Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

My Dearest Simon,

It's been three days since I ran from you.

Three days of self-flagellation and doubt.

Three days of regret, of what-ifs. Of seeing you there, within my grasp (me within your grasp). Of reliving every moment, sometimes through my eyes, sometimes through yours, and wishing more than anything that I had chosen differently.

But how could I?

We can't have this. I've always known it, even when there was no this to have. (Who do I think I'm fooling? There has always and only ever been this.)

I thought Oxford had ruined me. I was wrong.

You've ruined me. You and that smile and your curls and those fucking shoulders and your hands on my lapels and my hands over your ears and my name in your mouth and your mouth—

God, Simon, your mouth.

Your mouth on mine, where it belongs. Where you belong, where I do.

I don't know if you slept. I didn't. I haven't.

I was sick at the thought that I left you there, alone, in that storm, in the dark.

I was afraid for you.

I knew you would blame me, I hoped that you would. It is my fault. You needed my support but all you got instead was my cowardice.

I don't know how to be around you without loving you. Without wanting you. You don't want this, Simon. You don't need it. Your life is already in upheaval. I have no right to place my needs on your shoulders, no matter how broad they may be.

I spent the night pacing in my room, convinced that I had finally succeeded in killing my happiness. I had expected it. I've never believed I deserved happiness.

You, Simon, would make me happy. You would make me so happy.

I know you can't see your own worth, that you have learnt to measure your value only through the eyes of those who have abandoned and exploited you. We are taught from our first days that our worth lies in the things we cannot control: our names; our families; our fortunes. Everything I have and never did a single thing to earn. You were made to think that you didn't matter because your material worth has never matched your moral worth. And the world went along in the injustice.

You have fought your way to earn every scrap begrudgingly given and still you cannot see your value, your strength. I have never worked for anything, and still you look at me like I could ever deserve your affection.

The world has been cruel to you, Simon, and I am a cruel man. You cannot truly want what I offer, which is little more than a rope around your lovely throat.

My aunt Fiona would mock me for being overdramatic, but I've no reason to believe I will be offered more than one reprieve. I've done nothing to earn it.

It broke my heart to flee from you yet again, but it would break all of me and more to lose you in that way.

If life has shewn you anything, it has shewn you that it has no mercy.

A mother full of love taken too soon.

A neglectful father raising an army of children instead of a son.

A valuable commission bestowed for the very heroics that left your nerves in a state unfit to execute your new duties.

A family recovered too late to deliver the succour so needed in your most vulnerable years.

A man who loves you more than his own life, but not more than yours.

Will you ever be able to think of me without that hot, sharp anger that simmers just below your skin? I have felt its burn and sting.

I don't know if you'll ever forgive me, but I don't think I'll ever forgive myself. I knew better. I tried to be stronger than this. I tried to stay away from you (I tried to run away from you), but I've never been that strong. You're more than I can stand against. You're everything.

You drew me in and I went, willingly. I knew I'd be burned and I went anyway, because I wanted to. I wanted you. You're a good man, Simon. I know you probably can't see it, but you are. Far better a man than I've ever known.

I know our time is drawing short and I will have to let you go, but I will always be grateful for the little we got to have. It's more than I ever let myself hope for. And I'd like to end it this way, never having known more. I can't put myself through losing you if I actually know what I'm losing.

I suppose that's the way it's always been for me. I lost my mother before I had a chance to know who she was. I lost my father that same day. The man who's left is still a stranger to me and probably always will be. If he let me in, he'd have to let in all the parts of me I got from my mother, but more than that, all the parts of me I got from him. Malcolm Grimm isn't equipped to look into a mirror and meet himself. He'd have to confront his mortality. Men like him can't afford to acknowledge their humanity; it makes them weak.

I am that weakness personified: all the love he had for my mother; all the hope they placed in me for the preservation of the family; all the pain he felt in her loss; all the ways he's failed me as a father; all the ways I've failed him as a son.

This is why we've both been content to ignore each other all these years. We can't face what we see in the other.

And now that mutually beneficial avoidance has come to an end. I don't fool myself in believing that Father called me home because he has any genuine interest in my life, beyond the ways in which my behaviour reflects—poorly—upon him.

If he thinks that I will be swayed to compromise myself by a mere 40,000£, he certainly does have a very low opinion of me indeed. Not only would it be unfair to me, it would be quite cruel to the unsuspecting miss to relegate her into a misery of resentment and neglect.

It would have been different with Welby, of course. She has never suffered under any illusions as to the kind of man I am. (I have.) It would certainly have made both of our situations easier to weather, but I admire her strength in rejecting that route, even if I know it now leaves me in an even more precarious position.

Which is a terrible place to be in when one is summoned into Malcolm Grimm's study after his solicitor has just departed.

I didn't know where you were today. I didn't see you at breakfast, and when I looked for you on the grounds, you evaded my every assay. I was tempted to ask Dame Salisbury if you had left altogether, but the chances of receiving an affirmative for my trouble were too high to confront.

Simon, if you had left me without one final chance to drink in the sight of you, and bask in the gentle rumble of your voice, I should have considered it the greatest tragedy of my life. (Second only to flying from your embrace.)

I should have hunted you down just so that I could have one more glimpse with which to torment myself to the end of my useless days. (I wouldn't let you see me.) (I wouldn't want to cause you any more pain.)

I wished that I could have had you at my side in that moment.

"Come." Was the peremptory reply to my knock on Father's door.

I refused to be timid in my approach—best never to shew fear. Keeping my chin high and my shoulders solidly behind me, I strode into my father's study. He was, thankfully, alone.

"You've put me into quite a bind, Basilton," he began, without even bothering to look up at me. He was writing something into a ledger, but I couldn't make it out. I didn't feel inclined to dedicate much effort to the task: either it would involve me, in which case, I didn't want to know; or it wouldn't involve me, in which case, I didn't care to know. "Have you any notion how much trouble I've been to ever since this business at Oxford?"

Oh, God. This was worse than Miss 40,000£. Much, much worse. I thought we had an unspoken agreement that neither one of us would ever touch on Oxford. Ever.

"No, sir," was the most intelligent answer I could make as I sat down in the chair facing his desk. My voice sounded far meeker than I had intended. Damn it.

"I had a mind to bring you home from London immediately, but your mother convinced me that it was better for everyone if you were seen to be enjoying yourself. Hiding would have made you look guilty. Of course, I would have liked to believe that you would feel some modicum of shame, but that was hoping too much."

"If mother thought it best for me to stay in London, then why did you send for me? Sir." I added, just in case, and then hated myself for it.

His jaw muscle twitched. "I had it from Stainton that you were failing to deport yourself with anything remotely resembling discretion and I needed to see it for myself. And avoid you causing further damage."

Stainton, again. Bloody, fucking Philip Stainton. It was his son that had orchestrated the masterplot to expose me.  What gives them the right to think they know anything about me?

"I don't follow."

"You and the captain."

Fuck me.

"The captain?"

He closed his eyes and dropped his head. "I have lost all of my patience. I thought you were smarter than this, Basilton. That intrigue with the research fellow. Keeping that sort of filth in your room, where anyone could find it. Running around with this Salisbury, meeting in dark theatre corridors and…" he had trouble with this next word, "flirting brazenly in the fencing school in the middle of the day. What were you thinking?"

"I don't understand. If you thought I was…carrying on with Salisbury, why did you let me invite him?"

"I didn't. That was all your mother and Lady Ruth's doing."

"Why did mother allow it?"

"She seemed to think I was being unreasonable in passing judgment based on Stainton's word alone."

"Have I done or said anything in the time Salisbury has been staying here that has led you to make this accusation?"

"To be frank, it's everything you haven't done."

"What?"

"You never look his way, or speak to him. I would have believed that the whole thing was fabricated in an effort to make us look like fools, except that Captain Salisbury definitely looks as though he knows you, Basilton. He can't seem to keep his eyes off of you for a whole minute."

"I-I can hardly be held responsible for another man's actions. I cannot control who the captain chooses to look at."

"The captain is just the sort of opportunistic sort to attempt something and then entrap you for a fortune in order to save your hide."

"What?" I was absolutely horrified at his implication and utterly incensed on your behalf. "Salisbury is the last man alive who would hatch a scheme to extort money out of me—out of anyone. He is the most decent—"

"Are you having an affair with him?"

"How can you ask me that?"

"I am your father."

I felt like I was burning alive from the inside. Maybe I would turn to ash, maybe I would rise anew. All I could think of was you. Perhaps Shepard doesn't have faith in me to defend anyone's honour, but by God, I was going to defend you. And I was going to defend myself, because you see something in me, Simon. You see me for who I am and still you want me. You want to fight for me. You want me to be better, and I want to be better. For you. You make me want to be better.

"What I do in my private life is none of your business. I don't owe you or anyone else an accounting. And Salisbury owes you nothing. He risked his life to fight a war he didn't believe in so that you and I could rest assured no one less fortunate than us would get the wrong idea about who should be in power."

"You will not speak this way in my house—"

"This is my house. Has been since February and I've generously allowed you to continue occupying it without calling into question the changes you've made or the expenses you've incurred."

"I have been doing everything in my power to keep the estate running while you caper about London embarrassing the whole family. What you do reflects on all of us."

"You mean, it reflects on you."

"I mean it reflects on all of us. If you won't spare a thought for your own neck or your mother's feelings, think of your sisters. Think of how this will affect them. Your willfulness will ruin more than just your life. I had thought better of you."

"If you think my presence here is damaging to my sisters, then you should have left me alone in London, or else removed yourselves from my property. Perhaps you had better do, if you're so afraid of me."

"She would be so ashamed of you."

Ah, yes. There it was. I had been wondering how long it would take him to invoke the mythical She of my childhood, who was always there to remind me of all the ways I had failed.

Would she have been that kind of mother? Is that what I missed? A lifetime of always falling short of the mark. A ledger that has only my faults in its accounting, to shew me how far into debt I have fallen.

The tragedy of it is that I'll just never know.

But Father knows. He knows exactly what kind of woman she was. Perhaps he was right, and she would have been disappointed. Perhaps he was wrong, and he was using the idea of my mother to manipulate me into doing what he wanted.

If you were able to face down your father—the man who had held your fate in his hands and educated and conditioned you—and stand firm against his disappointment and strike out on your own path, then I, who has far less to lose, had no excuse but to take strength from you and refuse to cower before a woman who likely only ever existed in Father's mind.

"She's dead," I said. I'm not sure which one of us was more surprised. "And I can't live my whole life trying to fill the impossible expectations of a ghost! Nothing I have ever done has been good enough. I have never—never—stepped the slightest bit out of line. Do you know how difficult it was to carry the burden of this fucking name my whole life? The great scion of the Pitch house. The last hope for his line. It's just a name. It doesn't mean anything. I'm all there is that's left of it. And I'm tired. I'm just. So. Tired. Maybe Mother would be ashamed of me, I'll never know. But you're still here. And if you have something to say to me, I wish you'd just have the courage to say it yourself instead of hiding behind the imagined sentiments of your dead wife. What will it be, Father? Is this the day we're going to be honest with each other?"

He was quiet for a very long moment. I didn't know what to make of the silence. Father has never been noted for his garrulousness, but I thought that speech was worthy of some response.

I couldn't help wondering what you would have thought, Simon, if you had been there to hear it. (I wanted you there so badly. For entirely selfish reasons, of course.)

I had watched Father's emotions unfolding on his face as I spoke. Shocked, incensed, even betrayed, to something far less certain, something unidentifiable. Not an expression I had seen on Father's face before, and not much I had to compare it to.

"Basilton," he finally said, speaking on a sigh. "I have always been proud of you."

It would have been nice if he had ever thought to mention it before. I suppose I should simply be content that he said it at all.

"I am still proud of you. I know that you've never had much interest in the estate management and perhaps some of the blame lies with me in never insisting on it when you were younger. I don't object to you wishing to prioritise your academics. I don't object to you running about London with your friends. But when it comes to the matter of your discretion—"

"How have I been indiscreet? I haven't actually done anything to be indiscreet about."

He was so taken aback by that statement, he sat back in his chair, as if he were feeling the impact of my words hitting against him.

"I don't want to hear—"

I didn't want to hear. I didn't want to hear whatever the next words out of his mouth were going to be. I didn't want to hear what accusations he was going to lay at my feet. I didn't want to hear what new scandals I had stirred up while in Town, or brooding in the folly, or God knows where else.

"Nothing happened at Oxford," I told him. "Nothing happened in London. Nothing happened here. And nothing happened with Philip Stainton, though it wasn't for his lack of trying, or were you not aware that he's had it out to ruin my life since I rebuffed his advances at Harrow? Perhaps you should ask his father about that. Something tells me Junior never passed on that lurid little tidbit."

I don't think I had ever before seen my father's face turn such a florid shade as I did at that moment.

"This has nothing to do with Philip Stainton. He was only one of any hundreds of people who saw you together with Salisbury in London."

"Salisbury and I met on a handful of occasions quite by accident. None of our interactions lasted longer than a couple of minutes, save for when we sparred with each other at Angelo's, which is something I and every other man there have done countless times quite innocently with any number of opponents. Would you have had me ignore the captain and risk offending him and his family? Or should I have cut them all the moment we met under the assumption that someone would see the two of us standing in the same room and draw erroneous conclusions about our relationship? Please, tell me, Father, what I am to have done differently."

"I do not appreciate your tone, Basilton."

"I do not appreciate yours. Tell me what I have done to deserve your censure and I will apologise for it, but until you can do that, I think it is you who should be apologising to me. And, moreover, to Captain Salisbury, who has been completely innocent in this matter."

God, it felt good.

For the first time in perhaps my entire life, I held the moral highground. I knew that I was in the right, no matter what were my actual desires. More than that, Simon, I had your name to defend. And I will defend it. I will not allow anyone to speak poorly of you. I will not allow the name you have done so much to distinguish be slandered through no fault of your own.

You deserve more than that. You deserve to have your name adorned with laurels. You deserve to have odes written to you. Sonnets. Symphonies.

My father had no notion how to respond to me, how to deal with me. I had never spoken back to him before. I had never contradicted him or raised my voice. He was ill equipped for our confrontation to be two-sided and he was visibly struggling with how to handle my challenge.

After several very tense minutes of silence simmering between us, he dropped his head and let out a long, shaky breath. Still, he didn't speak. He planted his palms on his desk, pushed back his chair, stood, and strode over to me. Then, he laid his hand on my shoulder.

I couldn't recall the last time he had extended something like a fatherly gesture to me. Suddenly, it was I who was at a loss. I looked up at him, exceedingly uncomfortable with the height difference.

"I'm sorry, Basilton," he said, and I nearly lost consciousness from the shock of it. Had my father just told me he was proud of me and apologised to me on the same day? Maybe I had already lost consciousness. Maybe I was dead. "Perhaps I have been unfair."

I wanted to shout back perhaps? But I didn't, because he owed me more than that and I was going to wait until I got it.

"I worry about you."

"You do?" The words wrenched themselves out of me without my knowledge. It seemed such an impossible thing.

"You know I have never quite recovered myself after your mother's death. I care very deeply about Daphne, but your mother was the very centre of my world. I hadn't been prepared to lose her so young. I…" This part was hard for him. I could hear the strain in his voice, beyond that of humbling himself to talk about this in the first place. His pain was still fresh after sixteen years. "I look at you now, at the young man you've become, and I feel gripped with fear for your future."

"Wait. Is this why you've been lecturing me about discretion?" I could hardly believe it.

"Not the only reason. I don't approve of what you're doing, but I know I can't stop it. If you are insistent on continuing in this course, then the best thing I can do is to advise that you comport yourself with more restraint in public."

"Father, I told you. I've not done anything."

"Is that the truth?"

I stood up, facing him down. We're nearly the same height, but I had righteous fury on my side, so I tipped my head back to look down my nose as I spoke. "Perhaps one day I can hope to be so lucky as to earn your faith in my word. Until that day, I refuse to justify myself to you. If you want to disinherit me, I really wish you would get on with it, Father. I've other matters to attend to today."

His brow wrinkled. "What gives you the idea that I'm disinheriting you?"

"Aren't you? It's what everyone in Town says. If we are to take their words for veracity, then I believe you'll be throwing me out on my ear shortly."

"Oh, will you stop with the dramatics," he practically bellowed. "I am not going to disinherit you!"

"Then why all the meetings with your solicitor and the estate manager?"

He rubbed at his temples. I didn't often see Father betray his emotions (especially those that hinted at his fallibility as a human being), but there was something about this tête-à-tête that seemed to have him rattled.

"I have been trying to make provisions for the estate in the event that you attempted to dispense with it."

"What?"

"You've made your feelings on the matter of the property very clear, Basilton. I am determined that your apathy will not destroy the legacy that was handed down to you. I know you never responded to any of my letters, but I had held out the hope that you had at least read them."

"Your letters? I skimmed them." And then tossed them into the fire.

"If you had bothered to read them more closely, you would have seen that I was asking for your intentions with the estate. You are of age now, and your inheritance is yours to do with as you will. You gave me the impression you were aware of this fact when you threatened to remove your mother and your siblings from their home because you were unhappy with me."

"For fuck's sake," I muttered.

"Language, Basilton."

I had to move. I had spent so much time agonising over my certain impending doom after Oxford that I had completely missed the fact that I was not, in fact, being disinherited.

"But you hate what I am," I said, turning around to face him once I was already halfway across the room. I paced back over.

"I disapprove of how you're choosing to conduct yourself and your private affairs."

"I am choosing nothing, Father, except the course of least objectionable action. I can do nothing about my feelings or my inclinations, though I know you will find that impossible to believe."

"You are correct in that surmise."

"If your disapprobation is only for my actions, then you've nothing to condemn me for. I have rebuked every opportunist and rebuffed every advance. I cannot tell you if I resisted these things for your benefit, or for the idea of my dead mother, but I stand before you as sure in the innocence of my conduct as any man has the right to claim."

"Then cease this foolish flirtation of yours and take the rational course for once in your life."

"Do you still maintain that the only course for me is marriage and family?"

"I do. On this point, I will not waver."

"Then, Father, I am afraid we find ourselves at an impasse, because I, too, will not waver. I will not inflict myself upon some unsuspecting young miss. How would you feel if you discovered your son-in-law had taken in your daughter and her whole family in a sham to cover his own arse?"

"Language, Basilton."

"Would you relegate Mordelia or either of the twins to such an existence?"

"Now who is being emotionally manipulative?"

"I am trying to explain why you are wrong in suggesting marriage as any kind of solution in the only terms I think you will understand. I want you to think long and hard about it, Father. And remember that I am your child, too, and it would be just as unfair a situation to place me in as it would your other children."

"You are refusing marriage then."

"Yes."

He took a very deliberate breath, visibly struggling to maintain his composure. "And the property?"

"The Pitches will have no use for it if they are all dead. I'll meet with your solicitor and we can discuss provisions to be made to my named heirs."

"And you?"

"I will do as you have asked and comport myself in all aspects of public life with nothing but the utmost propriety."

I did not tell him that I had lost all inclination to ever appear in public again, or socialise with other humans, now that I had, as I thought, finally succeeded in driving you away. Any existence but that of the ascetic monk felt far too abhorrent unless it were to include you at my side.

"And privately?"

I clenched my jaw. "I will do as I bloody well please and not answer to anyone about it."

And with that final word, I walked out, only to find myself colliding with you yet again.

Are we so drawn to each other that we cannot avoid these collisions? Is gravity itself conspiring to bring my downfall?

"Baz!"

How is it, Simon, that you could still look at me that way, with hope and eagerness in your eyes after everything I have put you through? How could you speak my name with something that sounded like relief and affection and surprise and excitement all rolled up tidily into one syllable and three letters? It's unfair. You still have the advantage of me. (You will always have the advantage of me, I think.)

"What are you doing here?" God damn it. I don't know what's wrong with me. Why I can't at least try to keep up a guise of civility around you. Why I always have to twist my pain into yours.

How many times have I opened my mouth only to watch that light in your eyes dim and your face fall in an instant?

"S-sorry. I—"

"I only meant that I thought you had gone."

"Oh! No, I-no. Wait, gone where?"

"Just gone."

"I took a walk into the village with Shepard to post a letter to Pen. Needed the exercise."

"And how is Penelope? You'll be seeing her soon, won't you?"

Were you thinking of that night in the folly when I held your head and asked you to tell me about her? I was.

"I'm not sure, actually. I want to. Depends on where I'm going to go after I…leave."

Don't leave. Then you won't have to go anywhere.

"Have you heard from her? How is she amusing herself without you there to read to?"

"Oh, uh. She's a bit excited. She thinks she's found someone who's willing to publish her under an alias. Did you know her parents are authors? They've written books together. Religion and politics, mostly. Penny's read them to me, but my mind wanders, so I'm afraid I never absorbed much. Anyway. They've got five books between them. I think Penny's trying to compete."

"I wish her luck."

"Th-thanks. I mean, not thanks, from me. Thanks for her, I suppose. Or—yeah, thanks."

How is it that everything you say makes me want to kiss you? Even the most mundane of sentences? Even sentences that aren't sentences. Even words that are barely words.

"And what are you doing here?"

"Huh?"

"Lurking outside my father's study."

"Oh. Right. I-uh."

Would it have been wrong of me to reach out and stroke my fingers down that throat of yours, Simon? You did a shameful job this morning with your collar and your cravat. I wanted to put them out of their misery and undo them with my teeth and then I wanted to place my mouth onto your warm skin and tell you of all the ways you haunt me.

"L-Lady Ruth mentioned—she said that, well, that you were in a meeting with your father. A-and I just. I just wondered. I mean, I wanted to make sure that, you know, you were all right. If the conversation went all right."

"You came to wait for me to make sure I was all right?"

And there was that blush. I do wish it didn't hide your freckles that way, but I still know where they are. I know every single one.

"Sorry. I shouldn't have. But I know things have been tense between you, and I was just…worried."

"That was kind of you."

"It's all right, Baz. You don't need to try to be nice. I know you don't want me, and I'm not trying to bother you. I'll-I'll just go. Sorry. Again."

"Salisbury."

That look of hope in your eyes was like an arrow through my heart. (I'm already in love with you, Simon. You don't need Cupid's tricks to wound me.)

"I'm fine. Thank you for checking on me."

"Oh. Um. Yeah. Yeah. Y-you're welcome. How did it go?"

"Better than I had hoped." Because of you. "We reached an impasse, but we're talking, at least, and we've gotten much further than I would have thought possible for one meeting. And I don't think he's going to disinherit me."

"That's good! Baz, that's really good."

I wanted to hug you. I wanted you to hug me. I think you almost did, in your excitement for me. "It is good. I don't know if we'll ever be on better terms, but I think we've found a way to work together."

"I'm really happy for you."

Your smile could set the world on fire. It set me on fire long ago and I'm still burning.

You're too good, Simon. Too good for this world.

"Thank you. That means a lot to me."

"Yeah. Well. I should—"

No! I couldn't let you leave at that moment.

"What about you?" I tried, desperately.

"What about me?"

"Are you well?"

"Ah. No more thunderstorms."

"That isn't what I meant."

"I'm fine."

Why is it we only ever tell each other we're fine when we're not fine?

"Well. I'll g-go. Sorry, again. I wasn't out here trying to corner you or anything."

"I know."

"I'll leave it alone, Baz. I swear I will."

"Salisbury—"

"No, wait. I practised this and I'm going to say it."

"All right."

"The last few years, I've not been able to tell up from down. And mostly, I've been in a lot of down. Then, Lady Ruth shewed up, and we went to London, and I met you. And there's still a lot of down, but you're an up, Baz. You're one of the biggest ups I've ever had. That sounds weird outside of my head, but I think you know what I mean. I hope you do. And I know you don't want anything, you know, romantic, from me. I just. I hope I didn't mess things up too much the other night. I like you and I like having you in my life now. I'd like to be your friend, if you can look past the other stuff. I've never really had friends other than Penny. I'd like to have you. A-as a friend. If you'll have me."

"Yes, Salisbury. I'd like that."

How else could I respond? Certainly not by falling to my knees and clutching at your coattails and begging for you to love me. "I'd like that a lot."

Being friends with you will be like having everything and nothing all at once.

"That's good! I'll write to you. Oh, um. Would you mind if I wrote to you? I should ask first."

"I would love it if you wrote to me."

I would love it even more if you wrote me love letters.

"I'll see you at the dance later. I mean, because I'll be there and you will, too. Of course you will, it's your house and your party."

"Yes, later."

"I'll say good-bye now because it's hard in a ballroom. Good-bye, Baz. Thank you for being my friend."

I opened my mouth to tell you it was not good-bye, but then you were gone. And I didn't know how to bring you back to me. And I didn't know how to follow you.

I didn't know if I could do that.

Why is it that the thought of you and your passion gave me the courage to defend myself to my father, but the sight of you makes me feel so helpless?

I am helpless. Helpless against you.

I can't believe you waited outside my father's study for who knows how long just to make sure I was all right. None of my actual friends would have done that. (None of them did.)

Why did you? Why is it that you're always thinking of me before yourself? Trying to put me at ease the night we met when all I'd done was sneer at you and insult you. Trying to convince me I deserved better treatment from my friends while you were in the middle of some kind of nervous episode at the opera. Trying to make me admit to being a decent person at dinner. Trying to teach me the proper way to fight and then apologising for besting me at sabres. Trying to protect me from imaginary enemy fire. Trying to comfort me when I have need of it.

I am the greatest fool who has ever lived.

And now I must find a way to resign myself to this dawning reality—one without you in it, because I have driven you away—one in which I am the author of my own misery.

I suppose that were always going to be true. I have taught myself to be a veritable master in self destruction.

The proof of this hit me with renewed force and ruthless accuracy when you reminded me that I was meant to be hosting a party this very evening, every single one of my friends down from Town to be in attendance.

I should never have agreed to Daphne's scheme, but a mischievous part of me kept thinking of you, Simon, once more standing next to me, dressed in Dame Salisbury's latest fashion, not dancing, not talking, just existing, and torturing me with that existence.

And what exquisite torture it has been.

No, I take it back. You are exquisite, everything else pales in compare.

You look absolutely stunning in your grey coat and tails. I don't know who chose the silk for your waistcoat, but they have matched it perfectly to your hair and eyes.

I wish there were more life in those eyes tonight. I wish they were dancing with mirth again, the way they were when we sparred.

I wish they would look at me. Look at me.

I wish I wasn't such a bloody idiot.

I wish you hadn't decided to be decent and honour my wishes.

Will you honour my new wish?

Simon, I wish that I could have you for my own. I wish that I could be yours.

Do you think it will work?

I haven't even managed to cross the room yet, but I have a better view of you from where I'm standing and nothing will shake me from my spot.

You are not the only one whose notice I am trying to evade.

I know Father has been keeping a close eye on me all evening. I know he's uneasy about the terms I set for him. I appreciate his dilemma, but it is my life and my estate and I promised I would act with discretion.

Little does he know there is no way in which I can be indiscreet with you now.

Little did he anticipate that you would cease looking at me at all, let alone with anything like intention.

How do I cross this space between us?

Do I dare to do it when my father can see?

When the rest of my family can?

I know I must be the one. I put this space between us. I made this room impassable for you.

So, we stand, on opposite sides of the room, though we may as well be flung to the far ends of the earth.

I don't want to be separated from you. I want to collide with you, Simon. I want you to be my equal and opposite force. I want your momentum to pass into me and I want to move you as you have moved me.

It is not the force, nor the momentum, but the inertia which will be my undoing.

How do I get started when I do not have you to act upon me?

All along, you were pulling me and I was helpless to resist. And now you have me in your gravity and you will not release me. Let me go, Simon, or obliterate me, do not leave me in this suspension.

How do I get started?

How do we get started?

If I cross this room, if I find my way to you, what then?

What freedom will we have?

What life will we have but one painted in shadow?

It has been all shadows for us both. When I look at you, though, my dear love, I see colour and vibrance and dimension. How do I keep from dimming your light with my darkness?

How do I—

What is it? Ah. You recognise this song, do you?

I didn't ask for it to be played, but I see now that I should have. We met at a dance, and we will part at one, and all the while we've been dancing, haven't we? When I am lonely, I will play this song and think of you. (I could have done with something less festive, but I'll make do.)

I see the moment it happens break across your face like dawn breaching the heavens. I hear those final notes over the din of the revellers between us and I am thrown back to that moment in the Wellbeloves' drawing room. But this time, when our eyes meet, I don't move.

I won't move. I won't run. I won't.

Not this time. Not ever again.

Please, Simon, do this one more thing for us. Cross this divide one more time. Come and get me. Chase me down. Trust me. Want me. Love me.

God in Heaven, love me.

It's a foolish wish. Because I am but a fool. And there are two many people between us. The moment I lose your eyes, I know it's over. We've lost the moment, and I've lost you.

No, I drove you away.

I did.

It's too much. The oppression of the crowd is almost unbearable. The heat rises to engulf me on all sides, the room a ragout of bodies. I have to get out of here.

I have to find you.

I fly from the ballroom, I fly from the house.

There is nothing in there for me. That world doesn't want us and I don't want it. I want you. All I want is you, Simon.

"Snow!"

Where were you heading? To the rose garden? To the folly? To the stables to fetch a horse and be done with this charade?

I watch you turn to meet me. You look confused. You look happy.

"Are you leaving? Don't leave."

Don't leave.

"I wasn't. I just needed air. I needed space. I needed…"

"I'm sorry."

"You're sorry? For what? You didn't do anything wrong, Baz."

"I've been awful. I don't have to tell you that. You know I've been awful. I-I don't know why I ran away from you. No, that's a lie. I do know why I ran away. But I shouldn't have."

"It's all right, Baz."

"No, it's not."

"I don't want you to feel badly about it."

"Well, I do. I left you there in the middle of the storm, alone, to endure the thunder and the lightning and the rain and the dark."

"I was the one who tried to cross a line. It was wrong of me to think that just because you'd told me about yourself, about Oxford, that you would want…that. With me. I—"

"It wasn't wrong."

"Yes, it was and I shouldn't have done it. You were just trying to be kind and I turned it—"

"I wasn't trying to be kind. And I didn't run because I didn't want you. Simon, I want you. I have wanted you. And I never wanted to run. I-I—"

I lose all conscious thought as I feel a soft, swift brush of something warm and rough against the back of my hand. There and gone.

I look down at my hand, yours still outstretched, forefinger tentatively extended. I watch in stupefaction as you draw it once more along my skin, tracing the vein there, though the light is too dull for you to see that detail. My fingers cramp. My entire hand feels as though it's filled with needles, made of ice and set ablaze. Still, the sensation is not unpleasant. It sends a wave of heat through me, like my blood itself has decided to incinerate me at the magnitude of this one touch.

I hear myself let out a small gasp from my already open mouth. I've been gawping like an absolute simpleton.

Your finger stills at the sound of my intake of breath, then resumes its course more boldly, tracing an invisible path over my wrist, and up into the cuff of my sleeve. My entire body shivers at the contact; I feel as though every part of me is trying to chase you down, follow your path, find our way along together.

"Baz," your breath is a whisper, a question, a promise, an oath, a hymn.

I can feel myself tipping forward, and there's nothing I can do to prevent it. There's nothing I would do. You shift your hand, gripping me by the wrist, grounding me, holding me up as I fall into you. Then your hand is in my hair, and I'm not falling, you're pulling. You're pulling me into you and I let out a whimper when your mouth finds mine.

"Baz," you breathe again, against my mouth. Into my mouth.

Simon I think. Simon. It's the only thought in my head. The only word in my vocabulary. You are the only thing I know. You are my whole world.

Simon. Simon. Simon.

Hot like a second heartbeat through my body. Si-mon. Si-mon. Si-mon.

"Baz," you say again, your lips moving with mine. Softly, gently, but not tentatively. Never tentatively. Your mouth is only unsure when it speaks. It is anything but uncertain now.

Your hands are sure, too. So sure on me, holding me fast to you. I feel your fingers brushing through my hair as you angle my head to your liking and push your chin forward and my lips fall open and then I'm being utterly devoured.

I give in to dishevelment and abandon and do what I have been dreaming about since January: I trace my hands up over your arms and rest them upon your shoulders. It's glorious and heady and feels decadent in a way I cannot explain.

You're still pushing against me with that chin, so I push back and I hear and feel you groan in response. It makes your mouth tremble against mine and I nip at your lips and you smile into me and then my hands are in those curls and I'm digging in for purchase as you crush me between you and the wall of the house.

You've ruined another coat and possibly another pair of breeches.

True martyrs to the cause.

I'll soon be one of them.

I think I may be dying, but I won't stop.

I'll die kissing you. I will die kissing you. I will sacrifice myself to the slaughter.

I don't care.

I surrender.

Simon, my love, I surrender.

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"Where will you go?"

"Dunno. Don't care."

"You have to care."

"Well, I don't."

"What about the Army?"

"What about it?"

"Are you going back?"

"No. My uncle's going to find someone to buy me out."

"And then?"

"Not sure. I've never really had a plan for myself beyond the commission. Now that's done, I suppose I'll have to come up with something new. But I don't know what that is yet."

"I'd ask you to stay here, but I can't send my family away and my father would never allow this to go on under his nose. I think he's willing to pretend he doesn't know what I'm doing as long as he isn't made to think about it."

"The Salisburys want me at the Abbey. Penny wants me at home."

"What do you want?"

"You."

"You have me."

"Well, then."

"That's not an answer, Simon."

"Say it again."

"What?"

"Simon."

"Simon."

"Why does everything sound better when you say it?"

"Because you're obsessed with me."

"Baz."

"Is this our lot now? Doomed to an endless cycle of naming one another? It's endearing now, Simon, but I dare say the charm will wear off like the bloom of a rose."

"Hush and listen. I'm trying to ask you a question."

"Then hurry up and ask it already."

"I will, but you keep interrupting."

"Perhaps if I had some other means by which to occupy my mouth I would stay silent."

"You're incorrigible."

"I didn't think you knew what that word meant."

"Did I say 'incorrigible'? I meant insufferable."

"Go on, tell me how much you adore me."

"Baz."

"Yes, Simon? You wanted something?"

"Where will you go?"

"Ah, well, that is a thornier matter."

"Then we should talk about it, yeah?"

"Later."

"Why later? We need to sort this out. I don't want you running away from me again."

"I'm not going to run away again."

"How do you expect me to believe that?"

"Is my word not good enough?"

"Sure it is. Until you run again."

"I'm not going to run."

"All right. But what if you do?"

"Then you had better come and find me."

"That's not an answer."

"Why do you think I'm going to run now that I finally have you where I want you?"

"No, I've got you where I want you."

"It is certainly I who have you."

"That's completely wrong."

"Simon."

"Baz?"

"Why do you think I'm going to run away from you?"

"You mean, apart from all the other times?"

"I never ran away from you."

"All you've done is run."

"No. I was running away from the situation, not from you. I was removing myself from temptation. Now that I've succumbed, what is the use in once more trying to escape it? I shall happily drown here, in the arms of my siren."

"I'm not your siren."

"Of course you are."

"No, if anything, you're mine."

"Don't be silly. You're not the hero of this tale."

"I am the one who went to war abroad to make my fortune and return to discover a family I never knew I had."

"Yes, but I'm much better dressed."

"How do I know you're not going to run again?"

"I told you. I never ran from you. I don't know how you think I ever could."

"Don't you?"

"No, I don't."

"I'm basically worthless."

"You are the only thing in this whole world that means anything, Simon. I don't give a fuck who your parents were, or what kind of title you carry, or how much money you do or don't have. I come to you as nothing more than a pathetic husk of man, entirely empty, save for what you have given me. And you have given me everything. You give so much to everyone, just don't give too much, or you'll lose yourself. And I'm selfish. I want to keep you for me. And that's why I won't run."

"Because you're selfish?"

"Yes."

"Then where do you want to go?"

"Wherever you are."

"You can't just say that."

"I wouldn't be happy anywhere without you."

"But you can't just leave the estate, can you?"

"No, but I have other properties."

"You—what?"

"You never answered my question. Why do you think I'm going to run away from you?"

"You've seen me, Baz. You know what I'm like. It's not just some of the time. It's all the time. Any little provocation, no provocation. Fast asleep, in the middle of the night. When I'm able to sleep at all. I can't function most of the time. Nobody wants that."

"I do. No, I mean. I don't want that for you, but I want to be with you, with all that. I want to be with the you I know, not someone from before. I want you messy, not neat and tidy."

"Everything about you would indicate otherwise."

"I may be fastidious in my fashion, but that is because it is something I can control. There is very little in my life otherwise that I am able to manage. You know that."

"You did a fair job at managing to make my life sheer torture for the past three months."

"Good, then you know exactly how I felt."

"You truly want to burden yourself with all of my problems?"

"It's not a burden, but yes, I believe that is exactly how this sort of thing works, does it not? We lighten one another's load."

"That doesn't make any sense. If you give me some of your load, only to take some of mine, we'll end up with the same amount we started with, it will just be different."

"No, it will be lighter."

"How?"

"Because we choose it. We don't choose our own burdens, but we choose each other's. I'm choosing it, Simon. I'm choosing you."

"Oh."

"Are you all right, love?"

"I don't know."

"Simon?"

"N-no one's ever chosen me before."

"Well, I have, so you're mine now."

"Baz?"

"Simon."

"I choose you, too."

"You have excellent taste."

"Careful you don't make me regret my decision."

"I have much better taste."

"Is that how you pay a compliment?"

"I only speak truth."

"Baz?"

"Simon?"

"Say it again."

"Simon."

"No, the other one."

"Love."