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The hotel bar had been too bright, too proper, too quiet. Bolton had been seated for an entire three minutes before the discomfort swelling in his chest drew him up out of his seat and led him out of the hotel and down the street to a pub. In all of its crowded ruckus it feels more familiar and more safe than hotel formality.
He settles into the seat of his booth, the cushion exhaling behind his shoulders, as he watches men drink and jest and talk in their carefully calculated ways - a slap on a shoulder, a quirked smile and a sideways glance while another man feigns hurt at some especially personal jab, a laugh that sends someone leaning back dangerously in his chair. Regardless of their dress they still bear their uniforms in the carry of their shoulders, the tones of their jokes, the stiffness of their gaits. Even out of uniform they recognize one another, know one another with some effortless intimacy even as strangers. Sometimes it can be a comfort to know so well what one shares with a stranger. Mostly it serves as another reminder, lets one forget the war is over at all.
This, Bolton figures, is why he finds himself so much more comfortable in any space frequented by servicemen. He doesn’t drink like he used to, but still finds his way into some comfortable corner of a pub to listen to the chattering of dozens of other men trying just as desperately to to find room for home in their hearts again. Remembering how to be at home, he has found, is much more difficult than learning how to forget it.
There are plenty of things Bolton would love to forget that cling to him like the wetness in the air just after rain. Plenty of pain has sewn its way into his bones and his heart, and he can feel it so tangibly in the weight of his own body that he often wonders if his wife can feel them under his skin, like the ridges of clumsy stitching under a quilt.
At a nearby table a man - more of a boy than anything - tries to pull a much more worn-looking young man out of his seat, nodding pleadingly toward a dartboard, begging with words Bolton can’t hear. The older man shakes his head, a strand of blond hair falling out of its carefully combed place and over his eye, though he doesn’t seem to notice it to push it back.
The seated man firmly refuses the younger man’s insistence, shaking his head as the lines on his forehead grow more prominent. He stiffly stands up and taps a note down on the table and the other men look up at him and nod their goodbyes somberly. He claps one man on the shoulder and turns to leave. As he turns, Bolton sees that the side of his face shines with scarring, his eye clouded enough to be a lighter blue than the other. Bolton watches as he weaves his way through tables toward the door, his head down. Before the door swings shut behind him, Bolton sees him pause as he shoves his hands into the pockets of his jacket, tilting his head to look up at the sky before the door swings shut.
The blond's table settles gradually, and in ones and twos slowly trickle away.
Bolton sits back, listening to the arrhythmic percussion of conversation around him. He goes on to let his mind wander in a way he only can in places like this. He finds it easier to think of home when he feels that he's still away. It reminds him of where he should really be - attending his meetings, eating with his family more evenings than not, sleeping comfortably in his own bed. The comfort of home has yet to catch up to him.
Trapped was never something Bolton had felt inclined to feel, not when his entire career demanded a lack of claustrophobia, but being home left him feeling as if he is onboard on a meandering ship over which he has no command, and with a destination completely unknown to him. He still puts on his uniform, still fits himself into the rigidity of military life, but the destination has changed with no end of a war left to anticipate.
The only time he has ever felt quite so helpless, he believes, was on that godforsaken beach, with no choice but to keep his head up while men behind him were torn apart by bombs he could not stop, on sand they could not escape. There was something in it all - in being stood so far away from targeted masses, largely alone and considerably safe - that left him feeling dirty in a way he doubts he can ever wash out. Losing ships and men in two oceans, something that should be the worst thing he could have to carry on his shoulders, pale in comparison to standing on the mole.
When he finds himself in those quiet moments alone that come so frequently in peacetime, he feels his chest tighten around a swelling feeling of guilt, feeling negligent of something, anything, and he can never place what exactly it is that he fears he is neglecting. There is no silently gliding Spitfire to offer any respite, no matter how much he may summon the image for some sort of comfort. So he surrounds himself with others, as simply having company occupies him enough to relieve him of the sense of some looming unfulfilled duty. And so he finds himself surrounded by strangers, alone in pubs and bustling streets.
“Pardon me,” a voice comes up behind Bolton, and he looks up at its owner, a clean but weary-looking man nearly dwarfed in the bulk of his jacket, “I’m sorry, do you mind? There’s nowhere else to sit.”
“No, no, go right ahead,” Bolton says, nodding to the seat across from him, and the man sits down stiffly.
“Thank you,” he says. Bolton had long ago refined the skill of distinguishing one nondescript man from the rest. This man, no more or less distinct than any other, is weighed down in Bolton’s vision by some other familiarity that Bolton can’t place.
“Of course,” Bolton says.
The man lights a cigarette, offers one to Bolton, which Bolton politely declines. His lips are full enough to give the impression of a perpetual pout, giving his face some inherent mournfulness, detailed by the lines around his mouth and the weariness around his eyes.
Bolton extends a hand to introduce himself only by his name, and the man’s grey eyes flicker with surprise at the introduction. He reaches out and takes Bolton’s hand in a warm and tired grip.
“Farrier,” he introduces himself in return, guardedly, and Bolton doesn’t ask for more.
“Pleasure,” Bolton says. Farrier nods. He taps his lighter on the tabletop thoughtfully, and his fingers are marled and stiff, fingernails nearly brittle. Bolton looks at the weariness of Farrier’s face again, following the lines that are too deeply set for his age, and then Bolton understands. “Have you been home long?"
Farrier looks up from his own hands. A few white hairs shine slightly in his eyebrows.
“A few months now,” Farrier says. Bolton nods solemnly.
Farrier taps his lighter again as if he’s thinking of something to say, but he doesn’t speak any further. He looks up and cranes his neck to scan the pub, brow creased downward, his eyes intent as if he expects to find something.
“Can I buy you a drink?” Bolton asks, though he himself isn’t drinking - his glass is full and sweating on the table in front of him - and Farrier looks almost startled before he shakes his head.
“No, thank you. Not tonight.”
Farrier sighs, a long and tired sound, and looks up again to glance around the pub, resting an arm on the back of his seat this time. He returns to tapping his lighter on the table, rotating it between each tap. His fingernails are lined with damage, and the half-moons at the bases are faint and small.
Somewhere in the tapping of Farrier’s lighter on the table, Bolton’s ears start to ring above the din of the pub, and he swallows hard to try and drown it out, but the ringing continues like air raid sirens, like dive bombers over a dreary beach.
Farrier speaks, and though Bolton doesn’t hear the words it still shakes him from the deafening grip of his ringing ears. Bolton pulls his eyes from Farrier's hands, which have stilled around the lighter.
"I'm sorry?”
"Are you alright?” Farrier asks, his eyebrows furrowed, lining his face even further.
"I - yes, yes."
Farrier nods.
"Looked like you were about to drop off."
“Oh, I'm sorry," Bolton says.
"It's alright," Farrier says.
The silence between them, Bolton realizes with a glimmer of amusement, resembles something similar to men talking shop, speaking with so much familiarity that the need to impress or explain is nowhere to be found. The silence is something humble and understanding, like the silence that falls between men who have grown and aged alongside one another and no longer have any need to speak.
Bolton might as well have been seated at the table with him since they was born, for how familiar it all feels, and for how much time passes with the silence.
Bolton’s heart settles, and he feels hopeful and once again equipped for the duties of normal life. He watches Farrier look up again and around the pub with that fleeting hope and expectation in his face.
“I should probably be going,” Bolton says. Farrier turns to him and nods. “Are you waiting for someone?”
“I…yes,” Farrier says softly, as if saying more than he meant to.
“I hope he comes around.”
“Thank you,” Farrier says, with the knowing and resigned polite tone of someone accepting wishes of good health for a fading relative.
“Good night,” Bolton says as he stands up and pulls on his coat, “and thank you.”
“What for?”
Bolton pauses again, not quite sure what exactly he feels so grateful for.
“The company,” Bolton says, though it doesn’t feel like enough. Farrier nods, blinking and looking slightly puzzled, and settles back into his seat with a sigh. “Good luck.”
“Thank you,” Farrier nods. Bolton watches his face a moment longer, praying for some hint about his familiarity, but surrenders and finally turns away, weaving through the tables toward the door. He steps out into the damp evening once again, this time feeling slightly closer to home.