Chapter Text
Sometimes Tom would dig back into his mind as far as his memories could go, reaching back to the dusty, forgotten days of his childhood. Back before Sarah was born, before his dad…Before. There were a few flashes of things, his toy cars and his little bed, his crayons and his Where’s Wally? books.
But more than anything, he could remember Sco.
Sco had always been there, his serious face looking down at him. Kind, gentle Sco. He sat beside Tom on his bedroom floor, twisting blades of grass together, waiting. For what, Tom still didn’t know, but little Tom hadn’t minded. Simply wanted Sco to stay close.
He loved Sco, felt it deep, buried in his chest, buried in his memories.
Sometimes, just as Tom was closing his eyes in the darkness, drifting off to sleep, he could almost feel Sco taking his hand. He could almost make out Sco’s face.
He loved Sco more than anyone.
Tom was seven when he realized that maybe he was bit old to still have an imaginary friend. All of his mates had moved on, more interested in footie or gaming or that girl, Martha, who everyone seemed to be half in love with, but Tom couldn’t quite let go. Not yet.
In the middle of class, he surreptitiously bent his head over his notebook, drawing Sco for the millionth time. The older he got, the more details he was able to pull from his daydreams. The straps and pockets, the contrast between the green khaki suit and the leather jerkin, the different stripes on his sleeves. The rank stripes, the injury stripe. The older he got, the more he realized what exactly he was looking at.
Sco was a soldier. Tom felt sick when he thought about it too much, thought about why Sco’s hands were stained so dark sometimes, why he seemed so jumpy whenever it stormed outside Tom’s window. It all added up in ways that Tom didn’t know how to explain.
“Mr. Blake,” his teacher said sharply as she stopped beside his desk. Sco’s face was half complete in his picture, looking very little like how Tom wanted him to look. “Do we need to have another conversation about paying attention in class?” A spattering of laughter sounded around the room as Tom sunk low in his seat, scowling at the incomplete portrait. It wasn’t like he was going to get Sco right this time or anything, but still.
“No,” he pouted.
“Excellent” she pronounced, moving back to the front of the class. “Since it’s nearly Remembrance Day, today we’re going to be discussing the Great War, also known as World War I or the War to End all Wars.” The teacher flipped on the projector, causing a black and white photo to be cast across the white projector screen. Tom sat up straight in his seat.
This was Sco’s war.
In the picture, men stood along a deep ditch, all in matching uniforms, carrying rifles and looking at the camera with rather bored expressions. They were all dressed like Sco, silly helmets and everything.
Tom could practically see the trenches extending to either side of Sco for a moment, could visualize the colours and shapes of his world instead of the strange cut-out of Sco against Tom’s average school life. For a moment, Sco looked over his shoulder at Tom, and he swore he could make out his face perfectly for the first time for the tiniest of seconds.
At the front of the classroom, the teacher droned on, and Tom’s pencil flew across the pages of his notebook, filling each page with notes. Filling up his head with something that he never thought he’d capture.
Sco’s world was maybe a little closer in reach than he thought.
“Don’t you ever get tired of drawing the same guy over and over?” his sister, Sarah, asked as she leaned over Tom’s shoulder. They’d spread their drawings wide across the dining table, her colourful bunnies leaping over Tom’s careful depiction of Sco cleaning his rifle. Short Magazine Lee-Enfield No. I Mark III, the bayonet hanging in its sheath from his webbing.
“Not really,” Tom mumbled, shading Sco’s hands carefully. He had long, almost delicate fingers, and they’d turned out particularly nice in this drawing.
Sarah sighed heavily and leaned even harder into his shoulder. “You’re so good at drawing, though, why can’t you draw my characters again?” she whined. Her fingers curled into the back of his sweatshirt and shook him in her frustration. “Or more of those pretty girls, I like them. Draw me Cardcaptor Sakura!”
“Sarah, if you shut up and let me finish this, I can get to drawing your stuff faster,” he huffed. He glanced at the green numbers displaying the time on the cooker, doing the math on when he’d need to start supper, hoping he’d have time to finish his drawing and maybe produce something to make Sarah leave him alone. Not that he hated drawing pictures for her, but he was busy, this was important.
Twelve was far, far too old to keep clinging to an imaginary friend, Tom knew that. Didn’t stop him from doing just that, though.
His bookshelves were filled with visual guides and costuming books and personal accounts and big, sweeping descriptions of the War. That was all Sco would call it, “the War,” said only in his most soft, grave voice. The more Tom found, the more he dug up, the better his pictures were, the clearer Sco’s voice and face and life seemed. Sco felt so real when Tom had his nose pressed into a book, felt like maybe he could have been a real person instead of the careful construction that Tom knew he was. That he had to be.
Tom pushed his drawing away at the thought. He sketched out a rough form on another sheet of blank paper, adding in the quick idea of a full skirt and ribbons. He’d never admit it to Sarah, but he liked drawing these kinds of things, too, liked trying to match the way the fabric was drawn in his mangas, liked trying to get the sharp hairstyles to look pretty instead of silly on the paper.
But he only had so much time. He pushed the sketch over to Sarah to finish and stretched his arms over his head. “Is brekkie food alright for supper? I think mum said we had enough milk for pancakes,” he said as he pulled out a pan from the cabinet.
“Whatever,” Sarah replied, already absorbed with filling in the lines Tom had created.
Mum was gone a lot, had to be for work. Long hours pulling long shifts left her quiet and tired when she made it home in the afternoon, so Tom picked up the slack. It was his job as the man of the house, or at least that was what his mum always said. It wasn’t fun or anything, but he didn’t mind, really. Cooking was kind of fun most of the time and looking after his sister wasn’t a big deal, really. He didn’t get to play footie in the schoolyard after class with the rest of his mates, but it could be worse. He got to pick what they watched on the telly when they got home, so that was cool. And he always had time to draw and read without anyone (except Sarah, obviously) bothering him.
It wasn’t so bad.
As the dollop of pancake batter sizzled and fried in the pan, Tom let his eyes close. If he focused hard enough, he could imagine Sco standing next to him. He was taller than Tom and often leaned into him in a way that made Tom feel oddly small. But safe, safe, safe.
Tom had grown, but Sco was just the same as he always was. Quiet, his voice soft in Tom’s ears, standing close but never quite near enough. But as Tom had grown, his mind must have wrapped up Sco into the folds of some other thoughts, twisting him around like ribbon in the breeze. Because Sco never really seemed like an imagination, because Tom did imagine him sometimes, and that was always so different than Sco the person.
Sco felt more like the shimmering, uncertain memories of his dad. Long gone now, disappeared to who knows where. Sco felt like the very real, but hard to pin down images Tom dug into the back of his head to find—even though Sco was there, too. Sco felt like something that Tom was just on the edge of remembering, just on the edge of forgetting.
Sco felt like someone Tom had met once, even though he knew, he knew it was impossible.
By the time Tom had opened his eyes again, the bottom of the pancake had gone a little too dark. He sighed, even as his mind conjured the sound of Sco laughing gently. It was a nice sound, he thought as he patted the deep brown pancake with his spatula. Sco was nice and wonderful and very much not real, he told himself.
If only he could stop wishing that Sco was.
Tom tried to let everything go, to finally give up the ghost. Sixteen is too old, seventeen, he kept telling himself, even as he filled the margins of his school notes with scratchy imitations of Sco’s face, but nothing looked right. He’d sorted through so many reference photos, all trying to find that particular jawline, that nose, that exact brow line. Nothing was right.
Eighteen is too old, he thought to himself as he read through uni brochures, sorting through the credentials of their history programs. He liked all aspects of history, really, but he’d be lying if he said that the First World War wasn’t his deepest passion, even as the recorded histories and grainy photographs turned his stomach with a particular type of dread, like a cold wind against his spine. It was horrifying, but it was also everything.
Tom had no idea why.
“Blake,” Sco would still call to him, eighteen and far too old to keep thinking wistfully of his childhood imaginary friend. He talked to Tom in fragments, half-sentences that should have made no sense, but always seemed to draw all the lines together. Like those dot drawings, dragging his pencil from point 1 to point 2 to point 3. He was like memories. Ones that looked like dreams or imaginations most of the time, but felt like memories.
“Blake,” Sco would call him, looking over his shoulder at Tom. He could trace the shape of his words in the air, just like a dot drawing, forming pictures of deep trenches and lines of men and lights in the sky.
“Blake,” Sco would say.
Tom was eighteen and a bit terrified that there was no way to move past Sco. He had no idea if he even wanted to try.
There was a part of himself that was a bit worried that leaving his quiet routine would dislodge Sco from his head. That leaving behind the familiar walls of his bedroom where he’d spent every night for years closing his eyes and hoping that tonight was the night that he could remember what it felt like for Sco to push back his hair from his forehead would somehow make all of that fade away.
The thing was that it kind of did.
Sco almost felt like a whisper of some old life he’d lived, separate from the long, dark dormitory corridors, separate from the massive lecture halls filled with students, separate from the crowded pub tables after class. It was easier here to put Sco out of his mind, shoved back into the little corner of homesick in his heart. Easier to pretend like he didn’t still think of him, didn’t still draw the rough outline of his face over and over in the hopes that maybe this time he’d get it right.
Maybe he really had gotten Sco mixed up with memories of home and his family and everything.
Tom knew that he should have been relieved, but it just kind of ached. It was harder to feel him hovering nearby, his hand reaching out for Tom’s shoulder, even though he knew that he couldn’t ever remember what it felt like. What Sco’s hands felt like.
But it wasn’t like he was lonely or anything, not when he’d fallen into a group so easily. There was always someone around. There was Paola who was always taking the piss, there was Alfie who could drink everyone under the table, there was even the boy across the hall from his dorm who he watched all of Cowboy Bebop with in one night. There were always people, in his classes, at parties, standing in corridors as he walked past, and yet.
And yet he could feel that there was something he was overlooking, something he’d missed as he ran from his dorm to his classes, as he sat as just another face in a crowded history lecture. Tom still found himself reaching for Sco at night, feeling incredibly stupid for still being hopeful that Sco would finally be able to reach back.
“Thanks again for meeting up,” his classmate was saying as Tom followed him out of the library, Lucy taking her time checking out her books behind them. “This project’s been awful, but I feel so much better now. You’ve been so helpful,” he continued, reaching out to gently touch Tom’s forearm.
Tom smiled easily, still deciding how much he actually cared about flirting back right now. “It’s not a problem, I’m just—”
From the corner of his eye, Tom thought he caught a glimpse of something, a flash of recognition in the crowd milling around them on the wide front steps of the library. Tom watched the back of the people’s heads bobbing and weaving as they walked away.
It was a little like being a child again, catching glimpses of Sco on the edges of his mind every other minute and being sure that he could see Sco there with him. Back before he knew that Sco was just an image, a vision of what Tom didn’t have. Couldn’t have. A father, maybe. Reliable and kind, patient even when Tom knew he was annoying him. But Sco had stopped feeling like that ages ago. Now all he could see was the murky outline of Sco’s face next to his classmate’s. It was stupid.
“Tom?” his classmate asked, leaning into his line of sight.
“Sorry, thought I saw someone I knew,” Tom laughed. But the image clung to him, wrapped him up in it like it always did, a blanket in the cold. “Were you saying something?”
His classmate smiled, leaning in still further. “What would you say to meeting up for a drink sometime?” he asked, very real and very much here. His hand was gentle on Tom’s arm, not too much pressure, but clearly still there. He was shorter than Sco, his voice deeper and his hair much darker.
He wasn’t.
“Oh, yeah, with the class? I heard that there was a group getting together after all of our theses are done. Yeah, I was planning on going to that,” Tom said, glancing back to Lucy as she tried to hover inconspicuously behind them, hoping to egg her along.
He turned back just in time to see his classmate’s face fall.
On their walk back to the dormitory, Lucy sighed softly, “Seriously, Tom, it’s like you’ve got a ten metre radius around you sometimes.”
“What do you mean?” Tom asked, but he knew. Of course he knew.
“Sam’s a good guy, you get on with him really well, and yet, the second he asks you out, you play dumb. It’s just so weird, because I know you’re a romantic. Are you just not into dating or something?”
Tom scuffed the toe of his trainer along the pavement. There weren’t any explanations here, not really. Nothing that made any sense to anyone, including himself. It wasn’t like he’d never dated anyone, wasn’t like he wasn’t happy to get off with someone at a party or two, but everything always led back to Sco.
No one was like Sco.
“I don’t know, I just want things to feel…” Tom ran his hand through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead. “Right? Promising? Like, everyone in films are always going on about ‘sparks’ or some shit like that. I guess I just want to feel something.”
Lucy hummed, nodding slowly. “I can't fault you for that. But what if you never meet anyone who makes you feel like that?”
Watching the pedestrians around them for a moment, Tom imagined seeing Sco in the crowd like he thought he had for a single moment outside the library. How much would he give for Sco to appear, to be made real for him?
“Then I guess I’ll just keep looking,” Tom said finally.
He’d give anything.
They were nearly late to the lecture hall, the four of them barrelling into the room just as the professor was taking roll. Tom sagged with relief against Jovin’s shoulder. It was the beginning of the semester, the beginning of Tom’s second year of uni, and he was praying for an easy year. A good year.
Everything was stacking up in that direction, what with all of his closest mates packed into one house, his schedule full of classes that actually sounded worth taking. Tom was hopeful, despite everything, that he’d find… He let the thought trail off, terrified to form that thought even silently. Maybe this year he’d find some way to not be so alone, that was a better way to think of it.
Now if they could just get Mark to wake up at a decent time before this class, then Tom would be setting himself up very well.
“Sorry again, mates,” Mark muttered as they slid into the back of the class, the four of them in a neat row. Lucy yawned hugely, patting Mark’s arm distractedly as she pulled out her notes. Jovin simply scowled in his direction.
“I still can’t believe you slept through eight separate alarms. You might need one of those alarms that get louder and louder the longer you ignore them,” Tom said in an undertone as the professor began to introduce their guest lecturers for the day. “You know, something that’s smarter than you are when you’re sleepy.”
“That’s the problem, dude. I wake up, turn the thing off, then fall back asleep,” Mark sighed.
“Jesus,” Tom giggled, sitting back in his seat, ready to ignore whatever the hell library presentation they would be subjected to today. He yawned as the professor talked about primary sources, about research skills and all that. Then, the professor stepped aside, leaving the stage to the two librarians. The pretty dark-haired woman stayed sitting, but the man she was sat next to stood.
Tom leaned forward in his seat, using literally all of his willpower to stay seated. His heart was crashing in his chest, pounding out an aggressive rhythm.
“Good morning,” the man spoke. All clean, crisp sounds. He tugged at the cuff of his oxford shirt, the only sign that he was self-conscious. The rest of him seemed so assured, professional. He had the face of someone who’d been born a century ago with the serious set of his lips, the shape of his cheekbones, the cut of his chin, the depth of his eyes.
The vague image of Sco, the one that he’d carried all throughout his life, the one that stood stoically next to everyone Tom had ever met, that image stepped neatly into this man. Melded into one.
He was perfect. The perfect reference for Sco in every possible way.
“There are a number of reasons why consulting primary sources remains the most viable pathway towards understanding history and its implications,” the man continued as if reading a carefully worded script. It nearly sounded natural, but there was something almost unnaturally calm about him. It reminded Tom of those times when Sco would lose his temper, how he’d always pull back hard from his anger and talk to Tom with slow, evenly paced words. That façade of control masking the depths of his feeling.
Tom wanted to cry, everything about him was perfect. So perfect.
Hanging on his every word, Tom drank in this vision, tracing the shape of his hands as he gestured, slowly settling into himself as he continued to talk. Seeing everything about Sco assembled together for the first time, Tom was struck by how beautiful he was. For the first time in his life, Tom felt no need to draw anything at all, not if it meant looking away from this person when Tom had full permission to stare.
All too soon, the man stepped back to let the other librarian speak. Tom sat back in his seat slowly, the tension in his chest shifting. The man was positioned to be completely hidden from sight now. What a horrible, terrible shame, he thought.
“Tom, were you even breathing?” Lucy whispered, leaning over Mark to flick Tom on the cheek as the other librarian began her part of the lecture.
“‘Course,” Tom huffed, but, honestly, he couldn’t be sure.
With the man out of sight, Tom very dutifully ignored the rest of the lecture, sketching out Sco again in his proper sketchbook. But it was different now. Now he had the man’s face hidden away in his head, and he was perfect for the part. He drew his rough form, broad shoulders and tapered waist and long legs, only to hide him away behind the uniform. No leather vest, no webbing, no brodie helmet, just the man.
The man as Sco.
At the front of the lecture hall, the woman finished her part, the class clapping quietly for her as she moved over to allow for the man to stand beside her. She smiled broadly at the group and said, “Alright, well, we’ve bored you lot long enough. Does anyone have any questions about special collections?”
Tom’s hand flew up.
It took ages for her to finally point to him in the back of the room, and Tom tried not to be disappointed when the man’s eyes didn’t turn to him when he asked, “Are there any volunteer opportunities at the archives?”
On stage, the woman smiled even wider, rattling off ways for students to volunteer. Around him, his friends all shoved at him, questioning looks at his weird request. But the man’s eyes scanned the room, blinking slowly as he took in the faces of Tom’s classmates and overlooking him tucked far in the back. Tom fought every urge in him not to wave his hands over his head in a desperate attempt to get his attention.
Look at me, Tom chanted mentally as the woman moved on to the next question. I’m right here.
He never saw Tom. Never even got close.
“Everyone, that’s our time today. Please give another hand to our guests from the Special Collections department, Purnima Jondalar and William Schofield,” the professor said as he gestured to them on stage. The class clapped again, even more lacklustre this time as everyone moved out of the lecture hall.
Tom bit at his lip, desperate to keep his nervous laughter in. The coincidence of his name sat oddly in his stomach for moment, but what was in a name, really? Sco was just as made up as Schofield would have been once upon a time. Just a coincidence. Just as strange a mystery as seeing Sco's face and form on some stranger, but just as wonderful in its serendipity.
“Hey, you all go on ahead,” Tom said as his friends stood around him.
“What are you up to?” Lucy asked as she slung the strap of her bag over her shoulder, standing over Tom still in his seat.
He laughed gently, trying to wave away her questioning tone. “Oh, nothing much.”
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Jovin sighed.
After making sure they were actually milling out of the hall with the rest of their class, Tom flipped open his notebook, jotting down his name and school info as quickly as possible, desperate to catch the man before he left.
Luckily, he was still on the stage when Tom made it up to them.
He was even more striking up close, the texture of his hair and the colour of his eyes far more apparent at this distance. Even more handsome.
Tom took a deep breath and stepped in front of them both. “Hey, I was the one asking about volunteering? I wanted to pass on my name,” he said with as much confidence as he had buried in him, settling into his most broad, charming smile. His hand was just a little shaky as he held out the little slip of paper to the man. To William Schofield.
He blinked back at Tom, a look of confusion passing over his eyes before his face went very carefully blank. His eyes seemed to stare straight through Tom as he gingerly took the paper from his hand. Their fingers didn’t brush, flowers didn’t appear in the air, music didn’t play like in those romance animes that Tom pretended not to love, but it felt more significant somehow. Like he could see all the way down into the most tucked away, secret parts of Tom’s heart, could pick apart all of his most guarded, unsure feelings.
“Thank you,” the woman, Purnima, said, breaking them both from the moment. Breaking the sharp lines between their eyes. The world seemed to flood back into Tom’s brain, the silence of their connection dissolving like maybe it had never happened at all.
“Okay, cool,” Tom said, glancing between them now. He backed up with a tiny, awkward wave. “I’ll see you ‘round, then? Cheers.”
He practically sprinted from the room, the pressure in his chest returning. William Schofield had looked at him, had seen him. Tom leaned against the wall outside of the lecture hall, grinning up at the ceiling like a complete loon. As he let his breathing return to normal, his fingers dug around his bag to pull out the drawing in his sketchbook, half-finished and rough. It was perfect.
He’d finally gotten Sco right.