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Richard leaned against the doorway to the office, watching his lover frown at a Japanese puzzle box that he himself had already given up as a lost cause. It was still hard to believe. Every time he saw Thomas in quiet, comfortable moments—sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper, grumbling to himself about the state of Uncle Owen’s bookkeeping as he shuffled about, peering into the back of a clock with those little round glasses perched on his nose—his chest threatened to crack open.
Thomas had touched everything as if it might burn him, in those first weeks. As if everything was a pitfall, an ambush, an unexploded shell waiting to ruin him. Richard wasn’t much better. He never told Thomas that he lay awake at night, cursing himself for whatever missteps he had made that day, for going all these years not knowing that there were times when his lover could barely stomach a cup of tea and picked at his wrists. That even though they woke up together every morning, Richard had never been so terrified of losing him. That he felt so terribly small, and he wondered if perhaps the world had made such wrecks of them both that there was no coming back from it, no place to carve out for themselves. Richard never told him, but Thomas always knew, and that made it all worse. Until, little by little, it started to make it better.
Better began with the small things. Richard came up to the flat one evening to find a bowl of daylilies on the table and Thomas’ picture of his mother out on the mantel. A few days later, Thomas decided it was imperative that they get a rug for the living room. Richard found out over the coming days that the other man was damned particular about rugs. It led to a bit of an argument, but even that felt comfortable, in its way. The simple fact that they had time and space to bicker about something so trivial compared to the enormity of their togetherness brought solace, let him believe that things might be okay. The blue Persian-by-way-of-Birmingham one they ended up with was soft beneath their bare feet as they danced, more swaying together than anything else, while Esther Walker crooned from the phonograph.
“I’m sorry I’ve been so bloody difficult,” Thomas murmured. “I hate hurtin’ you.”
Richard squeezed him. “You haven’t—”
“Yes, I have. Don’t pretend; it doesn’t help.”
Richard stilled, living in his scent and the warm pressure of his arms. “I just want to be good for you,” he whispered. “I want to make you happy.”
“You are good. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Ever. And you do make me happy. It’s me that makes me unhappy. I’ve been tellin’ the stupid bastard to lay off, but he won’t listen.”
Richard smiled in spite of himself. They stood for a long time on the rug, moving together even after the record ran out into crackling silence. The guns didn’t come for him that night, and he woke up the next morning to the smell of bacon.
It still wasn’t easy. There was a screaming match over Richard ‘going through his private things’ that left them both feeling like they were mad and horrible. There were about thirty seconds of abject panic, the night of a Bad Day, when Thomas had his head underwater in the bath and didn’t hear Richard knocking. The bewildered look on Thomas’ face, damp hair hanging into his eyes and a towel hastily wrapped around his waist only made Richard cry harder. Perhaps it would never be as easy as he had imagined it. But the way that Thomas held him at night, the way he dragged him by the sleeve of his coat to look at something fascinating at an estate sale, the way he could make tea just how Richard liked it better than he could himself, made the Bad Days worth it. And those days were slowly, slowly, getting fewer and farther between.
The moment, if there was one moment that he realized they would be alright, came when Thomas crawled across the couch and into his lap at the end of a long day. Richard could see by the set of his shoulders that he was feeling low. If the shoe were on the other foot, there would be nothing extraordinary about it. Richard always clung like a limpet when he was troubled, and Thomas was always there with a blanket and a funny story, real or made-up, to distract him. Thomas was different. He licked his wounds away from prying eyes until they festered and became impossible to conceal. But maybe not anymore.
When Richard was four, his mother had shown him how to attract butterflies. They had been visiting Auntie Jemma in the country, which seemed like fairyland to a young Richard used to the bricks and stones of York. He remembered Mum picking wildflowers, telling him and his cousins to sit just-so, the flowers stuck between their fingers. The other children got bored quickly enough and scuttled off to play pirates by the stream. But Richard wanted butterflies. He picked up their discarded flowers, tucking them into his clothing and hair and waited. He would never forget their blue wings, almost glowing in the afternoon light, or the way they rested on his sun-warmed skin with their tickly little feet. Nobody else saw them. No one believed him when he told them about it, about how many there were or how long they stayed. It upset him terribly at the time. He wanted other people to understand this magical thing that had happened. As a man, he treasured the memories he had, the things that he knew, that were his and only his.
He held Thomas in his lap that evening and rubbed his back until the tension eased. He would never forget the way the lamplight picked out the silver in his hair, or the way his warm breath tickled.
“Hah! You owe me dinner.” Thomas grinned at him across the office, waving the intricate top of the puzzle box in the air. Richard wondered how long his lover had known he was there and had gone on ignoring him in favour of those little whorled cherry blossoms.
“What’s inside it then?”
“C’mere, we’ll find out together. But you’ve got to guess first.”
Richard circled the desk and draped himself over Thomas from behind, examining the cloth wrapping that filled the box to the brim. “The Irish Crown Jewels,” he declared.
Thomas laughed. “And I thought my guess was mad.”
“What were you gonna say?”
“A Fabergé egg.”
Richard smiled. “Go on, then. I’ll take you to dinner at the Ritz if you’re right.”
Thomas carefully pulled away what they soon realized was a scarf. The first items to emerge were several cream-and-red banded shells, followed by a delicate silver locket.
“That’ll fetch a bit,” Thomas murmured. “The chain’s nice.”
“Mm.”
Thomas rummaged further through what must have been someone’s little knick-knack treasure box, producing a child’s pewter cup, a small cat figurine that might be real jade but probably wasn’t, two more seashells, and, best of the lot, a few old francs with Louis XVIII on them. At the bottom lay several letters dated from the ’80s that started My dearest Amelia, and went on to make Thomas gag and Richard laugh.
“No diamonds, no eggs, but not bad. Better than I expected, really. Even the shells are pretty, not that they’d sell for much,” said Thomas, taking off his glasses and sucking on the end of the arm. He looked incredibly sweet like that, and Richard told his so.
“Are you flirting with me, Mr. Ellis?” Thomas asked in his best posh voice. It was amazing how much his life-long mask had frayed. There was a time when it snapped into place as easy as blinking, even for a joke. Now, his mouth twitched like anything.
“I am shocked,” Richard replied, his mask slipping too, “that you would even imply such a thing. Where to for dinner?”
They ate their fish and chips on a park bench, talking about puzzle boxes and clocks and the children down the street who had named their mongrel puppy Bo. Richard leaned back and thought about daylilies and seashells. Until Thomas laughed uncontrollably about something stupid, his eyes crinkling and tearing up. The setting sun painted him all pinks and golds and blackest blacks, and there was no one else in the world. Right then Richard thought, just for a moment, about butterflies.