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Thomas shrank back from the sounds of the bombs exploding around him, watching with eyes wide and terrified as bits of rock and dust and dirt were launched far up into the air. Was he going to die here? Oh God, he couldn’t die here… Was he going to?
Somehow, he’d gotten separated from the rest of his squad. The only weapons he had on his person were small arms, and he was entirely alone- not even still in the trenches. If he got caught by the enemy, he was dead.
Another bomb exploded in his near vicinity, and he shrunk back, heart pounding as he watched the ground set on fire. All that had to happen was one land where he was, before he made it back, and he was dead. The thought terrified him.
Thomas finally got to his feet, once it seemed there was a break in the explosions, and he took off running for the trenches. If he could make it there, it wouldn’t necessarily mean he was safe , but he’d be better off than out in the open in No Man’s Land.
As he ran, he suddenly heard the sound of shouting coming from the enemy’s trenches, and then there was gunfire. He hit the ground and let out a startled sound, blood ringing in his ears as he tried to crawl towards his base. The closer he got, the safer he began to let himself feel, and then there were men popping up over the edge, aiming their guns around him and returning fire.
He made eye contact with one of them, who suddenly dropped his gun and reached out with both his hands, pushing himself up just a little bit more to reach for Thomas, who suddenly pushed forward as hard as he could to try and grab onto him with both hands.
They connected, and suddenly the man was pulling Thomas as hard as he could, and grabbing onto his arm, his shoulder, any part of him he could reach to pull him down into relative safety. Unfortunately, this opened him to enemy fire, and he grunted as he took a bullet to the shoulder, just as he pulled Thomas over the edge and the two toppled to the ground.
Thomas panted as he looked down at the man who had likely just saved his life, and the man looked up at him with a grin. “Can’t say I’ve ever met anyone like this,” he quipped.
This was so startling to Thomas, who hadn’t expected this man to crack a joke immediately after being shot, that he answered on instinct, “We haven’t met, I don’t even know your name.”
“Richard Ellis,” the man said. “And my shoulder feels like it’s on fire.”
Thomas looked to the now bloody hole in Richard’s coat, and grimaced, before climbing off him and offering him a hand up. “Thomas Barrow,” he introduced himself. “And I’m in medical.”
“Looks like it’s my lucky day,” Richard said. “Anything you can do for this?” He used his uninjured arm to gesture toward his shoulder, and Thomas nodded.
“Yeah, come with me and we’ll get you fixed up,” he promised, and led Richard away.
The two snaked their way through the trenches into the heart of them, where the medical station was set up in the safest spot to protect their wounded, and Thomas took Richard under the shelter to an area where things seemed to be pretty slow at the moment. There, he instructed Richard to get out of the top portion of his uniform so he could access the wound, and Richard acquiesced. This became rather inconvenient for Thomas, who had already noted how handsome a man Richard was, and having the man sitting there shirtless was no help.
He went about getting the tools required to fix Richard up, and soon dragged a chair over so he could get to work. Grabbing a pair of forceps, he first set to the task of getting the bullet out of Richard’s shoulder, which had the other man squirming slightly as he searched for it.
“You’ve got to stay still,” Thomas admonished him. “Else I won’t find it as quickly and it’ll hurt a lot more.”
“Sorry,” Richard said with a self conscious chuckle. “I haven’t been hit yet, takes some getting used to.”
Thomas’s lips quirked up into the slightest bit of an amused smirk as he chuckled. “Well, you’re not a screamer, at least,” he said.
“And how would you know that?” Richard asked.
Thomas immediately sat up and looked at him with wide eyes, his cheeks flushing pink at the implication. How this man could still have that sense of mirth about him, even while getting his shoulder tended to after being shot in it was beyond him, but at least he wasn’t screeching miserably like some of the others.
“Guess I wouldn’t,” he eventually said.
Richard chuckled a little. “Where are you from?” he asked.
“Downton,” Thomas replied.
“I’m from York,” Richard told him. “Not too far away, is it? Maybe you’ll get to find out, if we both make it home.”
Thomas’s cheeks flushed even more at what he knew that statement meant, and he asked Richard, “How could you tell? About me?”
Richard smirked at him and put a finger to his lips. Not here, his eyes seemed to say. Later. “I’m good at reading people,” he said, as opposed to any real answer.
“Well, either way… I do hope we both make it home, and I’d be happy to see you again after.”
Fixing up Richard’s shoulder went quite well enough after that point, with the two making conversation between themselves, and soon Richard was all sewn up and ordered to rest it for a bit, although it wasn’t the sort of injury that would send him home. He gladly acquiesced to this, and on his way out, managed to convey a time and location to meet later that evening. Thomas agreed, and he was off.
The wait was nearly excruciating for him, even if he had his hands full with other wounded men, but the time did eventually come that he was able to sneak off and go find Richard. As promised, he was waiting in something of a little alcove, which would provide them plenty of privacy to have a delicate conversation. Thomas slipped into it, and Richard grinned when he saw him.
“So you found me, then,” he commented by way of greeting. “Well done.”
Thomas rolled his eyes and said, “You gave me directions, I don’t think I could have missed you.”
This earned a quiet chuckle from Richard. “Maybe not, but I’m happy to see you, anyway.”
Thomas flushed pink at that, shifting on his feet. “I should hope so, you did ask me to meet you so you could explain yourself. I’ve been wondering the rest of the day how you figured me out, and I’d rather like to know now, I think.”
“Oh, well… that was easy,” Richard confessed. “I could see it from how you responded to my shirt coming off.” If Thomas hadn’t been pink before, he’d passed it now and gone straight on to red. “You seemed a bit flustered, and men who aren’t like us don’t get flustered at the sight of another shirtless man, and they certainly don’t get flustered when another man flirts with them.”
Thomas grimaced a bit and glanced around them. “Please don’t tell me I was that obvious,” he said anxiously.
“You aren’t obvious,” Richard assured him. “I only noticed because you’d already caught my eye, so I was looking for something.”
“I’d already what?” Thomas asked him then. He’d heard him, of course, but he hadn’t expected to hear that.
Richard smiled. “You’d already caught my eye,” he repeated. “A handsome man quite literally falls into my lap? How could I not have noticed?” Thomas knew it was risky for Richard to reach up and touch his cheek, but the moment felt so good that he couldn’t bring himself to move away. In fact, he found himself leaning into the touch, his heart pounding away for an entirely different reason than it had that morning.
“Thank you for that, by the way,” Thomas said. “I might have been shot worse than what you got if you hadn’t pulled me in.”
Richard hummed softly. “I wasn’t going to let that happen,” he said. “Didn’t know it would turn out so well, but I couldn’t just let one of ours get shot out there when he was trying to get back.”
“Still,” Thomas insisted. “You may have saved my life today, and I don’t know how I can ever thank you enough for that, or repay you for it…”
“You stitched me up,” Richard pointed out. “If you must repay me for it, I’d say that makes us even.”
“If I must?” Thomas questioned, tilting his head. “Of course I must. That’s how it works. You helped me, and I help you.”
Richard now tilted his own head a little, an expression crossing his face Thomas couldn’t quite read. “Is that what you think? That good things that happen for you have to be repaid? Do you expect people to repay you for doing nice things?”
“Not exactly,” Thomas confessed with a shrug.
Richard frowned at this, and his hand flattened so he was cupping Thomas’s cheek more than just touching it. “I don’t know what’s happened to give you that impression,” he began. “But I hope to hear about it one day. As for now… you don’t owe me anything for pulling you to safety today, and anything else I do to help you while we’re here, you won’t owe me for. If you choose to see me again when we get home-”
“-If we get home,” Thomas interrupted. Richard just doubled down on his statement.
“ When we get home,” he corrected. “If you still want to see me again then, you still won’t owe me for anything.”
Thomas blinked a few times, surprised by Richard’s insistence. “Not for anything?” he questioned, and Richard smiled.
“Not for anything,” he confirmed. “Besides, as of right now, you and I are at war. So how about this? I’ll fight for you, and you can fight for me, and we’ll both make it home. How does that sound?”
Thomas smiled at him. “Sounds doable to me, if you mean it,” he said.
“I mean it,” Richard confirmed, and after a quick glance around, he leaned down just slightly to kiss Thomas’s forehead. The action melted him, and he smiled up at Richard. He wasn’t sure anyone had ever taken the time to show him that sort of affection- not without expecting something from him for it.
“Then I’ll fight for you,” Thomas promised. “And… maybe we can meet like this more often?”
Richard smiled and brushed his thumb over Thomas’s skin. “I thought you’d never ask.”