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There is tea on the kitchen table for Edward when he ambles back into the cottage. There is bread piled onto brilliant white china. There is warmth from a dying stove. There are dust particles flitting and scarpering away from the coat he swings onto the brass peg. There is a frost still clinging to the other side of the window, staring into the low sun, daring its gentle wrath. There is Thomas running his hand over a crease in the tablecloth at Edward’s place. There is a smile only for Edward. There is a hand to Edward’s cheek, there are stains from the silver cloth, there are dots of jam, there is a gentle pinch at his ear. There is a Good Morning, My Love. There is Thomas.
Edward’s spectacles will not stay out on the bridge of his nose when he glances down at the opened letter by his plate. He thinks he can slide them back into place before Thomas notices; he is a more hopeful man these days. Thomas has spent a lifetime in room corners and at the sides of people with duller perceptions than he. Thomas sees everything.
“If you did not have quite so straight a nose, Ned…” he smirks - teeth hidden, never cruel - as he sits, and Edward joins him, prepares for the repeat of last night’s lecture. He enjoys it.
He thinks on how he is always Ned to Thomas but never in his own mind. He won’t allow himself to deserve that. It is Thomas’s embrace for him.
“I told you, Mr Woodruff down in the village will adjust those things properly for you. Won’t you let him try?”
Edward is spreading butter across a crust. The knife doesn’t glisten quite like the strands in Thomas’s hair. He pauses to lick at his own thumb because he knows Thomas likes that.
“I’ve already been out for my walk today, my dear. And it’s rather cold. You wouldn’t want me stamping frost back into the house again, would you?”
Thomas never falls out of Edward’s rhythm. There has been no silence between them since they were handed back the luxury of one that didn’t mean an endless plain of grey death. The thought of it barely registers as a memory anymore. For Edward, it is no more than words on the page of a discarded book on a hidden shelf. Something written two decades ago by someone else that may as well have not happened to him at all.
“My darling, last night you told me you had not felt the cold in twenty years,” and he is still smiling. Thomas has spent a lifetime in room corners and at the sides of people with closed off attentions. Thomas remembers everything.
“So I did,” Edward rumbles, pretending to ponder on the matter. “Every day I thank the lord for giving me the gift of your wonderful memory, my dear Thomas.”
The lines at Thomas’s eyes etch further down his face now. Edward has left the bait in front of him and he waits for Thomas to pick it up.
“Now Edward, you had your pick of eligible navy men, did you not? Did Sergeant Tozer never appeal to your delectable appetites?”
Edward winces. He lets Thomas win this one. “Good lord, Thomas, not even the most soused, godless miscreant could conceive of any sort of…narrative where I would be enticed by that man.”
Thomas laughs as he pours their tea. There is a chip in the teapot’s spout. Edward considers agreeing to the visit to Mr Woodruff so he can buy Thomas an entire new tea set.
“There’s a letter for us, from Elizabeth,” Thomas draws him out of his reverie with a nod down at the neatly folded sheet of paper fluttering gently with the window’s draft. “I do believe we’ll be entertaining visitors soon.”
Edward holds the letter in one hand and the last of his bread in the other. There is butter on his thumb. Thomas is watching. Edward will make him wait until he has finished reading the letter.
His sister’s handwriting loops in perfect straight lines with the confidence of someone who has never had to address questions of their very being. Edward has long found he can no longer resent that about her; they have the same freckles, the same eyelashes, the same breathless fondness for nature that leads them off on rambles with her three daughters. She writes of their excitement at seeing Teddy and Tommy soon and Edward can already hear their shrieking giggles when he takes them to the lake on his morning strolls, when he shows them the diamonds in the ice and lets them press gently against it with their shoes as he grips their little hands.
“They’ll want to hear more stories, Ned,” Thomas is bringing him back again. Edward daydreams often but he doesn’t need to stay there long when Thomas’s arms are always open to him. “More about our adventures.”
Edward snorts. “Perhaps I’ll invite Francis and James up for tea, they’ll keep them entertained.”
Thomas clasps his arm suddenly, clutches at his own chest with his other hand. “Ned, not one of us has long enough left to live to hear every one of their tales!”
“We are quite on the way to matching them, Tom!” Edward pretends to be indignant and expects a chuckle in return. He isn’t given one right away. He thinks he might be misjudging the tone as he continues, quieter now. He finds, after so many years, he still can’t quite pull himself away from the grasp of melancholy in time. “We have been lucky to have those stories to tell, wouldn’t you say?”
Thomas’s breathing becomes slower, deeper. He tightens his grip on Edward’s arm. The sun, the tea, his hand, are all so warm.
“Sometimes I feel as if…we’ve been given so many chances, Ned. So many lifetimes. In the…the north, and here. And away from here. And before all of this.”
Ned places his other hand over Thomas’s. It’s his turn to guide Thomas home.
“And we always end up back home, love. I’ve made a lot of terrible, ridiculous decisions, but I’m here. With you.”
Thomas leans his head forward and slowly rubs his cheek against Edward’s shoulder. “I know. We’ve had so many strokes of luck.”
“Surviving up to now hasn’t just been luck, Tom, it’s…” Edward licks his lips, draws a breath. “It’s determination. It’s stubbornness. It’s the sun rising and setting and it’s progress and honesty and it’s realising a great many things about ourselves. It’s…imagination. Tea and bread on a winter’s morning. Soon it will be my nieces and the pictures they’ll draw for you. It’s this, on your nose,” and he punctuates the affirmation with a peck, tingling at Thomas’s laugh.
“Disgusting, Ned,” Thomas squeezes at Edward’s elbow before looking back up at him. “What ones shall we tell them this time?”
“I thought perhaps we could start with the time when we were pirates.”
“Yes, that would be a lark. First Mate Blanky and his peg-leg.”
“Long John Irving making the mutineers walk the plank.”
“He wouldn’t have been able to scare a mouse off the edge of a plank…”
“Something away from the sea, then. All the houses we’ve lived in. The gardens we’ve grown.”
“Mmm, when you were lord of the manor and I was your valet.”
“Your yearnings as you waited for me to return from war.”
“I kept myself busy, I’ll have you know.”
“When we were in another country, then. Somewhere in the mountains.”
“Francis and James wouldn’t have been able to reach us up there.”
“Ah, now this was in a time after some clever soul had built a carriage to carry us to the top. They’ll have had no excuse.”
“The future, then.”
“We are modern men of both adventure and leisure.”
“We still had our boyish good looks.”
“And that can, of course, be attributed to when you drank the blood of the youthful.”
“A much darker time in one of our many lives, that.”
“But we found the Passage on more than one occasion.”
“And we hid away and fooled everyone on the ship.”
“And everyone knew and loved us anyway.”
“And once or twice we never even met at all.”
At this, Edward halts his response. He can see Thomas out of the corner of his eye, reaching over and covering Edward’s gently gnarled hand, his thumb tucking under the meat of Edward’s palm. He’ll never let me wander too far away.
“Are we too old for more adventures, Tom?” Edward asks. Thomas lifts Edward’s wrist to his lips. They pass the soft, thumping caress of life back and forth into each other’s skin.
“There is still a great deal I want to see in the world, Ned. There will be more. We are allowed to have that.”
Thomas is quiet in his reply until he sits up, the sun dawning on his beautiful, lined face. “Sitting around here all day won’t help that now, will it! Shall we start with the adventure of the fixed spectacles?”
Before Edward can react, Thomas is hauling him to his feet, there is a whirl of coats and gloves and scarves and boots, there are grumbles and laughter and before they get to the end of the garden path Edward knows there will be a kiss.
In their holly bush, the blackbirds are shouting and arguing over berries. In the frost carpeting the grass there are dainty paw-prints and piled mounds of frozen mud. There is moss embracing the pile of stones intended to fix the gap in their wall behind the dormant potato patch. At the gate the wood whorls and knots and the spiders will be warm and content in the rotting gaps. Beyond that there are fields, and hills that go beyond the sky, and the sea, the sea where Edward and Thomas were reborn for each other, and then after that there is more than they could ever wish to fit in one lifetime.