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The way that Thomas—Sergeant Barrow, he must remember to call him Sergeant Barrow, he seemed rather tetchy about it with the Downton staff—stopped touching him happened slowly and all at once. At one time, when Edward could do nothing for himself, Barrow had touched him constantly. Always in that efficient, professional way that must have come from his time valeting. Those moments in the day disappeared slowly, as Edward learned to navigate the world again. Or at least his own shirt buttons. The other kind of touch had never been as frequent, but it meant so much more. The gentle hand on his knee. The squeeze of his arm. The brief touch of a damp cheek to his own while gloved hands grasped his wrists so hard he yelped, jerked out of the sinking haze. “Don’t you go dyin’ on me, you sonovabitch!” hissed in his ear. As much as the memory made him shake, he rather wished Barrow would curse at him again. Or at least touch his knee. But those touches had stopped, without warning, one week ago today.
The day had started out wonderfully, despite the chill in the air. He woke to the smell of biscuits, which was a lovely thing. So lovely that it gave him the resolve to get ready with only the barest assistance from Nurse Crawley in Doing Something With His Hair, which had been an ongoing concern even when he was possessed of all his senses. Braille had even passed, incomprehensibility-wise, from the realm of utter gibberish to somewhere between Italian and French. He was starting to think, in his better moments, that perhaps he could manage. Going for a walk with Barrow was a highlight on any day, and this time he knew he was grinning like an idiot as he tapped down the steps, listening to the quiet Mancunian direction in his ear.
“Take me somewhere secret,” said Edward, feeling rather naughty for it as soon as it passed his lips.
“Secret, sir?”
Must you call me that when we’re alone? My friends call me Edward. Sometimes Ted. Are you ever a Tom or a Tommy? “Somewhere that people don’t know about. You used to work here; you must know some good places.”
“There are some places in the woods, sir, but it’s rather wet…There’s the folly ’round the back. It’s not exactly secret, but it’s not as impressive as the other ones so almost no one ever goes there.”
“It’ll do.”
They set off across the lawns, the gentle, well-kept slopes easy sailing even if the ground squelched a bit beneath their feet. Barrow only described things if Edward asked him to, and today he was happy to walk in silence with only the occasional “it goes up a bit here,” or “mind, it’s lumpy.” Sybil was an angel, but she did not do well with long silences. Barrow lived in them, comfortable as a fish in water. It was a good thing he did. If Edward said half the things that went through his mind, they might both be in a world of trouble.
He was slightly out of breath by the time they reached their destination, which was embarrassing. There was a time when he had been able to run about fields and woods all day without so much as breaking a sweat. He was truly bloody useless.
“Tell me about it,” he said brightly, trying to step away from the pit in his mind.
“It’s another one of those Greco-Roman things, but it’s just a little alcove with a stone bench in it, completely closed at the back. It’s got two columns at the front corners, the kind with the plain, flat tops. The roof’s flat, but it’s got a little fake one in the front that’s a triangle. It’s maybe the size of a nice porch.”
Edward smiled. Barrow oscillated between stark practicality and verging on poetry when he described the world.
“You can’t see the Abbey from the bench. Just grass stretchin’ away down the hill where we came up, with woods on the other side. There’s some yarrow that grows around the hill in the summer. Violets, too. And there are two hawks that live in this big oak tree that’s half dead and hangs out over the path. If you stand to the left of the folly facin’ out and you squint, it looks like a hand holdin’ the nest.”
There it is. “Did you come up here often?” The stone was chilly through the fabric of his trousers. Doubly so, as he missed Thomas’ arm the moment they sat.
“Not often, sir. Didn’t have the time. It was nice, though, when I did.” There was a melancholy note to his voice. His accent had snapped back to what Edward had learned to call his upstairs voice. He wondered if Thomas’ face had been unguarded and then snapped back to a servant’s blank countenance as well. Part of him wanted to ask. But he knew that that would only make him want to ask other things. Things like Please describe to me the colour of your eyes in excruciating detail. Do they wrinkle more at the sides when you smile, or underneath? Both? Do you roll them when I think you do? May I please trace every contour of your brow? The nurses have said you’re handsome. Do you agree?
Edward sat quietly, listening to the swaying branches and enjoying the winter sun’s warmth on his face. There was peace up here, away from everything. He could focus individually on all the little sounds, like one might study the empty set for a play before the actors entered. A flick of a lighter, and it became the backdrop for a faceless man, quietly smoking because he knew that Edward didn’t mind.
“You turn like a sunflower, d’you know that?” The medic took a sharp breath as soon as he said it, like he was trying to suck the words back in.
What does that mean? Do you have a litany in your head too? Was I not supposed to hear that? Tell me other things I’m not supposed to hear. “Do I?” he asked, keeping his tone light.
How are you different? Please mean what I think you meant. Please tell me I’m not imagining things.
Barrow didn’t answer. It was a stupid, rhetorical question, anyway. “Best get back, sir,” he said at length.
“Yes. It wouldn’t do to keep you from your duties all day.” I want to keep you. I want to keep you with me; please don’t leave me alone. I want to keep you past where any pretense could hold up.
Things were normal until they got back. There was always a touch, when they parted. An unnecessary one. The substitute for a smile, a nod, a wave goodbye. Not that day. Not any of the days after. Not once. The reading grew more and more impersonal, the banter dried up. Touches were professional to a fault. Clinical. Devoid. None of them had been good days.
“Good morning, Lieutenant Courtenay.”
Edward had to call upon all his self-restraint to stifle a groan at Nurse Crawley’s bright voice. He wanted to be an oyster, snug and secure beneath the waves, with no one to demand that he account for himself. And if someone picked him up and served him in white wine, well, so be it.
“Up you get. You’re coming for a walk with me.”
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
Well. He was hardly in a position to argue.
Outside used to be freeing. An escape from stuffy drawing rooms and stifling conversation. Now it was enormous and blank, Sybil’s arm his only guiding force in the cold mass of nothingness. He wanted to crawl back inside and be small. He wanted morphine. Most of all, he wanted that big bed in the guest room where they first put him after his ‘incident’, far away from everyone and everything except Thomas’ arms. In Edward’s daydreams, Corporal Barrow didn’t stay on the little cot they dragged in.
He realized, belatedly, that they were back at that goddamn folly.
“Something’s happened,” Sybil said bluntly, guiding him to sit on the bench. “I know something has. What’s wrong?”
He didn’t want to lie. He was sick of lying. After all, what did he have to lose? A family that no longer wanted him? A would-be lover who had lost interest? A friend who would have been too good for him in any drawing room before war had thrown them together?
A life lived in the dark?
“I’m afraid it might shock you.”
“Edward, I have lost a great deal of my ability to be shocked,” she huffed. He smiled a little. War had done that to them all, he supposed. God knew what kind of things she had seen and heard, healing the sick and comforting the dying. “You’re scaring us,” she prompted gently, squeezing his hand. “You can tell me. I won’t tell a soul. Not even Sergeant Barrow, if you don’t want me to.”
“It’s about him, really.” God, he was actually doing this. “He’s been acting—” Distant. Aloof. Cold. Professional. “—strangely. Did I do something wrong?” Am I a burden? Has his pity run dry? Did I mistake a man doing his job for a man who carries me in his heart?
“That’s supposed to shock me?”
He blushed to the tips of his ears. “It…matters to me. What he thinks of me. Very deeply.”
She paused for a long moment before she let out a tiny gasp. “Oh, Edward.” He winced at her tone. Disgust and anger were better than that horrible pity. He was not prepared for the easy smack on his arm. “He’s in love with you, you idiot,” she said.
Edward gaped like a fish as she plowed on. “I thought he made some sort of advance and you weren’t interested. He’s been trying to shove us together, you know. At first I wondered if it was because he doesn’t approve of Tom, but then I noticed the distance between you and it seemed—”
“He’s in…excuse me?” Edward had had a few ideas of where this conversation might lead, some more optimistic than others, but this had not been one of them. “Did he tell you this?”
“He didn’t have to,” she said softly.
Edward shook his head. He couldn’t abide speculation. Not now. Not on this.
“No, you listen. He barely tolerates most people, but I’m fairly certain he’s stooped to blackmail to make sure he always has time to go walking with you. He sits looking through the papers on his breaks, circling things that you might find interesting. When you…had your incident…I’d never seen him like that. I don’t think anyone had ever seen him like that. Dr. Clarkson was frightened of him.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s…like me.” An invert. Broken.
“You don’t see how he looks at you.”
“No, you’re right. I don’t,” he spat. He regretted it immediately.
“Right. Stay here.”
“Sybil—”
“No, I’ve had quite enough of this. Don’t worry; I imagine he’ll come running when he hears that one of the new orderlies left you out here.”
“Sybil!”
Her footsteps pounded off down the hill, undeterred by his shouting. The tree branches whispered quietly. “Bloody hell,” he muttered. He hadn’t paid enough attention to the route to find his way back.
He wanted Thomas to hurry up and dreaded his arrival in equal measure. Sybil’s words played over and over in his head, fanning that tiny spark of hope that had lived in his chest ever since he had awoken with stinging wrists and a gloved hand rubbing his fingers. He barely tolerates people. But Edward was special. Thomas could be downright nasty, but there was something that turned him into an absolute lamb when they were together. It was an unfamiliar feeling, being special. Being the exception to someone’s rule not through accident of birth or even hard work, but simply because he was Edward. Dr. Clarkson was frightened of him. But Edward was frightened of him, too. They would be up here all alone, with nothing to stop the worst from happening. He had to believe, at least, that it wouldn’t come to that. He couldn’t bear it if Thomas hated him so. Perhaps the cat was already out of the bag. Perhaps all the things he thought in Thomas’ presence were written on his face. Perhaps his whole body had screamed I could be your sunflower, and that had been that.
He had never heard the medic run full tilt. Thomas was fast. “Lieutenant! What the hell happened?”
“Nothing. Well, Nurse Crawley might have had a flight of fancy. I’m sorry to be an inconvenience.” Edward winced at his own words. He was a constant inconvenience, and he was about to be a bigger one. There was nothing for it. Not much further to fall, in the end.
“You’re not the inconvenience, she is,” Thomas panted, with feeling. “She left you up here, then?”
“She thinks we ought to talk. Won’t you sit with me and catch your breath?”
Thomas flopped onto the bench beside him, close enough that their thighs brushed. Edward relished the warmth of it while he listened to the Sergeant’s breathing slow down. It was shaking in and out.
“Are you alright, Barrow?” Are you ever a Tom or a Tommy?
“Frightened me, is all, sir.” Edward’s stomach twisted. “So, while we’re up here, what has her Nurseship decided we need to talk about?”
“It’s my fault, really. I wondered if I had done something to upset you.”
He could almost hear Thomas frowning. “Why?” he asked carefully.
“You seem to have…distanced yourself.”
Thomas was silent for so long that Edward almost prodded him. “I didn’t think you would notice the difference,” he said, finally.
Edward wasn’t sure what kind of answer he had expected, but it hadn’t been that. “Please tell me why. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I don’t…” he sighed. “I do not wish to make things awkward, sir.”
“If you call me sir again for the duration of this conversation, I shall punch you. Now please tell me what you mean,” he demanded, with a command in his voice that he didn’t feel. He wondered if his face betrayed him.
Thomas laughed but said nothing. It was breathy and difficult, more nerves than amusement. Edward soaked it up all the same. He was all too aware that he might never hear it again. “Do I make you uncomfortable?” he asked in a small voice.
“No,” Thomas rasped. He sounded exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with running up a hill. “I’m the one who told a patient he looked like a flower. If anyone’s makin’ anyone—”
“Tell me again.”
Thomas swallowed loudly in the silence, his breath still stuttering between them. Edward rested a hand on his knee, running a thumb over the rough wool of uniform trousers. This is as obvious as I can be. Give me something more.
“When the sun comes out,” Thomas murmured, “you always turn to it and close your eyes. No matter what’s happenin’, no matter who you’re talkin’ to, you always face the sun.” He picked up Edward’s unresisting hand and placed it slowly, agonizingly slowly, against his cheek. “Even when you have your bad days, even when you’re sad, you always open up to it. Even if it’s just a little bit.”
Edward caressed over one sharp cheekbone and down to cup Thomas' jaw. “You have dimples,” he said stupidly. He only realized his mouth was hanging open when Thomas kissed him.
It was so gentle, so unlike the rushed affections he had shared in the secret corners of Oxford. There was a world bordered by two arms and a broad chest that smelt of cigarettes and iodine. A world built just for him by a man he would never see, close and tactile and safe. Edward learned it as diligently as he could out in the open, fingers wandering Thomas’ jaw, his nose, his ears, the touch of softness beneath his chin and the short hairs at the nape of his neck. He was perfect.
“Don’t…” Don’t stop, don’t ever stop. Let’s run away. Don’t let this be some passing fancy. Don’t hate me.
Thomas froze. “What’s the matter?”
“Don’t leave,” Edward whispered into his neck.
“I’m not goin’ anywhere,” Thomas reassured him, petting back his hair. “I’m right here.”
Edward let himself believe it, just for this moment. Tonight, he would lie awake in bed, wondering if it had been real. If he meant as much to Thomas as Thomas did to him. Tomorrow, he would open unseeing eyes to the stale morning, feeling ill and shaky and wanting so badly to hide under a blanket. But perhaps he could manage it. Perhaps he could manage all the things that he was.
Because he was also Thomas Barrow’s sunflower.