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Thomas didn’t see Jimmy tumble head-over-feet down the servants’ staircase. No one did. They were all huddled over the breakfast spread out on the table, devouring small, rapid bites of toast or egg or sausage, gulping down swallows of lukewarm tea as the silent bells hung like the Sword of Damocles above them. Mr Carson was making some pointed remark about how a first footman ought to be up with the morning call, glancing at Jimmy’s vacant seat, and a defense leapt to Thomas’s lips, an automatic reflex. He never got to say it.
The cry of surprise came first—then a series of heavy, dull, painful-sounding thuds—then awful, awful silence. Thomas bolted out of his chair so quickly it clattered to the floor. His heart pounded in his throat, mind misting over with panic. He knew that voice almost better than his own. But it couldn’t be, it couldn’t—
He tore off down the corridor, several pairs of feet clattering against the stone just behind him. He hardly heard them. His world had narrowed to the door just ahead, which he reached out for with a trembling hand. He found the knob and flung it open.
At the base of the steps, Jimmy lay awkwardly, torso half curled in on itself, limbs splayed every which way like a discarded toy. A stupid detail to notice, but Thomas spotted an undone tie and an unbuttoned waistcoat, realised that the man had tried to finish dressing himself while he dashed down the stairs to save time. His eyes were closed. He had gone very pale. He didn’t move.
It was at this point that the medic training took over, thank God, none-too-gently nudging aside the part of Thomas that wanted only to cradle Jimmy in his arms and weep so it could get to work. He knelt down. A calm, professional eye roved over the wounded man’s body, assessing the damage. No blood that he could see. Nothing was bent in a way to suggest it might be broken. There was a nasty bruise at the temple—concussion was a concern. Behind him, people were murmuring and shifting their feet. Someone—Ivy or Daisy, probably—let out a strangled squeaking sound. Mr Carson and Mrs Hughes were barking orders, some of which may have been for him. They didn’t matter. He ignored them as he had ignored bursts of gunfire and teeth-chattering cold and the acrid smell of burning flesh. All that mattered was the man who needed his help.
“Jimmy.” Thomas patted his face when he didn’t get a response. “Wake up, Jimmy. If you can hear me, open your eyes.”
And he did. A curious thing happened then, something Thomas had never seen from any man sick, injured, or dying. When the lids parted, they revealed an opaque silvery sheen covering the entirety of the eye. It was not the milky fog of blindness, not quite, although Thomas’ heart panged in remembrance of another man he had loved, even more lost to him than Jimmy was. The whole body jerked in one powerful motion, as if he’d grabbed hold of a live wire. The distant, terrified part of Thomas cried out silently in the heart-stopping second before Jimmy went still once more. Silver faded from his eyes like fog pierced by the morning rays of the sun. Colour seemed to return to the world as the chest heaved up and down in a regular rhythm. The properly-blue gaze came into focus and danced across its surroundings.
“Yeah, I can hear you.” The voice was tight with pain, but otherwise so casual they might’ve been smoking out in the kitchen yard. “I’m not deaf, now am I?”
Thomas bit back a half-hysterical laugh. “Do you know who you are? Who I am? Where we are?” Perhaps he hadn’t kept the hysteria at bay as well as he’d thought. He’d meant to ask those questions calmly, one at a time, not blurt them out together on a rush of air.
Jimmy’s screwed-up expression of concentration had no business being so adorable. “You’re Thomas Barrow. I’m Jimmy Kent. And we’re…” His gaze drifted to what must have been a sea of worried faces over Thomas’s shoulder. “We’re friends.”
He tried to rise. Thomas didn’t let him.
“Where are we?” he repeated firmly.
Jimmy sighed. “Downton Abbey. Yorkshire. England. Am I allowed to get off the floor now?”
Thrumming tension eased, leaving Thomas boneless and exhausted. He wanted to ask about the silver eyes and the jerking, in order to determine if Jimmy had felt anything queer in those moments. But he worried he’d sound mad. Perhaps he had gone mad for those few seconds. Broken bodies in the trenches had nearly done it for him back then, and he hadn’t loved any of those poor blokes.
“No,” Thomas said flatly in answer to the question. “Follow the movement of my finger with your eyes.”
He forced his breaths to be steady as a metronome. Things would be all-right. If nothing else, Jimmy was clearly feeling like himself.
Clad in pyjamas, Jimmy squirmed impatiently on the edge of his bed. Thomas ignored him and continued to count out each beat of his pulse. Dr Clarkson had left hours ago, after conducting a thorough examination of his own. He’d lectured Jimmy for some time—quite rightly, in Thomas’s estimation—about how he was damned lucky to be walking away from the accident with only cuts and bruises to show for it, that he was damned lucky to be walking away at all.
Still, Dr Clarkson could make a mistake, like anyone. So Thomas was checking it all again, just to be certain. He’d never get any sleep otherwise. Satisfied, he released Jimmy’s wrist.
“That’ll do for tonight,” he said with a nod. “Now, don’t stay up until the wee hours smoking and reading Photoplay, for God’s sake. Rest is the best thing for you now.”
Pulling a disgruntled face, Jimmy said, “You fuss worse than Dr Clarkson.”
“Well, I have a vested interest, don’t I? If you kick the bucket, I’m the one who’ll have to pick up the slack until Carson hires a new lad.”
Jimmy laughed, then winced, presumably at a fresh stab of pain. Carefully, he rose to his feet, only a few inches from where Thomas stood. Hooded eyes gazed up behind long lashes, a golden curl fell just so across the brow, beestung lips parted minutely. “Have I been a good patient, Dr Barrow?”
Thomas wrestled his expression into impassivity while tender feeling roiled within him in a wave. It wasn’t fair, but it wasn’t really Jimmy’s fault, either. He flirted with everyone, and he was only sometimes aware of it. Dryly, Thomas said, “Yes, Jimmy.”
“Am I allowed a treat, then? For being good?”
Thomas snorted. “What are you, a kid? Fine, I’ll give you a treat, you menace.”
All at once, Jimmy was kissing him. Arms were thrown over his shoulders. Lips were insistent against his own unresponsive mouth. It was a vision plucked from the fantasies that soothed Thomas’s loneliness in the dead of night. It was also the beginning to every nightmare that ended with Jimmy spitting on him and calling him disgusting. Thomas pushed him away. Perhaps not as quickly as he could have, but he was only human, after all. When Jimmy tried to touch him again, he shuffled backwards, out of reach.
Hurt and confused, Jimmy gaped at him. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Why are you looking at me like that? Am I not allowed to kiss you now?”
Thomas shook his head. “Please, don’t.” He thought, If you do it again, I’ll let you. You’ll never forgive me, and I’ll never forgive myself.
Tears welled up in Jimmy’s eyes, and Thomas bit down hard on the inside of his cheek until he was confident he wouldn’t crumble.
Jimmy said, “Why would you say that? Bored of me, are you? After everything?”
His voice wavered, but nevertheless it grew in pitch and volume. Thomas imagined Carson’s scowl emerging from behind the door and the questions that would come with it. Unconsciously, he shushed Jimmy, hands raised in a half-hearted gesture of supplication. In reply, fire flickered to life in Jimmy’s eyes.
He continued, “It’s that new butcher in the village, isn’t it? Him and his stupid, perfect dimples. You told me I didn’t have to worry about him. You were going to let him know that you’re spoken for.”
For a long moment, Thomas struggled in vain to arrange the words into a statement that made any kind of logical sense. Mr Bradford, a red-faced man in his middle fifties, had a voice like a foghorn and smelled faintly of raw meat even in his off-hours. It was difficult to imagine anyone mustering up romantic interest in him, including his wife. Gently, Thomas said, “You’re confused. I think you have a concussion, after all. Sit down, please.”
“Don’t change the subject!”
Thomas tried again. “Jimmy, there’s no new butcher in the village. The bloke behind the counter’s been around here longer than I have. As for you and I—we’re mates, that’s all. We’ve only ever been mates.”
Jimmy wore the dull, horrified expression of a fellow who strongly suspected he’d been shot in the gut, but who couldn’t quite bring himself to look down. “That’s not true. None of that’s true.”
“It is. What reason do I have to lie?”
“Maybe you’re the one who’s confused.”
“I’m not the one who hit his head this morning.”
Jimmy faltered. One word, one gesture from him, and Thomas would’ve given in. He would’ve gathered the other man into his arms and whispered reassurances into his hair. Instead, Jimmy squared his shoulders, marched forward, and untied Thomas’s dressing gown. Too baffled to stop him, Thomas could only stare.
“I can prove I’m right,” said Jimmy.
He yanked up the undershirt beneath to reveal a pale stomach dusted with dark hair, a bit softer around the middle than Thomas was entirely happy with. Nothing special about it, but Jimmy balked at the sight.
“Where’s your scar?” he demanded.
Thomas lifted his wounded hand, still in its glove.
“No, the other one! The one you got… at the fair…” Jimmy traced a short, uneven line down the unblemished abdomen, just underneath the ribs. The touch was chaste, exploratory in a manner divorced entirely from pleasure. Because it was Jimmy, a thrill came over Thomas nevertheless.
At least until, frightened and deflated, Jimmy muttered, “Something is seriously wrong.”
“Jimmy, you really ought to sit down.”
He did, on the bed. Curled up against the headboard, his face disappeared behind his hands. Thomas perched on the edge of the coverlet.
He said, “I’ve seen this before. It’s not uncommon with a great knock to the head like you’ve had. It’s not permanent.” Usually. Hopefully. “You need rest, that’s all. Then your memory can come back as it was. Promise me you’ll get some sleep tonight, yeah?”
Slowly, Jimmy nodded. He didn’t look up.
“When Dr Clarkson returns in the morning to check on you,” Thomas continued, “we’ll tell him what’s going on. He’ll know what to do. Don’t worry.”
A face swam into view from the dismal corner in which Thomas stored his memories of the trenches—Sergeant Laramie, whose best friend Murdoch was shot down in No Man’s Land. For weeks after, he refused to believe the man was dead, demanding with increasing agitation to speak to him. One day, he started waving a knife around, screaming that they wouldn’t be kept apart. The rumour had been that he’d been sent to an asylum in the end. Loony Laramie, the soldiers had called him in the typical pitch-black comedy of men standing neck-deep in Hell.
Eventually, Jimmy lifted his head. “We’re… friends.”
“Don’t you remember when you first came to Downton? How I helped you with the clocks?”
“Of course.”
“And—and the things O’Brien told you to do?”
Jimmy frowned. “Who the hell’s O’Brien?”
Immediately, his face crumpled with pain. He clutched at his head, a low groan escaping his lips. Fear drove a spike right between Thomas’s eyes. “What’s wrong?” he asked—in his calm, steady medic’s voice, fortunately.
“I don’t know.” The words came out between gritted teeth. “My head’s splitting.” A shaky hand moved down to his nose, wiping underneath. It came away dripping red.
The bleeding dried up shortly after, and the headache disappeared with it. Thomas assured Jimmy everything was fine, helped him into bed, and marched downstairs to call Dr Clarkson on Mr Carson’s telephone. After some back-and-forth, the doctor turned up at the Abbey shortly after dawn, several hours before he’d planned to arrive. He took Jimmy back with him to the cottage hospital.
Mr Carson was furious that Thomas had made a telephone call without permission, even more so when Thomas announced that he’d be riding with Jimmy in the car. Sensing the impending storm, Mrs Hughes emerged from nowhere to take Mr Carson by the elbow and murmur something sensible in a rumbly, Scottish purr. Thomas ignored them, eyes trained on Jimmy who was being led to the backseat of the automobile like a lost lamb, with Dr Clarkson as his brusque, unflappable sheepdog. Dizziness overtook him, and he stumbled. It didn’t matter what the old bastard threatened. If Thomas lost his job, then he lost it.
There were much worse things he could lose.
Hours later, the morning sun high in the sky outside the window, Jimmy sat atop a hospital bed. On his thighs lay a neglected breakfast tray. He shuffled a well-worn deck of cards over and over again with unsteady hands, until finally, he attempted a tricky move that sent cards flying in all directions.
When he swore, the nurse on the other side of the room glanced over, unamused. Thomas, sitting in a fold-out chair pulled up beside the bed, leaned down and scooped them all up with the quick, efficient motions of a servant. He held them out as if they were merely playing gin rummy in the servants’ hall, as if nothing could possibly be wrong. Probably it would help if he wasn’t watching the other man like a hawk and browbeating the medical staff, but he couldn’t bear to do otherwise.
Jimmy gave up and slid the cards into their cardboard box. “I remember who O’Brien is now,” he muttered to the fists bunched against his thighs.
Relief flooded Thomas from head to foot.
Jimmy continued, “She left before I came to Downton, but you mentioned her once or twice. You two were mates, right? Then she buggered off to India or something.”
Oh, no.
“Jimmy, you met O’Brien. You worked in the house with her. You don’t remember any of that?”
“I’m not mad,” Jimmy said, his face like thunder.
“Of course not. You need to rest, that’s all.”
“You and I… That was real. It happened. It didn’t come from my head.”
Thomas didn’t answer. To say it wasn’t true would break Jimmy’s heart. To lie would break his own.
Jimmy jutted out his chin, eyes shining bright with challenge. “I could tell you all the pretty noises you make when I’m inside you,” he whispered.
“Christ.” Thomas was almost too shocked for a series of vivid, extremely tempting images to fly through his head. Almost.
“Although I reckon I’m more familiar with the pretty noises you make when you’re inside me.”
The images were mocking him now. Phantom lovers smirked at him from behind impenetrable glass. “Jimmy, stop.”
Jimmy’s mouth thinned to an unhappy line. “The Thomas I know would’ve laughed at that.”
“I am the Thomas you know.”
With a huff, Jimmy crossed his arms. He meant to look stubborn. More than anything else, he looked frightened. Thomas longed for one of Jimmy’s petty, pedestrian problems instead—a disapproving butler, a lovesick kitchen maid, a bad bet on the horses. He wanted to roll up his sleeves and make it all better. He would have even gladly accepted the sting of self-pity when Jimmy mumbled “thanks” and carried on with his life with hardly a backward glance.
The two men sat in silence. Glass clinked as the nurse organised the contents of a medicine cabinet. A robin whistled outside the window, a splash of red hopping up and down the length of a tree branch. The world, somehow, continued to turn, heedless of their unhappiness.
Finally, Jimmy said, in an undertone the nurse wouldn’t hear, “When I fell, everything went dark, but it wasn’t like sleeping. It was like… when you’re on a train inside a tunnel. I think I’m on the wrong track now. I think I was meant to come out into the light somewhere else.”
Thomas hunted for the correct response. Nothing was forthcoming. He decided to be honest. “You’re not making much sense.”
Slumped back against the pillow, Jimmy watched the nurse leave the room. Once the brisk click-click of her heels had drifted down the corridor, he grasped for Thomas’s gloved hand, which rested on the blanket. Thomas flinched. He didn’t mean to. It was simply one of the rules—the unspoken litany he held to like gospel where Jimmy was concerned. No touching, not when skin might brush against skin.
“Is it bothering you today? More than usual?” Jimmy’s thumb dug firmly into the meat of damaged palm, felt even through the leather, soothing a bone-deep ache. It was something Thomas has done countless times for himself in unobserved moments. At least, he’d thought they’d been unobserved until now. He wasn’t about to let anyone, including Jimmy, know how awful the pain could be when he’d been lifting heavy luggage, or when the wind was cold and biting, or for no bloody reason at all.
Wide, concerned eyes danced across Thomas’s face. They found something and promptly hardened into stone. “Oh,” Jimmy said flatly. “Not proper to hold a mate’s hand, is it?”
He let the blighty drop, and Thomas told himself, quite firmly, that he was relieved.
“There’s one more thing I could tell you,” said Jimmy. “You’d have to believe me then.”
A weary sigh escaped Thomas. He didn’t want to indulge Jimmy’s… delusion was too strong a word. The man wasn’t mad. Thomas refused to entertain that notion. A sane man could be reasoned with. You could pick apart his arguments, one by one, until he saw sense.
“Go on, then.”
“I know what happened to Kitty’s drawings.”
Thomas froze, every muscle locked into place in a manner entirely removed from pretending to be furniture for the upstairs lot.
“You were twelve when she married and left home,” Jimmy ploughed on. “She left it behind by mistake. A little, leather book and a set of charcoal pencils she’d saved her money for. All her clever sketches of landscapes, and animals, and people. Her favourite was a portrait she’d done of you.”
In the anatomy illustrations Thomas had studied before shipping off to the trenches, the fellow had always looked quite bored about being cut open on an artist’s pen, all his insides on display for the world to see. Thomas probably looked bored now. It was a servant’s blessing, either that or a curse. Hard to tell the difference at times.
“You were angry with her for leaving you alone with your mum and dad. So you took the book out to the alley and burned it. She thought it’d gotten lost on the journey. You never said otherwise. You never said anything.”
Someone else reached out and opened Thomas’s mouth. “Who told you about that?” Even O’Brien hadn’t known.
Jimmy groaned in frustration. “You did. We were lying in bed one night, and I wanted to know something you’d never told anyone before.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“How else could I know that?”
Thomas hesitated. “I might have spoken in my sleep.”
“So you admit we share a bed?”
Other images crept in, more chaste than the last. The two of them in pyjamas, curling up together on a narrow servant’s mattress. A head resting on his chest, warm breath felt through thin cotton. Thomas playing with a handful of golden curls.
“I’ve dozed in front of the fire more than once.”
“Do you truly believe that’s what happened?”
Thomas was saved having to answer by the appearance of Dr Clarkson striding into the room, white coat flapping. He’d seen that expression many times before, directed at men Thomas didn’t weep for, only because none of them were his. It wasn’t good news. It wasn’t any sort of news at all. Dr Clarkson had no idea what was wrong with Jimmy. The headaches and the bleeding were a mystery, save the fact that in just the few hours he’d been at the hospital, they were clearly growing worse.
Over the next few days, Jimmy rapidly deteriorated, and he bore his misery with a child’s ill temper. Thomas yearned to coddle the man. Instead he bullied him into swallowing spoonfuls of soup and wrestled him into the occasional change of clothes. Thomas only left the hospital to serve dinner. Mr Carson really would’ve sacked him, except the Crawleys were aware they were friends and made a show of being sympathetic. Not that they knew Jimmy well enough not to call him ‘James,’ mind.
Getting Jimmy to exercise was like pulling teeth. On the postage stamp-sized patch of green behind the hospital, Thomas had to take his arm to convince Jimmy to walk in a lazy circuit. He moved slowly, each breath laboured. As a medic, Thomas had developed a keen sense for malingering. Although Jimmy was just the sort to pout for attention and special treatment, the grimace of pain was genuine. The man’s face always gave him away.
Of course he’s hurting, Thomas told himself. He fell down the bloody stairs Tuesday. Nothing strange about that.
Jimmy said, “Can we stop now? My head’s aching again.”
They sat on a nearby bench. Above them, the sky was a mass of wooly, grey clouds.
“Cigarette?” Jimmy didn’t even have to say the word anymore. Thomas could tell what he meant simply by the tilt of his eyebrows.
“The smoke will make you feel worse.” Thomas still handed one over.
In between puffs, Jimmy pulled a handkerchief from a pocket—one he’d borrowed from Thomas long ago and never returned. Red-brown stains were smeared across it in various stages of drying. Jimmy wiped at his nose. The blood had thickened from a drip to a steady trickle.
Injured men bleed. Nothing strange about that, either.
“Dr Clarkson tell you he’s talking to a specialist now?” Jimmy asked.
“He did. And he’s going to take some more blood this afternoon. There’s another round of tests he’d like to try.”
Jimmy squeezed his eyes shut, the way he did now when the dizzy spells threatened to make him vomit. “Christ, really?”
“Trust me, Jimmy, you don’t want them to make you comfortable. That means they’ve given up.”
“Not likely. You wouldn’t let them.”
They shared a smile, and for a moment, all was easy. Then Jimmy groaned, clutching his head, and Thomas had to snatch up the cigarette so he wouldn’t burn himself. He stamped out both half-finished fags beneath his heel.
The business-like medic had already slid into place. “Once Dr Clarkson’s sorted out a diagnosis, you can start getting properly better.”
“I know what’s wrong with me,” Jimmy insisted. “I’m not supposed to be here. The other Jimmy is.”
Another fruitless attempt to drag the man back to reality loomed, and Thomas only narrowly resisted the urge to scream and tear his hair out in chunks. “At least you don’t say that nonsense in front of Clarkson or the nurses.”
“Of course not. I’m not an idiot. Doesn’t mean it isn’t true. The key to fixing all this is to go back where I came from, I know it. But I worry that if I can’t figure out how to, I’ll just get worse and worse.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
One fat drop of rain landed in Thomas’s hair, another rolled down his nose. A sudden gust of wind sent a rusty gate creaking on its hinges. He stood, then held out a hand for Jimmy. But instead of standing, he only gazed upwards, forlorn.
“What did he do?”
“Sorry?”
“Your Jimmy. How did he ruin things?”
“Lord, not this again—”
“My Thomas loves me.” Unwavering faith echoed in every syllable. “He must have done something awful to spoil that.”
Thunder rolled in the distance, and Thomas felt the rumble deep in his chest. In a way, he wanted to bottle this moment and keep it for always. Jimmy, speaking about Thomas’s devotion for him as if it were a source of great pride. Normally, they cordoned off the subject from all conversation, as if even the slightest acknowledgement of unrequited affection might contaminate their friendship. But—Jimmy knew, all the same. He woke up every day knowing he was loved, and that was some consolation to Thomas.
Yet, in his current diminished state, he didn’t. Somehow, he could look at the man who’d bled for him and think he felt only lukewarm companionship and polite concern for his health. That terrified Thomas even more than any medical poking and prodding could.
So, when he finally found his voice, Thomas spoke the bitter truth. “I spoiled it. Not you.”
“How?” Jimmy scrunched up his nose adorably.
More rain fell. Soon, Thomas’s carefully-coifed hair would be an oily mess. Better to think of that than the cold, hard pit weighing down his stomach. God, how could he say it aloud? I frightened you. I nearly got you sacked or thrown into prison. All because I thought it was adorable when you scrunched up your nose.
“I took liberties. I expected things of you that you can never give me.”
“I want to give you everything.”
A dam inside of Thomas cracked open, spurting out some vital fluid. “You don’t!” He was shouting, and Jimmy was cringing, and he hated himself for that, and he couldn’t stop himself now that he’d begun. “You’re not like me. You’re not my sort of man. You think you are, right now. I don’t know why. Maybe you’re misremembering things. Maybe… maybe some part of you wants to make me happy, because we’re mates. But you’re not.”
“Who says?” Jimmy barked.
“You do.”
“Ah.” Jimmy shivered in the downpour. “It’s like that, then. He’s still afraid.”
Thomas tried to help him to his feet, but he was shrugged off. Deflated and wet and quietly ashamed, he said, “Please come inside. You’ll catch your—”
Hanging heavy in the air, unsaid, was the one word more unthinkable than ‘madness.’
Jimmy rose to his feet unaided. “I want you to do something for me. In case I don’t make it back to the Abbey.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“Oh, shut up, will you? Under my bed, there’s a lockbox. I know that much is true, because I found the key in my pocket.” In the outstretched hand, silver glinted. “I don’t know if the money will be. I’ve been saving it up, bit by bit, for a while now. It was supposed to be a surprise. When the time was right, I was going to ask my Thomas to run away with me.”
How did Jimmy manage to pluck each sentimental, idiotic daydream right from Thomas’s head? Was he truly that transparent? Well—when it came to Jimmy, probably yes.
“Anyway, the money will be there if your Jimmy has any sense in his head. And I want you to have the lot.”
“If I take this key, can we stop being drenched?”
Jimmy nodded, so Thomas did.
“It doesn’t matter,” Thomas muttered. Cold metal bit into his clenched fist. “Nothing’s going to happen to you. It doesn’t matter.”
That night, after serving dinner, Thomas went straight to Jimmy’s bedroom. He knelt on the wooden floorboards beside the bed, an old, tarnished lockbox in his hands. He set it down, then turned the key.
Not much lay inside. Money was scattered about, a couple of pounds in total. Hardly a nest egg, even accounting for a footman’s salary. But of course it wasn’t anything of the sort. Jimmy didn’t plan for the future. And when he left Downton one day, he wouldn’t be asking Thomas to join him.
A photograph, worn from frequent handling, was tucked away at the bottom of the box. In front of a brick exterior wall stood a surprisingly serious-looking man sporting a bottlebrush moustache. Beside him, a woman with fair curls and a pert, button nose sat in a chair. The boy was young enough to sit on her knee. He wore the perplexed, vaguely bored expression all children do when posed for a camera. His little legs were blurred slightly with motion, as if he hadn’t quite managed to keep from fidgeting.
It hit Thomas like an anvil to the chest. Only the lad survived. And if—if something happened, this would be the single bit of physical proof that the Kents, that handsome family of three, had ever existed at all.
Thomas cried for what must have been an awfully long time. When he was certain he’d finished, he put the lockbox back as it was. He went downstairs, and no sooner had he set foot in the servants’ hall than he sent Daisy scurrying off with her bottom lip wobbling and her tail firmly between her legs. Vicious glee buoyed him, albeit temporarily. Ignoring the glares of the other servants, he settled by the fire and pretended to read the evening paper.
They could disapprove all they wanted. She’d deserved the tongue lashing. I understand how you feel, she’d said. The hell she did. William had left behind a ring and a fucking widow’s pension. She simply had to utter the words my dead husband to have complete strangers nodding and cooing sympathetically.
What could Thomas say, to anyone? Jimmy wasn’t his husband, not even his lover. He wasn’t a relation. Thomas was Jimmy’s friend, but it didn’t work in the reverse. A friend was a trivial thing. A friend was someone you might be sad to leave behind, but you could do it. You could leave them behind. Thomas had never properly put words to what Jimmy meant to him, aside from the obvious, four-letter one. The closest he could come was a vast, unknowable stretch of space that had swallowed him whole—the sky, perhaps, or the sea.
His refusal to accept the idea that Jimmy might soon be gone wasn’t stubbornness or hubris. It was simply beyond imagining. Who imagined that one day they would glance out the window to find a blank canvas above the treetops? Who imagined that one day they would step onto the shore to find no crashing waves, merely barren sand in every direction? Nothing and more nothing, as far as the eye could see.
Eventually, Jimmy couldn’t leave the bed under his own power. At that point, Dr Clarkson tried to shoo him out the door, spouting nonsense about how Jimmy might feel better in familiar surroundings with familiar people. As if Jimmy didn’t hate his cramped, draughty quarters. As if Jimmy didn’t find everyone else under Downton’s roof unbearably dull.
Thomas opened his mouth to protest. There was a knife between his teeth. Dual images fought for dominance at the forefront of his brain. One was William coughing up pieces of lung while his head rested against a mountain of plush upstairs pillows. The other was a coppery stain beside a hospital bed that, no matter how the orderly scrubbed and scrubbed, couldn’t entirely be removed.
You send them home to die.
Jimmy, catching his expression, spoke first. “Can I stay?” Each word creaked like rusty hinges.
“If you wish. But I’m afraid there’s not much more we can do for you.”
“Then I’ll stay.” He looked at Thomas as he said it.
When Dr Clarkson left, Jimmy lay back and closed his eyes. Even in the muted light of dusk, purple hollows were visible beneath them, and shadows cut deep furrows into each crease upon a grey, haggard face. Thomas, in the usual chair, bent over him like a tree weakened by rot.
“You ought to go serve dinner,” Jimmy said.
“No.”
“You haven’t even been back to change your clothes since yesterday. You’re not losing your job because of me.”
“No. I’m staying. Until you’re better.”
“Thomas, you heard what Dr Clarkson said. They’re… making me comfortable now.”
“I know. But you’ll get better.”
Slowly, Jimmy opened his eyes. “I need to tell you about what I remember. About you and I.”
“Call me your lover, if you want to,” Thomas whispered. “Call me whatever you like. It doesn’t matter.”
“You think it’s some fairy tale romance, don’t you? That’s why you don’t want to hear it. You think if it’s true, then it’s your fault I was never properly yours. That you made some awful mistake.”
Thomas grimaced. “You don’t remember, but I did make an awful mistake, Jimmy. More than one, really.”
“Well, in my story, I made plenty of mistakes of my own. And I’d like to tell you about them, if you’ll let me.”
Reluctantly, Thomas nodded. He was tired of fighting Jimmy on this front. He simply wanted to be sitting there with him, whatever it meant.
With a bit of help, Jimmy floundered into a more upright position. Thomas tilted a glass of water to the other man’s dry, cracked lips. Once he was ready, Jimmy began:
“When I first came to Downton, I thought you were such a fool. To be a homosexual was a weakness of character, but to be so open about it could only be stupidity. You fawned over me as if no one could possibly care. And I came to see that you were right. The rest of the servants all looked the other way. Because you were His Lordship’s valet, you could do as you pleased.”
After a pause, he said, “Did I ever tell you about how it was between me and Lady Anstruther?”
Thrown by the sudden change of topic, Thomas said with total honesty, “Not really. I’ve guessed some of it. You… weren’t just a footman to her, I suppose?”
“That’s a delicate way of putting it. She was clever, in her way. She had me thinking it was my idea at the start, then she had her claws in deep by the end. When I finally got away, I… rewrote it in my head. I decided I’d had her wrapped around my finger, actually. And that, since you clearly wanted me, I could do the same to you.”
Thomas could picture it. Jimmy not only tolerating the man’s clumsy flirtations, but encouraging them. Squeezing his bicep while asking for help. Winking at him over the spread for the servants’ dinner. Snatching the lighter right out of Thomas’s pocket and caressing it with teasing fingers.
Where had all that come from?
“The plan at first was to play the blushing virgin as much as I could,” Jimmy said. “To never actually be a nancy, just dance around the idea. It was stupid of me, not to mention dangerous. If you’d been an impatient man—but you weren’t. You treated every warm look and chaste kiss on the cheek as if it were golden. She never would’ve—”
He broke off abruptly, glancing away for a moment.
“One night, I kissed you awake and climbed into your bed. I told myself I was protecting my investment. That you would’ve gotten bored of me if I hadn’t done something soon. And I’d find somewhere better before long, and I’d forget that I’d ever let a man touch me.”
Prickling dread sunk low in Thomas’s gut. “So, you—you felt obligated to be my lover?”
“No! Hell, I’m not explaining it right, am I?” Jimmy looked horrified. “This is why when I get the urge to talk about feelings, I usually just stick my hand down your trousers instead.” Despite himself, Thomas snorted. “I used to tell myself stories all the time. Stories about who I was. And I was certain that if I told the stories well enough and for long enough, they would become true. But I never thought that you’d make things difficult for me if I didn’t do what you wanted. I was never afraid of you.”
Righteous fury thrummed through Thomas’s veins. “Lady Anstruther had best hope she never crosses my path.”
“You’re awfully handsome when you threaten people, Mr Barrow.” Jimmy grinned as best he could behind a rictus of pain.
“Not a threat. Merely a statement of fact.”
Abruptly, Jimmy let out a high, broken noise and fumbled blindly for Thomas’s hand. He grabbed the wounded one by mistake, squeezing hard enough to make the bones and muscle ache. When the fresh wave of agony had ebbed, Thomas tried to gently extricate his fingers. Jimmy wouldn’t let him. With his free hand, Thomas brushed a lock of hair from the other man’s sweat-damp brow.
“I think that’s enough chat for now,” Thomas said. “Go to sleep.”
Instead Jimmy said, “Do you remember the fair? It was the summer of 1921.”
Thomas sat back, their hands remaining tangled together. “Bit hard to forget the beating I took.”
Jimmy’s eyebrows climbed up toward his hairline. “I pulled you under a bridge to kiss you?”
“No, you went under the bridge alone. I was… nearby.”
“That’s not how I remember it. I’d had more to drink than was good for me, and I was being too familiar with you even before then. You tried to be sensible, but it was too late. Some blokes had followed us, and they saw. They attacked us. You told me to run. But I stayed.”
Eyes shiny with unspent tears, Jimmy continued, “I thought you were going to die, you know? I still haven’t forgiven you for that, you bastard.”
“It was only a bruised face and a couple of cracked ribs,” Thomas said with a nonchalance he didn’t feel. He’d thought the same. “Nothing to trouble yourself over.”
Jimmy was confused. “Thomas, one of the men was carrying a knife.”
“Oh.” Suddenly, Jimmy’s hand on his bare stomach made a bit more sense. “The scar you were searching for.”
“It turned out to be a shallow wound, really, mostly superficial. But Dr Clarkson couldn’t say anything definite at first. And you were bleeding quite a lot. While Branson drove us to the cottage hospital, I held you and cried and told you that I loved you more times than I could count. I didn’t care who’d hear. It wasn’t the first time I’d said it to you. But it was the first time I truly meant it. Or at least, the first time I knew I meant it.”
A terrible, wonderful pang hit Thomas square in the chest.
Jimmy carried on speaking. “After that day, I stopped telling myself stories. I stopped playing my little games. And that was hard. Sometimes, it’s still hard. We’ve made each other very happy, though.”
Minutes crawled by with Thomas quite beyond words. Finally, he said, “That didn’t happen. I’m sorry, Jimmy. But you have made me very happy.”
“You said we aren’t lovers.”
“We aren’t. You’ve made me happy all the same.”
Jimmy smiled—truly, properly, pain and despair wiped clean away. Then, he hesitated. “I know you don’t want to, but can you kiss me anyway? Think of it as a last request.”
“It’s not a last request.” Thomas sighed. “And it’s more complicated than what I do or don’t want to do.”
Jimmy leaned forward, a dog who’d caught the scent. “You do want to, then? You just think I don’t want you to.”
“I know you don’t. You’ve made that very clear.” Thomas’s misery was obvious.
This time, when Jimmy squeezed his hand, it was a gesture of comfort. This time, Thomas couldn’t bear to try to pull away. “I’ve said before that you’re not my Thomas, but I shouldn’t have done,” Jimmy murmured with infinite softness. “You’re always mine, and I’m always yours. No matter how the road bends, no matter what paths we take, that’s for certain.”
Jimmy was ill. He wasn’t in his right mind. And Thomas—Thomas just wanted to see him smile again. How much time did he have left, really? Weeks, days, hours? Shouldn’t he spend that time as happy as he could be? As happy as they both could be?
If guilt stung Thomas when he kissed Jimmy chastely on the lips, it paled to insignificance against the way the man he loved sighed happily and urged him—with weak but insistent hands—to lie beside him atop the bed.
Thomas woke hours later to Jimmy bucking and jerking beneath the sheets. Fear jolted him into full consciousness. He glanced up to find Jimmy’s eyes open wide, silver and foggy in the moonlight. Before he could attempt to restrain him, the motion ceased. Eyes slid shut. Hurriedly, Thomas fumbled for a wrist, finding an even, steady pulse. He ran off to find the nurse.
When they returned, Jimmy was awake and sitting upright. He looked… well, not healthy. He hadn’t looked healthy in weeks. But he was alert, clear-eyed, and smiling in such a carefree way he seemed years younger. He said, “I wondered where you’d gone off to. Is there something to eat around here?”
Thomas blinked in surprise. Jimmy hadn’t managed more than a handful of spoonfuls of broth in the past few days. “You… want something to eat? Jimmy, you were flopping around like a landed fish just a moment ago.”
“Don’t remember that. I feel better, though.” He moved too quickly and winced. “My head’s sore and all, but it doesn’t feel like something’s trying to crack it open from the inside anymore.”
“You feel… better?” It hurt to hope, and it hurt to push that hope away with both hands.
“Yeah. Much.” Jimmy slumped with visible relief.
“I’ll make you a plate once I’ve examined you,” the nurse said in the cheerful but unyielding manner befitting her profession. “Come now, Mr Kent, you know how this goes.”
Jimmy submitted with only a little grumbling. The whole time, Thomas hovered nearby, annoying the nurse and Jimmy in equal measures. He scanned the man’s face and body for signs of pain, of dizziness, of that hated blood sliding down in a ragged, red line. Finally, the tightness in his chest unclenched when he found none.
A couple of days passed, and Jimmy and Thomas sat on a bench outside the hospital, waiting for the Crawley’s chauffeur to pick them up in a car. Normally, a farmer’s cart would’ve been good enough for them, but the family had insisted. They were calling Jimmy’s rapid recovery a miracle, and Thomas couldn’t disagree. Even Dr Clarkson was baffled.
It didn’t matter what anyone knew or didn’t know. Not while Jimmy sat beside him, skin golden where bits of dappled sunlight escaped the branches of the tree above, lips curved gently upward in quiet contentment. He wasn’t entirely whole yet, but he was healing. He was incandescently, unquestionably alive, and Thomas couldn’t ask for anything more.
Well—he wouldn’t ask for anything more. Although it wasn’t quite the same thing, it would have to do.
“Never thought I’d be so relieved to be returning to Mr Carson scowling and fussing at me,” said Jimmy.
“You don’t have to, you know. Not for good,” Thomas replied. “You can go anywhere, do anything you want. I’ve always believed that.”
Jimmy was nervous suddenly, kneading fists against his thighs. He wouldn’t look Thomas in the eye.
“You said…” Thomas hesitated. “You said that you don’t remember much from when you were ill.”
They’d hardly had a moment alone, just the two of them. And even if they had, how could he ask outright if Jimmy still believed them to be lovers? If he remembered that he ever had believed it? Any answer would be disastrous. Aside from the one Thomas most wanted to hear: I know that you kissed me in my sleep, and I know that I hated you for a year, and I love you now. I love you for everything that we’ve shared. I love you for everything that we will go on to share.
That, however, was an impossibility. Jimmy would leave him one day for a normal life with a wife and children. Thomas could endure that, as long as the man wasn’t cold, grey, and lying in a wooden box.
“No. Bits and pieces,” Jimmy answered. “There’s—well, there’s one thing. I remember what you asked of me that night after the fall. Before all hell broke loose, before I had to be rushed off to the hospital.”
Thomas had no clue what he meant. “Right.”
“And I—I remember that my answer was to yell at you and throw you out of my room.” Jimmy curled in on himself, face twisting into a grimace. Automatically, Thomas rested a hand on the man’s back, rubbing soothing circles into the muscles as he had done when the pain became too much. Jimmy only cringed all the harder. “Christ, I’m sorry, Thomas. I’m sorry, all-right? I thought I’d hidden my feelings so well. But of course I was only fooling myself. And barely that. Now that I’ve almost fucking died… can you ask me again? Please?”
The hand stilled its motions. Slowly, Thomas withdrew it. He faltered—wanting to fulfill the request, uncertain how to.
After a long, awkward moment, Jimmy clarified: “Ask me to run away with you.”
A dozen different emotions roiled within Thomas, surging and crashing into one another. He was determined not to show any of them. Reluctantly, he said, “Jimmy, I kissed you in your sleep.”
“Yeah, I know.” Jimmy frowned. “Wait, you mean recently?”
“No.”
“Then what does it matter?”
“It matters that you know. About the kiss, about the fair, about all of it.”
“Well, I do. Of course I do. Are you saying you won’t have me now? That there’s too much against us? I wouldn’t blame you—”
“Jimmy, will you run away with me?”
Thomas could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen Jimmy beam like that. Each one was a treasured memory, tucked away inside his heart, warming him from the inside out. “I will, someday soon. I know it’s rotten to ask for more time, when you’ve already waited so long—”
Immediately, Thomas said, “Take all the time you need.”
“I want… I want to give you everything.” A breath caught in Thomas’s throat. Did Jimmy recall that he’d said those same words only a couple of weeks before? He couldn’t. Could he? “But I want to be certain, too—truly certain. And I want you to be certain. I would hate for you to wake up one day and feel like—like I’d trapped you.”
Thomas yearned to tell him that he could never possibly feel that way. To open his eyes morning after morning to find Jimmy hogging the blankets and snoring loud enough to wake the dead—how could he tire of a vision as heavenly as that? However, he understood instinctively that those words weren’t what Jimmy needed to hear in such a moment.
“We’re not in any hurry,” he said instead. “We’ll take it as it comes, yeah?”
In the distance, an engine purred as the car eased down cobblestone lanes. It would arrive soon enough. In the meantime, Thomas let Jimmy lean against him, bearing a little of his weight. Two hands drifted closer across the wooden planks of the bench until, eventually, their fingers intertwined.