Chapter Text
It had been a tiring day, reflected the Captain, as he strode the familiar path to his bedchambers. Confronting what remained of his own mortality had only been one part of it.
Sharing the particulars of how he’d died—a story that did not make him sound graceful in any case, even if one didn’t include all the moral ways he might be judged—had been a greater drain of mental energy. Then the line-dancing exhausted him completely. He wanted nothing more than to recount the events of the evening to his pillow before laying upon it to sleep.
But he realised that might be easier said than done about the same time as he phased through the door and found he had a visitor.
At the desk on the far side of the room was Thomas Thorne, holding himself with affected stillness. Sitting ankle-on-knee, he had angled back his head while he peered through the window, bearing the expression of a man lost in thought. It was a look the Captain had seen on him often. Thorne likely felt it gave him the air of a tortured philosopher, but the Captain had always thought it made Thorne's eyes resemble those of an especially glum dairy-cow.
Pressing a fist to his mouth, the Captain cleared his throat. Thomas’s gaze snapped to him.
“Captain,” he said. His tone, suspiciously warm, was another thing the Captain recognised. Thomas only used it when he wanted something, and had decided to try attaining it with sweetness before the inevitable tantrum. He perched his chin on one hand, wearing a curious little smile. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Yes.” The Captain blinked. “I rather thought you had, on account of you… being in my room.”
“I simply had to see you,” Thomas continued, as though the Captain had not responded at all, “after what you said this evening. The story you shared was stirring by itself, but it was your honesty that moved me.”
The Captain widened his eyes, just for an instant. He composed himself quickly, but found he could no longer look at his visitor directly, instead fixing his attention to the nearest bedpost.
How absurd it was, that it had taken a mass of resolve to state his romantic preferences clearly. He felt that who he’d loved was really the least interesting thing about him. He was a man who’d served King and country and taken a wealth of military secrets to the grave, but God forbid anyone should realise what manner of person turned his head. Nobody would have cared a jot about his years of dedicated service if he’d been brought before the court martial.
And usually the Captain was indifferent to what Thomas thought about him, but on this, he’d cared with profound intensity. He’d cared what every member of Button House might say, if he stopped testing the waters and instead presented the facts as they were. Yet they hadn’t expelled him. Tonight made it seem like they never would.
He noticed himself smiling, and lifted his head.
“Thank you,” he said. He felt a tinge of guilt about thinking the worst of Thorne when the man had come in peace. “I am… grateful, Thomas, that you listened. And that you did so with understanding.”
“Of course,” replied Thomas, graciously spiralling a hand through the air. “Some of it was even new to me, in case you’re curious. I wasn’t actually present when you passed away.”
“I did wonder.”
“I wish I had been,” Thomas continued. “Because you did not deserve to die surrounded by jeering critics in commission of a loving act. I would have greeted you with my utmost respect.”
Embarrassed, though not unpleasantly, the Captain dipped his head. “That’s kind of you to say.”
“I mean it,” Thomas insisted.
The Captain hummed a note of acknowledgement. And, if Thorne had left things there, he would have considered the conversation to be one of the most successful interactions he’d had with the poet in about a year.
But Thomas was still Thomas. So he had to go and spoil it.
“And I could not help but notice that you and I are exactly alike.”
The Captain frowned. “I beg your pardon?”
Thomas shifted in the chair. He placed both feet on the floor and tilted forward.
“Isn’t it obvious?” When the Captain’s silence suggested otherwise, he explained. “We were both dedicated to our respective professions: you, the accomplished soldier, victorious in his war. Me, the promising litterateur, cut down in his prime. Yet we were both driven by our hearts to do things we usually wouldn’t.” Thomas smiled wistfully. “Love was the undoing of the both of us.”
The Captain opened his mouth, only to shut it again. He reminded himself that Thomas had been supportive, and deserved some sensitivity. For now.
Exercising all of his diplomatic talent, the Captain said, “That’s certainly one way of seeing it.”
Thomas looked pleased. “It’s the only way of seeing it.” He leaned back in his chair, seeming bolder, hooking one arm over it. “Which made me realise something. How often have you gone out of your way to warn me about looking for love in all the wrong places?”
It took the Captain a second to decipher what Thomas could possibly be referencing. “Do you mean when I tell you to stop troubling Alison?”
Thorne waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, you needn’t worry about her. Just as you suggested, I have awoken to discover that everything I was looking for was here. The whole time!”
The Captain narrowed his eyes. “You took that from a song on Michael’s portable record player.” When Thomas did not disagree, the Captain went on, “I’m glad I could aid you back to your senses, I suppose. The Coopers shall be pleased.”
For some reason, Thomas looked baffled. “Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“That you’ve recovered from your infatuation with Alison?”
“Oh, Captain.” Thomas smiled, this time with fond amusement. “I’m telling you that I understand, now, just how much time I wasted trying to see things in Alison that were already at the core of you.”
Though the Captain bristled, preparing to speak, he could not feasibly begin to convert his shock into words. It left him staring at Thomas with his mouth agape.
In life, when he’d been younger and comparatively more reckless, the Captain had occasionally found himself on the receiving end of romantic overtures. The women he’d known had been subtle, the men bolder in their advances, but the response they got from the Captain was the same. He was always slow on the uptake. He only registered their interest in him when they grew frustrated enough to spell it out.
There was no need for the direct approach this time. Thomas could not have made his intentions any more obvious. He was peering up at the Captain with those dairy-cow eyes again, bearing a hopeful smile calculated to break any observer’s heart. Below his chin, he clasped his hands together, apparently confident in his ability to charm by displaying a simple look of...
Adoration. The juvenile, artless kind he subjected Alison to all the time. Thomas’s idea of admiration had less in common with the great romancers of history and more in common with how Kitty responded to unusual butterflies.
“No,” the Captain said, finally, without having to think about it too hard at all. “Absolutely not.”
Thomas’s face fell. “But James—”
“Don’t you start. This…” The Captain brandished his crop with the empty threat of using it to beat Thorne away. It occurred to him that a part of him wanted to strike Thorne regardless. Shock was quickly giving way to ire. “This is insulting, Thomas. Not to mention cruel. I did not share something so private for you to use it as a source of entertainment.”
Thomas flinched. A crease developed between his brows. “Give me some credit! Do you really think I would play with something as tender as the human heart?”
That gave the Captain sufficient pause to lower his crop slightly. For all Thomas’s flaws—of which there were enough to keep the psychologists of Vienna busy for decades—trickery was not generally one of them.
At least, he truly believed he felt the things he claimed to feel. The trouble rested in how he did not appear to feel them for very long, yet made them everyone else’s problem in the meantime.
The Captain knew Thomas well enough to be aware that the only way out was through. Rebuttals were never adequate to crush Thorne’s indomitable spirit; he would not move on to another project until the new, shiny thing lost its lustre. So the Captain gathered himself, drawing an inhale that was as long as it was unnecessary, and considered which aspects of him Thomas would find the most unappealing.
One was immediately obvious. He gestured at himself with both hands.
“Wouldn’t you agree,” he ventured, deliberately, “that I bear very little resemblance to Alison? Or Lady Higham, even?”
Thomas was unmoved. “Obviously. But you see, while I was alive, it was no secret in literary circles that Byron took lovers of every gender.”
The Captain was no longer following. “And?”
“Well,” Thomas said, and assumed a petulant pout. “If Byron could have dalliances with other men, why can’t I?”
That question made the Captain’s face feel hot, though not in the way Thomas apparently wanted. He took a startled step back, expression contorted with offence.
“I am not some plaything you can use to satisfy your latest whim.”
“This is not a whim,” Thomas persisted. He rose to his feet with an elegant little bounce, like the initiation of a dance, and flung his arms excitably wide. “Your words truly moved me! They have placed every aspect of your character beneath a brand new light, and I feel as though I’m seeing you for the very first time.”
The Captain stared for a moment. Then he stared for a moment more. This felt rather like he was beholding a lull in one of the ghastly moving pictures Michael watched, wherein the killer had not struck for long enough that they were certain to emerge any second.
“In that case,” the Captain managed, “I order you to unsee me at once.”
Thomas laughed airily, like the Captain had made a rib-tickling joke rather than a high-priority command. “You needn’t be shy. I am nothing but intrigued—nay, bewitched—by what I have found.”
The Captain recoiled. He did so by reflex, but even through his anger he was conscious of the decency Thomas had been good enough to show him earlier. That which had meant so much. Even if the poet was letting himself get carried away now, the least the Captain could do was gently decline this… whatever this was. A flight of fancy Thomas would tire of by morning.
Against every better instinct in his body, he spoke gently. “Thorne. If I could just direct your attention to something—”
“Anything,” sighed Thomas.
“—your own words, if I may.” The Captain punctuated each one with a wave of his stick: “Boring. Stiff. Cantankerous. These are all adjectives you have applied to me over the years, and I believe at one point you likened me to a walrus.”
Thomas placed a hand earnestly over his chest. “What a fool I was.” His pointed look of regret was, the Captain had to concede, convincingly remorseful. “But I shall make it up to you tenfold. As I said before, this night has changed everything.”
“This is absurd,” the Captain said, because his patience was not infinite. “I am nearly twice your age.”
Thomas scoffed. “Compared to me, you’re barely out of the crib! I died nearly a century before you were even born.”
“You’ve informed me on several occasions that physically inhabiting the same room as myself can be difficult for you.”
“That’s only when you get,” Thomas began, trailing off. He made some strange flapping motion with a hand. “You know. When you get all blah.”
Though the Captain did not know what Thomas meant, he had no inclination to ask. “I suspect I will continue to be blah.”
“Perhaps,” Thomas said, and shrugged. “We all have our flaws.”
“We have scarcely anything in common. You are a…” The Captain caught himself before he could insert the usual mocking prefix of self-professed, “…poet, of aristocratic stock. I was raised within the middle class and died in the forces. You would never have paid a man like me the blindest bit of notice.”
“Exactly.” Thomas all but purred his answer. “Don’t you see? Only fate could have united two kindred spirits from very different walks of life. One good thing may still come from our tragic ends.”
This was maddening. The Captain furrowed his brow, deciding his current strategy was getting him nowhere. He wondered why he hadn’t simply stated the most obvious barrier to Thomas’s proposal from the start.
“I’m not the slightest bit interested in you.”
“Yet,” Thomas said, with ominous purpose. He uttered the word before the Captain had completed his sentence.
The Captain fell silent. He knew he shouldn’t. He ran the risk of letting Thorne think he’d won if he couldn’t produce a counterpoint, but the vapours he’d been running on were now completely sapped. He could but watch as Thomas advanced on him with a distinct spring beneath every step.
Thomas came to a stop before him, too close for comfort. To his great relief it was merely to clasp his arm, by the elbow. The touch was fleeting.
“You look tired,” Thomas began, whereupon the Captain interrupted to point out this was how he always looked, though Thomas ignored him. “And I wouldn’t want to keep you from your rest. I shall find you, tomorrow, and we’ll discuss this properly.”
“There is nothing to discuss,” the Captain tried to insist, but Thomas was already rounding him, making for the door.
He watched as Thorne disappeared from view, though not before casting a final, meaningful smile back at him.
For a moment the Captain lingered, gaze fixed to empty space, his weary mind failing to parse whether he’d missed something. Then he turned his head to look bemusedly at his pillow, supposing it would be expecting a briefing filled with illustrative context. Well, the pillow was out of luck.
“I’m just as perplexed as you,” he told it.