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September - 1902
Grantchester - Cambridge
The morning dawned sunny but crisp in the village and cast rays down at the white-washed cottage at the end of the lane. In the kitchen, Thaniel made up the table for breakfast, laying out identical cups for the tea, lifting out the eggs from the pan and into their cups. He reached for the still warm loaf of bread on the side, added the butter dish and jars of jam and placed them on the table next to Katsu who was sprawled happily in the light of a warm sunshaft coming through the window. Thaniel handed the octopus one of the jam spoons and smiled at the happy-sounding clicks as the spoon disappeared into metallic tentacles. Thaniel looked out the window, waiting for the familiar shadow to pass down the lane and go through the gate as the church clock stuck eight with it’s deep violet ring…
Which was accompanied by the light turquoise squeak of the garden gate.
Mori came walking up the path in his customary grey coat and black hat with a paper parcel tucked under one arm and a cane in the other. Ever the watchmaker, he was meticulous in his timings and whenever it was his turn to collect the deliveries and the post, he would always arrive back for breakfast by eight o’clock exactly just as he said he would. The door latch clicked open just as the church bell ceased its chime.
“So you took the cane.” Thaniel called through the hallway.
Mori usually didn’t need the cane for short distances but for the collection of the post it was a greater distance. Thaniel had raised it a few months ago after hearing Mori’s hiss of pain as he climbed into bed one evening and a stumble or two during their evening river walk. At first Mori had been embarrassed at his declining strength and rising frailty, denying any weakness at all with the samurai stoicism that had always frustrated Thaniel. Then later, in the deep yellow glow of the single electric bulb Thaniel had reminded him quite strongly that it was high time Mori caught up with him in the weakness stakes as he still had damaged lungs from his tuberculosis and subsequent treatment. Mori’s slender fingers had then pressed against Thaniel’s nightshirt, caressing across his ribs where underneath the layer of fabric lay the thin red scars from Thaniel’s surgery. Mori had looked pale at that moment, no doubt remembering those endless nights in the hospital wondering if Thaniel would ever wake up from his surgery and the one time he nearly didn't.
“I’ll get a cane if you do.” Thaniel said finally. "I could do with something else to lean on if you aren't going to be steady enough." Mori had laughed.
“Oh fine. But only if it will please you.”
Mori hung up his coat and there was a clatter of the ebony cane - which Mori had had topped with a bronze octopus - into the large antique Japanese vase that they had appropriated as an umbrella stand. Thaniel wished he could find it amusing that an antique that should really be in a museum was currently used as an umbrella stand but Mori was insistent. It was his ugly vase and he would do what he liked with it.
“Yes, I took the cane.” Mori murmured, his voice drifting through the hallways accompanied by the sound of him removing his shoes and sliding his feet into leather slippers. “Don’t you dare say that you were right.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Thaniel smiled at the teapot as he poured it into the cups. “What did we get? Looks like a lot today.”
Mori came into the kitchen and placed a thick bundle of letters down on the table along with a neat twine-wrapped package on top. He took a seat at the table - gently shifting Katsu from his sunspot and onto the third chair - and nodded his thanks as Thaniel placed the teacup in front of him. Thaniel brushed his fingers against Mori’s shoulder and a warm feeling suffused through them as Mori’s own hand came up to caress his own.
“The regular missive from Six, two marked from the Foreign Office, the thicker one is your translations for the week and I believe one is actually a telegram from Ito no doubt asking for his yearly reassurance that you and I will never set foot in Japan again - and a letter from Annabel, I would assume one of your nephews is getting married.” he gestured to the parcel and sipped his tea. “The parcel is lemon tarts and some fresh honeycomb. I think after three years Mrs Lockley is finally accepting seeing an oriental man in her village.”
Thaniel smirked. Certainly the Japanese Keita Mori was a far more unusual sight in a Cambridgeshire village than he ever had been on the streets of London. There had been no small amount of surprise when they had both appeared with their luggage at the vacant Holly Cottage in Grantchester three years ago. Thaniel still remembered the kind greetings he had received from the villagers - including Mrs Lockeley who chaired every possible committee - who were eager to know their new neighbour, swiftly followed by shock and slight horror when Mori appeared behind him, holding a bag that was clicking with the sound of a disgruntled clockwork octopus. It had taken quite some time, with a lot of scones and cakes for village fetes on Mori's part and Thaniel standing in for the church's pianist, to convince the village that they hadn't arrived to open a rural opium den.
However, for all their worry about Mori, no one in the village had raised even a whisper about the two men living alone in the same house together. In fact they seemed to accept odd housing situations as perfectly normal here - possibly due to the village's proximity to the University and being populated with more than a few oddly-inclined academics. For that small detail alone, Thaniel couldn't be more grateful to have left London where he had felt constantly scrutinised if he so much as looked at Mori for too long. He sliced and buttered some bread as Mori held up the familiar envelope in expectation.
"Six looks like she has written a lot this time." Thaniel said, feeling a secret wash of pleasure that his daughter was eager to tell them so much. Six was a better letter writer than talker these days. "Want me or you to read it?"
"You read it. Her writing gets worse every time." Mori sliced the top off his egg with samurai precision.
"Or else you need glasses." Thaniel jibed and smirked at Mori who made every show of preparing to throw the boiled egg at him. He then made the equal pretence of defending himself with the butter knife before taking the envelope and opening it carefully.
Had it really been three years already? Thaniel could hardly believe they had been here for that long. Time seemed to be running away from them. He was now in his forties with hair that seemed to be increasing in its grey every morning he looked in the mirror and a face that was becoming far more lined. Mori himself was not far off sixty too and still looked remarkably good for his age: with only a scattering of silver threads through his own hair giving him a scholarly look and lines which softened his feature. However, Mori had still never lost the look of frailty and his features still wore the damage he had picked up during those months in Japan.
Six was studying at Cambridge, only four miles from the village in which Thaniel and Mori now called home. Five years previously, Thaniel had received a letter asking politely if he planned to continue with the joke of writing up his research into mechanics using the pen name of a young girl. This had led to Six confessing that she had been critiquing university research to pass the time between schooling sessions, which then consequently led to Thaniel having to clarify to the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and King's College, London that Charlotte - alias Six - Steepleton was a real person. Cambridge University had subsequently offered her a chance to attend as a student of Engineering and a member of Newnham College.
At first Six had been reluctant to go. Apart from visits with her fathers she had never left London alone and the prospect was a disturbing one. Thaniel was also still in the treatment sessions for his tuberculosis and both she - and Mori - would be caring for him during his slow recoveries. But as the prospects became more positive she began to talk more and more about some of the experiments and research she would consider doing. Post was arriving at an almost alarming rate and Thaniel had also been more than a little disturbed to realise she had been corresponding with Grace Carrow also. Luckily it had been on purely academic topics but it still formed a knot in his stomach to know that connection was there.
Finally - over a tense dinner - Thaniel had ventured to ask about University again Six had violently lost her temper and hurled a plate at the wall before retreating to the corner of the room hysterically screaming. After cajoling from both Mori and Thaniel, Six finally admitted that no matter how much she wanted to study, she didn't want to leave either Mori or Thaniel or her home. She had spent the early years of her life with no family and in abject poverty at the workhouse. Now she had a home, an education and a loving family of a sort and a family who had done so much for her too not to be sent away from it. It seemed completely illogical to Six to simply leave: she had a debt to pay to the both of them and that was the end of it.
It was later that night, when Mori suggested moving to Cambridge for Six's sake.
"And yours." He had murmured into Thaniel's shoulder that evening, pulling him flush against his bare chest. He was so very warm and the kisses he was peppering along Thaniel's shoulder were warmer still. "I understand Cambridge is surrounded by rural countryside. It would be far better for your breathing there."
Thaniel’s hand rested over Mori’s as his fingers traced imperceptibly along the dressing covering Thaniel’s newly healing surgery scars. Underneath they were still an angry red and swathed in bruising but he was beginning to feel like a man whose lungs were simply damaged rather than a man who was slowly dying.
"Kei, what about your shop?" He said into the pillow.
"-Will not be needed by me anytime soon. You and Six need me more than the population of London needs watches." A soft kiss was pressed against the back of his neck and Thaniel melted wishing he had the energy to respond more deeply to Mori's attentions. "And I will bring a lot of my tools and equipment with me anyway."
And so a much-relieved Six - looking far too grown up in her academic robes for Thaniel's liking - was promptly installed in a pleasant college room at Newnham overlooking the extensive gardens ready to take up her studies at the school of Engineering within the next term. This left Thaniel and Mori to take up residence in the white-washed and slate-roofed Holly Cottage four miles away in the country village of Grantchester. Close enough that if things got irritating or difficult, Six would be able to storm back to them and far enough from the smoke of the town for Thaniel's lungs to appreciate the clean air.
That just left the Foreign Office.
At first the office had flapped like a flock of troubled birds at the possible loss of their senior Japanese translator and most experienced telegraphist. Fanshaw - a still-sprightly sixty-four now - was still running the office and had been the first to write off Thaniel's absences for his surgery as a necessary expense as Thaniel had proved more than capable of translating from the boredom of his sickbed - with some pointers from Mori who had rarely left his side. However, when Thaniel had said he was planning to move to Cambridge, Fanshaw had frowned over his spectacles and grumbled under his breath. Finally, at the promise of doing translation by post and telegraph and a further promise of monthly wax cylinders of any of Thaniel's compositions and performances, Fanshaw agreed to keep Thaniel strictly as a free-lance.
And now they were here, in their cottage hidden down a lane, in a quiet little village by the river getting older by the day. It was a romantic idyll really, or as romantic as a Northern translating telegraphist and an Oriental watchmaking formerly-clairvoyant aristocrat - who were both of the male persuasion - could get. Of course they still kept separate bedrooms for the sake of proprietary for anyone who crossed the threshold and maintained the illusion of two friends who shared a house as they always had done. Mori had also made sure to mention in passing he was a widower to the village gossips at least twice. However, behind closed doors they shared Mori's bed - the larger of the two and in the room with the evening sun - most nights.
Thaniel idly stirred his tea and read Six's letter aloud. Mostly Six's letters consisted of her latest research and discoveries but just lately her missives had begun to mention a gentleman who was 'the least irritating' in the engineering department. They had met at the library and they had gone for tea a few times to discuss the upcoming Tripos and the possibility of Six finally being able to take them despite being a woman. This gentleman had also appeared to be one of the few members of the University who was prepared to call her Six rather than the despised - but necessary - Charlotte, which she had found flattering. At first Thaniel had been ready to march over to the department with a cosh in hand but Mori had talked him round, reminding him - not unkindly - that Six was a woman grown now… and that she had a solid right hook taught by her father that could floor a sailor. She would be fine.
Thaniel now smiled at the memory, took a second slice of bread and pushed the knife into the fresh honeycomb. As he spread it across the bread, a runnel of the golden honey slid down the knife and onto his finger. Absentmindedly he licked it off and then met Mori's heated gaze over the table and felt a shiver of desire down his spine as he flushed. Mori looked downright devious. If Mrs Lockeley knew what thoughts and ideas her honey was inspiring she would probably burn down her beehives. He grinned.
Mori cleared his throat.
"I believe we may be seeing more of this gentleman of Six's." Said Mori softly, the now-tinged rose gold of his voice harmonising with the teal clink of porcelain cup on porcelain saucer.
Thaniel forgot the honey.
"Is that you seeing or just guessing?"
Mori's clairvoyant abilities - once thought gone forever - had seemed to surface at unexpected moments and only every so often. Neither Thaniel or Mori himself could predict when he would see a possible future but every so often Mori would put on three cups for tea and Six would stride through the door or Mori would relocate his clockwork projects from the garden into the music-room-come-workshop at the front of the cottage and a storm would follow an hour later. And it couldn't be wholly coincidence that the previous tenant of Holly Cottage had suddenly discovered a lost family relative in France and the landlords were looking for new tenants. Or that Thaniel had nearly died in the recovery period of his final surgery and a doctor had just happened to have walked by his room just at the right time.
"A little of both." Said Mori honestly, wiping his mouth on one of the napkins and gathering up the breakfast things. "Will you be translating today? The table in the garden is cleared for you."
Thaniel tested the weight of the translations and looked at the address.
"I better. There's a lot here. Think it's to do with that Japan-Korea thing, Fanshaw's writing looks pretty angry." He looked at Mori. "Workshop?"
"I will be finishing Six's chronometer today but it can be done in the garden. Would you like company?" Mori's mouth quirked.
"Don't play dumb, Kei, you know I would." Thaniel teased, putting the stack of dishes on the side
As Mori went to leave - Katsu now riding proudly on his shoulder, no doubt in anticipation of the garden - Thaniel caught his arm. Mori turned like a dancer into the circle of Thaniel's arms, head already tilted ready to be kissed. Whether this was through knowing or hoping Thaniel didn't care. Mori's lips were as warm and soft as the first time Thaniel had kissed him on his wedding night and no matter what life had thrown at them, the kisses were still just as tender, still just as hungry. Mori's hand came up to caress Thaniel's cheek and Thaniel pressed his larger hand to Mori's lower back, keeping him in place, keeping him in the kiss.
Finally, they parted, both flushed with unspoken desire. Thaniel's lungs were burning but not through pain.
"Keita." He whispered.
"My Thaniel." Returned Mori, raising Thaniel's hand and licking at his finger where there was a last taste of honey. He gave a smile full of promise before leaving the kitchen to collect his tools.
Breathless, Thaniel turned back to the breakfast things with kiss-bruised lips and a promise of deeper passions later. The sun was still shining through the window. It was just an ordinary day, and for that Thaniel was entirely grateful.