Percy/Oliver
'Me mum,' Oliver said, sitting up straighter and gesturing to the empty chair next to him. Sometimes it felt as if Percy needed urging to accomplish the simplest every day tasks. Oliver hoped he could keep his promise and get Percy - mentally and physically sound - to his exam in two weeks time.
'I grew up really poor,' he started to explain. Perhaps telling Verity had made it less difficult to tell other people, as well. Or maybe it was just that Oliver found it really easy to talk to Percy. Like it was easy to talk to Alice. 'Me dad was a coal miner. Me mum a substitute teacher. We lived in a two-up two-down in the middle of a terraced housing block. Everyone there was piss poor. I'm talking... rent parties and Sunday block roasts and sorry lads here's a slice of buttered bread for tea. But when Shrove Tuesday came round the district came to life. You'd go with your mates up to the high street and everyone was making pancakes, passing them round, chucking them from lofts down to lads in the street. Dinnae matter how poor you were that day you ate like bloody Queen.'
Oliver paused then to glance at his camper grill, the stacks of plates and food bowing the small table upon which they sat. Even his mound of pancakes came no where close to the amounts of food he could remember from his childhood in Edinburg. But the sentiment was the same, and that was the important part.
'No matter how poor we were me mum would always make pancakes and give them away for no more than a hug or a smile. I never understood it was a lad. Why she's go through that trouble. The financial burden when other people all over the city were doing the same thing with a lot more money. But I get it now... and so... I made cakes.'