-+- Spoiler Alert -+-
There is very little sex in this final part of the Unit/Runt/Workie Man stories.
This story line ends here. There will not be any more.
-+- \Spoiler Alert -+-
It was an early Friday finish. It was half two, I’d just got on the train, got a seat, and was looking forward to a cool shower to wash all the sweat and dust (mostly sweat) off. Then my phone buzzed…
-+- Unit: Call me.
-+- Unit: Please… soon as you can
I furrowed my brow; this was not normal behaviour. I thumbed the phone to call Unit…
“Unit; Workie Man here…” (We’d never really got round to using our real first names, which we did really know; it was always Runt, Unit and Workie Man.)
There was a bit of a pause, then “Thanks for calling…” He stopped again. There was something in his voice that put me on edge. “Thanks…” Another pause.
“Take your time,” I said, beginning to feel a little dread.
A deep breath the other end of the line. “It’s Runt.” Pause. “He’s dead.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. My jaw moved a few times, then I said “How? Where?”
A stifled sob. “The track down Wales way. He was a passenger in another team’s car…” Pause. “The drive coupling snapped, the prop shaft dug in and flipped the car over…” Pause. “Runt was thrown out but the car rolled onto him…”
He went silent again. “I’ll be there now,” I said. “Just pulling in to your stop…” I hung up, and got ready to leave as the train was slowing for the station.
I raced over to their house, up the steps and hammered on the door. “Unit! It’s me!” The door opened; Unit just stood there, blue suit trousers, smart shoes, creased white shirt and blue tie at half-mast. He just reached out with both arms and fell onto me, grabbing on to me, just holding me.
We stood there a good while, then he let go, pulled me inside, and wandered off to the kitchen. I dumped my bag in the hall, then followed. Unit was busying himself with the kettle. “When,” I asked.
“Late this morning,” he said without turning. He took a deep breath. “They’ve told me it was instant - no suffering. He was wearing a helmet too…” He stopped. “His YouTubers rang me. They… They…” His shoulders shook. “They can’t believe it. It wasn’t their car… The driver’s in an induced coma…”
I walked up behind him and just hugged. He took hold of my hands over his chest. “Thanks for coming over, Workie Man.” He chuckled. “You know if it weren’t for this I’d be all over you right now, smelling as you do…”
I put my head into his shoulder and hugged even harder. He took a shuddering intake of breath. “There’s more to tell you…”
I pulled away and gave him a worried look. “What?”
He folded his arms. “The family…” He looked off to one side, then back at me. “The family have decreed that I am not to go to identify the body, that I am not to have anything to do with the funeral arrangements, that I am not to attend the funeral… His workmates are allowed only because they were there. I am ‘not welcome’. Their words.”
“Fuck me!” I reacted… “Can they really do that? This family? That he’s never mentioned?”
“Never mentioned as they were estranged - best word for it. He did tell me all about them though.” Unit handed me a cuppa. “The mother rang me, cold and factual. He’d sent cards on birthdays and Christmas and so on, but they’d not even bothered to respond since he came up here as an apprentice mechanic and got famous after a while. He called himself ‘Runt’ even though he was the eldest of four boys.” Unit chuckled. “And he was the smallest of the four - the other three are all six foot plus; two are officers in the Navy and the other one’s in the Police.”
I laughed out loud. “So an architect wasn’t good enough for them?”
Unit grinned. “Guess not. Especially a successful architect that started as a brickie, was a skin a heart, and took it rough up the arse!”
I saluted him with my cuppa. “Fuck’ em!”
He saluted me back.
-+-
It was the day of the funeral.
We didn’t go to the service; we didn’t go to the crematorium. We did dress appropriately; Unit in his best dark boardmeeting suit, me in the only suit I own. We did stand outside the church across the road, and watch the comings and goings. We did engage in conversation with the YouTubers as they were coming out. They’d recognised Unit from the rare occasions Runt had needed a lift off him to the workshops and came over the road to chat. They did ask why we (well, more like Unit) weren’t in the service, and Unit told them the unvarnished truth; ‘not welcome’. The YouTubers noted all this; there was a nod between them and they got into their cars and headed off in the opposite direction to the family. We saw the family; two Naval uniforms, a Constable, a woman all in black. They did not register us in the slightest; we could have been trees…
-+-
A few weeks later I went over to Unit’s prearranged on the way home from work - yes I was hot, yes I was sweaty, yes I need a shower - but it seemed more important to call in, check in.
He opened the door to me. He was in his skin gear; bleachers cut off just before the tops of the 20 hole DMs, black Fred Perry with gold trim, black braces. He grabbed the back of my head and we bumped foreheads, the way Runt and I used to. He kept his large hand on the back of my neck and steered me int the kitchen, pushed me down onto a stool and busied himself making a cup of tea. All in silence.
He put a cuppa in front of me, then sat across the table with one of his own, and looked at me. “I need to say things. To you. Out loud.”
I was puzzled, but just nodded at him to continue.
“It may not have been obvious, but I loved Runt. Fuck, the sex was great and I hope he loved me, though he never said that out loud and I never said it to him out loud, and now I never will be able to. That pisses me off.” He held out his hand as I went to say something. “No. Listen.” He spread his hands on the table. “My work’s doing great; this house is mortgage free, and I insisted that when Runt moved in with me, he had a will made. Which he did, which is ironclad. As is mine, before you ask which you won’t as I still want you to listen. Our wills mirrored each other - a few bequests difference but in essence if I died first, he got everything, and if he died first, I got everything.” He leaned back. “The family contested.” He smiled. “They will not win. Ironclad. Industrial strength.”
He reached inside the neck of his shirt, and pulled out a miniature padlock on a gold chain. “We’d had these made. They’re not functional, they could barely restrain a shrew, but for us they were what we meant to each other.” He reached into a pocket, and pulled something out, placed it onto the table under his large hand. He looked up at me, hand still covering the object. “We had talked about his, Runt and me. Since meeting you we’d never picked up any other bloke to have sex with. You became our first choice, our only choice.” He turned his hand over, opening the fingers. Inside was a gold padlock on a gold chain. “This was Runt’s,” he said. “The family couldn’t get it back to me fast enough.” He moved his hand towards me. “It’s yours now. If you want it.”
I looked down at the padlock and chain, picked it up, felt its weight. I undid the clasp, and put it round my neck, patted it into place and tucked it away under my sweaty hiviz t-shirt. “There’s your answer,” I said quietly.
Unit reached out with both his hands and took both of mine. He held them there a while, then I looked into his eyes, and saw the tears forming, then flowing, then streaming down his cheeks. I held his hands tighter and tighter. Eventually, the tears stopped, and Unit sniffed.
“I’ve not cried since Runt died,” he said. “Not properly. Not grieved properly.”
I nodded. “I’ll be here for that,” I said. “We’ll grieve together.”
-+-
The YouTubers visited a few months after Runt’s death. After much discussion amongst themselves, they’d decided to close the channel that Runt had worked with them on with a final upload. They wanted Unit’s agreement for this, as basically it was an hour’s worth of Runt out-takes, things that had never made the channel, or were never even going to get near it; Runt calling them a pair of useless tossers in a number of innovative ways; Runt pulling faces behind the cameras as they explain their imaginative, yet ultimately flawed, ideas for cars; Runt working on cars and swearing a lot; Runt just swearing for no apparent reason; Runt expounding on electric cars; Runt looking far too grubby and far too pleased after pulling an all-nighter over an engine swap.
It got over 100k views…
-+-
A few years after that, Unit decided he’d had enough of being an architect, and sold his firm - for a quite handsome sum. With the proceeds he bought a farm in the West Country, and immediately rented out the working parts to people that knew what they were doing. He kept the farmhouse, and that was where we lived.
It was quite easy for me to find work down there - I’d gone ahead and got some sparky qualifications to go with the plumbing ones - they do say electricity and water doesn’t mix, but on a CV it don’t look too bad.
We’d been fully moved in for all of two weeks when Unit decided he didn’t want to be a man of leisure any more, and he started to come out on jobs with me, and at times got brickie work of his own. We eventually set up a little company doing repairs and small construction works; I had been heard to use the line ‘he’s the only employee I can fuck some sense into’ - and did mean it literally…
We were never bothered by Runt’s family again. We celebrated Runt’s birthday each year with great sex, some of it out under the stars…
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