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Richard runs his forefinger down the seam of Thomas’s glove. The pressure is soft in a way that Thomas can’t compare; it’s like nothing he’s ever felt before, the gentle sweep of skin on fabric.
“What happened?” Richard asks, his voice low as he continues to play with Thomas’s hand. Richard splays his fingers out, brings their palms together, runs his thumb along Thomas’s life line. He seems fascinated and Thomas doesn’t want him to stop.
They’re sitting on a picnic blanket in a small clearing near Richard’s childhood home. “It’s always been my secret place,” Richard had said when he invited Thomas on a visit to see his parents. “No one knows about it but me.” It had sounded like a promise, his voice low over the telephone.
Now they’re quiet. The words catch in Thomas’s throat as he remembers the bullet tear through his skin and the ensuing relief that his plan had worked. He’d thought about what he’d tell Richard if the other man had asked; Thomas found himself wondering constantly about what Richard would think of him. In his letters he’d told Richard about his past, about all the reasons why Richard wouldn’t want to write to him anymore. In every response, Richard had told him not to worry.
Still, Thomas had never told anyone the truth about his hand. He wants to and it scares him. But that’s the hold Richard has—he’s told Richard so many things he’s done, so many things he’s said that he’s never told anyone before. Often when he’d written letters, Thomas had filled the page with words before he’d realized what he’d written.
He knows it’s because he’s never been himself with anyone before. It was close with Ms. O’Brien and now with Ms. Baxter, but he can’t really be himself, not if he has any sense. But here is a man sitting before him to whom he can say anything. The feeling is intoxicating.
“I was a medic in the war,” Thomas starts. “I volunteered early, hoping to avoid the front lines. But I didn’t. I was in the trenches for two years.”
He feels Richard squeeze his hand as he talks, finally saying out loud horrors he’d never wanted to give voice to. He doesn’t have to tell Richard what it was like, as the other man had served in the war as well. Still, he finds himself describing in great detail everything he’d seen, the friends he’d made who later got shot in front of him, or worse. Some he could save, some he couldn’t.
“Finally, I couldn’t take it. If I couldn’t get out, I’d rather be dead,” he says, his voice hushed. “That wasn’t living. It was hell. So one night I…” He pauses, his chest tight with anxiety. He feels his heart thumping against his rib cage, wonders if Richard can hear it too. The man looks at him with a soft expression, one he looks at only Thomas with. It gives him the courage to continue.
“One night I held my lighter in my raised hand and a German soldier shot it to hell.” He can’t look at Richard as he speaks but he anchors himself with the feel of Richard’s warm hand around his. “It did the job and got me out, but my fingers aren’t what they used to be and it aches more than it doesn’t. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, though.”
Richard pulls Thomas’s hand into his lap, beginning to tug at the white material of the glove. “May I?” he asks, going slow so that Thomas can object if he wants to. He doesn’t.
Richard slides the glove off, exposing the wound below. It’s all gnarled scar tissue now, an angry red hole that will never go away. Somehow with all his clothes on Thomas feels more naked than he’s ever been.
Richard traces the edges of the scar, feeling the rough skin there. Thomas doesn’t feel much, just pressure where Richard touches him. The touch is so gentle, something he never thought he would experience. He knows he’s been touch-starved; he just never realized how bad it was.
“Does it make me a coward?” Thomas asks around a lump in his throat.
Wind rustles through the leaves of the trees around them. Richard kisses the back of Thomas’s hand, over the mutilated bullet hole.
“You’re not a coward,” Richard whispers into the skin. He turns to look at Thomas, his eyes bright with something Thomas can’t read. Richard’s other hand comes up to cup Thomas’s cheek. “In fact, I think you are very brave.”
Richard leans closer and without hesitation Thomas captures the man’s lips with his own. They lock together with an easy slide, like they’ve been doing it for years instead of months. Thomas’s heart is thumping wildly against his rib cage and he’s half-worried it might pound right through his chest. He wonders if Richard can feel it. Thomas’s hand on Richard’s side tightens.
A bird sings overhead and they break apart, breathless and gasping. Richard is so different from any man Thomas has ever been close to; the Duke was fun in a demented way and Jimmy was a good friend but nothing more, never anything more. But Richard makes him feel light all over, makes him feel brand new in a way he didn’t think was possible.
“Believe it or not, you’re not the first person to tell me that,” Thomas tells Richard as he tries to slow his pounding heart.
Richard smiles wide in that way he always does around Thomas, all teeth and rosy cheeks. “I believe it,” he answers, threading his fingers through Thomas’s, smooth skin brushing against mottled scars. It’s true that Mrs. Baxter had told him before that he was brave but he hadn’t agreed with her at the time. Now, though, with Richard’s warm hand against his own, he feels more brave than he can ever remember. “I believe it very much.”