard not to picture Pez, spread out on just such a blanket. He fails spectacularly, but he tries, and he’s pretty sure that still makes him a good person. “Thanks for the tip.”
SIX: A BICYCLE.
Liam looks up when the door opens, and immediately has to resist the urge to slam his head into the counter.
“No,” he says firmly before Pez is even halfway across the room. “Absolutely not.”
Pez’s blink is deliberately, pointedly innocent. “Whatever do you mean, lovely?”
“I figured out how to send, like, five thousand pounds of Marmite—which, by the way, absolutely should not count as food. What the fuck. I found the biggest box in this entire store for a soft toy that definitely exists in smaller sizes. I posted a dick.” Liam pinches the bridge of his nose. “There is no way on God’s green earth that I’m going to be able to figure out a way to send a bicycle to New York. Be fucking serious.”
For a man who’s just been cussed out by a service worker, Pez looks inordinately pleased. “Well, that’s a shame. I suppose I’ll just have to come back tomorrow with something else, then, won’t I?”
“You know all of these things exist in America, right? Why don’t you just get them sent to your friend directly?”
Pez looks at him for a long moment, something oddly vulnerable in the flicker of his smile. “You’re a smart lad, poppet. Do you really not know the answer to that question?”
Liam blinks.
Blinks again.
Oh, fuck. Has Pez been flirting?
And, more importantly, has Liam been wasting all this time fantasising when he could have had the real fucking thing?
“You know it would be way cheaper to just ask me out, right?”
“Because that’s my primary focus—finding the most cost-effective option.” Pez finally crosses the remaining space between them, propping the bike up against the counter before leaning against it. And Liam is at his place of work, which means he can’t traverse the last few inches between them to kiss Pez breathless, no matter how much he wants to. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that you’re worth taking time with?”
And the thing is, the answer to that question is, in fact, no. Which is fucking depressing, if Liam thinks about it. So he just… doesn’t.
“I finish at six.”
Pez’s smile spreads across his face slowly, until he’s practically glowing with it. “Then I shall make sure I have a dinner reservation for 6:30.”
“Oh, fuck—”
Pez moans in what sounds like agreement; it’s difficult to tell with how muffled it is. Liam arches up into the tight, wet heat of his mouth, his hands scrambling to find purchase in the blanket underneath him, and he thinks absently that the sex blanket is a fucking genius invention. They’ve already made a mess of it, between lube and sweat and Pez’s come, and if Pez keeps sucking him off like this, there’s going to be a whole lot more mess really fucking soon. It’s just all so good, the slide of Pez’s hand up the outside of his thigh, the way Pez’s tongue drags along the underside of his dick through the condom, the way sex with Pez makes his brain stop fucking racing for once.
The hand on Liam’s thigh moves, hooking under his leg and hoisting it up and over Pez’s shoulder. Pez pulls back for a moment, Liam’s cock falling back against his stomach with an embarrassing thwack as Pez licks across the seam of his balls, down towards his taint. Liam cries out, Pez’s name warm on his lips as his heel digs into Pez’s back.
“Such pretty noises, darling. All for me?” He presses a soft kiss to the inside of Liam’s thigh before reaching for the lube, slicking up his index finger before pressing it gently against Liam’s hole.
It doesn’t take long after that. The crook of Pez’s finger is a delicious counterpoint to the soft, lazy stroke of his tongue, the tight slide of his lips an intoxicating pressure on Liam’s dick. When he comes, it’s with a loud cry, his pulse rushing in his ears and Pez’s free hand gripping his thigh tight, guiding him through the aftershocks.
Sex blankets. Incredible invention. Pez just sort of rolls them both one way and then the other, pulling it out from underneath them and dropping it on the floor before he pulls the covers of the bed up around them. When he kisses Liam, it’s syrup-sweet in a way that makes him want to melt into it.
Fuck. He could really get used to this.
“You’ll stay, won’t you, lovely? I make a mean breakfast.” Pez’s breath is soft against his neck, his fingers gripping almost possessively at Liam’s waist, and he’s pretty sure wild horses couldn’t drag him out of this bed right now.
“What do you think?”
Liam looks over Pez’s shoulder. The bisexual flag on his screen looks innocuous enough until you read the description—the fucking thing is six feet wide. “You’re ridiculous. You’re torturing this poor guy, and you’ve never even met him.” He takes a sip from his mug; he’s pretty sure this country is wearing him down when it comes to tea. Or maybe it’s just the way Pez bats his eyelashes when he makes it. “Add to cart.”
“Obviously.” Pez is halfway through the checkout process when the timer in the kitchen beeps, and he leaps up from his chair with a curse. “Finish that for me, would you, darling? Credit card’s saved, and so is Hazza’s address; you’ll just need to change the delivery name.”
“Sure.” He slides into Pez’s newly vacated seat. “What’s the boyfriend’s name?”
Silence. When Liam looks up, Pez is already gone. “Babe?”
“What’s that, love?”
“Your boy’s boy. What’s his name?”
“Oh, sorry!” Pez re-emerges in the doorway. He’s been gone for two seconds, but somehow there’s a smear of flour across his cheek. “Useful information, that, isn’t it? It’s Alex. Claremont-Diaz.” He disappears again, leaving Liam frozen, his fingers hovering a few inches above the keyboard.
“Wait. What?”