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Thomas shifts from one foot to the other, the sweat under his arms prickling in perfectly concerted agony with the bloom of pain across his hip. He angles himself minutely towards the open window, trying to coax the cool fingers of a breeze into the stuffy dining room, and earns himself a glare from Carson. He ignores it, but he returns his gaze to a spot on the wallpaper across from him. There’s a sooty smudge near the door frame, perhaps left from the clumsy palms of an errant house maid, and it’s been the object of his gaze for the past nearly three hours. If he squints, it looks a bit like the peachy, beautiful backside of the porter he fucked in London a few Christmases ago.
Good god, he really must be going mad.
He shifts again, trying to ignore the shiver that’s crawling up his spine, even as a flash of white heat roils along his hip and causes a line of sweat to break out across his upper lip. Carson is staring at him, but he swallows – the click of his dry throat uncomfortable – and continues to focus on the bum-shaped smudge. The porter’s name had been Sidney, and he’d had lips the color of peonies and a tendency to laugh – a breathless kind of gasp, really – when the back of his neck was kissed.
Lord Grantham finally, blessedly announces the end of dinner, and Thomas steps forward to assist in the pulling of chairs and the opening of doors, but he’s blocked by Carson’s discreet whisper. “You’re excused for the night, Thomas,” he says, looking vaguely pained. “I won’t have you toppling over in the middle of the parlor, or or -.” A look of panic crosses his face. "Or spilling sherry in someone’s lap.”
Thomas nods; the smell of the fish soup had been getting to him, no matter how much he tried to breathe through his mouth. He exits out of one of the side doors for servants, tucked back in a discreet corner of the room. The alcove is dim and smells like wet slate, and around the corner there’s a long hallway that leads to the servant’s stairs. The carpet is bare all the way down the middle.
He stops and tries to catch his breath, leaning hard against the wall, dropping first his shoulder, then his good hip, and then his entire thigh, until he’s forced to admit that his legs won’t hold his weight anymore. His vision is starting to dim in the corners of his eyes, and there’s a roaring sound that won’t let up, the same noise that missiles makes as they whistle along overhead under a bright, clear sky. Once, he'd thought he’d die in mud, but he supposes the back stairs of a grand house to which he beautifully belongs isn’t as far off either…
He comes awake to the sound of someone calling his name, though it takes him several seconds to piece together that the word – spoken with worried tenderness, and a familiarity he can’t place – is his name at all. Cool fingers are stroking gently along his temple, the only point of comfort in his body at the moment. He blinks, surfacing into himself.
“There you are.”
Thomas has learned that a body is a thing made to bear pain – learned it first under the sharp, open-handed slaps his father liked to bestow upon him, wherever his skin could pink, and learned it again when he was sixteen and the other lads on the street decided they liked his face best when it was being ground into a brick wall, or the filthy pavement, or memorably on one occasion, the front of someone’s trousers.
And he certainly learned it – memorized it, swallowed it, let it live inside of him – during the war, when boys with holes in their bellies the size of a man’s fist wept and died in the mud, like children’s toys forgotten in street puddles.
Still, the ripple of pain – lush and immediate – that strikes through him at the sight of Jimmy’s face bending towards him, pale hair coming undone from its pomade, knocks the breath out of him.
Jimmy’s fingers slide down to touch his jaw. “Thomas?”
Oh, he thinks. If there was a heaven, I knew I’d find you there, he wants to say, but he doesn’t. He can’t get his mouth to form the words properly.
“You’re alright,” Jimmy says, fingers still light on his cheek. Thomas can’t remember the last time someone touched him.
“I…” he begins, but the right words don’t come.
“I think you’ve a fever,” Jimmy says, shifting on his heels. “You’re burnin’ up.” He frowns. “Came on quickly, you seemed just fine at breakfast,” he says, sounding personally vexed.
Breakfast. Right. Thomas finds his voice. “Am I – am I dead?” He finds he wouldn’t mind so much, only - if Jimmy is here, then he must be dead too, and the idea fills Thomas with a horrible kind of sorrow, like his heart is a ship at the bottom of the sea.
Jimmy licks his lips, looking worried. “Right, c’mon, I’m putting you to bed,” he says, and he hefts Thomas up, one arm around his waist, the other coming up to hold him steady by his chest. The touch is easy, familiar, and Thomas spends the entire, shuffling walk to his room unsure of where to put his hands, watching Jimmy from the corner of his eye.
In his room, Jimmy drops him gently on the end of the bed, standing in the space between Thomas’ knees, hands on Thomas’ shoulders. “You’re looking a bit better already,” he says, considering Thomas carefully. “Color’s come up again.”
“Has it?” Thomas still hasn’t worked out where his hands are supposed to go. He drops them on his thighs. If he reaches out just a little, he can feel the rough weave of Jimmy’s wool trousers against his fingertips.
“You should’ve told me you were feeling ill,” Jimmy admonishes, brushing his fingers back through Thomas’ hair.
“You’re right,” Thomas says, eyes shutting for a brief moment. “Of course, I should have.”
“Well, now, I know you’re really feeling poorly,” Jimmy laughs. “Being far too agreeable. Get your kit off." He turns as if to step away.
Thomas’s hands are around Jimmy’s waist before he realizes he’s moved. He swallows. “Don’t leave.”
Jimmy’s voice is soft. When Thomas glances up, he can see a blush edging delicately up the front of Jimmy's throat. “You’re in a funny mood.”
“It’s.” Thomas swallows, throat clicking. “It’s the fever.”
“’Course.” Jimmy’s palm comes down and he pulls Thomas’ head to his hip, an electrifying movement that causes all of the hair on Thomas’ neck to stand up, but which Jimmy does casually, automatically.
They stay like that for several long moments, Jimmy’s palm on the back of Thomas’ neck, his thumb sweeping in slow circles. Jimmy sighs. “This is nice.”
When Thomas was very young, his mother had told him he was going to have a baby brother. She let him pick the name, and he’d chosen Leo, after the yellow cat that lived next door and begged scraps off of Thomas after supper. Too impatient to wait for the real thing, he’d conjured Leo out of his imagination, and they’d palled around for a few weeks. It’d made his mother smile, to see Thomas so eager for a brother, but then she’d gone away for a couple of days, and when she came back she no longer smiled, and there was no more talk of brothers. One morning Thomas woke up, and Leo was gone, a sliver of his imagination carved out of being.
Thomas presses his mouth, a wretched shape, to Jimmy’s hip. He pulls the taste of wool and sweat into his mouth. “I’m afraid you’re not real,” he breathes.
Jimmy leans back, a flash of something indefinable crossing his face, but he says nothing. He tips Thomas’ head back, lets his fingers fall along the soft skin of his throat before dropping to Thomas’ chest and beginning to undo the buttons on his shirt. He coaxes Thomas out of his clothes like he’s done it before.
“What – what if someone comes in?”
Jimmy laughs, but his eyes flick to the door uncertainly. “Everyone else is down at supper, Thomas.” He drops to his knees to remove Thomas’ shoes. “Besides,” he says, looking up at Thomas through his lashes, “it’s not like I’ve got my mouth on your cock.”
Thomas makes a sound, as sharp and unbidden as the crack of a branch snapping, but Jimmy only smirks. “Maybe when you’re feeling better.” He flips his thumb inside each of Thomas’ socks and pulls them off easily. “I liked…last time,” he says. His voice is casual, but the tips of his ears are suddenly red. He looks at Thomas, then looks away. “When you finished on me face like that.”
Thomas suddenly knows this is real, because even in his deepest and most secret fantasies, the ones that leave him panting and pressing his thumb into the scarred center of his palm, he couldn’t have imagined those words coming from Jimmy’s mouth. He feels hunted, pulse jack-rabbiting in his throat.
The silence lengthens. Jimmy still won’t look at him, and the flush – bright red - has crawled along the back of his neck. Thomas reaches out, cups Jimmy’s jaw. “Anything,” he rasps, “You can have anything you want, love.”
Jimmy’s eyes are wide. He kisses Thomas’ palm. “You should rest,” he says, voice soft. He stands.
“I’m not tired.” Has he ever really been awake, until this moment?
Jimmy hesitates, but then relents. “I’ll read to you. Just - lie down for me, will you?” He pulls the quilt back on Thomas’ bed, then fetches yesterday’s newspaper from the desk and situates himself against the footboard. The lamplight is soft on his brow, and his hair is the color of corn husks. It’s the most beautiful sight Thomas has ever beheld.
+++
In the morning, he wakes alone. The newspaper is back on the desk. Thomas feels something come unhinged in his chest.
There’s a particular singularity to the silence in his room, broken only by the hush of Thomas’ noiseless sobs.
+++
In the end, it’s simple. He gets a hall boy to tell Carson he’s still ill, then as an added precaution, gets a second hall boy to tell Patmore and Mrs. Hughes that he’s not well enough to eat and not to send anything up.
He keeps the wooden box in the back of his wardrobe. The glass vials inside make a gentle, rolling sound as he pulls it out and places it on the desk. Inside are eight neat glass bottles, a thin syringe, a length of rubber tubing. He reaches for the syringe, then pauses, stops to drag a comb through his hair. Better.
The injection site is livid, the skin around it starting to crack and blister. He ignores it, grits his teeth against the sting of the needle. Then he waits. The clock on his bedside table clicks forward one minute, then five, then ten minutes.
Panic and despair rise up in him like bile but he swallows it back. He runs his hands through his hair, thinking hard. What did he expect? Jimmy to materialize out of thin air in front of him, like a magic trick? That’s ludicrous, he thinks, hands trembling. He shoves the box back into his wardrobe.
The hallway is empty, though he can hear the sounds of a kitchen running at full steam below. He closes his bedroom door behind him and heads towards the men’s washroom, thinking to check there first, but it’s empty. He splashes cold water on his face, wills his hands to stop shaking, and decides he’ll have to venture further.
He’s standing at the top of the stairs when Jimmy finds him. “Thomas?” He turns, heart in his throat. Jimmy strides over to him. “What’re you doing out of bed?”
He must look a little wild because Jimmy, glancing around first to check that they’re alone, takes his hand. He’s standing close enough that Thomas can see a crumb of toast clinging to his bottom lip.
“I was looking for you,” Thomas says, chest tight.
“Here I am.”
“Yes,” Thomas says with wonder. Jimmy can’t stop looking over his shoulder, checking both ends of the hallway, so Thomas nods them back to his room.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Better, now.” Thomas leans against the closed door. “Last night." He pauses. "Where did you go? When you leave, I mean,” he says, digging his fist into his scarred palm, “where do you go?”
Jimmy frowns, watching Thomas’ hands. He steps forward. “I went back to my room,” he says softly.
“Your room?”
Jimmy reaches out and takes Thomas’ gloved hand in his, unsnaps the button at the wrist. “Yes, Thomas.” He steps closer, so that their feet are parallel, overlapping. “I didn’t want to.” He leans in and kisses Thomas on the jaw. “I’m sorry I had to leave.” He slips the glove off of Thomas’ hand and Thomas moans low in the back of his throat.
“Please -,” he says, gasping, as Jimmy raises his palm to his lips. He wants to say, please don’t go away again, please don’t leave me here alone, but he can’t get the words to form, not when Jimmy’s mouth is moving in hot circles over the center of his palm, tongue slicking along pink sheared skin. “Please,” he breathes, and Jimmy surges up against him, fitting his open mouth against Thomas’, suddenly desperate and wanting.
They move together the way saplings bow up towards the sun. Thomas is undone, gasping, wanton – but then, so is Jimmy. Perhaps it’s always like this with them, in any universe, in any timeline; perhaps it’s always like finding each other again after too long apart.
When Jimmy hitches his leg up around Thomas’ thigh, Thomas groans, a feral, instinctive sound, and turns them around. He pushes Jimmy to lie flat on the length of his desk and runs his hands along his thighs, encouraging Jimmy to wraps his beautiful legs around him.
Jimmy moans, flushed and panting. He lets Thomas circle his hips, grinding against his bottom. “Do it,” he says, voice urgent but low. “I want you to fuck me.” He grips the edge of the desk with both hands and pushes back against Thomas. “I want to come being fucked by your cock.”
“Christ,” Thomas breathes, hips snapping forward. He drops to his elbow and kisses Jimmy, hard. “You’re so beautiful,” he says, kissing along the edge of Jimmy’s mouth. “You’re so fucking lovely.”
Jimmy bares his teeth, something dark and alive in his eyes. He pushes his trousers down just over the curve of his arse. “Fuck me, Thomas,” he says, again, “I want to feel you for the rest of the day.”
Thomas sucks two of his fingers into his mouth at the same time that he’s working his trousers open. “Anything you want,” he says, words a memory from last night. He sets his fingertips against Jimmy’s opening, pressing gently there against the blush-colored skin, then he spits into his palm and slicks himself up. Jimmy reaches back and Thomas watches, feeling dizzy, as both of their fingers slide inside of Jimmy. “I want to make you feel so good, darling.”
Jimmy arches his back and Thomas spits in his palm again, then spits directly onto Jimmy’s hole, using his fingers to push the saliva inside of him. At that, Jimmy hides his face in the crook of his elbow and shudders. “Do it,” he says, voice muffled, knees pulled up and hitched to one side.
Thomas grips his cock in one hand and Jimmy’s thigh in the other and presses forward, watching the way Jimmy’s rib cage expands and softens as he breathes through the feeling of a cock fucking its way inside of him. Thomas strokes the soft, beautiful skin on his lower back where he's arched it away from the top of the desk. He feels the way Jimmy bears down on him as he enters him, and realizes, like a fist wrapping around his heart, that someone taught him this. Probably spread him out on a bed, or perhaps a blanket in the forest, hidden away beneath the trees, and kissed him – everywhere - until he was trembling and aching, showed him how to relax into it, how taking a cock could be as good as taking an arse, held him through it, and, when they were done, kissed each of his eyelids, told him he was the most beautiful thing in the world.
Thomas knows this because it's exactly what he would’ve done, the only way it could’ve gone, in any universe, any timeline, any version of this story.
Thomas closes his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them, Jimmy is looking back at him, eyes dark, mouth loose and red. He reaches over and puts his hand on top of Thomas’s knuckles. “You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted,” he says, voice brittle. “You’re the only person I’ve ever loved.”
Thomas kisses him, soft and slow and sweet, and when Jimmy begs him to fuck him harder, he does, one palm gently cupping his beautiful face.
+++
“You’ll come back – at the end of the day, right?”
Jimmy smiles, pressing a quick kiss to Thomas’ lips. “Course, I will,” he says, pulling his jacket on over his shoulders. “If I can get away before then, I’ll come sooner.” He slides off the desk and tries to hide a wince, but Thomas catches it.
“Jimmy, I’m –.”
Jimmy cuts him off. “Don’t – don’t apologize.” He runs a palm over his hair, smoothing it back. “Feels…indecent enough as it is getting buggered before noon, I won’t have you apologizing for it, too.” He smiles, though his eyes are a little tight.
Thomas frowns. “You’re not – indecent. You’re one of the only decent people I know, Jimmy.”
“Well,” Jimmy says, laughing a little, “you spent an entire year trying to get a crippled man fired, so I’m not sure your standards on decency are entirely to be trusted there.”
“Fair enough,” Thomas relents. He steps closer. Their chests are touching. “We’ll be indecent together, then.”
Jimmy hums, mouth a curved, pleasant line. “That’s more like it,” he rumbles. When he kisses Thomas, it’s like every bright and beautiful thing is alive at once.
+++
The next day, Thomas pulls himself from an empty bed, takes his injection, and finds Jimmy in the third floor guest wing, where he kisses him until he’s breathless and dazed. Afterwards, his fever gets bad enough that Jimmy forces him into a cold bath and threatens to call Mrs. Hughes, but Thomas knows it was worth it. Jimmy kneels next to him on the wet tile and Thomas touches his hand with cold fingers, shivering and smiling.
The day after that, he spends several fruitless hours searching the long halls and dim alcoves for Jimmy. The wall paper is interminable. Carson finds him in the kitchens and devotes a breathless thirty minutes haranguing him for shirking his duties. Thomas watches the shadows lengthen across the floor and wishes Jimmy were with him. He serves dinner that night and Lady Grantham touches his elbow and asks him if he’s feeling well.
The following day breaks open grey and rainy. Thomas takes his injection, refuses breakfast. Anna’s face is drawn when she asks him if he’d like a cup of tea instead. He smokes cigarettes, one after the other, and waits for the meal to be over. The halls are endless, and Jimmy is unreachable. At lunch, he takes a second injection. The pain in his hip is a bright, unknowable thing. He retches. Jimmy is waiting for him in the courtyard; he lights two cigarettes and hands one to Thomas, fingers brushing the back of his hand.
The next morning his fever sears and his pulse is spiky. He catches sight of himself in the mirror and flinches. His lips are bloodless. He takes his injection and finds Jimmy in the boot-room, polishing a pair of black brogues. Jimmy frowns at him, tells him he’s being insensible, won’t let Thomas kiss him. His eyes are wide and shiny. “I’m fine, Jimmy,” Thomas says, heart thundering in his throat. “I’m with you.”
+++
Baxter stops him in the hallway.
“I know what you’re doing,” she says. Thomas bares his teeth. She smiles.
“Well, you must be pleased with yourself,” he snarls, but it comes out somehow more like a gasp. He’ll do better next time, he thinks, but right now as it is he’s having trouble keeping his knees from buckling.
“It won’t work.” She’s looking at him, but not really seeing him. “Take it from someone who’s been down this path before – the light at the end of the tunnel? It’s not redemption, that’s for sure.”
He shivers, swallows. “I don’t know – I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She smiles at him, again, eyes kind. “You’re killing yourself, Thomas.”
He closes his eyes, tips his head back against the wall. “I can’t lose him," he says out loud, but when he opens his eyes she's already gone, too.
+++
His fever breaks sometime in the middle of the night. There’s a crack in the ceiling plaster, right above his head. He imagines it widening, splitting, opening up and swallowing him. Maybe one day he’ll wake up and find himself sucked inside the ceiling, into another dimension, maybe the one where Jimmy never left and he touches Thomas like a blessing. Wetness rolls down along his temple.
It occurs to him that he’s only stealing from himself, some other version of himself, no doubt a happier, brighter version who managed to find the one beautiful thing and hang onto it like his life depended on it. He wonders if that Thomas was a better person, smiled more, schemed less, or if his Jimmy was different somehow, grew up with a father who didn’t beat him black and blue and tell him that’s what happens to Nancy boys who hold hands with other boys.
He wonders if he could go back and find the moment, the one that peeled away from this one, but – would he recognize it? Would he see it for what it was and reach for it, catch it by the edges of its flitting wings, or would he be staring at the ground again as it passed by over him?
He presses his palms flat against his eyes, biting back against the sound in his throat. Then he stands and crosses to his wardrobe.
There’s one single vial left. He barely feels it as the needle enters his skin. He’s replacing the vial in the box when there’s a knock on his door. Of course, he thinks.
Jimmy’s wearing his pajamas and robe; he looks tired and a little sad. There’s a pillow crease along his cheek, and Thomas wants to press his lips there and kiss him. He doesn’t.
Jimmy looks at him for a long moment. Then he comes forward and puts his arms around him. “I was asleep,” he says, softly, sighing into Thomas’ neck. “I woke up suddenly and I -.” He stops, shaking his head a little. “I don’t know,” he says. He presses his lips to Thomas’ throat, barely a kiss. “I needed to see you.”
Thomas holds him; he can feel the fever spiking, like a living thing coming out of rest underneath his skin. Still, Thomas holds him, swaying a little under the bare overhead bulb. Jimmy’s hand comes up to cup the back of his skull. “You should rest,” he says, a little guiltily.
“Yes,” Thomas agrees. His hands are fisted in the back of Jimmy’s shirt, knuckles white.
Jimmy sighs, again. Thomas can feel his lashes against his skin. “Don’t -.” Thomas swallows. “Don’t fall asleep just yet.”
“I won’t,” Jimmy says, pressing his lips against Thomas’ throat once more. “I promise.”
“Jimmy, can you listen to me for a moment?”
Jimmy hums, drowsy. Thomas blinks.
“You are my most -.” His voice catches. He squeezes his eyes shut. “My most beloved.” He breathes. “In this life or the next.”
Outside, the sky is a deep, black, and unhurried expanse. Thomas holds onto Jimmy for as long as he can, feeling the weight of his body against his own, until suddenly he no longer is.
+++
The next morning, Thomas finds Baxter. He thinks he asks to speak with her, but his pulse is a thready, skritching sound in his ears and his throat hurts.
After he’s shown her the wound on his hip, vicious with infection, he touches the top of the wooden box with numb fingertips. He can feel his heart echoing in his chest. Goodbye, he thinks. Maybe in another time, or place.