Oliver fished my thankfully unmouldy loaf of Hovis Soft White Medium from the bread bin he’d insisted on buying me when he’d discovered that I kept my bread on the side like a normal person, instead of giving it its own special box to go stale in. I buttered it up aggressively, because there’s no point trying to make bacon healthy, and offered him his choice of condiments. Well, his choice of ketchup or not ketchup because I hadn’t been as prepared as I would have liked to have been to cook emotional-support sandwiches.

Finally, we were on my sofa with plates on our laps, and Oliver was staring at his bacon butty with that confused, yearning look he sometimes got around desserts. And, if I’m honest, me.

“It’s okay,” I said, “to eat a bacon sandwich.”

“I’m a vegetarian.”

“Yeah, but you’re also human. You can’t be perfect all the time.”

“I shouldn’t do this.”

I sighed. “Then don’t. I’ll eat it. But please don’t expect me to talk you into something that you want to do but feel you have to deny yourself. Because that’s fucked up.”

There was a longish pause. Finally, Oliver took a bite of sandwich. His eyes fluttered closed. “God, that’s good.”

“I know this is wrong of me”—I dabbed a tiny curl of ketchup from the edge of his mouth with a fingertip—“but, fuck me, you’re sexy when you’re compromising your principles.”

He blushed. “This isn’t funny, Lucien.”

“I’m not laughing.”

We baconed for a while in silence.

“Y’know,” I said finally, “I really am sorry that this afternoon didn’t go. Um. Anything approaching well. And I’m sorry I got it wrong in the car. I was just… I’ve never seen you like that.”

He was staring at his sandwich with way too much focus. “I’ll try to make sure you never have to see me like that again.”

“Not what I was going for.” I flailed around in vague private guilt. “I wanted to be better for you at the party. Except you didn’t… I didn’t know what to expect.”

“Oh”—Oliver’s brows lifted nastily—“so it’s my fault you decided to swear at my parents.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. I had to un-fuck this somehow. “I get that it’s not my place to criticise your parents. But it feels like the only way you can believe good things about them is if you believe bad things about yourself. And I’m not… That’s not okay with me.”

“Lucien, I need you to accept that I had a perfectly normal childhood. You’re making Mother and Father out to be monsters.”

Reaching out an uncertain hand, I stroked his arm in that wholly unhelpful way I’d managed to perfect in the car. “I’m not saying they’re monsters. They’re just people. But people, well, suck sometimes. And while I’m sure they’ve done lots of good things for you, they’ve also clearly done some bad things. And…you don’t have to bear the burden of that.”

“I’ve never claimed my parents were perfect.” He tugged fretfully at the crust on his sandwich. “But they’ve always encouraged me to push myself, and it’s not unreasonable of them to continue to do that.”

“Okay,” I tried, “but if that’s what they’re trying to do, why are you sitting on my sofa eating a bacon sandwich and being sad, instead of, like, feeling uplifted and motivated?”

He turned, his eyes meeting mine for a long grey moment. “Because I’m not as strong as you think I am.”

“This isn’t about strength,” I told him. “It’s about who you’re choosing to make happy.”

There was a long silence. During which I picked half-heartedly at my sarnie. Apparently there were some situations bacon couldn’t make better.

“I keep wondering,” Oliver said, “why I brought you today.”

“Wow. I know I handled it badly but that’s harsh.”

He was frowning thoughtfully. Because Oliver. “No—you didn’t. Or rather, you handled it as I perhaps, on some level, expected you might. Not that I thought you’d go as far as telling my parents to go fuck themselves in front of Uncle Jim and the vicar. But I think…”

“What?” I asked.

“I think I wanted to do something that was for me, and not for them. To see what it felt like.”

“And, um, what did it feel like?”

“I…I still don’t know.”

“That’s all right.” I moved across and gave him a…well…a sort of nuzzle, I guess, that I probably should have been self-conscious about. “I can live with being for you.”

Quietly, he finished his bacon sandwich. Then he ate the rest of mine. But I felt he probably deserved it after everything he’d been through. Trying to stick with my new grown-up lifestyle, I took the plates back to the kitchen and did that half-washing-up thing where you rinse the worst bits off under the tap and dump the rest in the sink, hoping Oliver wouldn’t have spiralled into a pit-of-fried-meat-related despair and self-recrimination while I was away.

I found him still on the sofa, still looking a bit blank.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m not sure.”

I settled on the floor in front of him, folding my arms across his knees. “That’s all right. You don’t have to…um. Anything really.”

“I thought I’d feel guiltier. But I just feel…full of bacon.”

“Don’t knock it. That’s a good feeling.”

His fingers curled lightly into my hair. “Thank you for doing that for me.”

“I’d say I got as much out of it as you did, except you ate my fucking sandwich.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I’m teasing, Oliver.” I butted his hand with my head. “In two weeks, I’ll be able to have all the bacon I like. I’m going to bathe in bacon like that bit in American Beauty.”

“That is a very disturbing mental image. And also undercuts your original consequentialist argument for why it was okay for me to have this sandwich in the first place.”

“Fine. No meat baths then. You’re so unreasonable.”

He laughed, a bit unsteadily. “Oh, Lucien. I don’t know what I would have done without you today.”

“Well, probably you wouldn’t have had to leave your parents’ anniversary.”