Though at first glance it is a normal photo, the six of them after wrapping another show (David taking the photo in order to escape the insanity), left to right, the photo reads like a story.

Hugh stands slightly awkwardly next to Frankie, who as usual is pulling a stupid lewd pose, in an attempt to make Hugh burst out laughing. The sheer ridiculousness of Frankie’s pose makes Hugh look like the school-teacher who knows he shouldn’t laugh, it will just encourage the idiot next to him, and yet the tightening of the mouth shows how much he wants to guffaw at his antics.

Next to them, Andy stands with a pint (Dara asked him earlier whether he was planning to look for Jesus in it) and beaming smile, the flash from the camera reflecting off his head.

[For the end of the previous series, Frankie, Russell, Hugh and Dara had teamed together to buy him a rainbow-coloured afro, and the resulting chase through the studios wouldn’t have looked out of place on “You’ve been framed”, teamed with the Benny Hill theme tune.]

Andy stands next to Dara, who as usual looms over the rest of the team even though he tries not to.

[One night after the infamous ‘Anal Lube’ episode, Hugh suggested Dara should try out for WWE, and this led to the team wrapping the hotel-towels round their shoulders like capes and giving themselves insanely stupid wrestling names, the highlight of that evening being Russell’s body-slam of Frankie turning into him begging for mercy after Frankie bent his arms backwards and declared that he was the true champion of wrestling, not some “zummerzetian funny-man”.]

Dara stands in the midst of a bellowing laugh at Frankie’ pose, other arm with another pint (of cider, contrary to popular belief beer doesn’t sit well with him), the two of them looking like the mates Russell used to go drinking with who would rouse drunkards in Greenland with their bellowing, full-bodied laughs and sheer happiness to be doing the jobs that they love.

Next to them, arms over each other’s shoulders, smiles like the sun, the glint of a cheeky plan to prank the rest of them, stand Ed and Russell, leaning slightly in towards each other, sheer contrasts in their looks and yet so similar in their personalities. Ed as dark as his humour, hair in that stage of growing where it persistently tickles his neck, bags under his eyes visible even behind the glasses, a packet of cigarettes poking out his trouser pockets, blazer rumpled as though he’s slept in it. Russell, shining as bright as the day, giggling, his short blonde hair tousled and pointing every which way, t-shirt riding slightly to show the superman belt his mum bought him for Christmas, ink-stains on his hands, glasses sitting skewed on his face.

[The two of them had teamed together earlier to buy about twenty rubber ducks which they left around the studio and dressing rooms, with notes about the duck’s plans for world domination, and the confusion of the production staff left them in a pile of helpless laughter in the bar, holding on to each other for support as they struggled to breathe due to the memories of the poor cameraman finding a duck sitting in his seat, with a little note saying ‘that’s MY seat MWA HA HA HA HAAA’. Russell had to wrestle the darker plots from Ed’s fingers, feeling that although placing a duck in a noose on Dara’s desk, with the note ‘You will be the last to die’ would be hilarious, it might be slightly too freaky. Ed naturally had protested this, and it led to the two having an impromptu tickle fight, resulting in Frankie asking them (in front of the studio audience) as they arrived on set out of breath and clothes rumpled, whether they could wait till after the show to have passionate sex.]

Ed’s smug reply of “You’re just jealous of the duck” made Russell collapse on the desk in another giggle-fit, the rest of the team bemused as to why that was just so funny.

The slight blurriness of the photo is due to David bursting out laughing at Frankie’s “hurry the fuck up, my arms can’t grope Hugh any longer”, leading to Andy being forced to sit down as he was laughing too hard to be able to stand. By that point, Hugh had given up holding in the giggles, and Ed and Russell were horizontal on the floor, collapsed on each other in laughter, making David ask the two of them to “get a room”, as it was obvious that they were going to have sex. Russell’s reply of “it would be bloody difficult to have sex while giggling”, panting for breath, and Ed’s “but not impossible!” finished the two of them off, and the rest of the team were found in a pile in the corner, laughing so much that the barman came over to ask what the fuck was so funny that they had been laughing for the past hour solid.

The only reply from the seven of them (David by this time having joined the laughing), was “Ducks!” making the barman regret offering half-price drinks on the night that Mock the Week wrapped their shows.

If you live by the code, that defines you, makes you who you think you’re meant to be.

Don’t talk about sex with someone other than your girlfriend, laugh, be funny, smile, act like you never have a care in the world.

It makes you get up out of bed in the morning, when you’d rather burrow under the covers and hide from the world, and it makes you go to sleep at night when you’d rather be in someone else’s bed.

It makes you say “I love you” to the person who you’d rather leave, who you would rather not be there so you can be free and live your life how you want it.

Sometimes (though you never tell anyone), as you lie awake in bed next to them in the early hours, hearing them snuffle into the quilt, feeling their arm thrown over you like you’re a giant teddy bear, you fantasise about catching them in the middle of a torrid affair with someone else, then you won’t seem like the bad one if you broke up.

The code makes you ignore the person you’d rather be with, it forces you to joke with them and be merry but to never get past the friends barrier, to never see the real person who you know is under there waiting.

It forces you to never drink so much that your memories are obliterated, because you fear that you’ll either tell them how you feel and get rejected, or wake up beside them with no memory of how you got there, or why you feel as though you’ve just had sex.

You can never quite decide which one is the worst option.

It makes you sit on a set with them, laughing and whispering like two little school-boys, under the watchful eye of about two million people, knowing that all they see is two friends, knowing the public is watching for any move you make that is out of the ordinary, that isn’t natural, and then they’ll pounce like rabid wild animals.

It makes you draw an arm around your ‘partner’ at Sunday dinner, when your parents ask when you’re going to get married, and smile as though it will happen.

It makes you always look the same, because it’s the norm, yet you wish to one day walk into a barbers, and get them to chop off all your ridiculous blonde hair, maybe dye the new lot purple, so you don’t feel as much of a child desperately trying to be funny in hopes of making their crush laugh.

It makes you change your t-shirts so you’re not always wearing the same stuff day-in day-out (however you rebel by always wearing blue when he’s on the show – he said it makes him happy to see you in it, even if you wish he could see you with it off. And maybe his clothes as well. Scratch that, definitely no clothes involved for either party).

It makes you never sit next to him when the panellists go out drinking after successfully wrapping a show, the temptation to wrap your hand around his, bury your face into the crook of his neck and be tickled by his hair, which is persistently in that silly stage between short and cropped, and long and curly, smell his drink-fags-sex smell that leaves you gasping if you’re not prepared, is just too much.

When you see him and anyone else hug, the code makes you laugh and joke about whether they’re having sex, yet your heart breaks just a little more inside every time.

The code makes you answer “I’m fine, I’m happy, nothing could be better” when you’re asked the obligatory how-are-you by people, by him, by your ‘partner’, when you really want to answer “No I’m not fine, I want to do what I want, I want to be me” (and if he asks, answer “fuck me! Now!” and remove words from the equation and just kiss the answer).

The code makes you live normally in a normal life, in a normal world, when inside, you know that it’s not normal, that what you want and what you are will always be different, will never reconcile, and it makes you feel broken.

It was official – David couldn’t protect a bug, let alone himself and Griffin’s back.

Shit!, he cursed as his questing hands found yet another splinter in his back, made harder by the blood that was trickling from all the other holes he had gained from the blast. Beside him, David was poking his tongue out in concentration as he did a particularly fiddly knot around his upper arm bandage, and Griffin had the sudden urge to grab that tongue, pull it and slam David’s head into the floor. Repeatedly. Maybe then he would actually listen to Griffin as he told him NOT to touch anything in that bloody building!

A hiss of pain escaped from Griffin’s teeth, clenched as he painstakingly removed every single piece of building that had hit his back, and David felt even more ashamed than before – which was impossible.

Not only had David been stupid enough to touch the device, he had managed to get away from the resulting blast with only a gash on his arm, whereas Griffin’s back was covered in holes and gashes, where he had thrown David onto the floor, covering him from the ensuing damage. David had been in shock that Griffin had just protected him, for possibly the first time in his life, until a flying piece of brick had whizzed past his arm, catching it. Crying out in pain, he had Jumped both of them to Griffin’s lair, where he then became far more focused on the pain he had suffered, only realising how badly Griffin had been hurt once he saw him lying on the floor, a single tear rolling down his face and teeth clenched in grinding agony.

Then the shame happened, compounded by Griffin refusing all offers of help to get up and remove the shirt – well, tatters – in order to do bandaging and removing. What made it infinitely worse was that Griffin hadn’t said anything, not even cursing, or yelling about David was useless, he just sat there, in complete silence.

David looked back at his arm, and realised that short of covering it in enough bandages to mummify King-Kong, he couldn’t do any more to it, he just had to wait for the gash to close itself. He looked back over at Griffin, who was now using an insane amount of antiseptic wipes to clean off the dirt, brick dust and blood, and if it was possible for a person to actually crawl into a hole and die, he would have done. Anything to get away from the Coventry that Griffin had sent him to.

Pulling himself up off the stack of boxes – his stuff, in order to stop it getting lost in the hell-hole that was the lair – David edged around the silent figure of Griffin, picking up the wipes wrappers, and various take-away boxes that had been starting to invent the wheel, and Jumping silently away to a landfill site, where the boxes (he believed) would start attacking the seagulls that gathered there, such was the advanced life forms in them.

Jumping back, Griffin hadn’t moved, except to start winding a bandage around a particularly deep gash in his side, either un-noticing of David’s arrival, or simply ignoring him, letting him know exactly how he felt about David’s antics.

Griffin’s face was a study in perfect concentration, masking the utter fury that was coursing around his mind in a whirling hurricane, inter-changing thoughts of how, why, the pain, and an over-riding urge to kill David kill him for what he’s done, mixed with the knowledge that David had Jumped away again, leaving him in peace. Still his face remained blank, the only sign of his anger being the fuming air around him that rose and filled the lair in billowing, enveloping waves.

I shouldn’t have been so stupid, Griffin cursed silently, knowing that the supposedly empty building that they had been using as an unobtrusive entrance to Oslo’s centre would have been bugged, would have been turned into a trap, but the normal over-riding caution that Griffin held (paranoia more like, he could hear David say in his head after long, boring stake-outs in which Griffin would be constantly checking his surroundings), it hadn’t been there. For once, Griffin entered a building and didn’t feel foreboding, didn’t check the jump-site, didn’t do his normal routine, and he had no idea why.

Griffin shook his head violently, shaking his hair out of his vision as he continued cleaning and dressing the wound (he needed a haircut, but he didn’t trust David anywhere near him with a blade), and tried to work out why he had been so forgetful. The only thing he could think of was seeing David sprawled on his sofa that morning, arms thrown on each side, drool sliding down his face, and snoring for all he was worth. After that, he just decided to go to Oslo, even use the same jump-site that had been used twice before, David in tow, and he didn’t know why, why the sight of David like that had made him do that.

The soft sound of a Jump pulled him out of his musing, noticing that David had at least learnt not to make a dramatic entrance, after the previous attempt had collapsed Griffin’s pile of CD’s, and led to David sleeping outside. Soon, the smell of tea wafted around Griffin, mixed with the heady scent of David’s cologne, and was that Chinese? Epic!

David cleared his throat, the sound echoing in the silence that filled the lair, worrying about whether Griffin was ever going to face him, yell at him, God even leaving HIM in a pile of pylons in Chechnya would preferable to the damn silence!

“Err... do you want some?” Shit! Sound like the idiot you are won’t you!

Silence – mixed with the fuming air leaving David reeling.

“Hey, I found out that tea is actually quite nice, once you get past the gagging reflex ...”

Still nothing.

Never had David felt so useless, so worthless, so ... idiotic. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, ran a hand through his hair in an effort to do something with them, kicked a lump of wood and swore, but nothing made Griffin move from his stone-like position.

“Please ... I’m sorry”. In that moment, David realised he was, and it was true, and he had never truly meant it before.

Griffin shifted, before getting up and going to a pile of clothes, pulling on a clean black t-shirt, and then stood there, still with his back to David.

“... You’re sorry? Sorry? For what? Leaving me in Chechnya? Not listening to me? Causing me to be a bloody hero, and get my back lacerated? Or just because you think that if you say it, everything will be alright?”

Turning to face him, David realised that Griffin was trying so hard not to yell that his hands were shaking, and the sense that Griffin was holding back, because of him, swept through David like a hurricane.

“Everything.”

Griffin, if it was possible, looked surprised while angry, and then exploded, Jumping across the room and punching and kicking David, slamming his head repeatedly into the floor with every swear-word.

“You bastard! You utter, fucking, non-listening, ignorant, whiny little rich boy, bastard!! You NEVER pay attention, you never THINK, and one day it WILL leave someone dead!! Your father’s still in a coma, your stupid fucking girlfriend is recovering from her house being fucking jumped into a library, and I’m in fucking agony, because of your rat-arsing cabbage shitting attitude of not giving a fucking damn about anyone!!”

“I do give a damn!” David protested, head swimming from the pain, vaguely aware of blood pouring from his nose, the gash on his arm starting to bleed again, the taste of concrete dust in his mouth mixing with blood, and Griffin on his back, his hand twisted in David’s hair as he continued to pound his skull against the floor.

“Then pray explain, why you IGNORED my warning of hey, don’t touch that, it might be a trap! If it wasn’t for the fact that I threw you on the floor you would have died, and THEN you repay me by Jumping off! If I hadn’t been lying on top of you holding on, you would have left me behind! Left me to face the fuck-tarding wankers coming up the stairs, concentrating on your own fucking welfare!”

He stopped smashing David’s face into the floor, chest heaving with the exertion, hand still tangled in his hair, still sitting on top of David, who was moaning in pain, and he leaned in to whisper in David’s ear.

“You never think of the consequences Davey-boy, and there ain’t going to be someone looking out for you, not all the time. But you just don’t give a shit do you?”

Lying there, David was aware that Griffin was pressing him into the floor, and he desperately wanted to say that he did think, he did care, he didn’t want anyone to be hurt, and realised it would lead to another beating, because he didn’t mean it.

Suddenly, he felt Griffin Jump off him, the rip in reality leaving him gasping on the floor from shock to his already injured system, as Griffin re-appeared on the other side of the cave – LAIR! – his boots in David’s line of vision, hands picking up the tea and food, and Jumping to his bedroom.

As David fell asleep from the pain, his last coherent thought was well, at least he took the food...

­-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Griffin refused to let himself turn back round, to see how badly David had been injured, he fucking deserved it the bastard. He threw himself on the bed, gasping in pain as his back decided to protest against such actions, and proceeded to shovel the food and tea down his throat, firmly ignoring the rising sense of concern, the sense of checking and making sure David was okay, that he wasn’t too injured or broken. After he finished the food, and even licked out the lids to get all the sweet and sour sauce, he laid back and closed his eyes, trying to go to sleep.

Unfortunately for him, he was unable to do so. All that he could see was the image of David lying on the floor bleeding and gasping in pain, coupled with the growing certainty that since he’d left the room, he hadn’t heard a sound from the main area of his lair – cave, no it’s a LAIR! He yelled at the little voice in his head, which sounded far too much like David.

He could be seriously hurt. Could have died, and would you want that on your conscience?

Shurrup! Besides, what’s one more death, I don’t have nightmares about all the Paladins, why should David be different?

Because he’s your friend.

“Argh!” Griffin yelled, because the voice in his head (he always thought his conscience had fucked off once he’d killed his first Paladin) was right. David was one of the few friends that Griffin had, that were alive in any case, and he trusted him.

But that’s why it hurts so much that he was going to leave me, that he has done, and that he will probably do again.

Sighing, Griffin limped through into the main bit, and saw themes of David lying there, bleeding, looking worse than after he got drunk and accidently stood on a sea-urchin. Throwing his hands up in frustration he stalked over and picked up David, Jumping him to the bed, where he proceeded to swear imaginatively and loudly, as he cleaned up David’s blood.

...

Hazy, pain-filled, David rose back into consciousness noting that the floor had suddenly become comfy, and that blood was no longer in his vision. Content to lie still, he gathered information about his surroundings.

 Notably, that the bed smelled of Griffin – sweaty, spiky, and with a tantalising scent that was just him.

Peeling open his eyes, he saw a white bandage on his ribs that hadn’t been there before, and the one on his upper arm had been changed and re-tied. Outside, he could smell the sweet smell of coffee, and was that burgers? Epic!

Levering himself up into a sitting position, he noticed a familiar figure leaning on the wall, arms folded, looking concerned, until Griffin recognised that David was watching him, and his face re-arranged itself swiftly into one of indifference.

“Did you do these?” David asked, indicating the new bandages.

“No, the magic bandage-fairy did, you mong” Griffin replied in a sarcastic tone.

David smiled, gratefully.

“Thanks”.

Griffin coughed and looked embarrassed.

“Yeh, well, I ain’t your slave so you’ll have to go and get your own coffee and food”, and with that he abruptly turned away and sat carefully on the sofa, leaning back with a slight wince.

David was tempted to lie back on the bed and relish in the softness that was alien to Griffin’s sofa, but the smell of grease was too much to resist, and so he dragged himself out, grabbing the food and proceeding to eat it without any of the table manners his mother had so painstakingly taught him.

After he was finished, he sat back on the sofa, and looked at Griffin, who had been staring with an expression akin to horror at the display of eating David had just exhibited.

“... Riiiight”, Griffin drawled, before throwing a t-shirt at David.

“Get yourself dressed; I don’t want to see your pretty-boyness thankee muchly.”

Unquestioning, David pulled on the t-shirt, arms aching, and then spoke what he desperately wanted to ask:

“Why?”

Griffin hesitated from picking up the game-controller, and sighed.

“Because I don’t want to have wasted all my time training you for you to die from a mere beating. And ... I ... you’re a friend, for some weird fucking reason”.

David sat in shock that Griffin had just admitted this, and he couldn’t think of anything to say, anything that would equal the admission that Griffin had let him in, let him into his life and heart.

“Though tomorrow I am taking you to the Empty Quarter and kicking the shit out of you as you obviously need reminding who’s the boss, and THEN, if you dare do anything like that again, I’ll strap the fucking bomb to your back and dump you in the Atlantic do you hear?”

David smiled, content that at least Griffin wasn’t going to kill him at this moment in time, and Jumped the rubbish to the same land-fill site as before, before returning and falling asleep on the sofa, to the sounds of Griffin blasting the hell out of the game.

This is how it’s meant to be, was his last thought before drifting away, failing to notice the slight smile on Griffin’s face, and the gaze that he focused upon David, watching him sleep, forgetting his game entirely.

Turning slightly so he could see better, he thought to himself, I don’t like him in any other way, I don’t like him in any other way, I don’t ...as he drifted off himself.