By the time Maddie woke up on Monday morning, the house was silent. Her father left for work at seven forty-five each morning and though she had been vaguely aware of the bang of the door and the groan of his engine, by the time she dragged herself from bed it was almost ten o'clock. He was long gone. It was odd to be alone in the house. The silence followed her from room to room, mocking the soft wheeze of her slippers on the carpet, and she wondered how she would cope if she ever lived alone: she couldn't bear the lack of noise, even if that noise was just the papery whisper of her father reading the news of the faint whistle of his afternoon nap.

After Peter's match yesterday, there hadn't been a lot of time to talk. He and Max had both won their friendly games and celebrations had been in order, in the form of a pint down at the local pub, and Maddie had spent the entire time trying to decipher the slightest of hints from Peter. Her heart soared each time his fingers her grazed hers, and it had swiftly sunk each time he slung his arm around her shoulders and called her a friend. He was unreadable, always wearing that same grin whether he was joking with his friends or undressing her, and she had come to associate it with every feeling under the sun, from uncontrollable laughter to the warmth it sent creeping through her body.

It took seven minutes for Maddie to make it downstairs, pulling on something to wear regardless of her lack of plans and running a brush through her hair as though there was someone for whom she needed to look presentable. Her subconscious mind yelled Peter, the face she had once again grown so accustomed to after month of patchy communication. Now he was that ever present niggle at the back of her mind and the forefront of her imagination, every moment of idle-mindedness filled with his image.

The radio offered a little solace, somewhere for her thoughts to escape as she paid attention to the programme while trying not to burn her toast. She could never get the setting right on the toaster, always either turning the bread to charcoal or barely crisping the sides, but today she forced herself to keep a beady eye on her breakfast. Too often, her first attempt at feeding herself in the morning ended up sacrificed to the birds. Scraping off the charred patches never quite worked at returning her toast to a state of normality.

By half past ten, the solitude was clawing at her brain. After a high octane week in the company of others, it was odd - too odd - to suddenly be alone, and a few minutes after finishing her breakfast and dumping the plate into a sink of soapy water, Maddie took out her phone. Posy and her father were in a constant battle for the most recent contact in her phone, the only two she texted often with the exception of Nick's occasional texts, and currently her father was taking the lead. Maddie skipped over him and tapped the icon of Posy's face as she stretched her feet out onto the chair opposite her. The dial tone sounded several times, and just as Maddie was about to give up and resign herself to a lonely day, Posy picked up.

"Hello?" she said, her voice thick and slow.

"Posy?" Maddie frowned at the unfamiliar distortion of her friend's voice. "You ok?"

"I'm dying," Posy said, ever one to exaggerate. "I feel awful."

"What's wrong?"

"I have a cold," she said, a pathetic inflection to her voice. "I can't remember what it's like to breathe normally. My mouth is so fucking dry. It's ridiculous."

"That sucks," Maddie said. She had never been particularly good at verbal sympathy - she was far better at making herself useful when she was needed, rather than offering her compassion in words. No matter how much she actually did sympathise, she failed to put it into words. "You at home?"

"Yup." Posy let out a raspy sigh. "Just dying quietly and alone. I don't know if it's a coincidence or they're avoiding me but my parents chose today to go and visit my granny."

"And your sisters?" Maddie asked. Over the past three years, she'd only met Posy's two younger sisters a handful of times but she adored them, only deepening her desire for a sibling. At seventeen, Heather could be a bit snappy but she was a sweetheart, and fourteen-year-old Poppy was still as scattered and gangly as she had been when she was eleven.

"Both gone," Posy said. "They'd rather spend three hours in the car to sit in a stuffy nursing home than stay home and look after poor old me." She couched on the other end of the line, a throaty splutter that made Maddie wrinkle her nose. For all that she hated illness, though, she loved Posy a hundred times more and despised the boredom of being alone in her house.

"Want me to come over?" she asked, already standing and switching off the radio. Her bag was hanging by the door where she always shed it when she got home, her purse and keys safely stashed inside.

"You don't need to do that." Posy put up a weak protest.

"I'm on my way," Maddie said.

"Are you sure?"

She rolled her eyes at the phone and pulled the front door shut behind her. "Of course I'm sure. As long as you're not too ill to talk to me."

"I'll never be too ill for gossip," Posy said. "If you bring me some chocolate, I'll bring you a half-decent conversation and a flawless companion."

Maddie chuckled as she threw her bag across to the passenger seat and jammed the key in the ignition, twisting it hard to start the car with her foot on the clutch. The old banger was due an MOT soon and having only squeezed by last year, she wasn't sure it'd pass this time. Each day was a gamble, praying that the car would judder to life once more. "I'll be with you in an hour, so try not to die in the meantime."

"I'll try," Posy said with a groan. "Don't forget the chocolate, else we might have world war three on our hands."

"Can you even taste?"

"Irrelevant. I need a sugar high."

"I won't forget. You just rest."

"Maddie?"

"Yeah?" She had yet to leave the driveway, chuntering away as she wrapped up her conversation.

"Thanks, babe. You're a star."

"Right back at you," she said with a smile. "See you soon."

*

After stopping at a petrol station halfway to fill up her dangerously low tank and grab something sweet for Posy, Maddie arrived at her friend's house exactly an hour after she had set off. The traffic had been kind, not too many people on the road in the middle of a Monday morning, and the numerous sets of red lights had worked in her favour. Through a gap in the half-pulled curtain she could just about make out Posy's figure draped over the sofa in the sitting room and when she knocked on the window, Posy jumped with a start.

"The door's open," she said, straining her voice to force her words through the double glazing. Maddie gave her a thumbs up and let herself into the house. She made sure to take off her shoes, as per Posy's mother's preferences, before she padded through to Posy.

"Hey," she said, pulling a huge family-sized bar of chocolate out of her bag and waving it at her friend. "How's this, eh? Reckon it's enough?"

Posy's eyes filled with adoration, though it could've been the glistening from her cold, and she reached up from the sofa to take the bar, immediately peeling it open and snapping off a row of squares. "You're an angel, Mads."

"I also got you these." She held up a selection of trashy magazines that Posy thrived on, the gossip a lifesource for her, and her eyes brightened even more.

"This is why you're my best friend," she said with a grin. Maddie placed the magazines on the coffee table and sat down on the edge of a chair. "How's it going?"

"Not bad," Maddie said, letting her bag slip from her shoulder to the floor. "It's so quiet at home, I couldn't stand it much longer."

"Good thing you have a poor sick friend to look after." Posy stretched out on the sofa and let out a short, groggy laugh. "You realise we haven't spoken since the party?"

Maddie frowned before she nodded. "I didn't," she said, so caught up in her thoughts that she'd forgotten to share with her best friend.

"I take it you guys got home alright? You completely disappeared at, like, half two."

"We got a taxi to Peter's."

"Oh yeah?" Posy sat up a little straighter and wiggled her eyebrows before launching into a coughing fit. "How'd that go?"

"I can't remember, actually." Her cheeks pinkened. "I remember you falling off the table and then waking up in Peter's spare room."

A wicked grin spread over Posy's face. "Oh my God, that's brilliant. Or terrible, I guess. You can't remember?"

Pursing her lips, Maddie shook her head. "From what Peter told me, he basically put me to bed. I don't think we did anything once we got back. And if we did, we probably shouldn't have because I was wasted."

Posy snorted a laugh. "True, that. Plus, when you guys came down you didn't exactly hide the fact that you'd been fucking." She raised her arm just in time to sneeze into her elbow and let out a groan.

"Really?"

"Yeah! I heard one guy ask where you'd been and you literally outright told him you'd been shagging Peter. So if this was supposed to be some kind of low-key arrangement, it isn't anymore. I'm ninety-nine percent sure the entire tennis club knows about you two."

Maddie dropped her head into her hands. "Oh my God. Please say you're joking."

Posy grimaced. "I'm afraid not, Mads. I doubt it's a big deal. And Peter's a good guy, right? He seemed friendly enough. He's decent, right?"

"Yeah, he is," Maddie said, and she allowed the smallest of smiles to replace her despair. "He's great." But the smile didn't stick around for long, and Posy was quick to notice.

"What?"

"I don't know what he's thinking," Maddie said. She twisted her lips in thought, eyebrows meeting above her nose in a furrow. "It bothers me, I guess."

Posy struggled to sit up a little straighter and whipped a tissue out of the box on the floor to blow her nose. "Maybe he's not really thinking anything. In my experience of trying to figure out a guy's layers, I've been staring at the only one the whole time."

"No." Maddie shook her head. She scooted back in her seat and crossed her knees, slouching against the back of the chair. "I feel like he's hiding something. You know what I mean?"

"I guess," Posy said. She broke off a few more pieces of chocolate and held out the bar to Maddie, who declined with a wave of her hand. "But is there a chance you're just being paranoid? I mean, you've been friends with this guy for, like, forever. You must know him inside out."

"Exactly. I do know him inside out, and I feel like there's something missing." She bit her lip and stared at her hands, and the way the light fell across her unpainted nails. "We haven't talked at all. Like, we've talked, but not about us."

"Ah." Posy gave Maddie a sympathetic smile. "Well, I just think that after ten years, he probably couldn't hide anything if he wanted. He probably isn't even thinking about it. He probably just sees it as a friends with benefits situation." She paused for a moment. "Isn't that what it is anyway?"

"Yeah. At the moment. But I don't want it to be." Maddie let out an elaborate sigh and launched herself towards the chocolate.

Posy appeared to be lost in thought for a moment, completely still and frowning before she slipped into motion. "Is the sex good?"

"What?"

"I'm just trying to gage the situation. Is the sex good?"

"Yeah. I mean, I don't exactly have a point of comparison but I'd say it's pretty fucking good. Pretty good fucking."

Posy grinned. "Well, that's a tick. How about after?"

Maddie shook her head to herself. "You're gonna have to elaborate."

"What's he like afterwards? Is it a fuck-and-run or what?"

"No," Maddie said. "He's a gentleman. He's always a perfect gentleman afterwards. And during. And before. He's very careful. He cares. He always puts me first."

As she sipped from a glass of water, Posy's grin bloomed. "So stop fussing. He sounds amazing. What's there to worry about?"

Maddie opened her mouth to respond before realising she didn't actually have a response. She wasn't a hundred percent sure what she was so worried about; Peter had given her no reason to fret and yet she did anyway. "He told me he loved me," she said eventually, after enough time had passed for it to become a new strand of conversation. Posy almost spat out her water, her eyes bugging, and she spluttered a cough.

"What the fuck? Seriously? When?"

"At the party. We were drunk; we were, you know, in the middle of having sex." Maddie winced as she spoke the words out loud. The more she thought about it, the more she tried to convince herself that it meant nothing and judging by Posy's expression, she felt the same.

"Ah. That's a bit of a grey area." She finished her water and wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve, coughing again before composing herself. "I mean ... in the throes of orgasm, emotions are running wild." She shrugged and set the glass down on the floor. "I've done that before. It can be pretty awkward. Was it?"

Maddie tried to pull up that memory but it consisted of little more than the words leaving Peter's mouth and pushing her over the edge into a shuddering abyss. "That's not really what I wanted to hear," she said with a dry laugh. "I don't think it was. I didn't react."

"Well, I guess that's good. I'd just say there's no point messing with a good thing. You guys seem to have a decent arrangement, your feelings aside. Why ruin it? I hate to be the pessimist, but I guess I'm more of a realist. There's no guarantee that talking about it will do any good, and it sounds to me like sex hasn't ruined your friendship." She held Maddie's gaze for a couple of seconds.

"I guess." Maddie sighed. She knew Posy was right. She just didn't want that to be the answer. She wanted to be told that everything would turn out how she wanted it to, that Peter would be honest about his feelings and that they would match hers. But she was an idealist, and the world was grounded in reality.

*

With two steaming mugs of tea on the coffee table and a plate of biscuits between them, Maddie and Posy settled into the comfortable, comforting quietness of their friendship with a magazine each and Radio 1 playing the latest hits. Every now and then the calm was disturbed by Posy descending into a coughing fit or complaining about her inability to breathe properly, or by Maddie playing mother and putting the kettle on a couple of times.

Halfway through a two-page spread on a celebrity she had never heard about, Maddie's companionable solitude was pierced by Posy's voice.

"I never realised Ryan was gay."

"Huh?" Maddie lifted her eyes from her magazine, her instant assumption being that Posy had read an article.

"Ryan. Your cousin. You never told me he's gay." She shrugged. "Not that it matters. I just figured it would've come up by now."

Maddie frowned, her muscles working on automatic to present her confusion. "What? Ryan's not gay."

It was Posy's turn to frown. "Well, he might be bi, I guess. Or experimenting." She folded her magazine on her stomach. "Wait ... you didn't know?"

Maddie's mind was immediately bombarded with a hundred new questions and scenarios she had never even contemplated before. "No," she said, her back straightening. "How do you know?"

"At the party," Posy said. "I thought you were there. I guess it was late. Maybe you'd gone by then. I was trying to find somewhere to sleep and I walked in on him making out with one of the tennis guys."

As she processed the words, Maddie struggled to form a comprehensive thought. "I didn't know," she said at last.

"Well, shit," Posy said with a laugh. "I didn't mean to out him or anything. I haven't told anyone else. I just figured if he's kissing a guy at a party then he doesn't care if people know. Though he did yell at me. I thought maybe that was just because he didn't want me sleeping in that room." She glanced at Maddie, who still wore an expression of utter confusion.

"Maybe," Posy continued, "that's why he's so moody. Maybe he's repressed or something. Or that could just be his personality I guess." She reached for her tea and a biscuit to dip into it, stifling a sneeze by pinching the bridge of her nose until the sensation subsided. "Mads?"

"Yeah?"

"You alright? You look kinda spaced out."

"I just didn't know," she said. "I guess it makes sense. I think? I don't know." She let out a slow laugh. "I don't know what to think this week. It's all been a bit too much."

"Oh yeah?"

Maddie held up a hand to count off her fingers. "I lost my virginity to my best friend because of a pact; I found out my mum killed herself after eighteen years of thinking she had cancer, and now you're telling me Ryan's gay."

"Well, shit," Posy said after a short pause to let the words sink in. "I feel bad for whinging about my cold now." She laughed a throaty laugh, swallowing it down with a swig of her tea. "Is it a big deal? About Ryan, I mean?"

"No. Well, it doesn't matter. It's just new information. Unexpected. I mean, there are some people you just know, right? And Ryan ... I had no idea."

"I really thought you already knew. Sorry about that." Posy cradled her mug in both hands as though she was frozen when it was in fact a rather amenable temperature outside, and the heat was only set to climb.

"Nope," Maddie said, "but if you have any other bombshells, drop them now. I've been made immune."

"I can't say I do. Unless it would rock your world to learn that my mother has decided to get a new phone."

Maddie had to laugh at that. Posy always knew how to lighten the mood without relying on tasteless tactics: her serious side was always just a stone's throw away. She had always been the mother figure at university, keeping an eye on everyone in the house and occasionally cooking a full on meal for everyone. During exam periods, she had been Maddie's study partner, friend, chef and parent all rolled into one.

"It'll all figure itself out," Posy said after a little while. "These things always do. In the meantime, just enjoy what you have."

"Why do you get all the wisdom, huh?"

"You have it too," she said. "You just don't listen to yourself. None of us do. We have to hear the things we know from someone else before we believe them."

Maddie thought about that for a moment before realising its truth. What Posy said was nothing she hadn't said to herself at some point, and yet it made so much more sense coming from someone else. She smiled. "Thanks, Posy."

"No," Posy said, holding up the chocolate and winking, "thank you."  

+ - + - +

i hope you liked this chapter! i'm sorry it was a bit conversation-heavy - by my standards, there hasn't been a ton of proper conversation and this is an important moment between posy and maddie (even if only for their friendship rather than much progression). please don't forget to vote & comment if you did (and hey, maybe even give me a follow!) i absolutely love reading your comments and your ideas about what'll happen next

reminder: i have made an ask.fm account so you guys can ask me any questions you have there - ask.fm/dipthewick

ALSO a few people have asked how long 21NS will be. My original plan was 25 chapters but after planning up to ch21, there's no way I can wrap it up by then! I'm aiming for 30 chapters, so you guys know what you're waiting for :) i can't wait to show you guys the cover for the next (unrelated) story to come after the conclusion of #peddie! the cast is already up on my tumblr dipthewick and maybe i'll post the cover in ch20 as a wee teaser. this chapter is dedicated to hyrule for awesome comments!