Work Text:
London, November 1883
The boarding house looked bleak from the outside, but was much better in. He knew where Thaniel’s door was and for a skilled watchmaker it wasn’t hard to manipulate the lock into giving up. The room looked plain and neat and didn’t betray any personality at all of its owner. It was cold. Mori wrinkled his nose and concluded that Thaniel needed to take better care of himself. He lit the coals in the stove, tidied the dirty crockery and cutlery away and put the kettle on. While the water was heating up, he pulled the box from his bag.
He had spent years perfecting the clockwork. It would be a close call, so it couldn’t go wrong, not by a second. Carefully, he put it down on the bed and tried not to mind the memories of Thaniel in another bed, years from now, asleep under the quilt, soft and beautiful in the morning sun. His heart fluttered. Six months until they would meet. What were six months compared to a lifetime? But the closer the day came, the slower time seemed to flow.
He took another moment to make sure that everything was exactly as it should be, before he set out again. Thaniel would be home any moment now, but he couldn’t see him. Not yet.
London, 30 May 1884
Mori had been pacing around his workshop all evening, never getting anything done properly, so he had decided to bake scones. They might possibly come in handy later, though he didn’t quite know why. His mind still didn’t rest. What if he had overlooked something? What if the clock went wrong, even though he knew that it wouldn’t? What if Thaniel made an unpredicted choice? He was indecisive, it was part of why Mori would enjoy his company so much.
The locust clock neared midnight when he suddenly remembered with absolute certainty that Thaniel would be coming through his door soon. He gasped and staggered and then proceeded to do the only sensible thing that was left to do: he made tea.
‘Hello?’
His voice. Mori caught his breath for a second. He had known what Thaniel sounded like, but hearing it for real for the first time was something else. Like seeing the original oil painting when all you had known before were crudely pencilled copies. He was hardly ever nervous – it was hard to be nervous when you knew what was going to happen – but this was different. This was him. Thaniel. Not exactly his yet, but exceedingly close.
He breathed out and went through the door, carrying the tea cups. There he was. Dusty and dishevelled, in a state much worse than Mori had hoped, but he stood there before him, living and breathing and being Thaniel.
The lost man in his workshop looked at him just for a moment longer than might have been considered polite. ‘Oh, er – do you speak English?’
Mori almost smiled. He was a Thaniel that still had a few things to learn about the world.
‘Of course I do, I live in England.’ He offered Thaniel one of the cups, trying to keep his hands steady. ‘Tea? It’s horrible outside.’
Thaniel set down his soaking umbrella and took the cup. Their finger tips almost met. He could feel the electricity between them, a spark that only died down when Thaniel pulled the cup towards him. He watched as the young man breathed in the steam in the same way he would do every time Mori would make tea, sitting at the table in the kitchen, reading to Six… Oh, Six was still only a distant possibility. He shouldn’t shoot for an absolutely perfect future yet. That was a lot to ask.
As he sipped his tea, Mori noticed that Thaniel was bleeding. He frowned. That hadn’t meant to happen.
‘You’re bleeding.’
‘I’m what?’ Distractedly, Thaniel looked at his arm as if he hadn’t realised it was there before. ‘I’m all right. Are you Mr Mori?’
He shouldn’t be bleeding. ‘Yes. I think you ought to come through and–’
But Thaniel closed his hand in the air to stop him. ‘One of your watches – it saved me from an explosion in Whitehall.’
‘An–’
‘There was an alarm.’
It was hard to pretend to be baffled and to listen to Thaniel explain things when blood was dripping down his arm, dying his sleeve a muddy red. Mori tried his best to dissipate Thaniel’s suspicions while very much hoping that the love of his life wouldn’t bleed to death on his workshop floor, mere minutes after he had met him.
‘Come and sit down, please, you’re arm–’
‘Damn my arm! It was a bomb!’
Mori winced. He couldn’t stand it when Thaniel was angry with him, not now, not in the future. But he was stubborn, Mori knew. He didn’t give in easily, and he loved him for that. Would love him. Had always loved him. He didn’t feel good about lying to him, but he had to, not least because that bleeding would get worse if Thaniel didn’t calm down. He noticed his own hands trembling as he talked nonsense about clocks and costumers and alarms and hoped, Thaniel wouldn’t notice. Mori glanced at the door. Maybe he should get Dr Haverly, even though he already knew Thaniel wouldn’t take the help. Bloody stubborn idiot. Beautiful, sweet idiot. He wanted to clip him round the ear and hug him close at the same time.
Finally, Thaniel let his breath out. ‘You don’t know anything about it, do you?’
Relief settled in Mori’s stomach. ‘I don’t think I do.’
There was a little space of quiet, while Thaniel was indecisive about what to do next. ‘Right. I see. Well, I’d better go.’
Relief turned into a flash of panic. He couldn’t go now, not yet, and not like this. Mori willed his voice to stay calm and soothing.
‘No – no. Come and sit down, for God’s sake, before you bleed to death on my floor.’
Thaniel’s shoulders eased a bit. He needed rest, that much was obvious, but at the same he didn’t want to be a burden. Mori sympathised. He held out his arm to show him through to the kitchen.
‘The kitchen’s warm.’
He held open the door and waited for Thaniel to go through first. When he passed him he smelled of rain and blood and gun powder, but underneath it all there was a mixture of cologne and Lipton’s and a hint of freshly fallen snow.
Mori breathed deeply, before he closed the door behind him and followed Thaniel down the steps. His guest dropped down into the chair without having been offered a seat. He couldn’t be feeling well. The way he trapped his hands between his knees gave him the look of a child that didn’t know what to do with themselves. While he took in his surroundings, Mori took him in and remembered him sitting at this very table, hearty and healthy, smiling and offering a freshly shaved cheek for him to kiss.
‘Were you expecting someone?’
Mori jerked back to the here and now. He wanted to laugh. Oh, only you. Only for all my life, he wanted to say, but instead mumbled something unintelligible. Thaniel didn’t seem to care, or actually listen, for that matter. His brow furrowed, his eyelids fluttered. The pain seemed to finally catch up with him. Mori only had the patience to wait until he had asked half of the question before he filled a basin with water and set it down in front of him, together with some soap. Up close, Thaniel looked pale.
‘I’ll go next door and see if Dr Haverly has a spare shirt that might fit you.’ He eyed Thaniel very carefully. ‘I think I should bring him too.’
‘No, no, I’ll go home–’
Mori ached for a time when they were close enough for him to tell Thaniel to stop being a bloody idiot.
‘You wouldn’t get past the front door,’ he reasoned politely. ‘I’ll be back soon.’
‘I’m all right,’ Thaniel said and Mori had to bite back a sigh. No use in scaring him off by insisting.
‘Well, you need the shirt at least.’
He could see Thaniel arguing with himself in his head and it would have been sweet if the situation hadn’t been so fraught.
‘I… thanks then. But only if he has one he doesn’t want.’
Mori nodded and slipped out the door. In the cold rain he leaned against the wall for a moment and forced himself to breathe in and out, three times, very slowly. His heart was still racing. Thaniel was sitting in his kitchen. It was happening and even though he’d had all his life to prepare for this, it turned out that he wasn’t prepared at all.
When he came back with a fresh shirt and bandages, Thaniel had gotten rid of his waistcoat and had bared his forearm. Mori wished he could’ve enjoyed his dishevelled beauty, but the water, that was too red, and the shard of glass, that was too big, shocked him into a halt.
‘Christ.’
‘It’s better than it looks.’
He was lying, obviously. Mori’s finger prickled with wanting to touch him, to comfort him, but he knew he couldn’t push too much. So he swallowed all the things he wanted to say and settled on safer terrain.
‘You had better eat something. Sugar is good for shock.’
That, at least, Thaniel could accept.
‘Thank you.’
Thaniel carried on with cleaning the wound and bandaging it, even though Mori itched to do it for him. He wanted to joke with him to make him feel better, wanted to stroke his hair and hold his hand. But instead he turned away to assemble butter and jam, crockery and cutlery. He knew he couldn’t look when Thaniel ducked out of his own shirt to put on the new one, because it would have driven him away. So he listened to the sound of the fabric and remembered future nights where there was no such shyness between them and where he was the one to get rid of Thaniel’s shirt for him. A pleasant shudder ran down his spine as he remembered porcelain skin pressed to his darker one, as he remembered heated kisses and soft sighs. Now that Thaniel was here, the memories became clearer, closer, more real than they had ever been before. He remembered fingers curled tightly around his hips and teeth against his throat and a desperate want squirming in his guts. He had to brace himself on the counter for a second and remind himself to breathe.
When he turned around, he kept his face as even as he could, refilled Thaniel’s cup and set a scone on a plate down next to it, then dropped into the chair opposite him. He saw how he carefully looked him over and offered him a smile.
‘Do you know if there’s somewhere nearby I could stay?’ Thaniel asked. ‘I think I missed the last train.’
Mori’s throat went dry. The nonchalance didn’t come easily, not at this crucial point in time. ‘You can stay here, I’ve a spare room.’
‘I can’t cause you any more trouble.’
Oh, but you will. And you should. But he knew, he knew, he couldn’t push. Thaniel was fragile right now and would crumble underneath too firm a grasp. So he lifted his shoulders as if he didn’t care much either way and hoped he looked convincing.
‘There are hotels along Sloane Street, if you brought money.’
Thaniel shifted uncomfortably. ‘I… didn’t.’
‘Or you can try the Haverlys next door. They keep the attic for lodgers.’ Almost before he had stopped speaking, some banging and shouting reached them through the walls and for once he was grateful for the Haverly boys. Kind of. ‘There are the children, mind you.’
‘I can walk home, actually.’
His heart ached with wanting to tell Thaniel that it was all right to let someone take care of him for once and that he would be no use to anyone if he killed himself out of politeness. God, the Englishness! ‘I wouldn’t have asked you, if it were inconvenient,’ he reassured him. ‘I’m not that much of a Samaritan. The room has been ready to rent for months. Nobody wants it. And you can’t walk home.’ He made a point of looking him over, trying not seem too concerned about his ashen skin and weary eyes. It took Thaniel a few more seconds to decide and when he finally did, relief flooded through Mori.
‘You must let me pay you for the trouble later then,’ he said stiffly. He shut his eyes for a second. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be rude, I mean it’s – mortifying to stumble in here and–’
Again, Mori had to resist the urge to reach for him and to tell him that everything would be all right. Things were going to get better now.
‘Please don’t be mortified,’ he said quietly. ‘It isn’t your fault.’ It was all he could say and he hoped that Thaniel believed him. He watched him spread jam on his scone, while he tried to figure out what was going on in his head that made him frown like he did.
‘How do clockwork bombs work?’ Thaniel finally asked.
Mori set down his tea cup and started to explain. He would have much preferred to take Thaniel’s mind off these things, but knew that it was impossible right now. After he had finished and Thaniel had eaten his scone, he took the plate and brought it to the sink.
Thaniel half rose. ‘I meant to do that–’
Mori was precariously close to smacking him with a kitchen towel. ‘Sit down.’
There was a bump under the sink, so Mori opened the cupboard to let Kastu roam free. How he had gotten in there he didn’t know. He never knew what that octopus was up to. Thaniel recoiled instinctively, then stared, while Mori lifted Katsu up and put him in his water tank on the window sill.
‘Er…’ said Thaniel.
‘He’s called Katsu.’
‘I see?’
Mori looked away so he didn’t have to laugh at Thaniel’s expression. Flabbergasted was the proper English word.
‘It’s only clockwork. It’s not some strange fetish.’
‘No, no. It was, you know, unexpected. It’s good.’
Warmth spread in Mori’s chest. It had sounded honest. Nobody he had ever met had accepted Katsu’s existence quite so quickly.
‘Thank you.’ He inclined his head at Katsu, which mirrored him. ‘That said, I suppose it’s not much of a mystery why I can’t rent out the room.’
When he didn’t get a reaction, he looked at Thaniel and saw him completely taken in by the octopus, until, very suddenly, he straightened up.
‘Have I told you my name yet?’
Mori almost jumped and hastily tried to comb through his memories. Had he? Possibly. He didn’t know.
‘I don’t think so,’ he tried.
‘It’s Steepleton. Nathaniel, but Thaniel if you like. I know it’s a bit… but my father was Nat.’
Mori gulped. He couldn’t call him that, not yet, not when he couldn’t be as close to him as he wanted to. It would confuse him. He would mix up things that were happening and things that hadn’t happened yet and things that would never happen if he wasn’t careful with that kind of intimacy.
‘I’ll stick to Mr Steepleton, if you don’t mind.’
‘Why?’
‘In Japan, first names are only for who you’re married to, or if you’re being rude. It sounds wrong to me.’
That wasn’t a lie. Thaniel still didn’t seem comfortable with the idea. ‘Can we negotiate down to Steepleton? Mr Steepleton sounds like a bank manager.’
Don’t make yourself small, Mori wanted to say.
‘No,’ he actually said.
Thaniel laughed, then touched the back of his neck awkwardly. He was very pretty, flustered like that, and Mori’s chest tingled at the sight of him. ‘So I shouldn’t ask for your first name?’
He couldn’t help but smile. ‘It’s Keita.’
‘Sorry, what…?’
‘K – e – i – t – a. Rhymes with later.’
Not without satisfaction he realised that the first Japanese words Thaniel had ever learned were his name. He relished that knowledge for a moment, before he poured them some more tea. Thaniel was here, Thaniel would stay. Life was coming unbearably close to becoming perfect.