Work Text:
1905
Manchester
Thomas lay atop the quilt on his bed, fully dressed, unable to think of sleep. It wasn’t the pain that kept him up, although his ribs still ached dully if he stood too long. His father had been careful to wait until Thomas’s face was mostly healed before pursuing inquiries about a position up at the big house; he’d been less concerned about the bruises hidden beneath clothes, the ones unseen by an interviewing butler’s sharp eye. He’d certainly been unconcerned when he’d made them. Did Clarence have bruises? In the two weeks Thomas had been shut up in the clock shop’s upstairs flat like a princess in a tower—away from prying eyes and wagging tongues—his thoughts had always returned to Clarence.
He didn’t know what had happened to him after they’d run off in different directions. He’d asked his mother over and over again back when his black eye was fresh and his father stomped about the flat wearing his thundercloud face. But she’d only stared at him with wet eyes—disappointed eyes, ashamed eyes—saying nothing.
Maybe he’d been caught by the neighborhood boys who’d chased them. That could have ended very badly. Those boys had had rocks in their fists and murder in their eyes. He might’ve made it home, which wasn’t necessarily better. Clarence said his father never beat him, but who knew what a man might do if he found out his son was that sort? Perhaps he was going to be sent away like Thomas. He was tall enough to be a hall boy. People said he wasn’t handsome because of his crooked nose and the gap between his two front teeth. Thomas knew the truth though—he was, he really was. His kindness shone out of him.
Ribs bruised, cheeks burning with shame at the nasty words his father had hissed in his ear, he imagined that he and Clarence would be taken on as hall boys at the same house. He could see it clearly as the brown water stain on the ceiling, the empty mattress his sister had occupied before she was married, the dog-eared copy of Treasure Island resting on the bedside table. Clearer even—the only illumination in the room was a shaft of moonlight from the half-open curtains on the window, transforming the world into the darkened set of a play, into something unreal.
The two of them would find each other again amongst fine china and velvet curtains. They would run away together, buy a little shop where Thomas could mend clocks and Clarence could sew artificial flowers. When they walked down the street, they would hold hands. Nobody would even care.
The room had gone blurry, wetness sliding down his temples and into the shells of his ears. It was a stupid dream. He was a stupid boy. One day he would put aside such childish notions. He wouldn’t melt into a puddle just because some boy glanced his way. One day he would be hard as stone, and no one would ever hurt him again.
He got to his feet, ignoring protesting muscles, and crept over to the gleaming carriage clock on the shelf. The time read quarter to midnight. In the morning, his father would walk him up to the big house, heavy hand gripping his shoulder, then leave him at the servants’ entrance like a sack of potatoes for the Family’s dinner. Although nobody said it outright, Thomas understood that if the Family didn’t take him on, he could not come home. He couldn’t visit. He couldn’t write for help. “Barrow” was a word at the end of his name, and that was the end of it.
But that was morning. Tonight he lived in the flat where he had been born, above the clock shop that had been his nursery and his school. And, with everyone else asleep, he could do what he pleased.
He crept out onto the landing. The stair steps creaked in the middle, so he walked down them sideways, gripping the bannister for balance. Little moonlight trickled down to the windows on the ground floor, but Thomas could have navigated the back room blindfolded. He eased open the door and stepped into the shop proper. Padding between the dark, lumpy shapes of clocks on show, he stopped at the glass display case that housed two rows of shining pocket watches. He felt around behind it until he located the tiny, silver key that, despite his father’s best efforts, always fell off the nail it was meant to hang on.
Had he planned things out beforehand, Thomas would have stolen the most expensive watch. Or perhaps one his father had found broken and lovingly restored with a care he had never shown his son. But this was an impulsive act, urged on by a swell of strong feeling, like the first time Thomas’s and Clarence’s innocent wrestling in the grass had morphed into eager hands and soft mouths and oh yes please. He grabbed one at random, not even looking at it before shoving it into his pocket, locking the case, returning the key to its nail, and sprinting for his bedroom as if he were a scalded cat.
He huddled beneath the sun-bleached quilt for several long minutes, shoes kicked off haphazardly onto the floor and jacket thrown over a chair, while his heart thudded like a sledgehammer in his chest. No one barged through the door to demand the pocket watch back. In time, his pulse slowed to match the gentle tick tick tick pressed into his hip. When his father noticed it was gone, Thomas would be miles away, a hall boy or a boy with nowhere to go. Either one. The movement of the clock hands, the turning of the gears—that was the only constant, the only reliable thing.
He slid the watch from his pocket only long enough to check the time. It was three minutes after midnight on February fourteenth. He had just turned fifteen years old.
1923
Yorkshire
Sprawled on his narrow bed in shirt sleeves and socks, Thomas surveyed the royal flush he held in his hand through heavy-lidded eyes. Jimmy leaned forward in the armchair they’d dragged over from the corner of the room to poke Thomas’s foot.
“Oi, don’t fall asleep when I’m just about to win.”
“Not bloody likely,” said Thomas as he showed his hand.
“You’re a rotten cheater, you are,” said Jimmy when he threw down his own hand—a pair of Queens—but he was grinning like a schoolboy. They’d been passing a bottle of gin between them Jimmy had bought in York earlier that day. He tilted it up to his mouth for a generous swallow. Thomas tried not to watch the movement of his throat as the alcohol slid down it.
“Careful, Jimmy Kent.” Thomas sat up and lit himself another cigarette, pulling an already overflowing ashtray closer to him. “Those are fighting words.”
Jimmy’s cheeks went pinker than the drink allowed for. “Are you going to throw me down and wrestle me?”
Thomas froze. It was no bloody fair that he could say things like that in that gorgeously husky voice with those bee-stung lips pursed just so—
Head turned away, Thomas inhaled a steadying drag of smoke, willing his heartbeat to slow. No, that was unfair. It wasn’t Jimmy’s fault. He flirted with everyone—girls, men, whoever—without ever realising. How was he to know his words had awakened a vivid memory of a young, deliriously happy Thomas rolling around in a field with a boy who gazed up at him as if he were the sun?
“Oh!” Jimmy said, as if he’d just remembered something. “What time is it?”
Thomas squinted at the alarm clock beside him. “Three minutes past midnight. We ought to have been in bed ages ago.”
“No, not yet.” To Thomas’s surprise, Jimmy wasn’t pouting about losing at cards. His expression was solemn as a monk’s, his eyes large and liquid in the golden half-light of the bedside lamp. “I had to wait until it was the fourteenth, but I can give it to you now.” He stood up. “Stay here and don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
Once the door had clicked closed, Thomas sat up against the headboard and removed the tie that hung loosely around his neck, slid braces off his shoulders. The whole day had felt a bit like a dream. Certainly the idea of Jimmy faking sick so he could sneak off with Thomas on the under-butler’s half-day sounded as if it might’ve been plucked from Thomas’s fantasies rather than reality.
Your half-day’s tomorrow, why don’t you wait? he’d asked. You could take some pretty bird out for Valentine’s Day and give her a proper wooing. But Jimmy had merely smiled softly and ducked his head the way he did lately whenever Thomas brought up the topic of his best mate getting himself a girl.
Jimmy had all but dragged him onto that bus to York. From there, he’d had an entire afternoon and evening planned—a showing of the latest Fairbanks flick, an early dinner at a posh restaurant rather than the pub. When the bill had come, Jimmy had insisted on paying both shares. I want to do this right, he’d said as if that explained everything. Then he’d asked Thomas, in a strangely shy way, if there were any clubs in York that were to his liking. Why would he ask such a thing? It was Jimmy who knew where to go to have a good time. Looking out at the men and women spinning around the dance hall, he’d seemed almost disappointed for a moment, and Thomas had been struck by a familiar ache in his chest at the idea that he might have let Jimmy down.
But mostly the day had been wonderful. Even more so when Jimmy had followed him back to his room like a puppy who couldn’t bear to be left alone. Were it any other man, Thomas would know exactly what to make of the odd behaviour—but he’d more than learned his lesson as far as Jimmy was concerned. He’d had a thoroughly enjoyable day out with a dear friend, that was all. And if in his dreams tonight, their evening included soft kisses and sweet words, surely that was nobody’s business save his own.
Jimmy crept back into the room, a brown paper package tied with twine in his hand. Thomas stood, and Jimmy walked over, held it out. A Valentine’s gift for his sweetheart, Thomas’s mind supplied before his common sense got the better of him. He sighed. “Who told you it was my birthday?”
“Baxter, who else? Go on, open it.”
A childish desire to rip into the present and toss the paper to the floor was quickly squashed by over half a lifetime of training. He picked free the knot in the twine, peeled off the paper in one large piece, and set them both down carefully atop the quilt. The box, not much bigger than his palm, was cardboard that according to the label, had contained cinnamon in its previous life. Jimmy must’ve nicked it from the kitchen. Inside, amidst a nest of crumpled newspaper, lay a gleaming silver pocket watch. A very modern and handsome design of interlocking sharp, crisp lines was engraved into the top.
Against his will, his other hand came up and lifted it free of its case, popped open the cover. The clock ticked away, keeping perfect time. Jimmy had wound it for him. On the outside of the face was a ring of Roman numerals as one might expect, but the inner circle was only glass, exposing the workings of the copper cogs and gears within.
“I know you’ve already got one,” said Jimmy, “but whenever I catch you lookin’ at it… I don’t know, you look sad, is all. So I found a new one. A better one.”
Thomas keenly felt the presence of his old pocket watch, the one he’d worn every day since he was a boy, on his vanity. It seemed to be glowering at the back of his neck, like a jealous lover. Or an angry father. His stomach performed a slow, sickening somersault. He didn’t know whether to clutch the new pocket watch close to his chest—this kind, thoughtful gift—or fling it hard at the nearest wall. He sat heavily down on the edge of the bed.
“This must have been expensive,” he said finally. His dry throat clicked. “And I know what kind of money you make. I can’t accept this.”
“I won a pile at the ponies last month,” Jimmy replied a hair too quickly. His smile was so bright it hurt to look at directly. “I bought somethin’ for meself, as well. So don’t you worry about that.”
“Even so,” said Thomas. Heart sinking down to the floor, he put the shining pocket watch back in its little box, shut the lid.
Jimmy’s face fell almost comically, like a dipping souffle. “You don’t want it.”
“No, no, it’s not like that—”
“I’m so stupid, of course that pocket watch is important to you, that’s why you’re always fussin’ over it.”
“It belonged to my father.” It wasn’t a lie, not really, yet guilt prickled at the back of Thomas’s neck all the same.
Jimmy nodded so furiously golden strands came loose from their pomade hold and bounced across the brow. “I understand. I would hate to give up anything I have left of me mum and dad.”
And Thomas could’ve left it at that. He should’ve left it at that. He blamed the damned gin for what he said next, something even nosy O’Brien had never heard. “I stole it.”
Blinking owlishly, Jimmy muttered, “What?”
Thomas inhaled a shaky breath. “I snatched my pocket watch out of a display case the night before I left home. It’s to remind me, but not for the reasons you’re thinking of. It reminds me that to them I’m no good, I’m… a criminal. I can’t ever go back. I don’t have a home, or a family. I have to go it alone.”
When he glanced up, Jimmy’s expression was nothing short of furious. “That’s bollocks,” he said.
Thomas felt his own hackles rising. He loved Jimmy, God knew he did, but how could he possibly hope to understand, he who’d been the spoiled boy of two doting parents for however short a time. He opened his mouth to argue.
“That’s bollocks,” Jimmy repeated. “You’re not alone, you have—” His voice wavered. “—You have me.”
“And for how long will that be?” Lord, here we go.
Jimmy reeled back as if he’d been slapped. “What are you sayin’?” He sounded lost and very young. The need to hold him, to whisper reassurances and stroke his hair was a physical ache throbbing behind Thomas’s ribcage. But he couldn’t do any of that, which was the whole bloody point.
“You’re always going on about how you intend to travel the world one day. Are you telling me you intend to drag your pet degenerate around with you?” Thomas shut his eyes tight, shame hot against the back of his neck. Pet degenerate. That was much too cruel, too cruel to both of them. He blamed the gin again—the gin and the exhaustion deep in his bones and the cold knowledge that no man had touched him in two bloody years.
Although he didn’t speak for a long time, Thomas could feel Jimmy’s presence, an impossibly darker shadow against the black at the back of his eyelids. Finally he spat out, “If you don’t want me, you could’ve said somethin’ before I paid for sodding dinner.”
Thomas’s eyes shot open in time to see the other man’s features crumple. Shining hair caught the lamplight as the head fell into a pair of broad, tanned hands. “I didn’t mean it,” he said, voice muffled. “I didn’t. You’re not… you’re not bloody Ivy. I didn’t do all this just to get you into bed. I only wanted to make you happy today, give you the things you deserve. Anything else would’ve been, you know, a bonus. But I ruined it. Big shock, that. Jimmy Kent ruinin’ things.”
When Thomas got to his feet, he felt the floorboards shift precariously beneath him. He must have misunderstood what Jimmy had said. There had to be an innocent explanation. But none was forthcoming. Instead it sounded like the events of the day had been Jimmy’s attempt at romancing him. The door in Thomas’s heart—the one he’d never managed to entirely shut—creaked forward that tiny bit more, threatened to swing wide open.
He moved closer than he needed to be to place his hand on the other man’s shoulder. His breath hitched a little, but otherwise he didn’t react to the touch. “I didn’t mean it, either,” Thomas whispered.
Jimmy removed his hands, met Thomas’s eye. The undisguised hope in that gaze struck the man dumb for a moment. “You didn’t?” He was whispering too.
Thomas shook his head. Feeling very brave and very stupid, he said, “Jimmy, if I kissed you right now, would you punch me?”
“I s’pose we’ll find out together, Mr Barrow.” But he was grinning, properly grinning, and he leaned up just as much as Thomas leaned down so their lips could meet.
The kiss was relatively chaste, a soft brush of skin that gradually gave way to a gentle yet insistent pressure. They pulled away from one another after a minute, and Jimmy murmured, “Happy birthday, Thomas.” He nibbled on the other man’s lower lip, so sudden it sent a thrill up Thomas’s spine. “An’ happy Valentine’s Day too.”
They came together again, this kiss a great deal more passionate, tongues entering the equation. A warm, heavy sensation Thomas had long missed crept into his belly. He pressed a gloved palm to the muscled planes of a broad back, felt even through two layers of fabric. A low, encouraging noise escaped Jimmy’s throat, and Thomas had to nuzzle him to hide his stupid grin. He breathed against the delicate, pink shell of the ear, “You said something about getting me into bed?”
Jimmy drew away—out of the circle of Thomas’s arms—but to the older man’s relief, no fear or anger shown upon his face, only a rather endearing sort of shyness he wouldn’t have thought Jimmy capable of before. “I’m not quite that loose, thank you very much. If I’m going to love a man, I might as well get a free dinner an’ a show out of it before I let him get a leg over.” He peered up at Thomas from behind his lashes. “I reckon an under-butler can arrange it so our half-days line up next time?”
He’s nervous, Thomas realised, about the physical aspects. That was perfectly fine with him. He did not care how slowly they went, now that he knew they were travelling down the same road together. He raised an eyebrow. “Is that why you’ve chosen me, then?” he asked. “So you can pick your hours?”
Jimmy shrugged, cheeky grin firmly in place. “That, and you’re old, so you’re not likely to stray.”
“Steady on! I’ve only just turned thirty-three.”
“It’s worse than I thought. You’re practically ancient.” His expression suddenly went serious. Gaze drifting to the cardboard box still lying on the bed, he said, “You won’t offend me if you keep your old pocket watch, you know.”
“I know,” Thomas replied, “but I’m going to sell it to the secondhand shop in Ripon as soon as I can.” Dark malice slithered its tendrils out from the vanity, but he wasn’t afraid anymore. Not with his Jimmy shining golden and beautiful as the Sun before him. “You were right, I hate the damned thing. Why should I keep it around if it makes me miserable? I’m better off with something new, something with happier memories attached.”
Jimmy seemed to glow brighter when he smiled, not just a sun but a whole shimmering galaxy waiting to be explored. “Quite right. Goodnight, Thomas.”
“Goodnight, Jimmy.”
And then, as if he couldn’t help it, he pressed a kiss quick as a wink to the corner of Thomas’s mouth before darting out the door.
It took a Herculean effort for Thomas not to dance around and sing at the top of his lungs as he readied himself for bed. He wouldn’t get any sleep tonight, brain buzzing as it was with plans for his and Jimmy’s next day out, but he didn’t mind. He was a year older now, but he felt younger, much younger. He was fourteen years old, and the shy boy down the lane had asked to hold his hand. Without a moment’s hesitation, he shoved his father’s pocket watch in the bottom drawer of the dresser, under a mountain of socks. The new pocket watch—the one his sweetheart had given him—took pride of place on his nightstand. He left the lid open so he could hear the steady ticking as he slipped beneath the covers, like a second heartbeat overlapping his own.
Perhaps there would be two constants in his life, going forward.