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Luke taped the last box shut and heaved it onto the stack by the door. He stretched, groaning at the muscle strain. If he could move without pain tomorrow, he was going to be very surprised indeed.
It had taken him over an hour to pack all of Martin’s books. Martin, meanwhile, was in the attic, going through the stuff there to decide what to keep and what to make a jumble sale of. The books, though, he was taking with him. Every single one. Luke wasn’t sure their new house had enough space for all of them.
But, he thought as he went up the creaky stairs of Martin’s rodent-sized, run-down cottage, they were going to figure that out once they were moved in. Luke grinned to himself and took the last stairs at an excited run. He and Martin had bought a house together and he still couldn’t quite believe it.
The hatch to the attic was still open. “Martin?” he called up the ladder. “I packed your books, how far along are you?”
For a few moments, he didn’t get a reply. Then, he only got an “uhm…”
Luke sighed and climbed the ladder. Martin was sitting cross-legged on the dusty boards, surrounded by open boxes and holding a crinkled, yellowed piece of paper. He was smiling sheepishly.
Still on the ladder, Luke crossed his arms and leaned on the boards. “You’ve been sitting here reading old letters, haven’t you?”
“Sorry, love.”
Luke smirked and climbed the last rungs to crawl next to Martin. Martin immediately leaned closer so their shoulders touched. “What’ve you got there, then?” Luke asked.
Martin smiled wistfully and handed him the letter. “It’s from Sammy. I had already been sent to France, while he was still stationed in England.”
Luke pushed his glasses further up his nose, trying to decipher the squiggles of a soldier from nearly a hundred years ago. “Sammy was your partner back then, right?”
“Yes, we’d met a good ten years earlier.” Martin gave him an odd look, gently nudged him with his shoulder. “It’s not like you to forget things like that.”
“That’s not it, it’s just that he’s talking about how much he loves this girl Mary-Anne.”
“Oh, right.” Martin laughed. “That’s me. We didn’t know if the Army read our letters, so we agreed to pretend to talk about girls when we really were talking about us. Sammy had great fun coming up with all sorts of names for me; I think he may have kept a list. I only ever called him ‘Sarah’.”
Luke shot him a grin. “Not ‘Samantha’?”
Martin shook his head. His face had gone serious. “I thought it too risky. I remember he went with ‘Martina’ once and I was furious. If we had been found out…” He trailed off. Turned away and fiddled with a packet of letters tied together with twine.
Luke didn’t know what to say. So he just put his arms around Martin and nuzzled at his neck. He felt how Martin’s back rose and fell with a silent sigh.
Luke put his chin on Martin’s shoulder and peered at the box at Martin’s knee. It was full of letters. “Are those all from Sammy, then?”
Martin shrugged. “None of this is sorted. I just chucked it all together in whatever boxes I could find last time I moved.”
“Oh boy.” Luke sat up, rubbing his forehead, but he couldn’t keep from grinning. His fingers were positively itching for old documents and faded photographs. “Well, let’s make use of this opportunity, shall we?” Luke pulled a bulging shoe carton towards himself, but stopped. “I mean — if you don’t mind me going through your stuff.”
“Oh no, by all means.” Martin made a gesture that encompassed the whole attic. “Go ahead. I’d love to get some semblance of order in here, and I’ll never get it done by myself.”
“Okay then.” Luke lifted the lid off the shoe carton, and it overflowed with documents.
They worked for a while, Luke sorting the letters in the shoe box by date. He did his best not to read too much of the contents, but he caught snippets here and there. “Some of these are from you,” he pointed out in surprise.
Martin cocked his head in confusion, but his face cleared almost immediately. “Oh yes. It was considered polite to return your letters to you if the recipient died.”
“Oh.” Luke cleared his throat and put the letter in its proper place. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Please.”
Luke regarded Martin, who was pulling a sheaf of photos out of an envelope. When he saw the first one, Martin grimaced.
“What’s so bad about that one?” asked Luke.
Martin wordlessly handed him the picture. It showed him in full uniform. He had been photographed from a three-quarter angle, with his hands clasped in front of him, and he was smiling faintly and a little awkwardly. Even in black-and-white, the buttons and buckles on his uniform gleamed. Martin himself was still the same, washed-out pale.
“Hey, handsome,” Luke said, carefully running his fingers over the brittle carton.
“Really?” Martin scrunched up his nose in that cute way of his. “The haircut makes my ears look even bigger than they already are.”
“You’re exaggerating.” Luke paused, then gestured to the other photographs. “Who else have you got there?”
“Oh, dear…” Martin put the photos down like he was dealing cards. The first showed a nurse, captured similarly to how Martin had been. “That’s my sister Victoria.” The next was of another soldier, his portrait nearly identical to Martin’s, save for the fact that he was facing the other way. “John, my brother. And here’s all three of us.”
Luke leaned over; John and Martin were flanking their sister, who was sitting. Martin had one hand on her shoulder.
Luke looked back down on the picture of Martin he still had in his hand. “Can I keep this?”
Martin’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Well, I don’t want it.”
Luke huffed a laugh and carefully put the photo in a spare envelope. He nodded towards the last picture in Martin’s hands. “And that?”
Martin hesitated before he carefully laid it down. “Sammy.”
While the photographs of Martin, John, and Victoria were obviously taken on the same day in the same studio, this was different. For starters, it was only a head-and-shoulders shot. Further, the contrast was less sharp in Sammy’s, and the picture was a little bit blurry. Sammy wasn’t looking at the camera, and he had taken his cap off. He had been blond, but the exact shade was impossible to gauge in black-and-white. Luke involuntarily thought that Sammy had not been his type. He wondered what exactly it had been about Sammy that had made Martin fall in love with him.
Luke looked up when Martin suddenly started to rummage through the boxes, clearly in search of something. “What is it?”
“I’m looking for a picture where he isn’t in that blasted uniform,” Martin replied, sounding annoyed. “And of me, too. I know I have some around here somewhere.” He paused. “Did you find anything from the thirties?”
“Not yet.”
“Bugger.” Martin made a long arm and pulled a stack of milk crates out from behind a pile of suitcases. The crates were not only filled with papers, but other knick knacks as well.
Luke grabbed an envelope at random. As he pulled it out, the flap came untucked and a load of photos spilled out on Luke’s lap. “You need to put them in an album,” he said, gathering them up. “Or several.” The one he grabbed first showed nine men — four kneeling in the front, four standing in the back, and one standing a little further to the side. Their officer, Luke presumed. Martin was in the front row, all the way on the left. Luke flipped it over. The Second Shropshire Vampires, 3 December 1918. He held it up. “This was after the Armistice?”
“Hm? Oh, my God, is that the Shropshires?”
“That’s what it says on the back.” Luke handed him the photo.
“God, yes, I remember. Yes, it was after the Armistice. There were rumours we might be disbanded, so our sergeant arranged for us to have a photo taken together.”
“Were you disbanded?”
“Yes, some time in early 1919.” Martin was already turning his attention back to rummaging through the milk crates.
Luke shuffled through the other pictures in the sheaf. One surprised him. “Is this you at a Christening?”
“Oh, probably.” Martin beckoned, and Luke showed it to him. A couple with a baby in their arms, flanked on one side by a priest and on the other by Martin, smiling widely and holding the baptism candle.
Martin was smiling now, too. “The Franklins. Andrew and Viola, and their daughter Esther.” He tapped on the priest. “And that’s Thomas Glenn, the vicar.”
“The one you worked for during the Second World War,” Luke added.
“The very same. Lovely chap.”
“Is that why you were at the Christening?”
“I was at several Christenings because of that, but not this one.” He proudly drew himself up a little. “I was Esther’s godfather.”
“Wow!”
“Yes, it was quite the honour. I was — good friends with Andrew and Viola.”
Luke tilted his head, wondering if he had imagined the slight hesitation. His thoughts were interrupted by Martin handing him yet another photo, another portrait of him.
“Here,” he said. “If you really want a picture of me from before I was a vampire, I’d rather it’s this one.”
Luke shrugged. He still thought Martin looked very handsome in uniform, but he understood that he didn’t want to be reminded of his time in the Army.
While Martin was leafing through yet another stack of pictures, Luke rummaged through the milk crates. He found a watch with broken glass, several brittle paperbacks, two of them in French, a pocket set of backgammon, and three different decks of playing cards, apparently all from different eras and none of them complete. Neither was the backgammon set, it turned out. Luke pushed a few papers aside to see if the pieces were still in the crate; maybe they had fallen out. Instead, though, he found a leather pencil case. When he took it out, there came the sound of metal clacking against metal from within. His curiosity not so much sparked rather than set ablaze, he unzipped the case.
He gasped involuntarily. Inside were five different military medals. The colour on the ribbons was faded, and the metal really needed a good polish.
Martin looked over. “Oh, good. Finally something for the jumble sale.”
“What?!” Luke almost hugged the medals close to himself. “No way!”
“Come on. I didn’t deserve, earn, or want any of them.”
Luke raised an eyebrow. “Well, the Army apparently thought you earned them. Five medals!”
Martin scoffed and reached over. “These three,” he said, tapping them in turn, “they pinned to anyone who stood still for long enough. ‘Pip, Squeak, and Wilfred,’ we called ‘em. And this is a Military Medal, and that’s a Distinguished Conduct Medal. I got them for getting turned. They said in letting myself be turned, I was displaying an extraordinary sense of duty. As in, they thought I let myself get turned to continue fighting.” He paused. His voice was small when he continued. “All I wanted was to see Sammy again.”
Luke scooted closer so he could put an arm around his shoulders. “You could give them to a museum, at least,” Luke murmured, eyeing the medals.
“Hm.” Martin tilted his head so it was leaning against Luke’s. “Would be worth a try.” He chuckled. “If they don’t already have enough. Last I checked, they awarded six million or so Pips, Squeaks, and Wilfreds.”
“What are they really called?”
Martin was quiet for a moment. “I can’t bloody remember,” he said with a laugh. He looked down at the photograph he still held. “Where’s the envelope with the pictures we’re keeping?”
Luke let him go. He had to search for a bit, but he found it half-disappeared under a leather bag. “Can I see?”
Martin showed it to him. It was the first colour photograph Luke had seen that day; it showed a man in a shawl-collar jumper sitting on a balcony, unsmiling and squinting a little in the bright sunlight. His age was difficult to determine; he was very obviously ill. His eyes were sunken, and so were his cheeks. His hair was thin and wispy like cobwebs. “It’s the last picture Phillip would let me take of him,” Martin murmured, a little absently. “He died a few months later.”
Luke didn’t know what to say, so he wordlessy scooted over and hugged him. After being with him for three years, he had found out that a good hug rarely failed to make Martin feel better. It worked now, too; he felt him relax, first slowly, then, with a sigh, completely. Martin ran his hand up and down Luke’s arm.
“This is depressing,” Martin said, so sudden and vehement that Luke got startled and sat up. “My life was more — is more — than broken artefacts and photographs of dead people. I loved them all, and I’m not going to let something as mundane as death ruin the memory of them.”
Unable to help it, Luke smiled. He’d thought that after three years, Martin would stop surprising him. Apparently, luckily, he was wrong. “Death is mundane to you?”
“You live through two wars, then we’re talking.” Martin looked around at the slapdash collection of memorabilia. “Will you help me sort them and put them into albums?”
“Sure.” Luke paused. He felt the colour rise in his cheeks before he even said the words. “You know, it’s not photos of dead people. It’s photos of people you loved — and there’s so many of them! Seriously! Two wars and well over a hundred years, and you always found people to love.” He had to look down at his hands, because he couldn’t look at Martin. “You’re amazing. You’ve got so much love and kindness in you, I — I really admire that about you. I love you.” He buried his burning face in his hands. “God, I’m so cheesy. Kill me.”
He heard Martin laugh and draw closer. He let him pull his hands away. Martin was smiling so broadly his fangs showed. “I love you too,” he said quietly, and kissed him. When he drew back, he left one hand on Luke’s cheek, caressing it with his thumb. “I’m so, so glad you’re in my life.”
Luke smiled back, his heart beating as fast as it had done when he’d first met Martin. “And I’m glad you’re in mine.” He gave Martin another quick kiss. “Let’s get your stuff packed up and into our house.”