Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Look, we are not unspectacular things.

    We’ve come this far, survived this much. What

would happen if we decided to survive more?   

- Ada Limon, “Dead Stars”

“Have you seen him yet?”

Thomas looks up from his cup of watery tea to the housemaid sitting across from him.

“Who?” If she means his Lordship, Thomas will put her to rights. She’s not so new in the house that she doesn’t know not to tell him his job. The fires in Crozier’s bedroom and dressing room have long been lit and the coffee is ready to be brought up with the ring of a bell (most likely, Thomas won’t even need to wait for it. He knows when his Lordship wants his coffee, has a sixth sense about it by now. He can tell how early Crozier is going to rise by the cloud cover, and the season, and how long his lamp stayed flickering beneath his bedroom door into the night.)

“Mr. Little,” the housemaid tells him. 

Something - trips and restarts beneath the lace of Thomas’ ribs. He sets his teacup down very carefully. 

“His Lordship’s nephew from London,” the maid continues. “You knew him, I thought? Before.”

She doesn’t need to clarify ‘before what.’  

“I - did.” 

“He arrived late last night, unexpected. Rather a lot of excitement. Our John made up his room.”

“Oh.” No one rang for Thomas. They should have. It seems impossible that he slept through the night while Edward Little returned to Avonmore for the first time in years. He should have recognized the man’s footsteps coming up the stairs and lurched into wakefulness. He should have known, somehow, that Little was there.

“Do you remember him?”

( “Call me Edward, would you? You can.”)

Thomas swallows. The kitchen seems suddenly very warm - or maybe it’s the tea. He wants to take off his jacket, undo his collar, but he won’t.  

“I do.”

“Our John knew him when he was a lad. Said he was much altered. But least he’s not as poorly off as some, eh? Made it through with all his arms and legs still on. Saw that Captain Fitzjames at the village bazaar last Sunday - well surprising, since he never shows himself down there - and he looked like a man who’d already died.” The housemaid sips her tea as if she’s talking about the weather, and gives Thomas a sideways look with her pale-lashed eyes. “You must be grateful to have gotten free of it.”

He doesn’t blame her for the comment. He’s had worse, a lot worse over the years. Besides - she lost two nephews in the War. She’s allowed to look as sideways at Thomas as she likes. 

The worst part of it all is that Tom is.

He is grateful.

The truth of the matter (not that folks around here much care) is that Thomas had tried to enlist on the first day. The first bloody day, he’d stood in line with the chaps from the nearby villages and the other staff of Avonmore. The air was grim but glorious, the blossom of summer still lingering, and Thomas hadn’t been afraid then. Not in the sunshine, not with his friends about him. It had felt important, the absolute least he could do. All the papers said as much, and everyone with any sense said the same.  It was unthinkable to refuse England's call, and Tom didn't want to.

And - 

And there was -

There was another part of it. A part of him (some awful, selfish, loathsome part) that thought this might be his chance. His chance to see things , to get out of this village and away from his grief, to run as far and as fast as he could from the hemmed in life and death that awaited him here, and would still be waiting when he returned. 

Thomas can’t remember much of what the doctor said to him that day. He didn’t even know there was something wrong until the man handed his papers back. 

His heartbeat was too fast. 

What a thing to be sick with. A broken heart.

He’d never known, but there it was.

There were whispers in the house and in the village after that. He explained to those who would listen, and his Lordship knew the truth of it. It was the case for a lot of the miners and farming men as well, too sick and underfed to be of use as a soldier. Not that any of that made a difference in the public's opinion of them.

Enlisted or not, the whole of Avonmore House did their part for the war effort. Land was put to use for farming, and his Lordship was off to Seaford training recruits. War felt like a machine, at first. Its great wheels turned and kicked up stones and threw the whole world into motion. 

Thing is, a machine that size is difficult to stop. And a stone, even a small one, can take out a man’s eye.

“Suppose Mr. Little’s come out here to rest,” the housemaid says. “After.” 

Thomas’s mouth is dry, and he thinks about picking up his teacup, but doesn’t want to chance it. His hands will shake too much if he lifts it from the table; he’ll end up dashing it to the stone floor, and everyone will stare, and everyone will know. 

“Suppose he has.” Put this behind you , he tells himself very sternly. You should have, ages ago. 

There were moments when he thought he had. He thought that he’d banked these feelings, raked over them with ashes until they suffocated. His mother had died, and the whole world went to war. There wasn’t room for anything in his body but grief and fear and hunger.

He thought this fire had died. Yet here he is, throat full of sparks.

It must have to do with his age. Thomas has tried to tell himself that, time and again. Things mean more when you’re young. Your skin is softer, and people can carve deeper marks on it, leave you all scarred. Your world is small and dull, so when someone shines at you like a magic lantern, it's not your fault if you suddenly see colour.

It’s about inexperience. Innocence. That’s all it is.

Thomas was young when he first met Edward Little. Nothing had hurt him yet, and his whole heart was on offer.

He’s a very different man now.

(“Boy, get away -”

There is the sound of breaking glass from the study. 

Thomas is meant to be turning off the lamps before heading up to bed. He’s new to Avonmore (new as a footman, anyway) and not sure if this is one of those things to be investigated or carefully ignored. He errs toward the former, and follows the sound of shattering to find his employer, drunk and on his knees, with his nephew at his side. Mister Edward Little, just arrived from the city.

Thomas is seventeen.

There is a decanter of crystal in pieces on the hardwood floor of the study.  Little’s hand is bleeding, red staining the perfect white cuff of his shirt. It’s the same colour as the wine Thomas poured him at dinner. 

“Damn your eyes, leave me be! I said -“

“Uncle -” Little says, quietly urgent, and that’s when he notices Thomas.

Thomas holds his breath.

He doesn’t know quite why. They’ve met before, in passing, though it’s been a few months since the last.  Thomas knows they are about an age, and he knows that Little visits every summer, the only fond family his uncle seems to have.

Thomas also knows - other things. 

He knows that Little has the darkest eyes he’s ever seen, and the longest eyelashes. 

He knows this isn’t something a man should notice in another man but - but he did from the start. The first time he saw him. Thomas has spent most of his life at Avonmore House, and Edward Little has always been worthy of notice, always. It never felt like summer until Little had arrived from London - sometimes with his sisters, but usually alone, silent and serious as his suitcases were unloaded from the carriage. It wasn’t autumn until Little was boarding a train for home, a black silhouette against red and golden leaves, while Thomas pretended not to watch him go.

“Can I - be of assistance?” That sounds like the thing to say. Thomas longs to help, and he has a hound-like loyalty to Francis Crozier.  “Sir,” he adds as an afterthought, furious with himself for forgetting.

“Ah, Thomas. No, m’fine.” Crozier smiles in a bleary and unfocused way, trying unsuccessfully to get to his feet. 

Little’s dark eyes swim to his uncle’s face. There’s a silent plea there, and Thomas clenches one hand into a fist. 

“It’s my job, your Lordship.” Thomas keeps his tone gentle. He’s seen the man in worse states, it isn’t as alarming as Little’s face suggests. “You wouldn’t want me out of work.” 

Crozier chuckles, so Thomas guesses that was the right thing to say. He approaches slowly, steps into the lamplight and kneels beside his employer.

“Can mind myself, lad.”

“I dare say. But there’s my pride to think of.” Thomas offers his hand.

There’s a moment before Crozier takes it. When he does, it’s with a roll of his eyes and a put-upon sigh. He lets Thomas help him to his feet, leans against him as they trip towards the door. Little rushes forward, slinging his uncle’s free arm over his shoulders. Together, they navigate his Lordship out of the study, stumbling up the stairs to his bedroom.

“Should I get him water?” Little asks. “Or something to -”

“Christ’s sake, stop fussing Edward.”

Thomas catches Little’s eye before he speaks.

“I’m sure you fussed over your nephew a time or two in your life.”

Little winces with gratitude so fierce it looks like pain. “He certainly did.”

“An uncle’s meant to - meant to look after his nephew,” Crozier grumbles, chin down against his chest. “S’ not the same, don’t want to hear it.”

Thomas thinks of the last time he helped his mum to bed like this. He can smell her breath on his face, feel the clutch of her fingernails into his shoulder. If he isn’t careful, he can hear the hideous things she’s said to him (“ just like your fucking father, aren’t you? ”) 

Things she never means the morning after. 

“There we go, sir. You just lean on me.”

They make it up the stairs by some great miracle, and see Crozier safe into his room. When he’s sprawled on the bed and Thomas begins to take off his boots, he offers Little a dismissive smile ( you do not need to see this. Go to bed, go to the parlour, go to the library. Drink wine and play music, it’s what you’re meant for; leave this to me.)

But Little shakes his head before Thomas can even say a word.

“Tell me what to do.”

So Thomas does.

Together, they get the man dressed for bed. Little turns down his sheets, Thomas brings him water, and they pull the blankets over him as he grumbles into his pillow. 

Little watches Thomas through it all, a soft gaze that Thomas feels clawing at his collar. And when they leave his Lordship snoring, closing the door behind them, Little puts a hand on Thomas’ arm (Thomas tries not to flinch.)

“Is he often like this?”

Thomas wants to tell him ‘no.’ 

If he were speaking to anyone else, he might say just that.  But some part of him feels flayed open in front of Little, safe to speak the truth even if it’s ugly. Is it just because they’re the same age? Is it because of the years of casual meetings and partings? (Is it because of Little’s dark eyes and unreasonably long eyelashes -)

“More than we’d like, sir,” Thomas says. Little’s hand burns through the sleeve of his jacket, it’ll be eating through his dress-shirt next and singeing the hair on his forearm. 

“I didn’t know how bad it was.”

“We take care of him.”

“I can see that. I can see that you do.” Little’s voice is pitched low, and Thomas has to lean toward him to better make out the words. He feels the man’s breath on his face as he does.

“So do you, sir. He’s lucky to have you here -”

“Please don’t.”

“Sir?”

“Call me Edward. Would you?” In the lamplit hallway, Little’s eyes search his. “You can.”

Thomas thinks Little may be overestimating his capacity here (you can.) It makes Thomas’ face go hot to even think the man’s given name; it’d burn his tongue if he tried to say it. 

“Your hand,” he remembers suddenly.

“Oh. Yes.” Little shakes away the darkness that has stolen over his face, and lifts his hand to the light. There are two jagged cuts across it - one along his palm and one over the knuckle of his index finger. “I should have left things alone. I was worried he’d hurt himself but - clearly I was concerned for the wrong man.”

“Can I help?”

“With this? No, no. You’ve already done so much.”

“It won’t take a moment.” Thomas has bandaged more than a few injuries in his time. He learned quick (around his mum, God Bless her, things have a tendency to break.) “Best not leave it.”

Little hesitates, and there’s suddenly a flush of colour high on his cheekbones. Thomas feels almost sick at the sight of it, and he doesn’t know why. 

He knows he shouldn’t push things. He should bid the man goodnight, their task is done. He has no reason to stand here, too close, wondering how he can drag the encounter out a few moments longer.

The trouble is, he likes Edward Little. 

It’s the stupidest thing. Little, in his fine waistcoat with his lost eyes and bleeding hand, staring at Thomas like he’s a flock of birds suddenly taken to the sky. Thomas feels oddly protective of him. 

“There’s my pride to think of, sir,” he says, before he can feel suitably ashamed of himself.

It’s worth it to watch Little flush even deeper. To watch him smile, glancing down so Thomas can see the lay of his eyelashes against his skin. 

That rather seals it. Little follows Thomas to the servants hall below stairs, empty at the late hour. He lets Thomas clean his hand and bandage it. They do not speak, but it’s a comfortable quiet, and Thomas’ hands are steady as he presses the plaster against Little’s warm palm. 

His voice is steady as he bids the man goodnight, watches Little climb the stairs back to his side of the world. 

His heartbeat is steady as he leans against the doorframe for a long, long time.

Or - fairly steady. Maybe a bit fast. )

“Have you seen him?” his Lordship asks. 

Thomas is fastening the buttons of Crozier’s cuffs, mind anywhere but on his work. The question is a godsend; now Thomas won’t have to raise the subject himself.

No, he wants to say, No, I haven’t seen him. Where is he?

"Sir?"

“That damnable neighbour of ours. Tearing up the countryside in that hideous automobile.” Crozier snorts. “You have. ”

“Oh.” Oh .  They’re speaking of the Captain, then. 

“I can smell the fumes of it when I step outside.”

Captain Fitzjames’ property borders his Lordship’s, though the families are not close by any means. The Fitzjames are titled and well-connected, and Thomas can imagine their forebears had some Things to Say when Crozier’s grandfather and his new Irish money moved into the neighbouring estate. The current Lord and Lady seem relatively inoffensive, from what Thomas has heard from his employer. They never seem to rankle Crozier, or at least not openly. No, the only Fitzjames with which he takes issue is the son.  

It’s a bit mystifying. By all accounts, Captain Fitzjames is nothing but courteous, both before the War and since. He’s even been polite to Thomas himself on the few occasions their paths have crossed.  Thomas cannot help but wonder at the frequency of Captain Fitzjames’ name in his Lordship’s grumblings.  He can’t help but note the regular presence of Fitzjames around Avonmore, and the intensity of his Lordship’s dislike (dislike that strong can hide all manner of things beneath its blankets.) 

“I suspect it’s solely an attempt to aggravate me. He treats these grounds as if they were his own. I can hardly turn around without stumbling over the man. Once he asked if I wanted to go on a drive with him.” Crozier snorts in amazement. “Me! I set him straight.”

Thomas helps Lord Crozier into his greatcoat, brushing off the shoulders and trying not to grin. The way the man talks about that automobile, you’d think Fitzjames was going about in some futuristic flying machine.  There have been many, many conversations below stairs about Avonmore’s need for a car and driver, but no one says as much to Crozier. It’d be akin to treason. Mutiny. They’d all be hanged.

“We’ve been invited to dine with his family next week. I’ve put them off so long, I don’t believe I could refuse again. As if I need to hear any more of his war stories.” 

“We, sir?”

“Myself and my nephew. I should have said earlier.” Crozier examines his reflection in the mirror. He’s clear-eyed now, his face no longer red and tender looking. The last few years were hard for him in so many ways, but he’s come out the better for it. “Ned’s come to stay for  - however long he wishes. You remember him, don’t you? Edward?”

Thomas nods, silently. 

“Thought he’d do well in the quiet of the country. After everything.”

“Of course, sir.”

“You’ll see to him, won’t you? While he’s here. He hasn’t brought any staff with him, I assured him it wasn’t necessary.”

As if Thomas would ever say no to that. “Yes, sir.”

“We’ll let him lie this morning, though. He’s in the Blue Room, got in late yesterday.”

Thomas nods again, trying to remain expressionless. 

“Good man.” His Lordship nods, claps Thomas on the shoulder. He goes down to breakfast, leaving Thomas alone in the bedroom.

(Edward Little is in this house.)

He tells himself it’s nothing to him. He forces himself to think on what his Lordship might want to wear to dine with the Fitzjames. Something rather dashing, regardless of what he says. The dark grey frock coat, perhaps. Brings out the odd blue-green of his eyes. Thomas will set it out for him, see that he looks his best. He suspects the man might want to.

(Edward Little is on the same floor.)

Thomas picks up his Lordship’s nightshirt, pauses by the vanity to gather the brushes for cleaning and the basin of soapy water to be emptied. There’s a few pairs of shoes in need of a polish, but he’ll have to come back for those.

(Edward Little is under the same roof, only a few rooms away.)

Thomas curses under his breath.

It’s been years since they were this close together.  Little was at Oxford, then he was in London, then France, and Thomas was only ever here. In some ways, the space between them made it easier. Tom was fixed on the ground while Little was remote as any star. Thomas could almost tolerate his quiet light from that distance, where the heat didn’t leave any permanent damage.

The thought of Little back again, now, somewhere in the house that has been Thomas’ home for years - it makes his knees tremble. He would merely have to step into the hallway, follow it to the guest wing, and he’d be there. In front of the man’s door.

How are you ? he might ask. How have you been? I’ve heard -

He heard everything. And somehow he still feels like he hasn’t heard the worst of it.  For all the horror and violence, for all the endless names in the casualty lists he read every morning, he knows that there are darker stories still that the public has been spared. You can see it in the faces of the village men that came home, leaning on their crutches, empty sleeves pinned up or eyes bandaged closed. You can see it in Captain Fitzjames’ face, where his smile cracks around its edges. 

I thought of you constantly , Thomas might say. When officers were dying every day, I thought of you. I saw one of your letters once, recognized your writing and almost fell down in relief because it meant you were alive to hold a pen.

Tell me about it. If you want to tell someone about it, I want to hear it. If you want to sit in silence, let me sit with you. If you want to be alone, promise that you’ll ring for anything you need and I will be there in a moment, whenever you want, wherever you are, tell me -

He might say this.

Worse yet, he might reach out. He might cling to the other man, wrap his arms around him, press their heartbeats together just to prove they're both alive. They shouldn’t both be alive, it feels obscene to be so lucky. In a wild moment of gratitude, almost drunk on it, Thomas takes a step toward the door.

But then he catches his reflection in the mirror.

He’s handsome enough, he supposes. Sharp-jawed and tall, with eyes a watery blue; people have called him ‘honest-looking.’ Called him 'kind.' Maids at the house have giggled behind his back, told him he was ‘sweet’ and even ‘fair’ (he blames his eyes.)  In the tailored black livery that he keeps in impeccable condition (buttons polished as brightly as his shoes) he’d look almost respectable if it weren’t for the lock of hair forever falling in his eyes. He brushes it back now, and feels the calluses on his hands from his early days in the kitchen. He sees the lines beneath his eyes from too many late nights and early mornings. He looks older than his thirty years. Worn down as a heel on a boot.

He may be polished from a distance, but he’s no gentleman. 

He’s fooling himself if he thinks Little would see him as anything other than the help.

Put this behind you, Thomas tells himself again. 

They may have both survived a war, but that doesn’t mean their circumstances have changed. He’s not the sort of man for Edward Little. Even if Little wanted him, even if he felt the same. He may be down the hall but he’s as far from Thomas as he ever was. And that’s where he’ll remain. 

Thomas will put it behind him.

(Being in this room is a test of restraint, Thomas thinks, looking at the clutter surrounding him. There are sheafs of papers and stacks of books, an almost reasonable (almost) amount of chaos for a man who will only be with them for three or four months.  

Thomas’ hands itch to organize it. He clenches them into fists, and nudges a fallen book with his toe.

He is nineteen.

He contemplates asking his Lordship for an additional bookshelf, just to get some of this put away (and surely these are normal thoughts for a man his age to have.) It isn’t that Mr. Little is particularly untidy or careless, not like some of Avonmore’s other visitors. Thomas doesn’t feel that bite of resentment at the back of his throat when he witnesses the state of things. It all stays relatively confined to the desk and the night-table and the chair beside the bed. 

It’s a creative sort of space. Entirely too interesting.

He tries not to look at anything overlong.  Not to glance at letters or book titles and guess at what they might reveal. It’s an invasion of the other man’s privacy, and no business of a servant’s. 

But.  

Books are such a rare and precious thing in his world. And Little is off on a hunt with the other guests (Crozier’s sister and her husband, a few friends of the family) and he’ll be on a hunt for the next hour at least.

And Thomas wants to know. That’s the fucking worst of it. He has no real excuse but his own hunger (sod the linens. He turns toward Little’s desk.)

The Scarlet Pimpernel is the first title he sees.  It makes him feel strangely fond. He hasn’t read it, but he’s heard the story, and he wonders what Little likes about it. If he likes it. If he fancies himself a roguish, heroic sort (he’s got the face for it, though Tom will never say as much.) 

The Cherry Orchard, he sees next. Henry James. There are several classics that make Thomas feel hot about his ears with envy. Some of them he recognizes from school, others from Crozier’s vast, forbidden library, but some are completely new to him. He has to decipher their contents from their titles and covers alone, and is probably getting everything wrong.

One has a corner that has very clearly been chewed on by a small dog.

The book on the floor turns out to be a collection of poetry that’s bound in such a pretty way - the cover pale green, the spine all edged with gold-leaf - that Thomas has to pick it up.  It’s heavier than he thought it would be, and he weighs it in his hand. He lets it open to whatever page it falls on, telling himself that this is the end of it and he’d best get back to work. 

The Panther is the title. He reads:

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,

has grown so weary that it cannot hold

anything else. It seems to him there are

a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

Something happens in his chest, like he’s sucked in a breath of scalding air, and this is when the door clicks open.

“Oh - I’m sorry.”

Thomas snaps the book shut just as Little enters. The man is mud-spattered and damp-haired, and smells like grass and rain. 

Thomas can’t speak. He can’t move. The book in his hand is burning his fingerprints clean off.

“I didn’t know you  -” Little stops, awkwardly. “I’m sorry,” he says again, as if he’s the one intruding into Thomas’ private quarters and not the other way round. 

“I’m just picking up -” Thomas’ brain jolts awake at last. He gestures with the book before putting it back on the desk. 

“No, of course.” Little doesn’t move from the doorway. His hands are knit together like he’s come to ask for a favour, taken his cap off to show proper respect (Thomas would say yes to anything, to all of it.)  

“You’re - um - quite the reader, sir.”

Little laughs a bit harshly. “Entirely too much of one, according to my father. Are you?” There’s interest in his eyes, and it makes Thomas dizzy.

“What I can get my hands on, I suppose.” 

“Oh? Is it difficult to -”

“Has his Lordship returned?” Thomas tries to strong-arm the conversation back to safer territory. Anything to regain his balance. Anything to get the man to stop looking at him like - that.

(There is a word on his tongue that he’s heard before, though never in polite company. There’s a fast-approaching knowledge, some inborn understanding of himself and what he wants. It lives beneath his too-tight skin and shines out whenever he cuts himself .)

“No, only myself. Took a bad jump, fell from my horse.” 

Thomas’ pulse kicks at his jawbone in alarm. “Are you hurt?”

“No.” Little tangles a hand through his wet hair, shaking the water from it. The way the rain drips from his fingertips makes the room briefly shine around its edges; Thomas has to steady himself with a hand on the desk. “But annoyed enough to leave the rest of them to it. Never was much for hunting.”

Pale sunlight cuts a narrow path across the hardwood floor to spill at Little’s feet. If Thomas followed it, it would put him right in front of the other man. And God, he wants to. Wants to walk it like a plank, see what happens when he reaches the end of it. Whether he’ll tumble into the sea. Whether he’ll drown before anyone can save him.

“Do you need - help?” Thomas prays that the answer is no. He’s made it this far without having to touch Little’s skin - button linen against his chest, wind a tie around his throat. He doesn’t know if he’d survive it. 

Little flinches at the question. “No,” he says quickly.

“Then I’ll just -” He had a job - what was it? “I’ll be on my way, sir.”

He picks up the nearest random piece of fabric he can see, a vest of some kind, nodding at Little like he’s found his true purpose.  Little steps very carefully back as Thomas passes him. Little avoids his gaze as Thomas closes the door behind him.

That evening, when he goes down for supper, there is a book waiting for him in the servants hall.

“Mr. Little left this for you,” the housekeeper tells him, with a look of overwhelming disapproval. “Said he was returning it.”

It is the poetry book from Little’s room. The pretty one. 

“Returning it - to me?” Thomas is an entire idiot, but he can’t quite stop the question from leaving his mouth.

“That is what I said. Unless there’s been a mistake.”

“No mistake,” Thomas says quickly, “Good of him to - thank you. Yes. Thanks.”

That night, by a dying nub of candlelight, he reads his first book of poems from cover to cover. He can’t seem to stop, gasping for the next one and then the next, heedless of how soon the morning will be there to shriek at him.

Days after that, as random chance would have it, Lord Crozier opens up his library to the staff. He mentions it to Thomas over supper (“Heard you’re rather a reader, Mr. Jopson.”) and across the table Edward Little flushes so red he might as well be the wine in his glass but - 

But that will come later. 

That night, Thomas falls asleep that night with an open book of poetry left on his pillow.  He dreams of a wide window with an ocean on the other side of it. The water is the colour of Little’s silk necktie, and there are no bars between Thomas and the glass.)

Crozier dines alone that evening. And the next. 

Thomas wants to ask. He wants to ask desperately. He has the opportunity, has moments alone with his Lordship. It would be a simple matter: Should someone look in on our guest? How fares your nephew? Is there anything that I can do, anything at all -

Easy words, strung together like pearls on a cord. Thomas could ask. 

But he doesn’t. He waits for Crozier to mention it, wills him to feel Thomas’ concern.

Crozier says nothing. His brow is dark and troubled.

“Heard he won’t leave his bed,” one of the housemaids tells Tom when they meet on the stairs. “His Lordship his-self took a plate up to his room last night.” Her eyes have been pink since her fiancé went missing in France, tiny pinpricks of blood blooming around her pupils and down into her cheekbones.

“I heard he’s only coming out at night,” a groundskeeper tells Thomas the next day when there's still no sign of Little. “Creeping ‘round the place while the rest of us sleep. He came back not right in the head, I’ll tell you that. Some of ‘em get a real taste for it.”

Thomas gives him a cold glance, and says nothing. Mr. Hickey’s the last person to call anyone else not right in the head. He’s new to Avonmore, only been there a few months, and his story changes every time he tells it, shifting colour like the light through church windows.

The whispers continue for the next couple of days, gossip about where Mr. Little is, and what he’s doing to occupy his time. There’s no small amount of interest from the female members of staff, all waiting for a sight of the heroic, unmarried officer among them. Thomas mostly ignores it, but he can’t pretend he doesn’t have his eye out around every corridor, down every hallway. He feels like he’s been holding his breath for days, and it’s a bare relief when he can sneak away each afternoon for a roll-up by the stables.

It’s an odd spring - cold for April and overcast. Thomas regrets not wearing an overcoat as he walks toward the stable block, shivering. The flowers bloomed too early in the year, all of them certain it was summer, before a late frost killed them.  It’s been cold ever since, so the gardens are still bare, branches outstretched like gloveless fingers. The sky is grey and the trees are black, and sometimes Thomas feels like the War took all the colour along with it. 

He swears he can remember colour. Swears it was everywhere, once.

(Red: the warm blood pooling on the butcher’s block where his mum tied up the roast with sprigs of rosemary.)

Thomas leans against one of the stone walls of the stable, lets the ember of his cigarette warm his fingertips. Behind him, he can hear the horses whickering softly, the stomp of feet and snort of hot breath from their stalls. Truthfully, he’s always been a little afraid of horses. They’ve entirely too many teeth, and you can’t trust them. 

Though they’re nice to listen to from a distance.

(Pink: the ribbons in his sister’s hair when she married Michael. They were the exact same shade as the flush on her cheeks and the rubbed-raw knuckles of her hands. She may have worn white in that small country church, but everything about her glowed pink, even her laughter.)

There’s movement behind him. It’s probably the stablemaster or one of his lads coming to pester Thomas for a smoke, and he turns with an easy smile.

The smile falls to the earth like a dead thing.

(Green: a book he was given once. Green and gold, years and years ago.)

It isn’t the stablemaster standing behind him.

The stablemaster wouldn’t make Thomas forget about the lit cigarette in his hands. It bites at his fingertips, and Tom hisses more in surprise than pain, dropping it to the ground. 

Little looks older than he should. 

Paler as well. Or not paler - faded , like someone tried to scrub his portrait off a canvas. His eyes are still dark, but it’s a different sort of darkness than Thomas remembers. They used to remind Thomas of the bottom of the ocean, an unsoundable blue. Now they are blacker than that, cloudy and hardened into coal.

His hair is wild, long across his forehead, and he’s grown more of a beard than is strictly in fashion. He looks - like a werewolf from a penny dreadful. Like some terrible Gothic villain, the kind you might see upon the moors or in a castle. He looks -

Well, stunning. If Thomas is being honest. He wants to step forward and put his burnt fingers in the man’s mouth.

“Tom -” Little starts, before the name catches in his throat. He swallows, Adams apple visible beneath a dark shadow of stubble. “Mr. Jopson.”

There it is. What Thomas is supposed to be called, now that they’ve grown into the men they were always meant to be. 

“Mr. Little,” Thomas says. “I’m - sorry to intrude.” 

“You’re not.”

“Did you -” Jesus. Thomas had questions, didn’t he?  He had an entire speech planned out and all he can do is stare and stare, absorbing every detail as if he might need to sketch the man from memory later (the ragged nails, the stain on the cuff of his sleeve - tea, maybe - the threads of grey at his temples, barely noticeable, like a tiny kiss of starlight -)

“Yes?” 

Christ, Thomas. “Did you - did you wish to go riding, sir?”

Little’s mouth opens in surprise and Thomas curses to himself. This is not what he wanted. This is not what he wanted to say. He wanted - 

“I could - have a horse saddled for you.” 

Crozier’s bay mare pokes her head from her stall, snorting at the air, and Little turns to look. His face changes then, something gentle happening to his mouth. He takes a few steps closer to her, reaching out to touch her neck. 

“No, thank you. I only wanted to see them.” Little keeps his eyes on the horse, and Thomas watches the slow, careful movement of his hand. “That must sound foolish.”

“Nothing foolish about it,” Thomas says quickly.  He speaks to the bay instead of looking at Little, and wills her not to sink her teeth into the other man’s palm; she certainly seems the type.  “You’ve got a way with them. Anaximander will never leave you alone now.

Little laughs, the dead husk of a sound. “ No. Anaxi - is that really her name?”

“Regrettably, yes. I think he was a philosopher?”

“My uncle,” Little shakes his head, the murmur of a smile still on his mouth, “is a very serious man.”

“Very serious indeed, sir.”

A silence follows, and not an easy one. Thomas studies the brick of Anaximander's stall, the veins of copper shot through the grey stone. After a moment he feels Little’s eyes on him. It’s a tangible thing, a knife scraping over his neck and jawline. It makes him feel raw, all his layers peeled back until only the red meat of him is left to the stinging air. He’s afraid to look up, to meet the other man’s gaze. He does not know what he’ll see if he does.

“I should -“ he begins, just as Little says, “How have -“

“I’m sorry.” There is a flush visible above Little’s thick sideburns. “What were you going to say?”

“Nothing.” Thomas swallows, hating himself for feeling so off balance. He is deft and sure-footed at the worst of times, can read a room of people and see at a glance what each of them require. He anticipates need; it’s what made him an excellent footman and an even better valet.

But there is no accounting for Edward Little. When Little looks at him now - Thomas has no idea what he wants.

“I should get back to my duties, sir.” He studies Little’s face for a brief, indulgent moment. The crease of his eyebrows, the curve of his bottom lip. “Please do not hesitate to - to let me know if you need anything. If there’s anything I can do.”

Little nods, but doesn’t reply. And Thomas can’t resist.

“Will you be with us long?”

“I -“ Little looks at him with those dark, sad eyes, as if Thomas is a forest he must somehow find his way through. “I cannot say.”

Thomas nods, and nods again. He clenches both hands into fists, and leaves him there.

(He is twenty when he goes to Manchester for his sister’s wedding, meets a dark-eyed man who looks at him a certain way, and finds himself looking back. He thinks of Edward Little as he comes apart in the strange man’s fist, imagines the lushness of his mouth on Thomas’ own. 

Thomas is twenty-two when Sir James Ross’s valet touches his wrist in the library, and then kisses his neck, and then has him on his hands and knees in the stables where anyone could walk in and see. 

“Are you thinking of your fancy man?” he hisses between Thomas’ shoulder blades, “I’ve seen how you look at him.”

“Shut up,” Thomas says, or tries to say, but the words are all tangled up with a sound that he’s sure he’s never made before, something that wails.

“You think he’d have you like this? You wish this was his prick?” The valet - Christ, Thomas only knows his last name - fucks him harder, each jerk of his hips punching the air out of Thomas’ throat. “He wouldn’t make you feel like this.”

But he would, Thomas knows he would. He closes his eyes against the vicious pleasure, and dreams of a different man. Little, holding him down, a hand on his throat. Little giving him poetry books, and shy, serious glances across the dining room table when Thomas serves the family.

“You think he wants you?” The man pulls Thomas back, up onto his knees so he’s almost in the man’s lap. The shift makes Thomas come without a hand on him, spitting up onto his chest and his stomach, biting into his palm so he doesn’t cry out. Ross’ valet laughs, and keeps fucking him, and Thomas knows.

He knows.

He knows why he blushes around his employer’s nephew like he’s feverish. He knows why the first sight of the man each summer sits like a stone in his stomach, almost doubling him over. He knows why his heartbeat skips when Crozier mentions Little’s name, talks of his activities in London, his schooling, his plans to visit.

Thomas knows what he wants. And he knows it’s impossible.

When he can manage a day away (a very rare occurrence) Thomas goes to London. He goes to Manchester. He finds the places where men like him gather, and learns how to tell at a glance if a stranger’s taking interest. He is not precious in his desires; he knows bodies are unruly things, and he loves them all the more for it. He spends long nights dreaming of the sweat at the nape of Little’s neck, beneath his arms and up his spine. He wants the heft of Little’s thighs and the prickle of hair on his throat. He wonders how far that hair spills down the man’s chest - or over his shoulders. Or between his legs.

He thinks of the lengths he would go to to rob Little of some of his comportment. To undo the button of his collar. To have him sweating and cursing and spilling over Thomas’ hands.

As the years go on, some of that wanting shifts. Changes its colour and texture, becomes dangerously, chokingly soft. 

Thomas doesn’t just want Little to hold him down and say awful things to him.

Thomas wants to pet away the crease between Little’s heavy brows. He wants to kiss him, not with teeth and tongue, but with gentle words of praise (you are so lovely, Thomas would say to the man in his arms, and then kiss him again. So lovely and so good to me.) He wants to hold him close in the cold night, press the ember of his mouth against his collarbone. He wants to listen to him sighing in his sleep.

He wants to make him laugh. Make his eyes wrinkle with one of his rare smiles, over and over and over again until they aren’t rare at all.

He holds his breath, sometimes, and waits for the wanting to pass. It never really does. After a time, Thomas grows used to it. It becomes a friend to him, a quiet companion tugging on his sleeves while he works, occasionally waking him from lovely dreams.

Sometimes it’s nice to ache over something gorgeous and impossible. Poverty and politics and the empty bottles that his mum tries to hide from him - those are aches of a less pleasant sort. Edward Little’s face, the gentle sadness in his eyes - that’s something Thomas doesn’t mind so much. He presses on it like a bruise. He licks the taste of it off of his lips, sweet as a peach. )

Chapter Text

In the next few days, Little is not such a shade in the house. He joins Crozier for meals (though he eats next to nothing) he takes coffee in the library, he goes riding. Thomas sees him mostly in passing, and the sight makes him feel like someone’s cracked both his kneecaps. He tries not to stare, tries not to tilt dangerously toward the man, but it’s - difficult. Still difficult, after all these years.

Luckily, he’s kept busy with his Lordship, particularly as the evening of dinner with the Fitzjames family approaches. Crozier is in awful spirits, of course (certainly not nerves, no one would ever suggest that) and as the day arrives, the worst finally happens. Thomas should have known his stores of luck were nearing their end. Should have heard the scraping at the bottom of that barrel.

“His Lordship has asked that you bring up hot water so that Mr. Little can shave before their engagement this evening,” the butler tells him. “You may stay and help him dress.”

Thomas nods. He can nod, that’s a thing anyone can do, and he does not curse or blackout. He feels like that’s something to be proud of. 

Little is sitting down at his desk when Thomas enters his bedroom. He almost drops the pitcher of water when he realizes that the man is half dressed: an undershirt and pale trousers and - Christ, Thomas is likely to go blind.

“Oh,” Little looks up at him, eyes wide. “I didn’t -”

“Your uncle sent me, sir,” Thomas manages thickly, trying not to let his eyes wander too obviously. He’s never seen Little’s shoulders before. His shoulders, his - forearms, his bare wrists (stop this.)

The undershirt is not particularly wide-necked, but wide enough that it reveals a few curls of dark hair climbing up Little’s chest. It’s tight enough that Thomas can see the curves of muscle and flesh beneath it. For all that the war has made Little’s face harder, more angular, his body is still invitingly solid. 

“As long as it isn’t any trouble,” Little says.

“Of course not.” Thomas may be a fool, but he can still speak. That’s good, another mark in his favour. He can speak and nod, well done.

He turns away, toward the vanity, and tries to avoid Little’s dark-eyed reflection in the mirror. Crozier prefers to shave himself, so Thomas sets out the razor and brushes and fills the basin. Little watches him work, saying nothing. Thomas can hear the sound of his breathing. 

“Shall I - lay out your clothing, sir?”

“Thank you.” Little’s voice is quiet, and Thomas moves away from the mirror, letting Little take his place. 

It’s then that he takes his first real look around the room. It’s almost bare, as if it hasn’t been touched. The bed is made, sheets pulled tight and flat. It doesn’t seem like anyone has slept there in days. There are no books, no poetry or scattered papers. 

Little takes up no space at all.

Thomas glances behind himself to see Little with a lather of soap on his face, lifting the straight razor to his throat. There’s something about the way he holds it that makes Thomas uneasy - the angle of it, and the perspiration on Little’s forehead. Thomas swallows, audibly, and Little catches his eye in the reflection.

“I -” Little’s hand is shaking, the blade dangerously close to his skin.

“Sir.”

Little puts the razor down.

“I’ll be fine.” His gaze is flat and his shoulders have pulled together. “I will.”

“Let me help you.” Thomas is already crossing the room. 

“I wouldn’t take up more of your time -”

“It’s fine -”

“I’m sure I can manage -”

“For God’s sake, Edward.” Thomas laughs in exasperation, rolling his eyes before he realizes what he’s just said. “I mean - sir, I -”

Little’s stricken expression changes. Shifts just a fraction.

“I asked you to call me that - what, thirteen years ago?” There’s a rueful smile touching the corners of his mouth.

Thomas takes a step closer. “I’m very efficient, given the right motivation.” He feels something prickling against his skin, like the air before a storm, thick with lightning. He takes another step, another, until the man is close enough to touch (Thomas fancies he can smell the tea that Little drank that afternoon, black and bitter on his breath.)

Slowly, Thomas moves between Little and the mirror. Stands with the man’s thighs bracketing his own, like it’s a place Thomas was meant to be.

“Is that so,” Little says. 

Thomas could lean forward right now, snatch a kiss from Little’s mouth like a ring at the carnival. It would be worth it, he thinks, worth all the indignities that would follow.

But instead. 

Instead (because there’s always an instead. You can build a life out of ‘insteads,’ can’t you? Stone by stone, a path away from all the things you want.)

Instead. Thomas picks up the razor. 

“Lie back, sir.”

Little hesitates a moment, studying Thomas. Then he tilts his head back, exposing his throat. He’s lovely, even with half a face obscured by soap, but there’s a furrow between his brows. When Thomas lifts a hand to Little’s neck, he can feel the wild beat of the man’s pulse like it’s trying to kick down a door.

“Never fear, sir, you’re in excellent -”

“You can shave around my mouth,” Little says quickly, “and my - jaw and my neck. But I want to keep the sides long.”

“All right.” Thomas wonders a bit at the urgency in Little’s voice. As if he’s expecting to be argued with. It’s true that his unkempt sideburns only add to his wild look, but Thomas doesn’t - mind. Yes, let’s say that: he doesn’t mind. He’s completely neutral to Little’s face, and doesn’t at all want to lean forward, press his mouth to Little’s jaw and breathe deeply.

When he touches Little’s cheek to hold him still, Thomas finds his skin surprisingly soft, even with the shadow of whiskers. The razor rasps up Little’s throat, slow and easy. Thomas has steady hands, despite the racing of his heart beneath his skin. He scrapes the lather off the blade, into the basin.

“I’ve a - scar.” Little has his eyes closed, and his eyelids are trembling. He gestures vaguely to the left side of his jaw, hidden beneath wiry black hair.  “Shrapnel. Like a starburst.”

“Oh.” Thomas’ hands remain steady, even as he swallows back a brief vision of this man in smoke and darkness, face running red. It could have taken out Little’s eye, his hearing, he could have been one of those names on the front page and Thomas would never have had the chance to -

“Gravestone,” Little says. There’s a catch in his voice, and Thomas realizes that he’s stopped moving. Is standing, stone still, with the razor in his hand. “We were - in a churchyard.”

Thomas turns away to clean the blade, breathing as deeply and as quietly as he can. 

“Seems fitting, doesn’t it?.” Little continues roughly. “What I deserve for - for poisoning a place like that.”

When Thomas turns back to him, the man’s eyes are open and unfocused. It makes something burn at the back of Thomas’ throat, like he’s swallowed a lungful of sea water or whisky. Like his body is trying to rid itself of something poisonous, something that's choking him.

“Well.” Thomas swallows. “We’ll have to leave your whiskers then.” He drags the razor slowly over Little’s throat once again, and then once more, going with the grain of the man’s damp skin. “But I’ve every faith you’d look very roguish.”

Little snorts.

“A proper pirate. We’ll call you Blackbeard.”

“Don’t make me laugh while you’ve a blade at my throat.”

“Didn’t realize you could laugh, my apologies.”

Thomas scrapes the razor into the basin as Little bites down on a smile. 

“I’m going to do your chin now, sir.” He has to touch Little’s mouth for this, pull his bottom lip tight with his thumb. Thomas has dreamt about that bottom lip too many times to count on both hands (hands that are very steady. Hands that do not shake.)

“I - wrote you a letter,” Little murmurs, just as Thomas is cleaning off the blade once again.

He freezes in place.

“About your mother.” Little continues. “When I heard. My uncle told me -”

“He was very kind,” Thomas says quickly, because he’s more comfortable with gratitude. It’s easier than grief, and looks prettier from the outside. “He paid for the best medicine. He took me back when - it was done.”

“It’s the least anyone would do.”

“It really isn’t.” Given the stories from his sister, Thomas knows that not every employer is as generous as his Lordship. 

“Then - I’m glad he was kind. And very sorry to hear of her passing.” Little’s voice is soft and serious. “I should have told you sooner.”

Thomas feels the mad, compulsive urge to reassure him, to touch his shoulder in comfort or pet his hair. Tell him hush. It's all right. It will be all right.

“It’s good of you to say, sir.” 

“It isn’t.” Little’s tone has an edge to it, and Thomas feels something in his spine at the sound. “It isn’t good of me. You don’t have to thank me - thank anyone - for that.”

Thomas doesn’t know what to say. 

He nods instead of speaking and tries to carry on as if nothing has happened. He returns to his work, shaving Little’s upper lip in small, even strokes. When he’s done, he thoughtlessly smooths his thumb over the freshly shaved skin to ensure he hasn’t missed anything.

He feels the shiver, the puff of air from Little’s mouth, and snatches his hand back.

“All finished, I think.”

He wipes the blade clean as Little sits up.  ( He wrote you .)  Thomas passes him a towel for his face, and makes the brutal mistake of meeting the man’s eyes as he does. It feels like falling. It feels like that time as a child Thomas got sick with fever, and the whole world spun under each of his footsteps until his mum carried him to bed.

“I’ll - just -” He gestures vaguely, and moves away so that Little can look in the mirror. The man still has a bit of wildness about him, but it seems conscious now, purposefully Bohemian in a way that anyone with eyes would appreciate (Thomas is entirely objective.)  Little nods seriously at his reflection, and Thomas chooses to interpret that as immense satisfaction. 

He takes Little’s collared shirt from the clothes horse. When Little notices, he stands up immediately, and Thomas must again contend with the shape of his arms (only now there’s the bare pink of his neck to torment him as well.)

“I cannot trouble you further.”

“It’s no trouble,” Thomas says, and it really isn’t. For all that touching Little’s skin is a disaster, leaving the room with him standing there, half-dressed, seems infinitely worse.  

Little does not move as Thomas approaches him. His back is straight and his shoulders are squared, as if he’s preparing to set out into a great cold. 

“I never received your letter,” Thomas says suddenly, unable to keep the words inside his mouth for another moment. Little sighs and then nods sharply.

“Yes, I - didn’t send it.”

“You didn’t -?”

“I worried you’d think it too familiar. That it would be unwelcome.”

As if anything Little could do would be ‘too familiar’. Thomas wishes he could say as much out loud. He realizes that his hands are tight on Edward’s lovely linen shirt, likely creasing it all to hell. He forces himself to relax his grip - to hold the shirt up so that Little can slip his arms through.  

“It would have been welcome, sir,” he says. He does not trust himself to say anything more, nor to look Little directly in the face as he speaks. 

Perhaps it’s for the best that the letter remained unsent. God knows what would have gone on in Thomas’ head when he received it.

He lowers his gaze to the cuffs of Little’s shirt and notices the restless twitch of the man's fingers at his sides. Thomas does up the buttons on his wrists as gently as he can, and when he looks up again, Little is staring directly at him. 

Thomas hears his breath hitch as their eyes meet. 

“Mr. Jopson,” Little wets his lips and Thomas wants to be his tongue, “I -”

There is a knock at the door. 

They both flinch at the sound. Thomas steps hastily backwards, then feels mortified about it (he's done nothing wrong, he was doing nothing wrong, this is his job, this is -)

“Mr. Little.” It’s the voice of the footman, the younger one. “Brought your boots, sir.”

“I’ll - just -” Thomas doesn’t know where to put his hands, doesn’t know where to look. He crosses the room quickly to open the door, and tries to ignore the keen-eyed look from the footman waiting outside. 

“Oh, Tom. His Lordship’s looking for you. I can finish up here, if you like.”

“Yes, um. Thanks.” Thomas turns back briefly to nod at Little, only to regret it immediately. The man’s jaw is tight but his eyes are soft, and there is a sunrise on his cheekbones. Anyone who looked at him would fall in love with him. Thomas can’t be blamed.

“Have a good evening, sir.”

He leaves while he still can. He doesn’t look back.

(The grand piano in the parlour is a flashy thing, a creature that mostly lives in silence. His Lordship doesn’t have much interest in music, but it was his late mother’s and therefore occupies a place of decorative honour. Occasionally it also acts as a less than comfortable place to sit.

Little isn’t playing it, but one hand is resting on the keys. Thomas doesn’t know if he’s the musical sort. If he differs from his uncle in that way, along with all the others. He wants to find out.

Just as he wants to keep standing in the doorway of the parlour, watching him. It’s a bad idea, particularly when Little is candlelit and honey-eyed from wine. Thomas is meant to be collecting the lingering glasses from this evening’s small dinner party, not standing motionless and struck dumb by the profile of the man at the piano.

But he is twenty-four. And he is a shipwreck for Edward Little, all gunpowder and splinters and sand. 

Lost forever at the bottom of the sea, dissolving into ghosts.

Little turns his head.

“Tom,” he says, and his mouth curves in an almost-grin. The grin would not be there if he hadn’t had several glasses of wine over dinner. Little usually keeps his smiles as buttoned-up as his collars, but Thomas knows, he knows they’re there. 

“Has his Lordship retired for the evening?”  Thomas carries his tray into the room, takes an empty port glass from a side table.

“Very much against his will.” Little’s smile falls immediately. He has a wine glass in his other hand, etched with a delicate rose pattern. It seems at odds with his blunt fingers, and the coarse dark hair that creeps from beneath the cuff of his coat. “How was he this winter?”

That’s a question. His Lordship has been - melancholy.  He gets worse in the darker seasons, and then the drinking gets worse in return. But as much as Thomas trusts Little, he is also fiercely protective of Lord Crozier. It’s a balancing act, and one Thomas hopes he does with some semblance of grace. 

“It was a long winter, sir.”

Little takes his meaning. “I imagine it was. My mother tried to lure him to London but he wouldn’t think of it. Not since Miss Cracroft -” He stops quickly and clears his throat, but he needn’t fear any shocking revelations there. Thomas knows his Lordship’s history well enough; there’s no shortage of gossip below stairs. How many rejected proposals have there been to a woman who clearly doesn’t deserve him - two? Three? Thomas has forgotten the details of it, but it still twists in his side.

“He has you, sir. He’s very lucky for that.”

“You’re supposed to call me Edward.” 

“Blame the lateness of the hour. I’ve quite forgotten myself.” Thomas winks, and then hates himself for winking. Though he can’t hate himself for long, not when it makes such a pretty flush bloom on Little’s serious face. Thomas has to look away or he’ll lose his mind. He does a circle of the room, collects another empty glass.

“How did you come to work here?” Little says to his back.

What a question to ask a footman. “It’s not an interesting story, sir.”

“I refuse to believe it.”

Thomas turns over his shoulder to study the man. Edward’s watching him with an expectant tilt to his head. There is something curious in his gaze, but also something solid. Safe. Like Thomas could tell him anything and Edward would hold it carefully for him.

This is how it happened:

Thomas’ mum was a cook. His sister was in service elsewhere, so there was no one to mind him as a child. He more or less grew up in the Avonmore kitchens - not many employers would’ve allowed it, but Crozier was different. He was fond of Tom’s mum: her blunt manners, her Irish roots and her gran’s recipes. He was so fond he even kept her on after Thomas’ dad ran out on them. Thomas wasn’t old enough to remember it, but he heard the story from a housemaid (his mum weeping in the front hall beneath the former housekeeper’s pinched and accusing face. “There’ll be a scandal,” the housekeeper had said, and his Lordship just snorted and rolled his eyes, face already pink from whisky. “Not under my roof, there won’t be. Who gives a damn about the rest of it?”)

As soon as Thomas was able, he was put to work doing odd jobs around the house. He didn’t mind it; he liked the bits of bread and candy he’d be given for his help. He liked that his mum was near, and that he got to watch her chop and stir and bark orders at the other staff, a chaotic dance that somehow resulted in the most beautiful food Thomas could even imagine. If he lived upstairs, he thought then, he wouldn’t be able to eat it. He’d just stare at it, breathe it in, and that would be enough to keep his stomach full.

When he started school, things changed. His mum got this thought in her head that he would make something of himself. He did well at first, and he started thinking - what if she was right? He learned quickly, and he understood people - the things they wanted and the things they needed and how to smooth his path by giving it to them. 

‘A barrister,’ his mum said. ‘A businessman.’ She said ‘university’ (though that was madness, God knows how they’d afford it.) She talked him up around town and in the great house, and he wanted to do right by her. He wanted to make her proud.

And he wanted something else, too: a train ticket away from this life of his. He lay awake at night and dreamt about getting on that train and riding it as far as it would go, and then hiring a carriage until it ran out of road and then running and running and running until his heart gave out and his muscles seized and he died wherever he landed. 

By then he’d be halfway around the world.  He’d be leagues away from this sad little village, and God, the things that he’d have seen -

It would be worth it. No matter where he fell, how lonely or remote. It would be worth it.

Then his mum took ill.

 It happened so fast, he didn’t have time to prepare himself.  One day she was fine, and the next she seemed four stone lighter with skin like amber glass. She didn’t have the strength to work in the kitchens anymore; she didn’t have the strength to do much of anything. His sister was sending her wages home but it wasn’t nearly enough, and they’d have lost the cottage if Lord Crozier hadn’t hired Thomas on, officially this time, as a footman.  

It was an act of charity. His Lordship didn’t even need the help, most like. 

Thomas left school at sixteen. It was meant to be temporary, just until his mum recovered. She moved back into their old cottage, did sewing work when she felt well enough. Thomas visited every chance he could.

This was when the drinking started, properly. He knew the signs from working with his Lordship and he wasn’t about to judge her. It worried him, of course. He worried it’d get worse (and it did.) He worried it spoke to a deeper sort of loneliness, the kind of injury that an empty bottle would never sooth (and it never could.) He worried that she was all alone in that cottage, and there’d be a day she’d fall, or hurt herself; a day she’d need him, and he wouldn’t be there in time. 

(And he wasn’t.)

In the lamplight, Little is watching him. His face is unbearably kind. It’s difficult to look at.

“My mum was a cook at Avonmore for years. Your uncle hired me after she took ill.” It’s all that Thomas says, and he tries to keep the tightness from his throat. It isn’t painful. He’s happy here. He has a roof over his head and food in his stomach and this beautiful man to look at for four months every year. How could anyone be unhappy?

“Is this what you wanted to do?”

Thomas laughs in his face. 

Little looks taken aback. His thick eyebrows raise in astonishment and Thomas instantly feels mortified, tries to school his face into a properly dignified expression.

“I’m very grateful, sir. We’re so lucky -”

“Stop.” Little shakes his head. “Don’t do that.”

Thomas’ hand curls and uncurls at his hip. He sighs. Puts the drinks tray down. He leans on the arm of the chaise lounge, legs crossed at the ankle. 

“Do you ask all the staff these sorts of questions? Thought we were beyond notice.”

Little snorts. “ You could never -”  He shuts his mouth with a snap that Thomas feels beneath his buttoned-up collar. It’s too tight, suddenly. 

“I - don’t know what I wanted to do. Didn’t have much of a chance to decide.” He pushes that contemptible lock of hair off his forehead.  “I’m not complaining.”

“I know.”

“I wanted to travel, mostly. See what’s out there. Did you know that if you go far enough south they have different constellations? Can you imagine that?” Thomas had read a book about astronomy once, when he was first allowed to pilfer Crozier’s library. He thought of nothing else for months, dreamt of vast spaces and dead light until it made him dizzy. “Looking up and seeing a new sky?”

“Circumpolar constellations,” Little says, and his eyes on Thomas are warm in the lamplight. 

“Have you seen them?”

Little shakes his head. “I’m not that well travelled.”

“But you have travelled?”

“A bit.”

Thomas scoffs. “A bit.”

He watches Little’s fingers on his wine glass. The drum of them, and the ragged edges of his fingernails against the last remaining mouthful of Burgundy. For all that the man is polished to a shine, there are places where honesty bleeds through.

Thomas likes those places most of all.

“Not as much as others,” Little says.

“Have you been to America?”

“Once.”

“New York?”

Little glances down as he answers. “Briefly.”

“You monster.” Thomas folds his arms in mock outrage, and it makes Little laugh. “Did you see the East River Bridge? I read about it. Supposed to be the longest suspension bridge in the world. Can’t imagine crossing it, I’d be sick.”

“It isn’t as terrifying as all that.”

“Tell me what it’s like.”

It’s impulsively said, a demand that he has no right making. And yet Little only laughs, a little embarrassed, a little flattered. Thomas could breathe that laugh instead of air, he thinks. 

Little tells him what it’s like.  In his quiet, halting way, he tells Thomas of the buildings and the carriages and the people and the smells. He talks about the journey more fondly than anything, and Thomas has a brief vision of Little on the deck of a ship. Grey-green water stretching out so far you can’t see where it ends. Little would be laughing, and his lips would taste like salt.

“I’d love to see it,” Thomas says, dangerously in earnest. “Fold me up in your suitcase, will you? Next time you go.”

Little says nothing, just huffs a quiet laugh, and Thomas forgets for a moment to be guarded in his longing; he looks and looks , as if Little is a well clean enough to drink from. 

Little looks back. 

The clock chimes then, and Thomas straightens unconsciously. After all these years, he still panics when he hears it. It’s a reminder that this - easy conversation over candlelight - is not the world that he belongs to. There’s always something else that needs to be done. 

There’s always somewhere else that he should be instead of where he is.

“I should get back to it,” Thomas says, and the clock ticks its own hateful approval.  “They’ll be missing me.”

“I’m sorry for taking up your time.”

“You never - I mean. Thank you. For telling me about it.”

“You’re not meant to thank me for that.” Little shakes his head. “I should thank you. For - for listening to me go on.”

“Oh yes. I’m a hero and a saint, aren’t I? Putting up with you and your fascinating stories.” Thomas picks up his tray.  “Don’t even get offered a drink for my trouble.”

“Forgive my terrible manners.” Little huffs a quiet laugh. “Can I offer you a drink?”

Thomas feels warm at the idea that he and this man could sit here, toasting each other, talking of travel and books and philosophy like friends. What would that be like, that kind of freedom? It makes him ache - it’s a pretty sort of ache, mind - but the smile falls from his mouth. He realizes that Little is still studying him, and there’s a look in his eyes that does something stupid to Thomas’ stupid heart. So he does something stupid in return. 

He crosses the room like he’s longed to do all evening, until they’re almost close enough to touch. He senses Little’s surprise, sees the man go still and his eyes go wide. What does he think Thomas is going to do, he wonders? Hit him? Kiss him? God, Thomas would - if he thought - if he thought there was any chance -

But instead (instead.) He takes the wineglass from Little’s hand and raises it to his lips. Without breaking eye contact, he drains the last sip of it. Head tilted back, burn in his throat, lamplight warm as honey and spilling all over him. 

He puts the empty glass down on his tray. Little is staring at him, face flushed and lips parted. Their mouths would taste the same right now, the silk of plum and black currant.

“Better not,” Thomas says. “Sir.”)

Spring continues grey and colder than any Thomas can remember.  Green things push from the earth only to freeze and die, and their gardener ceaselessly grumbles about it. Thomas feels the chill in his bones at night. He makes sure his Lordship’s fire is crackling at even earlier hours, so the heat will spread through the rooms by the time he’s ready to rise.

He instructs the housemaid to do the same for Mr. Little.

It feels appropriate that the spring and summer following a war would be paper cut-outs of themselves. After waiting so long for armistice, for the music and dancing and reunion kiss that everyone had planned, the reality is a much more barren thing. 

Some things can’t be recovered from. Even the earth knows it. Even the crocuses.

Thomas is walking toward the stables to deliver a message from his Lordship when he sees the two men on horseback in the distance. They are dark silhouettes against a pale sky, almost obscured by mist. Thomas places Little immediately (he knows the shape of the man’s shoulders too well) but the other figure is a mystery.  As they ride closer, Thomas recognizes the long-limbed shape of Captain Fitzjames, their neighbour.

He is speaking to Little as their horses slow to a walk, leaning toward him with a serious - almost solemn look. Little nods. And then, his mouth curves in a smile.

It makes Thomas taste something sour at the back of his throat, and he rolls his eyes at himself.

Captain Fitzjames is a gentleman. He’s unfairly handsome, despite the hollow look in his eyes of late. His hair is long, and falls in gentle waves almost to his shoulders. He’s also a hero, spent four months in Craiglockhart before the war was over, and when he finally came home he was weighted down by medals. Uncommon bravery, folks said. (“Damned foolish risk-taking,” Crozier grumbled.) Regardless, Fitzjames inspired no small amount of interest and fascination wherever he went.

He’s the right sort of person for Little to smile at.

“Mr. Jopson,” the man calls out as they approach. It is no surprise that he knows Thomas’ name; he seems to have a gift for names, and for knowing people, regardless of their station. 

Thomas tries not to look like he’s just standing there, staring like a fool at the two of them. Which is in fact what he’s doing - but he puts on an officious air about it.

Captain Fitzjames nods at Thomas as his horse comes to a stop.  “How fares Lord Crozier this morning?”

He only found reason to complain about you - what, three times? Thomas keeps that thought between his teeth. “Very well, sir.”

“Do let him know how much we enjoyed his company at dinner last week. My staff is a riot of anticipation over when a corresponding invitation will be extended.” Fitzjames smirks like he’s telling a hilarious joke, but there’s something earnest underneath it. Thomas has seen it in the past, in the few interactions he’s witnessed between the Captain and his Lordship. Fitzjames is a man that wants to be noticed. 

“I’ll be sure to tell him.”

Fitzjames claps Little on the shoulder, and leans in to say something under his breath, something Thomas can’t make out. Then the Captain digs his heels into his horse and turns to ride away.

“Be well, Edward,” Fitzjames calls over his shoulder. His horse quickens to a trot, and Little looks briefly after him before turning his eyes to Thomas.

“Mr. Jopson,” he says. His face is as serious as ever, but his cheeks are flushed from the fresh and biting air. It’s an echo of the man Thomas knew years ago. A charcoal sketch, smeared by the heel of a clumsy hand.

“Mr. Little,” he says. Edward, Edward, Edward .

“Did you ever learn?” Little asks.

Thomas doesn’t know what he means until Little leans forward, patting the neck of his mare (Parmenides, Thomas thinks.)

“ Oh . No, sir. Regrettably, I - never had the chance.”

“You should. If it’s something you’re interested in. I’m sure my uncle would have no problem lending you anything you needed.”

Thomas can’t imagine asking, but he nods anyway. “He’s a very generous man.”

“I could -” Little glances nervously off toward the manor. “Teach you.”

It takes Thomas a moment to make his mouth work again. “To - ride?”

“Of course.” Little looks panicked, as if he isn’t the person who just made the offer. “If you wanted. If you want.”

Thomas feels heat at the back of his neck, a creeping sort of electricity. “Well. It’s a very kind offer, sir.” He should say ‘yes.’ He should say ‘thank you.’ But instead. “To be honest - I don’t think horses like me much.”

As if the words reveal her true, beastly nature, Parmenides snorts in frustration and takes a few steps backwards. Little hushes her, tugs on the reins slightly.

“You see! I’ve already frightened her. She can tell I’m a bad sort.”

“You are not,” Little says quietly. “But you are nervous.”

“I’m not,” Thomas insists, when what he wants to say is ‘who wouldn’t be?’ Parmenides’ teeth would take his whole hand off if he got too close to her.

“Come say hello. She’s not so bad.”

“I’d really rather -” Thomas is about to protest that he has matters to attend to, jobs to do - but the truth is different. He is scared. And he doesn’t want to be. And he wants Edward to teach him to ride, he wants to be on a horse beside him, looking every bit as dashing as Captain Fitzjames. He wants, he wants, he wants (born hungry, his mum used to say. It must have been true, because he’s been starving since.)

“What do I do?”

“Come toward us slowly, from an angle. Like that.”

Thomas takes a step across the damp grass, and then another. He’s going to lose his fingers and be useless as a valet; he’s going to be thrown out on his ear, and he’ll blame Little entirely.

“You can talk to her, if you want. Softly.” Little’s voice is even, as if Thomas is the one that needs to be gentled, needs the tentative touch. Christ, he supposes it’s true.

“Um.” He takes another step, freezing when the horse breathes out sharply. 

“Out of things to say? You ?”

“Shut up.” Thomas can’t keep the fondness from his voice, or his face, or undoubtedly, his eyes. “You’re a very good horse, and a very pretty horse. Shame about your rider though.”

Little laughs, low and rough, more of a cough than anything. But Thomas hears it for what it is, and his whole body is a sunrise.

He takes one more step, putting him nearly within biting and kicking distance. Parmenides allows it, considering him side-eyed. 

“Hold your hand out, slow,” Little says, “Let her smell you.”

Thomas takes a deep breath. “She’s going to bite me.”

“She won’t.”

Step by step toward ruin. Perhaps that was how Thomas’ life was always going to go. 

He holds out his hand. 

The beast leans forward with her great head, nostrils flaring. He feels the warmth of her breath on his palm. He doesn’t look at her, not directly. He’s been around enough dogs growing up to know that eye contact isn’t always appreciated. Instead, he keeps his eyes on Little. And - Edward keeps his eyes on Thomas.

And it’s painful almost, the intimacy of it. The grey sky, and the puff of Parmenides’ breath.  Edward’s hopeless eyes and Thomas’ hummingbird heart (too fast.) 

Then soft, velvet skin touches his hand. It’s all Thomas can do not to jerk away as Parmenides bumps him with her nose. She doesn’t even attempt to bite his fingers off at the knuckle, bless her. It makes Thomas laugh, and Little smiles at him. It isn’t the way he smiled at Fitzjames. There’s something sweeter in it, like honey dissolving in tea.

“She likes you,” Little says. 

“How can you tell?”

The horse bumps against Thomas’ hand again, and Thomas risks giving her a gentle pat. She huffs at him, and it’s cold enough that her breath ghosts silvery through the air.

“That’s how they say it,” Little tells him. “That’s the only way they can.”

It’s that same night, on his way to bed, that Thomas hears someone shouting.

He lost track of time downstairs, almost falling asleep before the housekeeper pulled his chair out from under him, insisting he find his room. It’s later than it should be, and he’s climbing up the servants’ staircase by feel alone, not even a lamp to guide him, when he hears the sound.

A cry of pain. Of terror.

Thomas moves all on instinct, no hesitation at all. He enters the second floor hallway and hurries toward the sound without a thought for his own safety - before he realizes how terribly stupid that is. He should have grabbed something, a lamp, a candlestick.  If someone has broken in, he should be prepared to fight them off, not just throw himself into harm’s way for the sake of his Lordship’s silverware.

Damn it.

Thomas pauses, grabs a - large vase from a corner table, and feels slightly mollified. It’s heavy enough, it might crack a skull. Possibly. With the right motivation.

There’s another shout - and it’s coming from the Blue Room.

Little’s room.

Thomas freezes. He’s not about to barge in on the man in the middle of the night, that’s -

Then something crashes inside, and there’s another cry, and Thomas doesn’t even take the time to knock.  He’s got the keys in hand, and has unlocked the door in a moment. He steps headlong into the darkness, searching for any sign of threat (the vase seems a poor decision at this moment.)

“Mr. Little -” he says, eyes adjusting until he can make out the window, with its curtains drawn, and the desk and the mirror and the bed -

Which is where the threat lies. 

The man there is fighting against his blankets like they’re the ocean he’s drowning in. His eyes are wide open but blank and unfocused, and his face is white with terror.

On the floor beside the bed there is a broken lamp. Thomas can see the shards glinting in the spare slivers of moonlight that the curtains can’t keep out.

Thomas puts the vase down.

“Mr. Little,” he says, a bit louder. “Sir, you’re dreaming.”

The man does not react to his voice, so Thomas approaches the bed. The moment he’s within arm’s reach, Little sits up suddenly. Thomas would’ve flinched away in surprise if not for Little grabbing onto his wrist and jerking him sharply forward.

“Get fucking down, Sawdon, get down, Christ -”

The grip on his wrist is strong enough to leave bruises, and there are flicks of spittle on his face.

“Mr. -” Thomas inhales slowly. “Edward.”

He turns his hand gently in Little’s grip so that the pad of his thumb can stroke the man’s wrist - an easy, steady motion. 

“Edward.” 

Little’s eyelashes flicker. 

“It’s okay,” Thomas says, his thumb continuing to move in slow circles even as his pulse pounds in his wrist. He sits carefully down on the edge of Little’s bed.

“Tom?” Little asks, in a small, heartbroken voice. He does not let go of his wrist.

“You were dreaming.” 

 “I wasn’t.” Little presses Thomas’ hand against his chest, blinking wildly at the darkness. His skin is feverishly warm beneath his nightshirt, and Thomas can feel the frantic, dove-like beating of his heart.

“You were,” Thomas says, voice steady. “But it’s done. It’s over.”

With the hand not clutching Thomas’ wrist, Little reaches out, digs his fingers into Thomas’ shoulder. He’s shaking, whether from the nightmare or the sweat chilling his skin or both. In the moonlight, Thomas can see how long and wet the hair across his forehead is and - damn him, he can’t stop himself from lifting his free hand to brush it back from Little’s face. Little closes his eyes at the touch, so Thomas does it again. Again. 

“I was there,” Little murmurs. “I was -”

“You’re here . You’re safe.”

“On the floor, by the window. That shadow there, do you see it. It’s not -”

“Not what?”

“Not -” Little’s voice breaks, and Thomas doesn’t need to be told. He carefully withdraws from Little’s grasp and walks around the foot of the bed until he can pull open the curtain. The moonlight spills in, and the shadows beneath the windowpane scatter.

“It’s nothing, sir. Just the dark.”

“I thought - I could see them there. I could see them .” Little’s voice becomes louder, almost hoarse with panic, and Thomas knows he hasn’t been where Little’s been, or done the things he’s had to do.  He knows that there are bodies that can’t be buried beneath comforting words and good country air. 

But he also knows what it is to wake up in the darkness and be frightened. So he sits back down on the edge of Edward’s bed. And he keeps talking. 

“Listen. The grandfather clock in the hallway. Can you hear the ticking of it?” He pauses so Little can listen for that loud bloody thing, the heartbeat of the whole house. 

“I - can.”

“Outside your window, the crickets. Can you hear them too?” Tom waits, strains his ears until he can make out their quiet chirping. It seems suddenly amazing that the long winter killed everything else, but the crickets are still singing.

“Yes. I think so.” Little’s eyes are closed, head tilted faintly as if listening to music.

What else, what else. “Do you smell that bite of lemon? The maids use it to shine up the floorboards. They must have done your room this morning.”

Little takes a deep breath, and exhales unsteadily. “I do.”

“You’re at your uncle’s house. You’re here and you’re safe -”

“With you,” Little says. 

Then he opens his eyes and meets Thomas’ wild, moonstruck stare. Thomas doesn’t have time to hide his expression, to stop looking at the man like he’s the first thing Thomas has ever seen.

“With me,” he says.  

“Oh - Christ.” Little scrubs his hands over his face. Reality seems to wash over him, and fear is replaced by shame. “I must have been - how did you get in here?”

“I heard you calling out, sir. Thought maybe there was trouble.”

“I’m - the worst kind of sorry. You shouldn’t have had to -”

“Don’t apologize.” Thomas can’t bear it. “Can I get you something? Water? Something warm? I could -”

“No.” Little says quickly, and then his hand is on Thomas’ knee, fingers tight with panic. “Please.  Don’t leave yet.”

A better man would offer to fetch Little’s uncle. A better man would call for the doctor, someone who could quiet Little’s mind with none of the thoughts that Thomas has running through his head.

But Little’s hand is warm on his knee. And even in the dark, Thomas can see the whiteness of his knuckles.

“Please stay.”

“All right, sir.” Another step down the wrong path. Thomas places his hand over Little’s. It’s meant to be kindly, in comfort, but Little turns his hand up, and somehow their fingers lace together (another step deeper into the lightless woods.) Somehow Little’s trembling palm is cradled in Thomas’ own. “I’ll stay.”

His thumb strokes once over Little’s hand. Little glances down at their fingers together.  He doesn’t say anything.

“Do you want to talk about it? Your dream?”

“No,” 

“Centaurus,” Thomas says, and Little glances at him. 

“What -”

“That’s a circumpolar constellation, like you said. Do you remember? It’s one of the ones we can’t see up here.”

He watches Little’s eyelashes dip slowly. 

“Supposed to be a centaur. Do you want to hear about the others?”

“You’ll stay?”

“As long as you like,” Thomas says, and he means it. More than he should.

He ends up sitting in a chair by the man’s bed, talking nonsense at him until Little’s breathing grows even and steady. Thomas listens to it for a bit. Finds himself breathing in tandem against his will. He’ll leave soon. It’s too intimate to watch Little sleeping, to study the soft curve of his open mouth against his pillow, or the way the moonlight licks the waves of his dark hair. Thomas will leave soon.

He’ll only close his eyes for a moment. 

The morning light wakes him, luckily enough.  His schedule is in his bones at this point, and he lurches awake with a stiff neck and a bloodless panic at not being where he expects to find himself.

The events of last night come back to him as soon as he sees the other man. As he creeps silently from the room, he spares one moment to glance back at him.

He’s unfairly lovely, Edward Little. It makes something tighten in Thomas’ stomach to see the man in such an unguarded moment. Still asleep, still breathing easy. One hand outstretched and limp across the coverlet, as if looking for something to hold. 

(“Where are you off to this morning?”

There’s the sound of hooves on the gravel road behind him, and Thomas turns his head at Little’s voice, already fussing with the hair in his face. It is August and unreasonably gorgeous; he can feel the sweat beading on the back of his neck. He should have brought a hat on his walk. He’ll be pink as roses by the end of it.

“Chucked it all in. Running away,”  he says, shielding his eyes from the sun as he looks at Edward. It is a mistake; the man is entirely too attractive in riding boots. Thomas thinks briefly of getting on his knees between those boots, and tries to keep his mouth from opening. 

He is twenty-five.

“You’re making rather slow on your escape.”

“Well, it is a lovely day.”

Little smiles. Openly, teeth glinting in the light. They’re white against the shadow of stubble on his face, and Thomas could just - stare. If he had the time and freedom and the complete lack of decency (the last bit is getting close, he’ll admit it.)

“It’s my afternoon off. Thought I’d walk into town.”

“That’s a fair trip on foot.”

“Ah, you city boys,” Thomas says, shaking his head. “It’s hardly more than an hour. I suppose you’d hire a cab for that.”

A rough laugh escapes Little’s mouth, and Thomas grins at the lovely sound. 

“You’re - not wrong,” he says.

“I knew it. Must be difficult for you, here in the country. Doing without.”

There is someone coming down the road towards them, a quickly moving figure kicking up dust in its progress. It’s a woman, Tom thinks, from the shape of her skirts flying.

“Do you know them?” Little asks, squinting into the distance.

“Is that our scullery girl? I can’t -”

As she gets closer, the girl begins to wave her arms. Her blurry features pull into focus (something cold rises in Thomas’ throat.)

“No, that’s - that’s my neighbours’ daughter. That’s -” Thomas takes off, running toward her. Little follows him on horseback, slow so as not to overtake him. In moments, they’ve reached the young girl, her face red and sweaty with exertion.

“Tamsin, what -”

“Your mum, Tom,” the girl says, panting, “She’s taken a turn. Papa’s gone to fetch the doctor, said I was to come for you straight away.”

The words don’t make any sense. Thomas stares at the girl, trying to smash the sentences together like mismatched puzzle pieces. 

“But she’s - fine.” The last time he saw her, she was so much better. There must be a mistake, he thinks. Tamsin’s got the wrong man. The wrong house. “I should - I should -”

“Take my horse,” Edward says, already swinging down from the beast.

“No, I can’t - I’ll have the buggy readied -” Someone else is speaking, it can’t possibly be Thomas. There are reins in his hand and he has no idea how they got there.

“That will take too much time. Here, leave now. I’ll see to the girl.”

“You must hurry, Tom, that’s what Papa says -”

“I can’t ride,” Thomas says desperately, shivering. Why is he shivering in this heat? “I’ve never - I can’t.”

Little only hesitates a moment. Then he is pulling himself back into the saddle.

“Girl,” he says, “can you make your way to Avonmore?”

“I can, sir.”

“Tell them I sent you - they’re to feed you and give you something to drink and see you home.”

“Thank you, sir. I will, sir.”

Then Little is leaning down, offering Thomas a hand.

“Mr. Little -”

“Put your right foot in the stirrup. Quickly now. I’ll help you.”

Thomas barely remembers anything about the journey.  It’s more sense memory than anything else, his body processing what his brain could not.

He remembers the warm and solid presence of Little against his chest.  He remembers movement so rapid and jolting that he was briefly afraid of being thrown from the horse (it wasn’t like sailing over water or anything else he might have imagined. Riding was a jarring business, and Tom’s bones rattled with it.) 

He remembers the texture of Little’s riding jacket.  Impossibly soft beneath his hands. He remembers - larks, at one point. A scattering of them, black against a blue sky.

And then he is home. The small cottage that he’d been born in. 

Little helps him down, but stays astride the horse. 

“I’ll ride back to see that the girl is cared for. And I’ll fetch my uncle’s physician. I can direct him.”

“I - I cannot thank you enough.”

“It is nothing, ” Little says in rush, a hint of fervour in his low voice. 

Then something happens. Something Thomas will think about in the months to come, wondering if he’d just imagined it. 

Little reaches out his hand. 

He’s wearing kid leather riding gloves, black as his hair.  Thomas takes his hand, and holds it, a tight grasp of panic and gratitude that lasts longer than he intends. It lasts and lasts, and Thomas can’t let go. If he lets go he’ll have to go into that house, he’ll have to see, he’ll have to know -  

He stares up at Little on his horse, feels the man’s pulse beating in Thomas’ own palm, and knows suddenly, and simply, and without hope - that this is not something he will recover from.

It feels like a promise, their hands caught together in that moment.

It feels like a plea.

Then Little pulls his hand back, a tremor in it as if he were in pain. He nods once, and rides off.

It is the last time they see each other for five years.)

Chapter Text

“Have you seen him?” Lord Crozier asks.

He's peering out the wide windows of the orangery. There is a wall of rain obscuring the hedges and the rolling hills beyond them. The world outside seems entirely grey, but inside it Avonmore it is warm, and smells like Earl Grey and citrus.

Thomas is arranging tea service on the cream linen tablecloth. “Sir?”

“My nephew. He went out riding this morning and hasn’t come back. It was already raining then, the fool.” 

That would have been hours ago, Thomas thinks. It’s cold outside, and once the rain soaks through Little’s coat, it will be colder still. 

“I haven’t, sir.” Thomas tries not to sound too worried. Tries not to wonder whether Edward wore his gloves. “Perhaps he called upon Captain Fitzjames?”

“Why in God’s name would he do that?” 

“I’ve - seen them together, sir. Thought maybe they were friends.”

“Friends?” The word sounds ugly when Crozier says it, and a blotch of colour rises on his cheeks. “Christ. Let’s hope not.”

His Lordship gazes out the window a moment longer, as if expecting Little to emerge dramatically from the fog. But there is nothing to see except the rain. No sound of hoofbeats approaching, only a constant drumming on the glass windows and glass ceiling.

“If he doesn’t return soon, I may need to go out looking for him. Don’t know what he was thinking.” Scorn tries to blot out the shine of Crozier’s concern, but it’s still obvious in every word.

The day progresses, and Thomas tries to keep from staring too long out of windows. Storm clouds are approaching, thundering in like black horses, promising more rain to come. He wants to volunteer to go out into it, cold and damp be damned. Let me be the one to find him. Let me be the one to bring him home. He thinks that he’d be drawn to Little somehow, magnetism or - or gravity or something like that. A hook on a line in a lake, tugging them toward each other. 

When the sky begins to darken, Crozier decides to ride out to the Fitzjames’ and see if Little is weathering the storm there. Thomas helps him on with his coat and gloves, just as the first clap of thunder rattles the house.

“Be careful, sir.”

“I’ve ridden in worse than this,” Crozier says with a shake of his head. “If Edward returns before I do, see to him, will you?”

“Of course.” Thomas’ heartbeat is steady. His hands are steady. He does not flinch at the thought of ‘seeing to’ anyone.

“With any luck, he’s sheltering with Ja- the Captain.” Crozier clears his throat. “Well. Not lucky for Edward. Of course. But for my own peace of mind.”

“Safe travels, your Lordship.”

Crozier touches the brim of his hat before setting out into the rain, leaving Thomas in the doorway (is his whole life meant to be lurking in doorways, watching the people he loves walk away from him? It seems a bad lot, even with room and board and a steady income. For once, Thomas wants to be the one traveling beside them. Leading the way, even. Going somewhere new.)

An hour passes, marked by the solemn notes of the hall clock. The butler is just gathering the groundskeeper and stablehands for a potential search party, when one of the maids interrupts them.

“He’s back.”

Thomas freezes, spoonful of broth halfway to his mouth.

“His Lordship?” the butler asks.

“No, sir. Mr. Little.” 

Thomas is getting to his feet before the butler even gives the order.

“Mr. Jopson, you should take yourself upstairs. A hot bath may be necessary. If he wishes to have supper in his rooms later, we will make up a tray.”

“Very good, sir.” And that’s as ugly a lie as Thomas has ever told.

He bites into into his cheek as he climbs the stairs, heading down the hallway toward the dressing room. What’s the matter, Thomas? Oh, just draw him a bath, easy as that. Just help him undress and let your eyes wander all over the skin you can't touch. Just warm the man up until he's flushed and opal-eyed, just act like it means nothing to you.

Christ, he’s ruined. A body isn’t meant to be in love this long, he decides, not without being loved back. All that affection takes its toll on the heart, and Thomas’ heart is shite enough already.

Little is waiting in the dressing room that adjoins one of Avonmore’s full baths. When Thomas enters, the man is sitting in an armchair and staring at nothing. The blinds are open but the sky is overcast with the storm, and Little hasn’t even turned on a lamp (Thomas does. When the room floods with light, Little looks at him at last.)

He’s soaked through, still in his sodden greatcoat, still buttoned up to the chin in a linen shirt gone sheer from rain. His hair is slick to his forehead and his eyes are feverishly bright on Thomas’ face. The fire at least has been lit, thank God for that. Thomas would be afraid for the man’s health otherwise. He still is, a bit. 

“Oh,” Little says, in his low, lovely voice. "I am sorry."

That is not what Thomas was expecting. It occurs to him that Little apologizes too much, for things he has no right to.

“Whatever for, sir?”

“To cause any worry. Trouble. It’s very good of you to -”

“Sir-”

“Edward.” A droplet of rainwater clings to Little's jaw, runs down his throat. Thomas follows it with his eyes until it disappears beneath the man's collar. “Would you? You did once.”

“Edward.” Thomas says it the way he’s said it in his mind, when he’s alone and when he’s dreaming. When he's brave with himself and his broken heart. “Edward, I’m going to draw you a bath.”

He hangs a towel in front of the fire to warm before he escapes into the large tiled bathroom. He twists the taps and lets the tub start to fill as hot as it can, breathing deeply while the drum of water will drown out the sound of his panic. There are soaps on the ledge and Thomas adds them haphazardly, grateful to have a task in front of him. He's so much better when he's got a job to do, and soon the air is thick with the scent of lavender and bergamot. Clean porcelain and polished brass and copper.

When he returns to the dressing room, Edward gets to his feet, as if he's rising from the supper table to mark the entrance of a fine lady. He’s shivering though, and the sight makes goosebumps climb up Thomas’ neck. Perhaps the chill is catching.

“I got lost,” Edward says, and Thomas nods.

“Of course. It would be easy for anyone in this fog -”

“Not like that.” Edward’s mouth barely moves as he speaks. His lips have gone pale as the pages in a book.  Thomas grits his teeth against the urge to pull him close and rub the colour back into his skin - dry his hair, kiss him everywhere the damp has touched him until his body only remembers summer. 

But instead.

He approaches the man slowly, professionally even, and slides the soaking coat from Edward’s shoulders. He pretends his hands belong to someone else. Pretends he’s watching this scene play out behind glass, at a safe distance, where it can’t hurt him.

“Compasses don’t work when there’s too much metal about. I didn’t know that.” Edward's voice is distant and distracted. His words don't seem like they're meant for Thomas.  “Sometimes you’d get all - turned around. Like you were in a maze. Once I spent two hours - O'Kelly had to find me. Christ knows what he thought."

Thomas hangs Edward’s coat by the fire, then stands there silently. He studies the sheen of water reflecting on his hands. 

“I remember looking at the pin - it just kept spinning.” Edward’s voice cracks open on a laugh.  “So I kept walking. Thought I was imagining things.”

Thomas doesn’t know what to say, but he wants to hear anything Edward feels safe to tell him. He comes closer once again, and leans in to unwind Edward’s scarf, careful not to let his fingertips brush against skin. 

“He died the next day. Not even hours later. I didn't even know, they told me -” Little's eyes suddenly focus, as if realizing that Thomas is in the room with him.  He stiffens and pulls back. “Christ, you don’t have to - do anything.”

“Let me.” Thomas slides the braces from Little’s shoulders (his hands are steady.) “You’re freezing.”

“Am I?” 

The braces hang at Edward’s sides, and Thomas is faced with the buttons of his shirt. He once had a particularly lovely dream about biting each one off as he slowly dropped to his knees, but that sort of thing feels profane right now. There's a weight in his chest, and Thomas is having trouble breathing beneath it.

“Doubt your hands have enough feeling in them right now to get this shirt undone.” Thomas unbuttons it briskly, mind carefully blank as more and more of Edward’s careful armour is stripped away. He hangs the shirt by the fire too, glad for a small respite from looking at Edward's face.

The roar of running water rings in his ears, but he can still hear his clanging heartbeat underneath it.  It seems obvious that there’s something wrong with him, that he should have known he wasn’t fit for the army. How could he have missed it? No one else’s heart is this loud, surely. No one else’s heart chips away at their ribs.

“I wasn’t always like this,” Edward says to his back. Thomas quickly turns to look at him, the man standing there in his damp undershirt and trousers, fabric clinging to him with rain. “I’m - not always like this.”

“I know.” Thomas walks back to him, a hook on a line in a lake, tugged through dark water. “I know you.”

He reaches out and Edward stops his hands.

“I thought of Avonmore.” Edward searches Thomas' face like he's lost, like he's still out wandering in the storm and Thomas is a lantern. “In the dark, when I thought I might - I saw myself back here.”

An anguished sound breaks free from Thomas’ throat at the image (Little alone and terrified, Little lying in the dirt and the darkness, Edward -)

“And - and I saw you, Tom.” 

“Sir -” Thomas tries to keep his head clear in the warmth and the steam but Edward's thumb is tracing his wrist, sliding beneath the cuff of his shirt.

“I saw your face and I - God damn me, I wanted -”

“Edward,” Thomas says, and the other man hisses out a breath at the sound of his name. “Please -”

He doesn’t know who moves first. Suddenly he is flush against Edward’s body, suddenly he is pressed back against the floral wallpaper and he is being kissed.

A snarl or a sob rattles out of Edward, vibrating against Thomas’ chest. Edward’s mouth is on his and it is open and wet, biting at his lips; Thomas' hands have somehow found their way into his hair, tilting Edward's head to kiss him more deeply.  He distantly hears Edward cry out at the slick taste of his tongue, and Edward’s hands are on his hips, thumbs pressed into his hipbones, pulling them together. He's hard against Thomas - Thomas can feel the outline of his prick through his trousers, and he's ready to beg, ready to drop to his knees and offer anything, is -

“No,” Edward gasps, stepping backwards. “Oh God - I’m -”

The whole world tilts, slides into the sea.

“Sorry.” Thomas’ lips still work even though they’ve been burned clean off. “Sorry. I’m sorry, I -” He stumbles as he pushes off from the wall. It may have been the only thing holding him upright, and he nearly stumbles again. The world is spinning beneath him and even though he reaches out to steady himself, there's nothing to hold onto.

Edward's looking at him with horror, like Thomas is a monster. He’s put so much distance between them, he's so impossibly far away, and the tub is still running and oh fuck it’s over. Thomas did the thing he swore he wouldn't do, he's ruined it and ruined - everything, he’ll lose his job, he’ll lose Edward and -

Thomas staggers from the room like he’s drunk. He jerks open the door and he flees, trips down the hallway with the taste of Edward’s tongue (rain and rain and salt and lemon) in his mouth. He has to cling to the railing on the staircase or he’ll fall; his knees feel like water and can’t carry his weight. Sorry is the only word in his head, sorry so sorry over and over until it's only noise and shapes, no meaning left.

He’s going to be sacked. He’s going to be removed from the house, and he doesn't bloody care. Little will reveal him for what he is, and his Lordship will send him on his way and it doesn’t even matter. Leaving Avonmore won’t be the worst of it. The worst has already happened.

Thomas finds himself leaning against the doorframe of a room he can’t remember walking into. It’s the library. The library, empty and dark with rain lashing on the windows. A room that was shut to all the staff until Edward opened the door.

God, he might be sick.

He wishes he had something to break.  A glass to shatter.  A heart to squeeze into pulp, useless as any other part of his useless body (better not. It’d be a mess to clean up and he’d be the one doing it.)

There's nothing he can do to fix this, so he does the only thing he knows how.

He goes back downstairs. He does his mending. He lets the walls close in on him and he keeps his hands busy.

He does his job.

(Thomas is twenty-five when his mother dies. 

He watches it happen in increments, like the way she’d slice the apples for her pies - each piece thinner and thinner until the last was nearly translucent. You could see right through her in the end. 

Thomas sits at her bedside until some kind person lifts him up and takes him away and makes him eat and drink and sleep. He can't remember who it was. His Lordship pays for the doctor and pays for the medicine and pays for the funeral besides. Then he hires Thomas back - after three months away - as his valet. 

Thomas comes returns to Avonmore with eyes ringed purple and a year's worth of lines around his mouth. Little does not. Neither does he return the year after. There is too much happening in London - Thomas hears his Lordship speak of it over dinner. He reads the headlines on the papers Crozier studies with his morning coffee.

Thomas wonders about Little much too often - how he's doing, and where he is doing it, and he reads that book of poetry until his vision blurs (when you come back, he thinks, I’ll slip poems under your door. You'll never know who they're from and I'll never tell you, never, as long as I live.  But maybe you’ll guess.)

He is twenty-six when England goes to war, and Edward goes with it. 

Thomas is twenty-seven, twenty-eight, and the world reels like a carriage on black ice, horses screaming. His heart beats too fast and there are rations and there are wounded men and overfull hospitals and headlines, Christ, there are headlines. There are too many dead and too many missing and Crozier drinks too much and falls down the main staircase, weeping for the first time that Thomas has ever seen ("They’ve no idea, none at all, they're children, fucking children and I'm meant to send them -”)

In the village, a girl gives Thomas a white feather and her mother spits on the ground as she walks past. He avoids the village for a bit after that, after hearing reports of what they’re doing to conchies in London and Manchester. 

But he lives. He loses two stone and he lives. He takes on extra work during seeding and harvest, and he burns himself red and raw-skinned and he lives.

He helps his Lordship to bed at night and cleans the sick from his shirt in the morning. He moves the entirety of the wine cellar somewhere it won't be found (into one of the gardening sheds, under the cover of nightfall with help from the remaining footman. It's at his Lordship's request, and Thomas ignores the butler’s righteous and ongoing screed that every bottle is numbered and recorded and accounted for.)

His Lordship is violently ill for a time, but he lives too. And somewhere in France, Edward Little shines like a candle flame, the only light in Thomas’ world. (When you come back, Thomas thinks, I’ll make you laugh. I’ll linger in the parlour looking at your face, I'll steal sips of your wine. I'll say all the things I cannot say in gestures and in glances and it will be enough.)

Every letter that arrives for his Lordship makes the whole of the manor go quiet, waiting for news of who has been lost. Thomas doesn’t ask any questions, forces himself to live on the scraps of information that Crozier lets slip (once, glancing dangerously at an open letter left on his Lordship’s desk. I am well, he read in that familiar, rounded script. I am well, in Edward’s beloved hand, only one year into the war. The three words felt like three burns from the edge of a hot frying pan, and Thomas wanted to press his mouth to the page. Instead he stood there in the empty study, shaking and silent. Thank God. Thank God.) 

Edward comes back from the Front, sick with trench fever.

He spends three weeks at Lady Brassey’s Convalescent Home, and his Lordship writes letters to him there while Edward is too ill for visitors. Thomas holds each envelope in his hand before they're sent off, watching them go like the paper ships he used to make as a child and set adrift in ponds and creeks. Wondering where their travels would take them. 

When Edward is sent back to Belgium, Thomas blacks out.  Mortifying and true; he hears the news and then wakes up on the ground in the kitchen, with a circle of maids peering over him. He blames it on the heat and exhaustion and is sent to his room to rest. That night he tries to write something down for the first time, just so he has somewhere to put all the ache. He's not allowed to write Edward any letters, can't send him an etching as if they were sweethearts, but maybe if he lays it all out on paper it’ll be easier to carry. Even if no one else sees it. He can vomit this feeling into words, and his stomach won’t perpetually twist, and his mouth won’t sting with bile, and he'll be young again. Clean, and hopeful, and unbent by love.

(When you come back, he thinks -

But there's nothing else to say. Come back, is all that he's left with. Come back come back comebackcomebackcomebackcomebackgodfuckcome -)

He stares at his pen and paper instead of sleeping, years of love caught in his throat like dry bread. The pages remain blank. 

Thomas is twenty-nine when the war ends. 

Twenty-nine when Little returns to England. 

Thomas waits for him like a lantern in a window, unsettling the dark.)

The rain continues. 

Toward nightfall, a message comes from Captain Fitzjames that his Lordship has been prevailed upon to stay and wait out the storm (the man that delivers the message comes on horseback - the roads being impassable by car. After soup and a cup of tea, he’s sent back with word that Crozier’s nephew is safe and accounted for.)

Which leaves Thomas alone to attend to Mr. Little that evening.

He’s successfully avoided the man since that afternoon. A footman brought a tray up for his supper, so Thomas knows he didn't drown himself in the bath. Thomas has kept himself busy since, in a distracted and unhappy way, but he hasn’t run off. Hasn’t packed his bag and crept into the storm like a stray cat. That must mean something - that some blue-eyed part of him thinks that he can fix this. That he can convince his - friend that he has nothing to fear from Thomas. 

That Thomas will never touch him again.

He goes over it all in his head when he’s supposed to be helping the butler count crystal, and checking for leaks in the study. First, he’ll apologize. He ought to have done that properly from the start, ought to have stayed and had it out. He’ll apologize and then he’ll leave Avonmore if that’s what Little wishes. He doesn’t think Little is the type to call the authorities, has more faith in him than that. But perhaps if the man were sufficiently scared - or disgusted - 

Thomas’ stomach twists as he climbs the stairs toward Little's room and stands outside his bedroom door, steeling himself for the worst. He tries to bring to mind the look of horror on Little’s face from that afternoon, just so he’s prepared for it, but it keeps shifting (Little on horseback, telling Thomas to come closer slowly. Little in the parlour, candlelit, smiling at him. Little in bed, chilled with sweat, reaching out for Thomas’ hand.)

He pushes his hair out of his eyes. Then he knocks on the door before he loses his nerve, and waits until the man calls out to enter.

Little freezes in place by the window when Thomas comes in, as if he'd been pacing the floor. He opens his mouth but says nothing, so Thomas seizes his chance.

“Sir.” He closes the door behind him but does not come any closer. He tries to ignore the tremor in his voice. “They sent me. I couldn’t refuse or there'd be questions. But I understand if you’d rather I not -”

“Mr. Jopson, you must let me say something."

Oh. Thomas goes quiet, waiting for the axe to take his head clean off.  Little nods to himself, swallows, looks anywhere but Thomas.

"God, I am so sorry.”

Thomas has no reply. He tries to remember what the hell he was going to say, all the speeches he had planned, but they're gone. In no version of the terrible events he imagined was Little the one apologizing to him.

“Let me assure you that the events of this afternoon will not be repeated. I regret it. More than I can say. I did not intend to -” Edward stops suddenly, scrubbing his hands across his face. He looks absolutely wretched.

“Of course, sir. I know.” Of course, Little regrets it. Of course it will not happen again. Thomas did not need to be told this. 

“I would hate to think our friendship was forever tainted by -” Little swallows. “You were simply performing your - your duties and I sullied it with my - base inclinations.” 

"Your -" The rest of that sentence dies in his mouth. Little is still speaking, but Thomas can't put it together, can only stare at the shape his lips make, trying to understand.

“It is wrong. I know that. And you must believe me, I’ve tried not to want you in this way, I swear, but -”

“Tried - not to? Wait, you -" Thomas feels light-headed and he wills his heart to last just a few moments longer.  Just beat, old thing, until Thomas can ask the question. “You - want me?”

At the window, Little drops his head. “Please don’t make me say it.”

Thomas just - stares at him. He couldn’t say another word if he wanted to, shocked into silence (there is something dangerous growing inside of him, in his bones, in the marrow; if he holds his breath, he can hear its leaves rustling.)

“To my shame -” Little stutters, “Yes.”

“To your shame?" Yes, he said yes he said yes.  "Why?”

“Because you have only ever been decent and - kind.  I’ve tried not to think of you - I am trying not to, but -”

(Summer finally crashes over Avonmore. After years of war and winter, all the roses bloom at once.)

“I think of you,” Thomas says, “every single night.”

Little’s head snaps up. 

“I think about you.” Thomas crosses the room weightlessly, feet barely skimming the ground. “And I frig my cock and pretend it’s your hand.”

Edward's breath hitches as Thomas approaches. He reaches out, pressing a shaking hand to Thomas' chest as soon as he’s close enough to touch. Thomas doesn’t know whether that hand is meant to pull him closer or keep him at a safe distance. He doesn’t much care when the result is the same; Edward is touching him.

“I want you.” If Thomas can't say it now, what sort of man is he? If he can't say it now, he deserves every white feather he's ever been given. “I always have. And I am - I am not ashamed.”

A broken, hiccoughing sound escapes from Edward’s throat. It's more like a sob than anything else, but then he’s leaning in to kiss Thomas and nothing else matters. He fists both hands in Thomas’ jacket and his mouth is wet and open. He kisses like he's a drowning man, desperate for air, and Thomas tugs him closer by his hair until their chests are pressed together. Their hips. Edward wants him, Edward is kissing him and the whole shining world is spinning beneath his feet.

Edward shudders, writhes against Thomas where their bodies touch. Thomas pulls back to kiss the edge of Edward's jaw, the lobe of his ear and the soft skin behind it. He scrapes his teeth lightly over Edward's neck, tugs aside the collar to get his mouth low on his throat, on his collarbones. He breaths against his skin, and Edward clings to him, arms wrapped tightly around Thomas' waist.

“Your mouth,” Edward murmurs, a bit wild, a bit wondrous, “Tom, your mouth -” and Thomas tilts his head up to find Edward’s lips again. His body is so warm it makes Thomas dizzy and his hands can't stay still. There's too much to touch: the down of Edward's hair, the sandpaper of his jawline, his broad chest and firm stomach. Thomas slides one hand down the front of Edward’s shirt to his trouser placket, feeling out the shape of him through wool and pressing - just - so -

"Tom -" Edward bites off a cry, pulling back to look at him with eyes blown black.

Thomas wants to laugh. He feels languid and whiskey-drunk with wanting. He wants to tear his shirt off, spread his legs, take and take and take whatever Edward will give him. He would crawl on his knees if he was asked, body empty and crying out for Edward's thumb in his mouth or prick down his throat, or anything, anything at all.

But he can feel Edward’s heartbeat rattling in his chest, almost as fast as Thomas’ own. He can see the fluttering pulse in Edward’s jaw, and he breathes against the wave of desire that fills his lungs. 

Slow. Slow down. 

His hand stills at the waist of Edward’s trousers.  “Will you let me?” 

“You would?” Edward’s voice is rough with disbelief. He clearly hasn't a clue how lovely he is, or how long Thomas has wanted this. Thomas will have to show him.

“I’d do anything," he says.

The man nods, dumbstruck, and thank God for that. Thomas tugs open his buttons, letting his trousers fall open at his hips. He pushes up Edward’s shirt until he can get his hand on the man’s stomach. His skin is warm and soft as silk, and there’s a thick trail of black hair below his navel. Thomas pets it and Edward shivers.

“Sit down on the bed.”

Edward obediently stumbles backwards to sit, thighs falling open and chest heaving.

"Good." Thomas allows himself a brief moment to admire the man before dropping to his knees.

“Christ.” Edward hisses out a breath as Thomas presses kisses up his linen-covered thigh, a kiss to his bare hip, a kiss where his cock pushes hard and hot against his underclothes.  He palms Edward through the fabric, then follows his hand with his mouth. On the coverlet, Edward’s fingers are clenched in a white-knuckled grip. When Thomas glances up, he sees that Edward’s other hand is pressed over his mouth. His hips rock restlessly again, and he flushes as he meets Thomas' gaze.

“I’m so sorry -” He’s too much a gentleman, even now, trembling with restraint. Thomas can’t have that.

“Anything,” he says again. Taking pity on Edward's wrecked expression, Thomas pushes his trousers and pants farther down on his hips, revealing his gorgeous prick at last. The sound Edward makes is like a cry of pain, and Thomas’ own cock aches in sympathy. He can feel it between his legs, oversensitive against the rough wool of his uniform.

"God blind me, sir." Thomas touches Edward's prick gently, traces the tips of his fingers up a heavy vein to circle the tip, basking in the way Edward gasps as he does. He needs a delicate touch, Thomas reckons. A man this fine is something to be savoured. "Aren't you pretty."

His cock is bigger than Thomas' own, thicker, and he draws his mouth over it with a sigh, letting the head briefly catch on his lower lip. 

“Tom, you -”

“Do you want this in my mouth?” Thomas asks, pressing a dry kiss to the head, and following it with a lash of tongue. Edward tastes like the ocean Thomas has never visited, and the sound he makes is obscene. “Do you want me to get it wet and let you spend down my throat? I’d like that, sir.”

At the ‘sir,’ Edward’s hips jerk, a shallow and helpless thrust.  Thomas almost grins; he might have seen that coming.

“Or would you like my hand? Milking it out of you slowly, keeping you right on the edge. I could do that, keep you there for an hour maybe. Could kiss you at the same time.”

“Kiss me now. Would you?” Edward's voice is so tentative and polite that Thomas wouldn't dream of saying no. He rises up on his knees and Edward leans down, slotting their mouths together. 

“Or would you like something else?” Thomas asks, lips damp against Edward's. He hardly dares say it, just the thought makes him wild. "Would you like to be between my legs? Lie me down like I'm your proper sweetheart? God - Edward, would you -"

“I want everything.” Edward’s voice is rough. "I want you."

“All right. Yes. Everything."

He kisses his way back down Edward's chest, undoing buttons as he goes.

"Let me taste you first - is that all right? Is this -”

“I won’t last.”

“Just a taste -” 

“Oh.” Edward’s hands curve against Thomas’ skull as he lowers his mouth to the man’s cock. He feels the stretch at the corners of his lips as he takes as much as he can. He can't take all of Edward, not nearly enough and Jesus, he wants so much more. “You - oh .”

Thomas pulls off slowly, hollows his cheeks as he sucks at the head before relaxing his jaw, trying to take Edward deeper. With his free hand he drags blunt nails up Edward’s thighs, tugs gently at his stones in a way that makes Edward nearly sob. Thomas tastes him - tastes the salt sweetness of him, tongues at the fluid that spills over in slick pulses. I'm doing this to you, he thinks, You're this wet for me, because of me. He forgets about his own pleasure, about his cock in his trousers, desperate to be tugged or sucked or rubbed up against something (Edward's leg would do at this point.) Tom could stay here forever, he’d never get tired of the sounds that Edward makes. They could build a statue to commemorate his legacy, here in this room, on his knees with his mouth stretched wide. A sinner and a penitent both. 

“Please,” Edward says, tugging gently at Thomas' hair. Reluctantly, Thomas draws slowly off the man’s cock. “I want to know -" He smooth his hands over Thomas’ shoulders. Then hesitantly, he moves them to his collar. “May I?”

Thomas immediately goes still. 

He doesn’t know why. He has dressed and undressed many men in his life, helped his Lordship and his Lordship’s guests out of their trousers too many times to count. But he has never had the favour returned.

He doesn’t know if it’s something he’ll care for. Doesn’t know if it’s something he can stand. No one's ever looked at him bare, or not since he was a lad. No one's ever - touched him like this.

But for some reason, against his better judgement, he's nodding. 

Edward looks so grateful, as if Thomas has just given him a gift. His hands are impossibly careful on the buttons of Thomas' shirt, like he's afraid he might break something.  Like Thomas is precious (he doesn't he know that Thomas is shoe-leather at this point, nothing fragile about him. Or maybe he does know that, but his hands clearly don't.) There’s an unbearable intimacy about it - the slow movements, the unintentional brush of skin on skin - and Thomas swallows back an unexpected well of emotion. There's no reason for him to be so affected by it, but when Edward’s hands start at his cuffs, he realizes he’s trembling.  

"All right?" Edward asks, and Thomas nods again, unable to speak.

Edward kisses each of his palms as he slides them free from Thomas’ sleeves. His shirt falls to the floor, and a prickle of goosebumps rises over his chest. 

“Stand up.” There’s a trace of imperiousness creeping into Edward’s tone, and Thomas likes it more than well enough to obey. When he gets to his feet, Edward just looks at him. His eyes move over Thomas’ shoulders, down over his stomach to his belt, his hips, the desperate curve of his cock beneath his trousers. Maybe he's too underfed for Edward's tastes. Maybe his ribs are too sharp. Maybe -

Edward makes a pained sound, and tugs Thomas forward by his belt loops. He does not expect the man's mouth on his naval. Does not expect a slow, hot kiss to his exposed skin. A moan breaks from Thomas like water trapped in stone as Edward's lips drag across Thomas’ stomach, hipbones, chest. 

“I haven’t - since I returned,” Edward presses his forehead to Thomas’s breastbone. His hair is damp with sweat.  “And there are some things I’ve never -”

“That’s all right,” Thomas leans down to kiss him. “I’ll take care of you."

He helps pull Edward’s partially undone shirt off over his head. “Lie back,” he says, “sir.”

Edward does. Sprawled backwards on the rust-green coverlet, eyes tightly closed, he is more a work of art than a person (Thomas would pay to see him in a gallery.) There are whorls of black hair on his stomach and chest, and he’s solid, with a spattering of scars on his ribs. Stubble shadows his jaw and throat, and his nipples are incongruously pink and soft like a woman’s. They're the colour of rose petals, and Thomas wants to take them between his teeth. Later, he promises himself, drunk on the wild notion that he’ll have time.

He kneels and pulls Edward’s trousers off properly, one leg after the other. Edward has a bruise on his left knee like a violet, and Thomas presses his lips to it. He lets his mouth wander a bit: kisses his thigh, and then his hip. Presses his face to the thatch of dark hair at the base of Edward's cock, lush and fragrant. An entirely selfish creature, Thomas gives one last kiss to the head of Edward's gorgeous prick -  briefly, before he gets too carried away. He feels Edward’s moan more than hears it, a vibration that hums in his hands (once, when he was young, a maid let him put his palm on the lid of the gramophone as it played, and Tom will never forget the feeling of music.) Then he straightens up, undoes his belt and slips out of the rest of his clothes. He toes off his shoes and socks, feels the warmth of the firelight against his naked back.

Edward’s eyes are open now. 

Thomas knows where everything is kept in this room. On the vanity, there is oil that Edward uses in his hair and his whiskers; it smells like artemisia. He brings it to the bed.

“Show me,” Edward asks, and Thomas kisses him and kisses him, and does.

It shouldn’t be as easy as it is.

It’s been years since someone properly had him, but he never took much warming up beforehand. He’s the kind of man who likes the ache, and - thighs spread wide across the hips of Edward Little, oil shining on his fingers - Thomas is liquid gold. He stretches himself while Edward stares up at him, mouth open in a gasp that Thomas wants to taste. 

“Christ, you’re beautiful.” Edward’s fingers tremble on Thomas’ hips, featherlight and tentative. He makes a cut-off, choking sound as Thomas takes his cock in his oil-slick hand, strokes it slow and tight for a moment. Then Thomas rises up on his knees and reaches behind himself to guide Edward’s cock where he wants it.

“There we are,” Thomas whispers. "Just there, sir."

It burns but in a blissful way, and Thomas bites down on his lip to give his body something else to think about for a moment. His stomach muscles clench and his thighs tremble in an effort to relax. Inch by blessed inch, Edward is inside him. Thomas can feel the man's heartbeat between his legs, and the tightening of fingers on his waist, holding him in place.

“Don’t - ah, move.” Edward’s voice is impossibly tight, jaw clenched. Sweat prickles at his hairline, like diamonds in the firelight. “Please -”

Thomas doesn’t move. He waits, breathing slowly through the sensation, luxuriating in the pleasure-pain of it. Edward looks ruined, and when Thomas shifts just slightly to run his fingers through Edward’s hair, the man cries out.

“Jesus - Tom, if - if you move, I’ll -” 

The thought of the man spending just like this makes a wave of desire roll through him. “Let me have it then.” He wants that. He wants Edward utterly undone.

“No - not like this. You’ve barely - give me a moment.”

Thomas exhales unsteadily and waits, eyes locked with Edward’s. Eventually, he reaches out for Thomas' hands, takes one in each of his.

“Like this? Can we -?”

“Yes,” Thomas says, and has never meant anything more.

It doesn’t take long. They keep their hands laced together as Thomas works himself slowly on Edward’s cock. He can't keep his eyes off the man’s face as he is fucked: the bitten lips, the dour brows, those long bloody eyelashes that first made Thomas such a wreck. There’s an ache in his chest like a blade, but it’s a dull thing compared to the pleasure that he feels every time he moves, and every time he bottoms out, and every time Edward gasps beneath him.

"I'm nearly - God, I can't -"

“You can,” Thomas murmurs, “You can, you can,” and Edward grits his teeth, shakes his head frantically and holds on. Sweat rolls down Thomas’ spine, drips down his forehead, and the noises Edward makes - bitten back and swallowed down - are something that will be burned into Thomas' memory permanently. Thirty years from now, he’ll wake in the dark and hear the same melody in his ears. Fifty years from now, he’ll touch himself at the thought and lick his fingers clean.

Edward’s thrust become more frantic as the end approaches. His hips lift urgently from the bed, grinding his cock into a spot that makes Thomas see bonfire night behind his eyelids.

“Oh, yes sir."

Edward pushes himself up into a sitting position and wraps an arm around Thomas’s back. The change in angle is good, better than good, and Thomas' prick is trapped between their writhing bodies. The friction of Edward’s hair and skin is all he needs - he goes off far sooner than he thought he would, spurting across Edward’s chest and stomach, fingers clenched on Edward’s biceps and so good so fucking good he nearly goes blind with it -

"Kiss me," he manages, and Edward does. It's less a proper kiss than shared breath, but it's what Thomas needs as he trembles through the aftershocks, boneless with pleasure.

A gentleman until the end, Edward waits for Thomas to nod before he continues. Then he holds him tightly in place, fucking him in earnest. The bed frame jostles against the wall with each thrust of his hips and Thomas is oversensitive and wrung out but still wants more. His cock aches and his hips ache and he thinks he could come again if Edward just didn't - stop - 

“You beauty -” Edward gasps, “You beauty, you -”

He bites down on Thomas’ collarbone as he comes. 

Time gets away from him a bit after this. Their foreheads are pressed together and Thomas feels dizzy, drunk with touch. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to leave this bed, doesn't think his arms and legs will allow it. He breathes against Edward's skin, and Edward is saying something quiet, and Thomas can't quite make out the words.

It happens again, and now Thomas is lying down. One of Edward’s hands is in his hair, and the other is around his waist. Thomas is sticky with sweat and spend and still feels holy, like a saint. He should be surrounded with candles. Old women should be leaving offerings at his feet.

“You. You are utterly -” Edward doesn't finish that thought, blushing and glancing away shyly. Thomas is too fond of him, it’s ridiculous.

“So are you,” he says, and Edward huffs a laugh.

He brushes his thumb across the red mark he left on Thomas’ collarbone, the faint indent of teeth. A frown darkens his face. “I shouldn’t have been so rough. I didn't realize -”

“It’s all right. I like it.” 

“But I hurt you -”

“Hush, love, it’s -”  The word leaves his mouth before he can censor himself. He doesn't even think about it until it's too late.

Edward's face goes expressionless and Thomas - cannot speak, cannot come up with a way to repair this. He should pretend Edward misheard - make him laugh, distract him. The longer he waits the worse it will be, he should just - 

“I loved you too.”

Edward should have just punched Thomas in the stomach, the effect would be the same.

“Back then." Edward swallows. "Did you know?” 

The room is blurry, Edward's face suddenly out of focus. Thomas doesn't know why his eyes are failing him. and he doesn’t know why his heart wants to kill him but it does (he decides then and there not to let it.)

“No.” He barely manages the single syllable. His voice is thick and sounds like a stranger's.

Edward kisses Thomas' collarbone, and then his jaw, and then the corner of his eye. His lips come away wet, but Thomas pretends not to notice.

“Can you stay? For a little while?”

These are stolen moments and they both know it.  Thomas will be needed; he’s probably already been missed. Time is not a luxury that he was born swimming in.

But the war is over. Somehow Edward made his way home.

“For a little while," he says, ignoring all the reasons he should go.  He lies there in the darkness, watching Edward’s eyelashes dip. Listens to his breathing even out, feels the hand in his hair go limp and heavy. He waits. He won’t fall asleep, he tells himself, he’ll just stay here for a few moments more. Just a few.

He waits.

He lives.

“I loved you too,” Thomas says, the words as quiet as he can make them. (Edward breathes like a stone skipping over a calm sea, and Thomas loves him still.)

He wakes slowly, damp with sweat. The rain is still coming down hard outside, and Edward’s mouth is warm on the back of his neck. Thomas smiles in the darkness (thank God, it’s still dark, there’s time) and arches his back. When his hips shift, he feels the hard outline of Edward’s cock, and the man behind him moans.

“Awake, are we?” Thomas asks, grinding back against him.

“Christ,” Edward gasps, his voice beautifully ruined. “Thomas, you - can’t.”

Thomas purrs at the slide of skin behind him, the warmth and rasp of Edward’s chest hair.

“Can you? God, could you again -“

“Yes.”

“Please, can I -“

Thomas is still slick and loose from earlier. The slight tenderness is nothing compared to the want he feels. It is a simple matter to place Edward’s hand against his knee, show the man how to spread him. He feels the tentative nudge of Edward's cockhead, hears Edward cry out softly behind him.

“Oh - you’re wet, you’re still -”

For you, Thomas wants to say. Wants to tell Little that he’ll keep himself just like this, all the time, every moment, so that Little can fuck him when and wherever he pleases. He’ll keep himself slicked and stretched and ready for Little to slide into, to take and wreck at the slightest notice.

Instead he makes a sound of protest as the pressure against him retreats. Edward is pulling away, leaving Thomas bereft, starving -

Large warm hands are turning him onto his back.  Edward climbs on top of him, slots between his thighs like he was always meant to be there.

“I want to see your face,” Edward murmurs. “Is this all right? Like - like this?”

It shouldn’t feel so heavy and precious, but it does. Edward wants to see his face, and Thomas doesn’t want to see anything else for the rest of his bloody life. In the darkness he stares at the man above him, trails gentle hands through his beard and wild hair until Edward moans, a broken-sounding thing.

“Can I -“

“I’ll go mad if you don’t.”

They fit together too well. Edward is inside him again, that pleasure that borders on pain, the stretch Thomas can feel in his stomach and his heart. It is slow and patient, and with every thrust Edward gasps a little, presses a desperate kiss to Thomas’ mouth and jaw and throat. His hands push Thomas’ knees back against his chest, the rock of his hips like an ocean as Thomas is filled and filled again.

“I would have you,” Edward says, teeth clenched together, “like this -”

“Yes -“

“Always.”

Everything in Thomas sings at that word. Neither of them say anything else for a very long time. 

The next time Thomas wakes, Edward has rolled onto his side, facing away from him. He takes a moment to lie there and fall in love with Edward's back and his shoulders and the hair that curls at the nape of his neck. Beautiful.

Thomas, on the other hand, smells like sex. His thighs are sore, and his clothes are - God, who knows? They’ll be in a fine state when he finds them. It’s still dark out, but not dark enough, and he feels shabby in the queasy grey light. 

He needs to go. He should have left a long time ago.

He moves as quietly as he can, a silence drawn from years of practice as a servant, unnoticed and unnoticeable. He holds his breath as he peels himself from the bed where Edward sleeps. The night air is a shock to his skin, and he feels for his trousers and shirt on the floor, pulling them on briskly. 

(Congratulations, Thomas, on being another member of the help willing to spread his legs for the upper crust. He won’t look at you again, will he, now that he’s had you. Hope it was worth it.)

The monologue in his head is not a flattering one, but perhaps that comes from getting what you want.

“You’re going?” Edward mumbles, voice dull with sleep. 

Thomas doesn’t stop dressing, but the cruelty in his head becomes less vicious. “Yes, um. Past time I did.”

“Right. Of course.” Edward shifts beneath the covers, running a hand through his hair and making even more of a mess of it than it was before. It makes something catch in Thomas’ throat, like a snag in a silk. “If there’s any trouble -”

“There won’t be.” Thomas is less worried than he should be, perhaps, but he won’t make Edward fret over it. Not for a moment.

“Would you come with me?"

Thomas is searching the floor for his jacket, and it takes a moment for the the words to reach him, distracted as he is. He straightens immediately, jacket crumpled in his hands. He looks at Edward and just - looks. 

"If I left. Here, I mean. England. If I went somewhere, would you -”

There's a soft thump as the jacket slides out of Thomas' grip and lands at his feet. He doesn't bother bending down to grab it, can't quite remember how that's done. Edward sits up in bed, and the sheet slides down his chest. Thomas is briefly distracted from the absurdity of the question by Edward's absurdly pretty nipples. Unfair.

“That sounds - sorry, perhaps I shouldn’t have even - I know it is a - question.” 

“Just a bit,” Thomas says, throat very dry.  

“I don't have any immediate plans, it would take time. And I know you love my uncle. I know you wouldn’t leave lightly.”

Thomas shakes his head. "That is not -"

“But I might need to be somewhere other than - here. For a few months, perhaps longer. I have family in America, and - money, and - it would be nothing to have you with me.”

"As your - servant." What other options could there be? It's not a bad offer, at least they'd be together.

“As my friend.” Edward shifts again, and the sheet slides down to his hips. Against his will, Thomas is drawn forward to touch his skin. He presses a thumb into the muscle of Edward's shoulder just because he can, rubbing out the tension there. Then he presses a kiss to the same spot. 

“You would have me be your kept man, sir,” Thomas murmurs, and Edward takes his hand. Looks up into his eyes.

“I would have you be whatever kind of man you like.” He kisses Thomas’ knuckles, and the gentleness makes Thomas flinch, like he’s had a static shock. “I would have you nearby.” Edward unfolds Thomas’ hand, kisses his palm. “I would keep you close to me. If that was something you wanted. I would want that."

Edward kisses Thomas’ wrist then, and Thomas sighs and leans down to steal Edward’s mouth for his own. He is climbing into the man’s lap, threading his hands through his hair as their mouths meet and the kiss deepens. It’s too easy to imagine other mornings like this: on a ship, in a hotel room, staring across tables at each other, living off private glances until they were alone. Edward might be melancholy but Thomas would take care of him. Edward might get lost sometimes, but Thomas would find him. He would make sure Edward ate, would wake him from nightmares. He would tug Edward's hair just sharply enough that Edward would gasp and kiss him. Thomas would help the man shave and then get to his knees for him. Thomas would love him, until -

Until Edward came to his senses. Grew bored and distant. Married a woman from the appropriate circles and left Thomas on a street corner with a suitcase and a few shillings for his trouble. Isn’t that what always happens with this sort of thing?

It won’t end well. These sorts of stories never do. Tom might get a few good weeks, just enough to forget himself, and then have the rest of his life to sweep up the ashes.

“You’re a terrible romantic, sir,” Thomas says quietly (the trouble is, he likes Edward Little. It’s the stupidest thing.)  “I have to go.”

Edward buries his face against Thomas’ neck, breathes him in. Thomas savours the moment, trying hard not to think about anything beyond the walls of this room. He'll have time for that later. 

“I know it’s a great deal to ask." Edward's voice is warm and rough against his skin. "But I - had to ask. I’ve wanted to.”

Thomas nods. Kisses him on the cheek before he leaves.

He navigates the darkness silently on the way back to his room. He's very conscious of where a floorboard might creak, or how gently to open a door so that the hinges don't whine. The house is asleep, for now, but it won't be long until the new day starts in earnest. Thomas has wasted too much time already, acting like it's something he can afford to spend.

He has almost reached the staircase that will take him to the attic, when he passes by an open window. The storm has stopped and the night sky is cloudless, clear as a river. Thomas pauses for just a moment, studying the shadowy hills, the trees beyond, the grey road disappearing on its way to the village. How many times has he walked that road and wished he would never come to the end of it?

He could say yes.

To Edward, to all of it. He could find some reason for going, no one on staff would need to know the truth.  He’s clever, didn’t they always say he was clever? He could fit in with Edward’s friends and family, he’s certain of it. They’d be like Edward, so Thomas would love them. He’s been dreaming of running all his life, and now he’s got a ticket on offer, all he has to do is take it.

If only he knew that his Lordship was settled. Thomas couldn't leave Crozier with no one to take care of him, not after everything the man had done for Thomas and his family. He'd worry constantly about his Lordship's health, his well-being, his loneliness. There's no possibility of Thomas going anywhere without knowing that Crozier has companionship (he’d find another valet in a heartbeat, Thomas, don’t fancy yourself more important than you are. At the end of the day, you're not his family, you're a servant, and you aren't the only one he depends upon. There may even be someone in particular - you've noticed it yourself, you've long suspected, perhaps it's time -)

Thomas rolls his eyes at himself. Clutching at excuses, trying to convince himself they're true.

If only he had more savings, that’s another thing. He wouldn’t want to rely on Edward for everything. How long would it be before that wore thin? Thomas would need to have options if the whole thing fell apart (but he could sell the cottage, couldn’t he? His sister would be in favour of the income, she’d brought it up before.  It wouldn’t be much, but it’d be something and then Thomas could feel more like an equal, and maybe he could find some work in America, he was good with people, maybe -)

“Stop it,” Thomas says under his breath. The words leave a puff of steam against the windowpane.

If only he had any certainty at all. That's the heart of things. He has no idea what might happen if he left, if they went away together. Edward might change his mind in a matter of days. Might leave Thomas in the middle of a foreign country, might grow callous and cruel. 

At the horizon, there’s the promise of dawn, but some lingering stars are still visible in the grey sky. There’s an odd cluster of them that catches Thomas’ eye. They seem particularly bright for the early hour. Possibly even out of place.  

Thomas doesn't believe he's seen them before.

Certainty, what rubbish. What absolute shite, what nonsense, what is he doing -

When Edward opens his bedroom door to the sound of quiet knocking, he finds Thomas standing there, breathless.

“Yes,” Thomas says. “I will. Yes.”

Edward is beautiful and sleep-mussed, dressing gown hastily belted around his waist. Tom watches him blink the drowsiness from his eyes, sees the slow transformation of confusion into hope. It is like dawn breaking. Like grey turning gold.

“You’ll come with me?”

“Yes.” Thomas swallows against the lump rising in his throat. If he starts crying - and he won’t, but if he does - he’ll never forgive himself. “Wherever you want to go.”

“You will.”

“I will.” 

Edward tilts slightly, like he might fall over. He reaches a hand out to steady himself against the doorframe, and Thomas laughs, puts his fingers on top of Edward’s. Edward blushes pink as a sunrise (Thomas remembers that colour. It was everywhere once. He hasn't forgotten.)

By the time Thomas reaches his room, all the stars have vanished, and a sliver of the new day is rising. He stands at his small attic window, letting the light touch him. 

He'll go back downstairs in a few moments, pretend he’s had any sleep at all and is ready to get to work. He'll bring Edward a cup of tea, perhaps, once the fires in his room are lit. His Lordship will return at some point, and with any luck the night has done him and the Captain both some good. Thomas is hopeful. It's an unfamiliar feeling, but he thinks he can remember how to hold it. It might just take some practice.

He stares out the window and listens to Avonmore waking up around him.

The sounds are comforting, and steady as a song.

Beneath his breastbone, his heart beats, and it is steady too.

Mostly steady.

Maybe a bit fast.