Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

And to think I might’ve stayed and bought Daisy a bottle of pop. 

Thomas blinked away the blood falling in his eyes, spitting out still more onto the dirt, watching the dusty path soak it up. All he wanted to do was lie down...but it seemed wiser to try and be conscious when someone found him (and someone would have to come and find him eventually). 

Anyway, none of the pain was too sharp—if he caught his breath, he might even be able to get himself back to the fair. He’d cause a scene, but there was no avoiding that, now.

He was a bloody fool...if he’d been given any sense at all, he’d have forced Alfred to come along, marched them all home on some pretense, he had the right...if it had really been Jimmy’s welfare he was looking out for…

It was, he insisted to the shame building in his stomach. It is. 

Otherwise, what had he done it for? 

He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, wincing at how it knocked against his teeth. The shooting pain made him more irritated than relieved when he heard footsteps approaching. 

“Fucking hell…” The man knelt down beside him, one hand brushing against Thomas’s arm. “Are you alright?”

“What does it look like?” Thomas snapped, mortified by his own reaction the moment the words left his lips. Because he was really in a place to start driving away Good Samaritans…

Then again, it had been a stupid question...perhaps the man knew it himself, for he didn’t respond to Thomas’s ire, choosing instead to press a handkerchief to his forehead. 

“Here,” he murmured, pressing it too tightly for comfort. “Christ. Can you stand with some help? My sister lives just down that way, we can get you settled.”

Thomas shook his head. 

“Someone might be looking for me…” Someone, at some point, would surely realize they were missing an underbutler. 

“Might be?” The man chuckled to himself. “Worse luck...”

“Oi!” Another voice—Thomas lifted his head enough to see two additional pairs of feet approaching. “Who’s that?”

“Just help me…” The first man had pulled Thomas’s right arm over his shoulder. “I’m going to take him to Pat’s.”

Another man—taller than the first, less limber, leaned down just far enough for Thomas’s arm to reach. 

“Fred has a car,” he said.

“Fred can borrow a car, that’s not the same thing…”

“And he’s not supposed to do that, either,” said the third man, who stood aside to let them pass. He wasn’t Fred, then...they were quite a group. 

“But he could.” 

“But he isn’t here, Oscar, so it doesn’t matter. It’d take twice as long to find him—”

“—and he’s pissed by now anyway,” the first man laughed. “Marvin, wait there, won’t you? In case someone comes.”

Thomas didn’t need to see anything above Marvin’s kneecaps to know that he didn’t like that idea one bit. 

“In case?” he said, voice rising enough to echo against the stone. “It looks like they already did, and who’s to say they won’t come back?”

“Will you just? For ten minutes, that’s all. Give someone time to check up on him.”

Marvin sighed. 

“Well then take my—”

He shoved something (probably his wallet) into Oscar’s pocket. 

“—Christ, Marvin—”

“—if I don’t come back, buy yourself something nice,” Marvin teased. “Not too nice!”

“Ridiculous man…” But he sounded pleased. 

If his head weren’t throbbing, Thomas would be craning for a better look at them all. From the sound of it, they were only working class men—locals, or near enough. Nothing especially interesting, on the surface of things. 

But there was something else, in the way the words passed back and forth over his head and across the way. Something familiar, something easy…

It’s called having friends, not that you’d know anything about that. 

Still...Thomas clung to as many words as he could, pulling them through the fog in his mind and letting them settle somewhere comforting. 

They were strangers to him, taking him to a strange place, yet he wasn’t afraid. Embarrassed, of course, that someone was going to have to fetch him, that he’d be late for dinner, that everyone would ask the same questions…

But not yet, he thought, feeling another hand catch him as he stumbled over a rock.

“I’ve got you—it’s just over here, do you see?”

And if Thomas lifted his head just another inch, he could spot the line of houses ahead. For a moment, the sight made him give up early, falling forward with a weary sigh. 

“Come on, just lean on me, you’re almost there…”

Thomas lowered his head again, letting his eyes drift shut. It was easier to take it on trust. 

“There you are…”

The bed he’d been placed in was larger than his own, though the room itself was smaller. Thomas surveyed it once before closing his eyes, answering a litany of questions before they’d been asked as someone took off his jacket and shoes. He wasn’t sure, really, if he was even talking aloud, or if he was only babbling to himself in his mind.

He could hear the man who’d first found him talking in the hall—it sounded like Marvin had returned, with no one accompanying him. 

Maybe no one will come, Thomas thought. Maybe they’ll just let me be missing, forever and ever. 

There was something attractive in it, after all that had happened. Things with Jimmy weren’t improving, and neither was anything else. Mr. Carson—cowed, perhaps, by the viciousness of his own words—had been almost kind to Thomas for three months, after which he promptly forgot that Thomas was thirty and an underbutler, not a teenaged footman in need of scolding. 

Mrs. Hughes talked to him more than she’d used to, and the newest hall boys liked him, but he could do without everyone else. 

Perhaps he’d have been better off, in the end, leaving. Reference or not. 

“—Downton Abbey,” came the voice from the hall. “A Thomas Barrow. Give them the address, tell them he’s fine.”

“Are you sure he is?” Marvin asked. “I had an uncle—”

“—just go and send it.”

“Come on…” Oscar said. “He had an uncle who what?”

“Well, he fell off his horse, see, and walked around for two days until—”

Their voices faded away—for some reason, Thomas pictured them arm in arm, walking through the streets of Thirsk to send a telegram. He laughed to himself before slipping off. 

His head hurt worse than before when he opened his eyes. He kept them closed. 

“Someone should go for the police,” came a woman’s voice. The sister, probably. 

“What good’ll that do?”

“He might know the men!”

“Then he can go to the station on his time, but I don’t want anything to do with bringing them here.” 

Someone sat beside him on the bed. Thomas winced as a warm, wet cloth pressed against his forehead, then across his cheek, dabbing at the gashes and scrapes. 

“I can do that,” Pat said. It sounded more like disapproval than an offer of help. 

“You have the girls and everything else,” came the (rather gruff) reply. “I brought him here, I can take care of him.”

“You don’t think we should send for a doctor?"

“Who’s going to pay for that?”

“They will, when they get him. Or they should.”

“I’m not counting on that.” Though he would have rather pretended to be asleep, Thomas couldn’t help but crack a smile at that.  

“There he is, you see?” the man laughed. “He’ll be fine…”

The fondness in his voice—accompanied by a peculiarly gentle brush of the cloth across his forehead—pried Thomas’s eyes open, giving him his first proper look at his rescuer. 

He’d turned halfway around to talk to his sister, dipping the cloth back into a basin of water and ringing it out. From the side, with his hair tousled and his sleeves rolled up, he looked younger than Thomas had first thought. Without his moustache, Thomas supposed he’d look younger still. 

“—tell him I’ll make it up next time you’re in York…” He grinned at noticing Thomas blinking himself awake. “What did I say? There he is…”

Thomas closed his eyes again as the cloth dabbed against his cheek, though not before noticing how bright the man’s smile was. 

A child cried out for a “Mummy!” in the distance, and the sister sighed. 

“It’s always something,” she grumbled as she stood, adding that she’d fix something for them to eat once she got the “little monkey” settled. 

“Makes you jealous, doesn’t it?” he joked to Thomas, touching a bruise on his jaw too harshly.

“Sorry,” he said, pulling away as Thomas winced. 

“It’s fine.” Now that he was coming to himself, Thomas would rather have been anywhere else but a stranger’s house in such a condition. It would have been worth a few knowing looks from Anna, the disapproval from Carson…

It was worse, making a poor impression on a man he’d only just met. The whole thing eroded some illusion he had that he was merely misunderstood at Downton, that he might escape it, somehow. 

But here in Thirsk, being tended to by people he didn’t know, he felt exactly the same as he would have felt at Downton. Pathetic, incapable...small and embarrassed, terrified that someone would ask what exactly had happened. 

He was turning hot in the cheeks, humiliated over something that was already happening, something he couldn’t stop. 

The man in front of him was discovering who he was, and Thomas didn’t like it at all. 

“I hope you got a hit in as well…” he said. The moment didn’t appear nearly so portentous to him as it did to Thomas. 

“Not really…” Thomas followed a light nudge of his hand, tilting his head up and to the side so he could better reach a scrape. “One of ‘em held my arms.”

“Not a fair fight, then...bastards. Did they take anything?”

“There wasn’t much to take, but they took it all.” 

He waited for something—pity, a sense of admonishment, a recognition of his failure to protect what was his—but none of it came. It was if he’d said nothing at all.

“Someone’s always got to make trouble, even at a fair. There…” he pulled back, draping the cloth over the side of the basin and leaning back on his hand. “Good as new.”

Thomas could tell by the way it hurt him to grimace that this wasn’t at all true. 

“Thank you,” he managed, hoping he was instilling some dignity in the words. “You didn’t have to—”

“—I did. I was happy to.” 

He looked it, too. Thomas found himself returning his smile without willing it, without fully knowing why. 

“Chris Webster, by the way,” he added, holding out a hand that Thomas tentatively shook in his own. They might’ve been back at the fair, meeting like regular people. “It’s Barrow, is it?”

So he had been talking outloud, after all...Thomas nodded. “I don’t know why I kept blathering on…”

“I don’t mind it.”

It’d have been nice, meeting him at the fair. He must have been there the whole time, him and his friends...if Thomas had spent the afternoon doing anything but mooning about over someone who couldn’t care less, he might have seen him. 

He always imagined himself as that sort—the kind of man who could manage lots of friends, the man who knew what he was about. He was clever enough, he was strong enough...he’d done enough, hadn’t he, to earn some interest? 

There was one problem, one barrier that most men sensed before long. It didn’t have to matter, but it usually did. 

Chris Webster hadn’t noticed it yet. 

“Here…” he said, tracing over a bruise on Thomas’s forehead with a bare hand. “That needs ice.”

He stood, striding towards the door, waving his hand behind his back as if to say he’d just be a moment. 

“Pat! Pat do you have—Jesus, where did you come from?” He bent down, past where Thomas could see, shooing away what was surely a curious child. “No, you can’t go in and see, come on…”

But at her insistence, he soon scooped the girl up, holding her on his hip as he went off in search of Pat. Thomas had surely been hit too hard, for something in the gesture provoked a surge of affection for the man. A sense of trust that his reason couldn’t budge. 

It had been too long since he’d met someone who made him feel that way. 

At first, Thomas had doubted whether he’d be able to finish even half a bowl of the soup Mrs. Eastburn (“Pat”) offered him. It wasn’t her or the soup’s fault—only his head was still aching, and the setting sun was solidifying a feeling of neglect in the pit of his stomach that he feared might not leave room for much else. 

But Chris (and Chris was what he insisted on being called, “as that’s my name”) sat on the end of the bed and ate alongside him, looking so comfortable that Thomas forgot he was practically a stranger. 

He was less of one by the time Thomas had polished off his second bowl. He lived in York, worked in Rowntree’s factory (“for now, if they can keep afloat”), and was so easy to talk to that Thomas found himself telling stories he shouldn’t (though the laughter he received in return for them kept him reaching for another). 

His friends were all off back to York, but Chris claimed he’d always intended to stay the night at his sister’s (probably in the bed Thomas was now occupying, though he gave Thomas no reason to feel badly for it). 

“So don’t worry if they take their time at the Abbey...worst comes to worst, I can find a car. Can’t drive it, really, but that’s just another step, isn’t it?”

Just like that...Thomas almost believed it might be that simple, and he was somewhat sorry when Mrs. Hughes knocked on the door not long after. 

He’d forgotten how badly off he was until she entered the room, paling as she took him in. 

“Heavens…”

“It looks worse than it is,” Thomas said at once, feeling a foolish need to protect her. She didn’t need it, she could handle herself better than most...but she was always the one asked to care about such things, simply because she did care when no one else could be bothered. 

He was tired just watching her do it. 

“I don’t believe that,” she replied, stepping closer.

“Might be because it isn’t exactly true,” Chris said with a smile. He’d stood on her arrival, one hand on the bedpost. “But he’ll be just fine.”

“I’ll wait for a doctor to see him before making any declarations on that score…” Mrs. Hughes said, in that no-nonsense way of hers. She was at Thomas’s side, now, eyes tracing finer lines across his face. “But I can see you’ve been well taken care of.”

Chris grinned. “I’ve done my best.”

No one doubted it. 

Still, after so many hours in relative comfort, the walk to the car was near torture—Thomas shut his eyes immediately on sitting down, wishing he might sink into the seat rather than sitting atop of it, massaging bruises he was grateful he hadn’t yet been allowed to see. 

Mrs. Hughes took her time about getting in—Thomas opened one eye and looked out the window. She was talking to Chris, who was holding Thomas’s things. Thomas turned away quickly, though he didn’t dare close his eyes again, for fear it would aid his imagination in running rampant with the possibilities of what they were talking about.

They were talking about him, of course, but there were plenty of directions that could go, (though few were ones Thomas felt settled about). 

Thankfully, they finished before the dam broke, Chris opening the door closest to Thomas as Mrs. Hughes made her goodbyes to Mrs. Eastburn. 

“Shall I set these here?” he said, reaching across Thomas in order to drape his jacket along the seat, setting his hat atop of it. 

“Thank you,” Thomas said, swallowing as Chris met his eye. He was handsome, he really was...Thomas didn’t think that was only his head talking. “For all of it. I—”

Chris waved a dismissive hand. “It was nothing at all. You were good company.”

He might have been better, Thomas thought glumly. 

“Did I mention, I have a few friends in Downton?” Chris said, chancing a brief glance behind him. “Find myself there every so often.”

Thomas blinked. He was supposed to know better than to trust in his own notions of intentionality, but there was something in Chris’s voice, in the way he was looking at Thomas...there had to be something in it...

“And?” he murmured, delighting in how Chris’s smile widened. 

“Well, maybe I’ll take a trip up to the big house,” he said, his own voice lowering. “See how this is coming along…”

A hand came up to trace the bottom of Thomas’s jaw—too quickly and quietly for the chauffeur to have cared if he’d noticed. 

He would notice, however, if Thomas swooned, which felt like quite a pressing danger. Chris laughed under his breath as he pulled away, finally shutting the door and letting him breathe. 

Nothing would come of it, surely...but something could. Something might. 

He hadn’t been wrong, that was the main thing. He hadn’t been wrong. Men didn’t do that if they weren’t…

Mrs. Hughes must have noticed his lightheadedness, but perhaps she attributed it to his being pummeled earlier in the day, for she said nothing, except to ask Mr. Ryder to drive slowly if he could. 

“We’ll be late getting back,” she remarked, though without much prejudice in the words. 

"You shouldn’t have had to come all the way.” 

“I don’t mind,” she said. “And you should know: James told me the whole story. He was convinced you’d been tossed in a ditch somewhere and it was his fault. And so it would have been, from the sound of it…”

Though he felt sorry for Jimmy, Thomas wasn’t exactly sorry that she was on his side. 

“There were two of them, and he’d had a bit to drink,” he said. “It wasn’t his fault.”

Mrs. Hughes was a far cry from convinced. “Hm. Well, if you ask me, a little guilt might do him some good.”

Or perhaps he’d realize Thomas didn’t mean any harm...that would do better than guilt, he thought. 

Though why, Thomas wondered, thinking of Chris, did he need to spend so much time on a person who was determined to dislike him? What good would it do either of them? 

“They seemed like nice people,” Mrs. Hughes said. 

“They were.”

“Mr. Webster was friendly with you,” she remarked, smiling as if she’d read his thoughts. “It made a nice change”

From someone else’s lips, the words might have felt like a survey of his own faults (Thomas was sure Mrs. Hughes could list them if she wanted). But there was real relief in her voice, as if a part of her believed his condition of loneliness was only a habit that she wanted to see broken. 

She’d told him so, once, though he’d assumed that was only because he’d been half out of his mind, sobbing away stupidly over a lukewarm cup of tea. 

Perhaps she really believed it after all.

“I don’t know what you mean, Mrs. Hughes…” he said with a smile. She laughed. 

“Lord knows, after ten years, I’m used to that…” 

Chapter Text

Mr. Carson waited until the morning to visit Thomas’s room, lending his particular brand of sympathy to the situation:

“If—in future—you find yourself in such a situation, Mr. Barrow, I hope you will consider staying put, and allow the rest of us to save our consternation for when you really do go missing.” 

He must have gotten tired of hearing Thomas’s name all evening, and not having any excuse to ignore it.

“Is there anything else I should know, Mr. Carson? For when I go missing?” Thomas said without humor. 

Carson’s frown tightened. He didn’t wait to be out of earshot before continuing his litany of complaints, grumbling in the hallway to a disinterested Mrs. Hughes. 

“I don’t want him coming upstairs until he’s back to normal.” (Thomas didn’t suppose for a moment that Carson was referring to his sore muscles or aching head). “And just when the family’s returning...we couldn’t have chosen a worse time to make a poor showing.”

“Well, it’s hardly Mr. Barrow’s fault,” Mrs. Hughes protested. “Anyway, with a baby coming I should think they’ll have more important things to worry about than whether the underbutler looks worse for wear.” 

Tea time hadn’t passed before the news came—as it turned out, Mrs. Hughes had never been more on the mark in her life. 

Lady Sybil’s death had been wretched, and most of them remembered it well. Too well. It made Matthew Crawley’s death all the more miserable. To have died on the day his son was born...no one had dared think it possible, hardly a year after Lady Sybil. 

Thomas wasn’t reverent—at least, he didn’t see much value in trying to be—but the weight of such happenings couldn’t be ignored. Besides, he’d liked Mr. Crawley very much. To have come through the war as he did, only to meet such an end...it was a waste. A horrible waste.

Still, the fog had to lift sometime, bit by bit. Little Miss Sybbie was starting to walk—not very far, but enough to have everyone cooing at her (and Thomas didn’t mind counting himself among them). Jimmy had been coming around to him since the fair, though Thomas often needed to remind himself to be grateful for the shift.  

He’d wanted a friend, and now he had one. If it didn’t feel just as Thomas had expected it would, well, then: what in life ever did? 

Something was better than nothing—the folks upstairs knew that, as they pinched Master George’s cheeks with black gloves. Be grateful for what you had—it made no promise to stay. That was the lesson the world seemed to believe they all needed to keep on learning.

Thomas intended to try. 

He’d almost (almost) forgotten about the fair by the time Chris Webster turned up at Downton. Alfred was the one to answer the back door, and he told Thomas the news with a face that betrayed a curiosity he’d surely deny with his words.

Anna wasn’t so guarded. 

“Is that the one—?” Mrs. Hughes silenced her with a brief nod. 

“If you need to use my sitting room…” she offered as Thomas stood. 

Thomas very nearly refused outright—it was going to be hard enough knowing what to say without wondering if anyone was listening at the door, or what stupid question someone might ask in the hallway. 

But what if Chris expected to be let in, to be treated as a guest? He had every right, after what he’d done for Thomas. And Thomas supposed he had a right, too, after so many years. They’d like it, wouldn’t they, for him to keep his visitors out in the yard? 

He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. Why shouldn’t he have tea in the sitting room, like everyone else? 

Chris was fiddling with his wristwatch when Thomas opened the door, oblivious to the squeaking hinges. He looked more than a little bit nervous. 

Thomas couldn’t say he was sorry to have noticed it.

“You came,” he said, closing the door behind him. 

Time exaggerated many things, but the brightness of Chris Webster’s smile wasn’t one of them. Thomas was glad to have caught a glimpse of his prior uncertainty, for it had vanished entirely in the wake of Thomas announcing himself. 

“I told you I would, didn’t I?” All confidence again—Thomas wished he could say the same. Absent of anything to say, he only laughed stupidly and looked off to the side to stare at an empty wheelbarrow. 

“I would’ve come earlier, but I heard about what happened,” Chris continued. “Thought I should wait. How are you?”

Thomas blinked. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been asked it. Certainly no one before Chris had bothered to check in on how he was holding up since Mr. Crawley’s death (and Thomas didn’t blame them for that, really, except that it was part of a pattern by now). 

“Oh, I can’t complain,” he said, thinking that would be the end of it. Most people asked as a formality, anyway. 

But Chris didn’t stop it there. 

“Did you know him pretty well?” he asked. “I mean, do you get to, in a place like this?”

Thomas noticed Chris’s eyes tracing over his livery—he wasn’t sure he liked it very much. Most people he saw in a day were in service themselves or took his position for granted. He hardly noticed it, in their company. 

He was noticing it with Chris. 

“We get to,” he said stiffly, looking away again. “He was a good man. I’m sorry for it, really. Very sorry.”

“Well, then, I’m sorry too.” He sounded as if he meant it, and he hesitated when Thomas suggested he stay for tea. 

“Won’t they mind?” he asked. “The lad at the door didn’t look too happy to see me.”

Of course he hadn’t. Thomas had long since tired of untangling when Alfred was unhappy with him, when he was unhappy with someone else, and when he was unhappy out of sheer principle (he was Miss O’Brien’s nephew, after all…)

“That’s just Alfred,” he settled on. Which made Chris laugh. 

Still, he stopped Thomas turning the door handle with an outstretched hand that brushed against his arm. 

“Before you—” he paused at the same time Thomas did, laughing at himself before shaking his head. “I’ll just come out with it—did you know what I meant, the last time? By...”

He hesitated—another blessed sign that he was human, that he lived in the same world Thomas did. A world where questions like that turned dangerous fast if you weren’t careful. 

“I think I did.”

For an exhilarating, ridiculous moment, they only looked at each other, taking in the view beyond the threshold they’d crossed. Thomas couldn’t remember the last time anyone had looked so pleased about anything he’d said...nor could he remember the last time he’d felt so entirely buoyed up by his own words. 

Words usually felt like something thrown out into the wind, likely to be misinterpreted or ignored. They were stunningly imperfect yet usually necessary: a fraught combination that Thomas had never balanced out right.

He was probably going to tip the balance with Chris as well, before too long. 

All the more reason to enjoy the moment while it lasted. 

“I’m hoping that smile means I might have a chance?” Chris said, stepping forward. As he’d already been quite close, the shift was exponential. 

“More than a chance,” Thomas said, trying to catch his breath. “I was starting to think you’d been teasing.”

Chris shook his head, in a manner that suggested he didn’t quite realize he was doing it. 

“Anyone who’d tease you is a braver man than I am,” he laughed. “You cut a fine figure. I’d be terrified if I came through here, no matter what I was lord of.”

His eyes were tracing Thomas at their leisure—there was no hiding his intention. 

“What’ve I done to make you terrified?” Thomas smirked. He didn’t mind Chris noticing his livery so much, now. Not if he was going to look at him that way...

“I’m not terrified, here as me. But if I were them…” He nodded his head in the direction of the house. “Giving orders to you when you look like that...I couldn’t do it.”

He stepped still closer, one hand reaching out to catch Thomas’s wrist—did these things always happen so quickly, and he’d just forgotten? 

“Couldn’t you?” Thomas murmured. 

Chris shook his head. “I’ll bet there are gentlemen who don’t even try. Tell me straight.”

It was true, actually—or it had been, back before the war. Thomas had come across plenty of lords and sirs and barons who had wanted nothing more than to have him purring underneath them. Some of them did give orders; many hadn’t, at least not convincingly. It had been easy, then. Everything had been easy. 

It hadn’t been that way in years. Thomas suspected it would never quite be that way again—not for him, anyway. A proper bloke like Chris might see something desirable in him, but the average gentleman of a decade ago had wanted someone quite different. Something he no longer was, nor would be again.

“I haven’t noticed that, exactly,” Thomas said coyly. 

“Then money really does corrupt,” Chris said. His fingers had lowered to intertwine with Thomas’s own. “I can’t steal you away now, can I?”

He’d have him right then, if he could...and if Thomas had a hope of getting away with it, he’d have said yes. 

But he didn’t have a hope, not in the afternoon when everyone downstairs would know by now that he had a visitor. 

“Not for that long you can’t.” Thomas leaned forward. “You might have written, before coming all this way.” 

He thought for a moment that he had him—Chris’s pupils widened, his mouth going slack. 

He recovered. 

“But then I wouldn’t have gotten to see you,” he replied, his other hand brushing against Thomas’s waist. “And I’ve been wanting to.”

Thomas was used to brazenness—he preferred it, even. You didn’t have to guess what men wanted when they told you so clearly, and it was no use being afraid because they wouldn’t listen to any such talk. 

But he wasn’t used to finding brazenness in men like Chris Webster, men who had just as much to lose as he did by a gardener or hall boy or anyone coming ‘round the corner.

His hand was resting on Thomas’s waist, now. Thumb moving up and down slowly, with only a vague sense of rhythm. Thomas wondered how far he’d go, standing right there, if Thomas encouraged him—if he leaned into his touch, if he sighed, if he tipped his head forward and kissed him…

If it were anywhere else...

“Have you? Even with all your friends back in York to keep you company?” Thomas said, playing a card he didn’t really put stock in—anyone who was truly jealous had already lost the game—but always worked in a pinch. 

“It’s not like that…well, not usually,” Chris laughed, eyes meeting Thomas’s. So he recognized the card—and knew exactly what to play after it. Thomas swallowed, thinking of how many men in York he’d wound up like this before. If Thomas were the jealous sort, it would be over and done with.

But he wasn’t—not this early on, anyway. 

“And not lately, ask any of ‘em,” Chris continued. “I’ve been talking their ears off about you.”

Some of the seduction wore off at the reminder that he’d met Chris while playing the part of a hapless victim. What stories could he tell that didn’t ultimately characterize Thomas as rather pathetic? 

“So I should prepare myself for plenty of pity…”

“Pity?” Chris raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know what you do here at Downton Abbey, but in York we don’t pity heroes.”

He smiled at Thomas’s look of confusion. 

“Your housekeeper told me,” he explained. Thomas didn’t know what had possessed Mrs. Hughes to elaborate on the story, and he wasn’t sure he was grateful to her for it. “You kept that quiet.”

“I don’t think it’s the hero’s way to boast,” Thomas pointed out (though he hadn’t felt a hero then, and he hardly felt one now, even with Jimmy’s gratitude).

“No,” Chris agreed. His hand was pressing tighter against Thomas’s side, asking for trouble, pleading for someone to walk by and see. “They let other people do that for them…”

It had to stop there. They were on borrowed time—Thomas knew that. He had every intention of pulling away, of turning the doorknob and inviting his guest in for tea. Start up a perfectly ordinary conversation in a perfectly ordinary sitting room, and wait for another day to pick up where they’d have to leave off. 

He knew all that. The trouble was, he couldn’t make himself want to. 

“You’re confident,” he said, letting Chris pull him closer. 

“Aren’t you?” Chris lifted his chin. “Looking at me the way you were. Pretty early on, if I remember right.”

“So it’s my fault, is it?” 

Chris shook his head. “I started it. But you kept it up, Mr. Barrow—”

“—Thomas.” 

“Thomas.” Chris smiled. “Is that just for us, or can I call you that in there as well?”

He might have started it, but he was also going to be the one to end it. With a final squeeze of his hand, Thomas felt Chris’s fingers untangle from his own, his body almost imperceptibly drawing away. His other hand, however, remained on Thomas’s waist. 

“Half of them use it themselves, so no harm in you doing it.”

Chris was too ignorant of how a house was run to hear the bitterness in Thomas’s voice. 

“How are they, here?” he asked. “I always thought it’d be hard, living with the same people you work with.” 

Of course it was hard, what did he think? That there was an outside chance they were all the best of friends? Even proper families didn’t work that way, usually...and they weren’t that, either. 

Thomas shrugged, regretting it instantly when the movement caused Chris to finally let go of him. They were reaching part where he was finally going to upend it all by saying the wrong thing. 

“We don’t have to talk about any of them,” Thomas said, looking away. 

“Any of who?” Chris said with a grin. 

It wasn’t right that he couldn’t kiss him then and there. 

“What about your friends?” Thomas asked. “Are most of them…?”

“I try not to be friends with anyone else,” Chris replied. “It’s easier. Well, not easier, it can be a real mess…”

He laughed, and this time Thomas did feel a little bit jealous of all those blokes back in York, getting to see him like this whenever they wanted. 

 “But it’s a lot more fun,” Chris continued. “You should meet them. They’d like you.”

Lacking any real evidence, Thomas didn’t feel so sure. 

“I don’t really meet very many,” Thomas admitted. “Not like this.”

Chris pocketed the hand that had been holding his not two minutes before. Thomas wondered when he’d get to hold it again. 

“Well, if you’re interested, you could meet quite a few sticking with me.”

“I think I might be,” Thomas murmured, finally catching sight of one of the gardeners. He straightened his back, looking at Chris with a glint in his eye before opening the door at long last. 

“Inside, Mr. Webster…” 

But Chris didn’t move. 

“Are you sure? I’ve got somewhere else we can go.”

Thomas stared at him, wishing he had a better reason to say no. He had plenty of good ones, plenty of thorough ones...but what he needed in the face of Chris’s offer was something incontrovertible, and nothing quite that convincing was coming to mind. 

It was only down to the village with a friend for a drink, as far as they were concerned. He had time, people ran errands and such every day...he was a person, he had the right to ask at least…

“One minute,” he said breathlessly. 

Chris grinned. 

“You can have more if you need it,” he said, “as long as it means you’re coming with me.” 

Thomas tilted his head up towards the vaulted ceiling while he lay sprawled on the wide bed. Though his limbs were now languid, his heart still thudded in his chest as Chris leaned down to kiss him again. 

“You like the room,” Chris murmured on pulling away. 

“Now that I’m finally noticing it. I was busy with other things, before…” He drew Chris in for another kiss before the words could embarrass either of them. “All I know is, I’m in debt to Mr. Fawcett…” 

“No, you aren’t; I’ve done the same thing for him, and will again. Though I did get the better end of the bargain, I think…”

He means the house, Thomas told himself, even as he blushed. 

“How is it you know every man like us in Yorkshire?”

“I didn’t know you.”

“Until now.”

“Right, until now...got to know you pretty well, now.”

Thomas gave a low laugh, closing his eyes. 

He didn’t know who’d started it this time, but Chris was going to have to be the one who ended it. Thomas didn’t have it in him to leave when more could be given. He’d never been able to, though usually it made little difference—most men had a clear idea of when they’d been spent, and they were eager to let Thomas know when it happened. 

Get up and get off and get out, in whatever order was most convenient. 

In the ordinary view of things, they’d both spent all they had; Chris, however, didn’t seem to be one for doing things in the ordinary way. He looked perfectly happy to keep Thomas there—naked and idle, not the picture of lust anymore so much as sloth. Sloth and something else...Thomas closed his eyes as Chris ran his fingers through his hair again, pulling it back from his forehead. 

He was going to have to sneak upstairs and fix it before dinner, Thomas thought, not caring one bit. 

“You’ll have to go soon,” Chris murmured, propping himself up so he was upright, leaning on his left hand. His right hand was still preoccupied with Thomas’s hair. 

“How d’you know that?”

“‘Cause you told me, when we started.” 

“Oh,” Thomas frowned. “I don’t think I meant to.”

Chris laughed. “That’s alright. Easier to know beforehand.”

“I’m told I’m very efficient.”

“I don’t doubt it, Mr. Barrow. Thomas,” he said, making a show of correcting himself. He hadn’t forgotten it any other time since they’d arrived, that much Thomas did remember. 

He hadn’t heard a man say it so many times—and say it that way— in ten years. 

It was better than he’d remembered--or maybe it was simply better than it had ever been before. 

“Can I see you again?” Chris asked, standing and pulling Thomas upright by the hand. He didn’t need to ask, and he grinned like he knew it. 

“You can,” Thomas said, grinning back in spite of himself. And that was why people asked even when they felt sure—as a call and response, a harmony of thought and word.

“Good,” Chris said. Showing the most patience he had all day, Chris waited until they were both at least half-dressed before pulling Thomas into his arms, hands splayed across his back as he kissed him. 

“I have to get them while I have time,” he laughed, helping Thomas button his shirt with steady hands (though it was clear enough he’d never been a valet, from the way he managed it).  “Don’t know when they’ll let you outside again…and I’m not a temperate man, Thomas.”

For which Thomas was entirely grateful. 

Chapter Text

No one was more surprised than Thomas when the letter arrived. He pocketed it quickly—too quickly, in fact. 

“What’s that?” Jimmy asked, more tactless than unkind. 

Thomas was probably only imagining Miss O’Brien’s head turning in his direction. She’d done a faithful job of ignoring him for well over a year. It’d be a pity if she gave it up now.

“Nothing.” Thomas tried for a smile, but it clearly didn’t come off, seeing as Anna felt the need to interject. 

“I suppose it’s Mr. Barrow’s business who he gets letters from,” she said, looking at Thomas and nodding as if he’d already agreed with her (and he did agree, of course, but he didn’t understand why she was bothering with it). 

“And I suppose it’s my right to ask a question,” Jimmy grumbled. 

Perhaps it was, but Thomas had no intention of answering, friends or not. 

It was a miserable morning—as most of them were nowadays, since Mr. Crawley’s death—and the letter sat burning a hole for too long before he could take a moment to read it. 

Dear Thomas,

This is me sending a note like you asked. If you’re ever in York, now you have the address. How’s that for a hint? Here’s another one: 

I owe you a drink or something like it. I have manners, even if I forget them from time to time. Usually I can forgive myself for it, but I feel embarrassed, when it comes to you. 

Remember what I said about you making men afraid? I thought I could count myself out, but I think you managed it after all. 

Anyway, now here I am writing a letter. My penmanship is no good, so I try and avoid it. I could write the prettiest words, but if they don’t look it, then it’s all wasted.

But since I would like to see you again, and I would like to be taken seriously in your eyes, then I have no right to do anything but try. 

(I took my time writing that part—it almost looks worth it. I promise I have other qualities that can make it up. And if you come to York, I can just say everything to your face and it won’t matter what it would look like on the page)

Sincerely,

C. Webster

He did have a messy hand...though Thomas had contended with worse. He might not have noticed it all, had Chris not called attention to his own efforts, his own awareness of what he had determined to do in sending a letter. Thomas laughed to himself on reading it through the first time, but the words were denser than they appeared—they stuck around, settling somewhere far less humorous. 

Thomas could treat it as a novelty for only so long, before remembering that he knew what letters meant. Letters took time. They crafted permanence, and with permanence came expectations. 

Though he knew he couldn’t afford them, Thomas knew he had no choice about resisting those expectations. 

Perhaps one day, something would even come of them. 

In many ways, life in service had cast Thomas in amber, making him entirely unaware of how real men lived out their lives. He’d gotten a glimpse during the war, but that too was a false image—they’d all been in the same sinking boat, and any remembrances of a life before the reckless waves was hearsay (and sentimental hearsay at that). 

However, Thomas had always assumed that most men like him—in service or not—felt just as aimless, just as stagnant. Surely they were all waiting for the same signal, the same truth to come to the surface and set them free? 

But Marvin Hall and Oscar Murray had a proper house. A small house, an inauspicious one, but a house all the same. A house all to themselves. 

Thomas could hardly believe it, even perched on a chair in their sitting room, listening to Oscar play the piano. 

“But how does it work?” he asked Marvin. Chris had finally wandered from his side to fetch another drink. 

“What do you mean?” Marvin cocked his head to the side—he was slight and nervy and very funny, if peculiar. He reminded Thomas of some of the worldly valets he’d met in London—sighing every time they were called up the staircase, a wink in their eye. 

He’d always liked their company best of all, though he’d never dared wonder outloud how many were like him. Though Marvin had never been in service, talking to him felt like recapturing a time he’d once thought lost, evidence of something he’d already guessed was true.

Only this time, he could talk about it with someone, and for that reason alone, he liked Marvin. 

“I mean, do you worry?” 

He liked Marvin a little bit less for laughing at the question—loudly, too, and for a good long time. He was still doing it when Chris came back, two drinks in hand. 

“What happened?” he asked, returning to his seat on Thomas’s lap. Another thing Thomas had never thought of doing in someone else’s home, in their sitting room...but Chris had been too charming, asking if he could “sit with him,” smile betraying his meaning in such an eager way that Thomas hadn’t thought of refusing. 

The posture felt a little strange—Thomas didn’t have much practice in it, even in privacy, and he wondered if it looked like he was pretending to be someone he wasn’t, acting as if he knew things he didn’t. 

They all seemed so easy in it all...so familiar with things Thomas hadn’t ever thought of seriously before. 

He was like them, but he wasn’t. 

“He asked me if I worry…” Marvin laughed. 

“Well, don’t you?” Thomas said, hardly containing a scowl (Chris’s arm draped across his shoulders helped). 

“All the time,” Mavin said, more seriously.  “But I have to live.” 

“And you have the right to,” Chris said, eyes on Thomas. “We all do.”

Except they didn’t, that was the whole point...though just now the law’s argument seemed less convincing by the moment. 

People would live as they pleased, more or less, whatever happened. And some people—people like him in more ways than one—were living pretty well. 

They’d invited him to see it all—be a part of it, even, if he could manage to convince himself that what he was seeing was true. 

Thomas—after taking a heavy sip of his drink—pulled Chris closer by the waist, pushing through how strange it felt until the good overwhelmed it. He lifted his chin, and Chris saw what he was after. 

He kissed him as if no one else was there at all. With his eyes closed, it was easier for Thomas to pretend it was true...he didn’t even mind Marvin’s chuckling. It felt dreamlike—distant and undefined and somehow important because of those things. 

Chris planted another kiss to his cheek before pulling away. He looked so pleased that Thomas wanted nothing more than to try it again, right away...but Chris’s mind was on something else. 

“Oscar!” He turned towards the piano, a glint in his eye. “Play something livelier, will you?” 

Oscar—tall and broad and melancholic to the tips of his fingers—stopped his playing at once. 

”I thought I was,” he said, a slice of irony in his voice...he rather enjoyed playing the part, Thomas thought. But he started up a new tune, more to Chris’s liking. 

“That’s more like it.” He stood, holding a hand out to Thomas. “Come dance with me.”

 Another thing he’d never done before, but this time he could pretend...until Chris put a hand on his waist.

“Are you leading?” Thomas asked, finding pleasure in the way it made his heart race to ask it. He hadn’t thought of that part...

“Unless you want to,” even as Chris pulled him closer by the waist—and Thomas knew better than he ever had before why people danced in the first place. 

He’d been pretending, all this time—he’d even fooled himself, thinking he knew so much about dancing…

He’d known nothing at all about dancing until this moment...and they hadn't even started. 

“I don’t want to,” he said, as if by instinct. Not if I don’t have to. 

There was no room inside of him to feel foolish or overeager with the answer. That was the difference between wanting something and looking forward to it—one was an empty container, while the other was so full it might burst.

Except it didn’t. Not when Chris laughed, not when they started a tango, not when Thomas forgot to keep track of where they were in the room...the feeling just kept coming, kept bouying him up. It was all he could do to tear his eyes away and look delightedly for an anchor.

Marvin had moved to the piano and was sitting next to Oscar on the bench. Wine in one hand, his other rested on Oscar’s leg. They were talking to each other, too low to hear over the music. Oscar’s nose wrinkled when he laughed—almost like he regretted it every time—and Marvin kept holding his glass out so Oscar could have a sip. 

“They’re funny,” Thomas said without thinking. 

“Funny how?” 

There was nothing bitter in the words, but they shook Thomas out of it all the same. 

“Not funny, really, I just mean…I’ve never met anyone like us, who...” 

He substituted the end of the thought for a squeeze of Chris’s hand. 

“People find a way,” Chris said, hearing the truth in the gesture. 

He looked down at their feet at the same time Thomas did (it was a different thing, following in a dance, and just because Thomas liked it didn’t mean he was any good at it yet). 

“You’re doing well.”

“I’ve never done it this way,” Thomas said—and though he’d meant it as a confession, it sounded more like a statement of victory. 

“Could’ve fooled me.” And it didn’t matter whether it was a lie or not, because Chris pulled him closer either way...and he was getting better at it, every moment. 

He could almost see it becoming easy. 

“Can you play, Chris?” Marvin called out. “I want a dance.” 

Thomas was sorry to hear the music stop, but he wasn’t sorry when Chris pulled him by the hand to the piano and sat him down in the same place Marvin had been only a moment before. Maybe it was only copying, to put his hand in the same place on Chris’s thigh, but it felt right. 

“This is nice,” he remarked to Oscar, distracting himself with the piano as Chris’s fingers played across his own. 

“My grandmother’s,” Oscar said, finishing off the glass of wine before setting it on the top of the piano. “I was the only one who bothered with it.”

Marvin plucked the empty glass from the piano. “He’s the only one who bothered with anything, far as I’m concerned…”

“...let’s not bore him with that.” Oscar led Marvin by the waist over to the open space in the sitting room. “Go on, Chris.”

Marvin had hardly gotten the wine glass placed on a table before Chris started playing and Oscar snatched him up in a foxtrot. 

Thomas was staring again, though he didn’t realize it until Oscar spun Marvin around and Thomas felt himself sighing. He blinked, feeling stupid, and turned back to the piano and Chris. Chris’s eyes were intent on the keys—he clearly wasn’t as practiced as Oscar at it—but he leaned into Thomas’s side when he felt him turn back around. 

“You’re not bad,” Thomas said. 

Chris shrugged, smile widening. “I’m not as good as Oscar, but I make do.”

He did, too...Thomas watched him for another minute, waiting for a fear that never came to settle. And the next time Chris chanced a glance up at him, Thomas found himself leaning forward. 

“Can I—” 

His breath hardly had time to hitch before Chris filled the space. 

“—you had better, Mr. Barrow…”

The second kiss was even easier than the first—for Thomas at least; Chris fumbled with the keys, prompting groans from the dancing couple. 

“This is what happens when Fred works late and we have to make do with him…”  Marvin exclaimed, which prompted an argument between himself and Oscar as to whether Fred was really ‘working late’ or ‘hiding some bloke from us...again.’ 

Thomas and Chris laughed together on the bench, heads still bent towards each other. 

“You were going to tell me something while I was up here,” Thomas murmured, taking a chance before the dancers insisted on the music starting up again. 

“Was I?” Chris almost looked nervous. 

“You said you would,” Thomas said, refusing to feel sorry for him. “I’d almost say you promised.” 

Chris laughed. 

“You’re something else…”

“Was that what you were going to tell me?”

“No,” Chris said at once. He blushed when Thomas’s smile widened. “Yes...or something like it, maybe. You’ve got me all mixed up…”

“Well, I’m sorry for that,” Thomas said, hand teasing along Chris’s inner thigh. He only idly considered whether he might be taking it a step too far. 

Chris didn’t seem to think so, and he’d know better than Thomas. 

“Don’t be sorry,” he said in a low voice. “I like it, very much. I like you.” 

Thomas let his hand rest as he watched Chris’s face, his next question coming entirely from the answer it gave him. 

“Very much?” he teased. 

Chris made a show of looking over his shoulder. 

“Marvin, get me my drink, would you?” he called out.

“And then you’ll play the whole song, I suppose?” Marvin said, tacking on a sigh as he trudged to the table. 

“Yes, I’ll play it perfectly, just for you.” 

Marvin laughed sardonically. “What a man...”

He took his time about it, but Chris didn’t wait to have it in hand before starting up the music again. 

“Yes, very much, ” he said underneath the melody, leaning into Thomas.

If he could only grow used to that, it would be enough.