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Drake takes his leave of the station house a couple of hours before the inquest.
Inspector Abberline eyes him from the office as he departs, understanding over reprimand. They have both been at their desks long before daybreak and Drake suspects it is for the same reason—that they might put themselves to their work and forget the demons that plague their sleepless hours.
The same cannot be said for Inspector Reid, whose own desk stands empty. Taking the leave he is owed, Abberline might say, except for the fact that they are both aware he is frequenting public houses more often than his own home.
Fred Best is lurking on the steps outside, pen and paper in hand.
“I have not seen Inspector Reid for a few days,” Best calls out, a knowing look in his eye. “I had been hoping to catch a word with him ahead of this morning’s inquest.”
Drake wishes he could crush him underfoot as one would a beetle in the desert. He does not care that his expression will say as much. There is no excuse he could offer that would not prove Best correct, and the editor knows it. He must know, too, where Drake is headed.
Let Best use it, if he wishes. Let his loyalty to Reid be displayed on the page for all to see. Let newspaper sellers cry it on the street. It is too late now to salt the earth and walk away.
Instead, every step he takes is one closer to Reid, as though closing the physical distance between them might also repair the rest.
These streets may be long-familiar to him, yet to walk through them now is to pass through a graveyard of memories. The vendor on the corner selling strawberry ices. A girl with red curls holding her father’s hand. Each and every one stands as a solemn sentinel to his loss.
For it is his loss, too, as selfish as it is to think it. Men like him have nothing to offer a child of their own. But with Mathilda by his side, in all her gentle innocence, he would almost be able to see himself through her smiling eyes. To see himself as something other than a weapon. If he closes his eyes, he can almost remember the feel of her little hand in his.
Their time together ends in the same way as on those sunny afternoons, in front of the same door, his hand leaving Mathilda’s to reach for the bronzed knocker.
He raps twice, misplaced hope over expectation. If courtesy alone could bring Reid to answer his call now, he would linger on the threshold all day.
A pause, long enough for the Inspector to reach the door if he were in any fit state to do so, then he swiftly picks the lock and pushes it open.
Reid’s hat hangs on the hall stand, his coat below. His wife’s do not. She is now more often to be found at church than in her home, a place that feels like an empty shell now that all the light is gone from its rooms. Drake hangs his in her place.
“Sir,” he calls, the word sounding as a pistol crack in the silence. There is no response, save for the echo of his own voice in the hallway and the tread of his boots against tile.
He does not have to go far in search of the man he seeks. His hand is barely on the banister, foot raised for the first stair, when a small groan issues from the parlour. Reid is slumped piteously against the cushions of the settee below the window, on the near edge of consciousness.
“Mr. Reid, sir,” Drake manages, drawing close. “Forgive the intrusion, but I thought I ought to call on you this morning.” Reid will not find any judgment here, but those gathered in the courthouse will not be so forgiving.
Reid does not seem to register the words. “Bennet?” he croaks, bleary-eyed and reeking of whiskey.
“It is I, sir.”
Reid grunts and then shifts, arm outstretched as though to reach for him, but even that is a movement too far. The motion throws him into nausea. It is a sensation that Drake is familiarly acquainted with.
There is a bucket at the foot of the settee and Reid moves for it, tumbling gracelessly to meet the floor with a resounding thud. For all it lacks in execution, it is clear that it is a practised move. Drake knows that, too, intimately—the planned descent into oblivion and the knowledge of where it will end. He moves to crouch beside him, supporting his head as Reid heaves below.
He is ill-suited to comfort—he is not built right for it, has never had any cause to offer it—but he reaches out before he can consider the action. His hand soothes over smooth silk, cautious at first, but Reid does not shy away from his touch.
Emboldened, then, Drake steadies his palm over the curve of Reid’s shoulder, his thumb stroking softly across the bunched fabric of his waistcoat. He does not mean for it to dip briefly under his shirt collar, only one layer of starched linen between their skin. Nor does he mean to brush a few strands of hair away from Reid’s face with his other hand, wild and reckless, fingers coming to rest against his temple. The closest to a reprieve he can hope for is that Reid is too preoccupied to notice.
After a while, Reid exhausts himself, pushing away to collapse back onto the settee. “How long before it begins?” he groans. If nothing else, he has not entirely forgotten his duty, nor abandoned the pursuit of it.
“Two hours, sir,” Drake says, helping him to settle more comfortably. There is not enough time for any restorative sleep to claim him, but a few minutes should suffice to allow Reid to recover from his nausea.
The worst may now have passed, but even rested, Reid is unlikely to be in any fit state to make it easily upstairs to freshen up. Instead, Drake fetches the pitcher and basin from the wash-stand and brings them down, along with Reid’s jacket from the armoire. Reid is still hunched on the settee when he returns.
“Mr. Reid, sir,” Drake says, rousing him from sleep with a careful hand to his shoulder. “We should be readying.”
Reid wakes groggily, accepting Drake’s proffered hand to haul himself to his feet. It is easier than raising him drunken from a public house bench, at least.
Drake busies himself with filling the pitcher, in laying out a towel next to the basin. He looks over to find that Reid has only managed to divest himself of his waistcoat.
There is no excuse now for not keeping his hands to himself, away from Reid—none that would stand up to interrogation, or in a court of law. Reid is slowly sobering, no longer distracted by illness. All his attention, all that careful focus, can only be brought to bear on Drake and his actions.
It is foolish, therefore, to reach out and remove Reid’s loosened cravat, to work on the buttons of his shirt. He does not dare to look up at Reid as he does it. The touch may yet be passed off as perfunctory if Reid does not see the truth of it in his eyes.
He slides both shirt and braces over Reid’s shoulders to gather at his hips, and if his eyes catch briefly on the skin exposed to him, he does not allow himself to linger. Yet Reid is only the second man to set a fire in him like this, and with Colonel Faulkner no longer in his life, he can think of no one better suited to his devotion.
“Come, sir,” he says, gesturing to the table, and, to his surprise, Reid follows willingly. He allows Drake to bend him over the basin with a gentle hand to his shoulder, careful to avoid the ridges of fresh scarring where the flames licked at his flesh. Drake’s fingers curl over his clavicle, thumb brushing the sweep of his neck, skin to skin. There is a purpose to it now, a utility—it does not ignite anything in him. If he tells himself that often enough, he may begin to believe it.
Reid braces himself against the table, no trace of reluctance or shame in the curved lines of his body. He seems content to let Drake pour the water for him, splashing over his hair and face, even as he groans against the chill.
Drake towels off his hair in a short, quick motion, and then allows Reid to pull away. He does not allow himself to miss the warmth of his skin.
He expects Reid to redress hastily, but Reid only passes a hand across his chin, long fingers catching over days-old stubble. It is a long way from hirsute wildness, but it will not do for him to be seen beyond these walls. Perhaps he had not trusted what he might do with a razor to his throat. The thought turns Drake’s stomach.
“Let me,” he says. It comes out softer than he intends, a forbidden warmth that he usually fights to conceal. Reid’s eyes catch his in surprise.
His gaze is clearer now, sharper, and Drake half-expects to be kicked back onto the street for the offer, but after a long, breathless moment, he relents. It may only be one quick incline of the head, but it is the first hard-won allowance Drake has been granted in months and he is not about to let it slip through his fingers.
Reid is seated before the basin when he returns with a fresh towel and the razor, brush and shaving soap from upstairs. He has not moved to cover himself, save for the towel around his neck.
Drake does not dare study his expression as he brings the soap to a lather. There is a weight to the silence, now, something that has not been there before, heavy and forbidden and blooming suddenly into life, a seedling turned to blossom within mere moments.
It is not about the act itself, or, at least, it shouldn’t be. It is something that any man has done to themselves a thousand times over, a service that every barber offers, and it does not carry this weight with it.
But this is neither of those circumstances, and there is no possible way he can ignore that fact, nor the importance of it. There is an intimacy about it that cannot be denied. Reid is entrusting him with his vulnerability, baring his throat with a defiance that seems to dare Drake to spurn him, as though he might observe him like this, and, even after weathering the worst of everything Reid has thrown at him, might at last find him wanting.
He does not. He could not, ever—not when the cause of Reid’s state, and the wounding words he has hurled in defence of it, are due entirely to the loss of his daughter, and his perceived failure as a father and protector of this city.
Reid would rather it remain unspoken, he knows. He is not yet ready to accept the absolution Drake is only too willing to bestow, but it is enough that he is allowing this, and Drake will not waste the opportunity to show him, even by action alone, that he is forgiven.
He lathers Reid’s face with determined strokes, steadying him with a gentle hand on his shoulder. He is aiming for detached efficiency, and if his hand shakes a little with the effort, he has the movement of the brush to excuse it.
He cannot afford to make that mistake with the razor. He moves to stand behind Reid—the angle will be better, he reasons, a similar action to doing it to himself. It is not because it will be easier if he does not have to look at Reid watching him as he does it.
Reid tenses slightly beneath his hands as Drake encourages him into position, first with a gentle touch to his shoulder, then a guiding hand to his forehead. Drake presses closer, until they are chest to back with no space between them. Reid’s head rests against his shoulder, his eyes closed when Drake finally dares to gaze down upon him, at the way he has curled into the touch as though it is a caress.
It is an aching, painful intimacy, the likes of which he has never permitted himself to yearn for. Let Emily Reid seek solace in the Church, he thinks, as long as Edmund Reid can find some measure of peace under his hands.
He tilts Reid’s face to expose his neck, leaning in to make the first pass. Reid is a strange mix of stiff and pliant beneath the blade. Drake is amazed that he permits this. The faint rasp of the razor as steel meets flesh is the loudest noise in the room.
A second swipe, then a third, nearer the thin, delicate skin of his throat. Reid’s eyes open and catch his. Drake is too close not to see the heat in them.
“Bennet,” Reid murmurs, so softly that he appears not to register that he has spoken aloud, as though it has been drawn unconsciously from him, but Drake cannot miss it. He is too finely attuned to the way his name sounds coming from Reid’s mouth not to hang off every instance of it.
He wonders if Reid knows how he looks, like this, the invitation his whole body has become beneath Drake’s hands, from his beseeching eyes to the rapid rise and fall of his chest, still bare, still revealed to Drake’s wild, hungry gaze, skin warm where it meets his own. If the awareness of it, heavy with temptation, prickles along his spine, too.
“Don’t—” Drake starts, but bites down on saying anything further. There is no acceptable way to explain how much harder this will be with Reid’s eyes on him. He swallows heavily. “Just, hold still, sir. I don’t want to cut you.”
“You should,” Reid says, quiet as a whisper, more to himself than Drake. It should not feel like a reprieve that Reid cannot look at him as he says it. “I’m the reason she’s gone.”
Gone, Drake thinks, and for a moment the tear in his soul gapes wide, the grief unpacked from where he buries it. Mathilda is gone, and Reid close to being lost with her.
“But you aren’t, sir, however much you may wish it differently,” he manages. His fist aches with clenching around the razor. “This city needs you still.” It is not wholly his meaning and he thinks Reid knows it.
He finishes off the left side just to give his hands something to do, something else to focus on besides the words crowding his head and threatening to leave his tongue. There is a speck of residual foam under Reid’s jaw and he wipes it with the pad of his thumb. Reid’s pulse thunders beneath the digit, as rapid as his own.
He wipes the blade clean.
“It deserves better,” Reid says into the heavy silence. “This city, its people. Those who need protection from the evil on these streets. They deserve more than an inebriate inspector unfit to serve them.” His hands twist in his lap. “And yourself, Sergeant. How can I claim to be your superior, in any respect? Your loyalty deserves a better return than that.”
The quiet admission is more than Drake can bear. “My friend,” he says, and this time he wants Reid to look at him, if only to make him believe it. “This city has seen enough of good men and bad men to know which you are—and so have I.”
Reid’s expression does not change but Drake knows he has registered the words. There is a slight easing in the tense lines of his body.
“My wife still believes she might be found alive,” Reid admits quietly, his eyes misty blue. “That as she was not one of those pulled from the river, she might have made it safely ashore. But what sort of person, upon discovering a child in the wake of a disaster such as that, would not seek to reunite her with her parents?” His voice catches. “No, I would rather she is at peace, than in the hands of a man like that.”
Drake thinks of the fallen girls, now preyed upon by the Ripper. Suddenly he sees the shape of Reid’s nightmares far more clearly—that his fear is not rooted solely in his daughter’s death, but in her living.
He lays his hand on Reid’s shoulder briefly, a fleeting press of reassurance and understanding. “As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Reid, that does not make you a bad person. It makes you a good father.”
Reid gives no response to the admission, but it is enough that he has allowed Drake to say it. He stills obediently when Drake brings the razor up to start on his face, hooking a finger under his chin to tip his head back. He cannot miss the way Reid’s eyes spark at the touch.
This is how they might touch if they were to kiss, Drake thinks, unbidden. This is how Reid might look if he were thinking the same.
There is suddenly not enough air in the room.
He makes the first swipe along Reid’s cheek, and the awareness of being watched as he does it prickles across his skin. With every pass of the razor Reid looks more like himself—the façade of steadfast Inspector falling slowly into place, remade by his hands. There is a strange thrill to the thought.
Drake reaches out to run an appraising fingertip over the smooth exposed skin, realising too late how close to a caress it seems. Reid shifts beneath the touch. The razor nicks his skin, drawing a thin line of blood to well up and stain the foam.
“You have no need to concern yourself, Sergeant,” Reid says, as Drake mutters a hasty apology and reaches for the towel. “You only wanted to be certain.”
“And I did warn you to hold still, sir,” Drake murmurs, pressing the cloth to his skin.
Reid’s lips twitch slightly in response. It is the closest to a smile he has given in months. “Indeed, you did,” he agrees mildly. “Perhaps I shall listen to you in future.”
There are a myriad of things Drake could say in response, but those words would not be welcome now. He stays silent and focuses instead on clearing the final few patches, then wipes the razor clean and sets it aside.
Reid passes the towel over his face and neck, clearing the final traces of soap from his skin. Drake wonders if he is thinking of the same moments that linger in the back of his own mind—of the ghost of his touch against Reid’s throat and the line of his jaw.
He allows Reid to redress, eyes carefully averted. He revealed too much, the first time, in reaching for Reid’s clothes himself. His hands on Reid now would be the final damning confession.
“Bennet,” Reid says, hoarse, and Drake returns to his side like the obedient dog Reid accused him of being. Reid’s gaze is earnest, a deep warmth in his eyes that has been absent for more months than Drake can bear to count. “Thank you.”
Drake hoards the words, greedily, selfishly, to return to later and warm himself at, when he is alone and it is as safe as it can be to dwell on the thrill of Reid’s reliance on him, and the feel of Reid’s skin against his.
He knows that they are not out of the worst of it yet. There will be countless drunken evenings to come, no doubt, when the weight of duty and loss becomes too heavy to bear alone. The best he can hope for is that Reid will not spurn his devotion and choose to lean on him once more.