Chapter Text
It had rained the night before the match. The pitch was a soggy mess made worse for the dozens of studs that had been chewing into the damp grass for the last hour. The home crowd was uproarious in their support of their national team. A chant was circling the stands again as the referee organized for a scrum.
Jamie didn’t let himself pay attention to it. There were enough red dragons amidst the sea of green and orange to feel supported by the crowd. He look his position on the outer right side, watching the other lads line up. Last game of the championship. Wales down by two.
“Crouch,” the referee called.
It was Wales’ scrum. Ten minutes left. Miracles could happen.
“Bind.”
Green shirts against red, looking like a Christmas holiday. Shoulder to shoulder, white knuckling each other’s kits, toes digging into the pitch. Tanner, the Welsh scrum half, stepped up with the ball.
“Set.”
The crowd roared, a dull buzz in the background as Jamie’s focus narrowed. The ball passed smoothly into his hands. He darted past the outstretched grip of an Irish player. Then he was off. The turf sunk under his studs. His legs pumped evenly. His breath heavy but controlled in his chest.
His teammates ranged out in his periphery but he outstripped even them so fast it didn’t even make sense to try and pass back. He pulled away from the Irish defence, past 22-meters. Nearly to the goal line. He hands stretched the ball out for a try. Then a train hit him.
An arm wrapped around his hips, another behind his knees. He felt his feet leave the ground. He hit the pitch back first. The air crushed from him as a body slammed down on top of him. He legs tangled with the Irishman’s as they both fought for control of the ball. Then the weight vanished as Williams appeared and shoved the Irish player off him.
Jamie flipped himself around, curving into a C-shape. He held the ball out as his team formed a protective ruck above him. The Irish players were quick to fold in to contest. The push-pull above him got tangled and fell apart into a messy maul. A whistle shrieked and play suspended. Another scrum called.“Y’alright, Mac?” Carter asked as he reached down a hand to help him up.
“Felt like I got hit by a fucking truck,” he panted. He shook his sweaty curls from his eyes. “Who was it?”
“New lad,” replied Carter. He pointed to where the scrum was reforming. The Irishman he indicated was stocky and baby-faced with short-clipped brown hair. He was smaller than would have been expected for the position of a Lock but looks were clearly deceiving.
“Huh,” he mused.
As if aware he was being observed, the man’s eyes flicked over to them. Jamie met his gaze, sharp and wary as it was. The man grinned, baring teeth. Cocky little shit. Jamie grinned back. The Irishman looked away first.
Miracles didn’t happen that day. Ireland clenched victory and Wales landed last in the championship standings. Disappointment was a bitter mistress and that night saw most of the Welsh team getting atrociously drunk at a Belfast pub at the corner of ‘Couldn’t Care’ and ‘I’m Not A Fucking Map’.
They kept to themselves well enough. They had wanted to drown their disappointments in pints and whiskey shots, not draw attention to the fact that most of the Welsh national rugby team was sat in an Irish pub after an Irish victory.
Attention, unfortunately, ended up being drawn to them. The bell above the door chimed and a roar of celebration crashed into the pub. Jamie looked up to see a handful of the Irish team stumble across the threshold, cheeks flushed and eyes already glazed with drink.
“Fuck,” someone muttered from across the table.
Jamie had to agree, especially when he saw that same player who’d tackled him staring right at him. On the pitch the lad had barely looked old enough to buy a pint. Now the low light of the pub brought out the sharp jaw and heavy brow he’d finish growing into within a year or so. So much for anonymity.
Jamie wasn’t sure how the fight started. Maybe it was Williams’ fault for muttering something unflattering under his breath when he was getting another pint. Perhaps it was the Irish Prop who’d overheard him. Or maybe it was the way Daniel had leapt up to punch back when that Irish Prop has shoved at Williams and that's what started it all.
Or maybe it was that Irish lad noticing him from across the bar. Perhaps it was the way he’d swayed into Jamie’s space with whiskey-soured breath and eyes alight for want of a fight. Maybe it had been how his pint had sloshed over into Jamie’s lap. And maybe it was Jamie who threw the first punch.
The brawl spilled out into the street as the bartender wielded threats and a broomstick. Someone shoved him hard and Jamie's already poor sense of balance went askew. He stumbled right into that Irish lad, who shoved him right back. Jamie lashed out, his knuckles finding purchase on the other man's cheekbone. The man's shook his head like a dog and grinned bloody.
Arms wrapped around Jamie's hips and for the second time that day, he felt himself spun to the ground by the bastard. Blows rained down with such precision and weight that he giddily wondered if the man had been a boxer before he took up rugby. Someone, Jamie couldn’t be sure but he thought it was Bill, grabbed the Irishman by the scruff of his jumper and threw him off. Jamie stumbled to his feet with far less grace, trying to shake the ringing from his ears.
Much like the game itself, the fight was a blur until police whistles split the air. The brawlers scattered. No one wanted to spend the night in a cell. Jamie didn’t stop to think. He grabbed Bill’s wrist and just picked a direction. They raced down the main street, slipped drunkenly around a corner and down a side street. They dodged dustbins and cars and other revellers stumbling home from various pubs. He kept running until he couldn’t hear the whistles anymore and then ducked them into an alley just to be safe.
He stumbled to a stop, bracing his free hand on his knee. The drink and sudden exertion had decided to start a war within his belly. His stomach roiled. “Think I’m going to be sick,” he mumbled.
“I don’t speak Welsh,” said a stranger’s voice in English.
Jamie’s head snapped up.
“You’re not Bill,” he said stupidly.
“No,” the Irish lad replied. “No, I am not.”
He sounded so calm for a man who’d only moments ago had been beating Jamie’s face in with such singular focus. A bruise was beginning to swell across cheekbone and there was blood in his eyebrow. The collar of his jumper had been yanked to the limits of the seam, left loose and sagging across his collarbone. His voice rolled, not just from the lilt of his accent. His cadence was distinct and purposeful.
Blue eyes flicked downwards and blatantly, Jamie realized he was still holding the man’s wrist. “I…sorry,” he fumbled and dropped it.
“For what?” the man asked curiously.
Jamie blinked. He didn't know what to say to that. “Why’d you follow me?” he asked instead. The man had been behind him the whole time. Even after the initial adrenaline, surely he must have noticed that Jamie was not one of his own teammates.
“You seemed very intent on getting me out of that brawl. Would have been rude to protest it,” the man replied. He leaned himself against the rough brick of the alley. Narrow as it was, it only put about another foot or so between them.
Jamie felt the need to clarify. "I thought you were Bill."
“Aye, you said that much.”
Jamie didn’t really know what to say to that either. “You’re not going to start punching me again, are you?” he asked warily.
That cracked a wolfish grin. “No, no, my bloodlust has been sated for tonight I think.” The Irishman cocked his head back and crowed into the darkness. “Let everyone answer! Let those who sleep be waked! Let none evade!”
Out on the main street a light flicked on. Someone shouted out the window, grumpy and sleep-addled as they cursed themselves blue. Somewhere else further up the street, someone else responded in kind. Frankly, they were being louder than the Irishman but that didn’t mean the lad wasn’t giving it his best.
“Now look what you’ve done,” scolded Jamie.
“The blind sleep, and the deaf and dumb sleep,” rambled the other man, still grinning like an idiot. “The prisoner sleeps well in the prison.”
“We’re gonna be sleeping in a prison ourselves if you’d don’t shut up,” scolded Jamie. He glanced out the mouth of the alley. Two men in shiny boots and buttons rounded the corner, batons in hand.
“The murderer that is to be hung next day — how does he sleep? And the murder’d per—mmmhph!”
“Shhh,” Jamie hissed, his hand clamped across the shorter man’s mouth to stifle his recitations. He dragged them both further into the shadows as footfalls drew closer. The other man struggled against him, eyes indignant and hands fisted in his shirtfront. Jamie hissed for quiet again, shoving them into a shallow doorway.
The two policemen crossed the alleyway and paused, peering down it. Jamie held very still. The little step would not hide them against any closer scrutiny. At least the other man had finally gotten the hint. He froze, feet balanced precariously on the narrow step. His hands were now pulling Jamie closer instead of pushing away. Shallow breaths ghosted the back of Jamie’s hand.
To his utmost relief, the two policeman moved along without spotting them. The shouting neighbours got sternly shushed and soon quiet settled over the alley once more. Only then did Jamie remove his hand.
“So who was that then?” he asked softly.
Hands spasmed against his shirtfront. Blue eyes flicked up from where they’d been staring somewhere around the hollow of his throat. “What?”
“The poet you were quoting.”
The lad’s brow furrowed. “Whitman,” he replied.
“You certainly seem to like him.”
He shrugged. “He’s alright,” he said cautiously. His gaze darted away and then back.
Maybe Jamie was seeing things, hoping for things, but then again the lad had yet to let go of his shirt. So Jamie, drunk as he was, did something very very stupid. In that moment, all he could feel was the man's sweat-damp shirt under his hands and all he could hear was his own heartbeat. He pulled away, putting a hairsbreadth of space between them.
“Gonna start punching me again?” he said quietly, as if too much noise or movement would shatter whatever this fragile thing was.
“Not as of yet,” the man whispered.
“Good,” he murmured and leaned in again.
It wasn’t until later, when Jamie stumbled back to his hotel, that he realized he’d never asked the lad his name.
It was another year, another championship, and another match against the Irish. This time it was on Welsh home ground. The day was overcast but miraculously dry for March. The Irish were warming up on the other side of the pitch and Jamie couldn’t help sneaking glances at one player in particular.
It hadn’t taken much to find out his name. The articles about last year’s match had highlighted the debut of one Robert Blair Mayne, complimenting his “ruthless efficiency”. He’d been the only new lad on the Irish team that year so it was an easy connection to make.
The match was hard fought as Wales clawed in points. Mayne in particular played like he had something to prove. He tackled hard, spat insults with more frequency than before, and got told off by the referee twice. He avoided Jamie unless strictly necessary, never making eye contact. Even his own players seemed a bit wary around him but he played so well that no one said anything. After halftime, the Irish defence began to unraveled and not even Robert Blair Mayne could stop the Welsh from pulling ahead. They won the match eleven to five.
Jamie found himself lingering as he changed out of his kit. He promised the lads he’d meet them at the pub for a proper celebration in a bit. Go on ahead without him. Just a pulled shoulder muscle slowing him down, he’d be right behind. It wasn’t until he’d stepped out of club and saw a solitary figure standing across the intersection that he allowed himself to admit why he’d taken his time. What it was he’d been hoping for.
The Irishman was the picture of ease, leaning against the building with crossed ankles and a cigarette between his teeth. Only the tips of his fingers betrayed any nerves, tapping restlessly against his thigh.
“Robert Blair Mayne,” said Jamie once he was close enough to be heard without shouting.
“James Griffiths,” the Irishman drawled in return. “So why do the lads call you Mac then?”
“My middle name is Macsen,” he explained.
“Shall I call you Mac as well?” The cigarette glowed cherry in the faded light, flaking ash about their boots.
“I’d prefer Jamie.” He snatched the smoke as it was being returned to the Irishman’s mouth. The man followed the movement with sharp eyes. “Am I to call you Robert, or do you go by Blair?” he asked, taking a slow puff.
The man’s cheek twitched. “I don’t rightly prefer either. But my family calls me Blair.”
“Am I family then?” Jamie teased, taking another slow inhale. The hot smoke filled his chest even as he watched heat rise red across the back of Mayne’s neck. It was a wonder such a man could blush so easily.
“Fuck no,” snorted the man. Then quieter. “But you can call me Blair all the same.”
“And I am glad of it. You don’t much look like a Robert. Perhaps you should find yourself a nickname,” he mused as he held out the cigarette.
“Perhaps I shall." Calloused fingers brushed his own as Blair took it back. "Not in the mood for celebrations?”
That there was an odd tone. It felt sharp and baiting. However self-preservation had never been one of Jamie’s well-practised skills. “Oh on the contrary. I’m very much in the mood,” he drawled.
Blair looked away. The flush crept up to his ears. His jaw flexed. “Perhaps you should find your lads then, if it’s carousing you’re after,” he said sharply.
Jamie blinked, thrown by the sudden shift. The man had clearly been waiting, and seemingly for him, so what exactly was the game here? “Wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” he said cautiously.
“Well I have the mind to find a pint and a fight, so perhaps we are not so aligned in our endeavours.” Blair snuffed the smoke out under his toe with more force than necessary.
Jamie’s brow furrowed. He didn’t like the idea of Blair wandering around Swansea by himself with the professed intentions of starting bar fights. Something close to seasickness curled under his ribs. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to protect Swansea from Blair or Blair from the rest of the world. Both feelings were problematic.
“I could be persuaded,” he said slowly, “but only if you buy the first round.” He didn’t miss the surprise that flickered across Blair’s face nor the way he doggedly set his jaw like it was some sort of a challenge. And maybe it was.
Blair would indeed buy the first round and he would certainly find his fight and he would drag Jamie into it with him. Spitfire that he was, Blair continued to hurl insults even as he let Jamie drag him out and away from the pub. Stubborn as he was, Jamie didn’t let Blair go back to show that poncy Welsh cunt…well honestly, he couldn’t make out the rest of the expletives.
Finally they rounded the end of the road and were far enough away that the pub crawlers couldn’t hear them anymore and vice versa. He let Blair go, who promptly stumbled until he caught himself on the side of a fence. It creaked ominously under the man’s weight. It held, if now a bit lopsided.
Blair looked so offended by the fence that Jamie couldn’t help but laugh. Once he’d started, he found he couldn’t stop. He folded forward, bracing against his knees. “What’s got you in stitches then?” slurred Blair as he pushed himself off the fence.
“You gave that fence the same look you gave that smelterman,” wheezed Jamie.
“Aye, well, both of them got my goat, didn't they?” said Blair so sincerely that it set Jamie off again. Blair glared but the corner of his mouth curled up into a smile. “Alright, alright. Calm down else ye’ll choke, fucking eejit,” he grumbled.
“I’m calm, I’m calm.” Jamie wiped his eyes on his sleeves. When he looked up, he found Blair watching him. He’d been doing it a lot tonight. There was an intensity in everything Blair did but the heaviest was in his eyes. The sharp focus on the pitch as he tracked players and anticipated their moves before they even knew themselves. The bright glint when he wanted to get his fists and teeth bloody, searching for any perceived slight to act as catalyst.
And then there was how his eyes looked when he thought Jamie couldn’t see. Something furious and desperate. A poet’s heart behind a brawler’s tongue. He watched everything around him like he wanted to peel back the skin of the world and reveal what was underneath.
“That jumper’s probably ruined,” he said, keeping his observations to himself. The man’s pale knit was red all down the front from Blair’s busted nose and lip. Brownish ale stains discoloured the sleeves. “Come on, you can soak it at my flat.” He was a half block away before he realized Blair wasn’t behind him. God, he was more drunk than he realized. He jogged back to where the man was rooted to the cobbles as if stuck. “Problem?”
“Didn’t know you lived here." It wasn’t an answer. It wasn’t what was wrong either.
“I don’t but my cousin does. I stay at his flat if I’m in town. He’s not at home,” he rushed to add. “He’s down in Cardiff on business. Won’t be home for weeks. I promise,” he added when still, Blair said nothing. “Blair, I promise it’s safe.”
The contrast was stark; harsh and loud to quiet and hesitant in an instant. Both versions immovable. Jamie watched as Blair rocked back on his heels like a child, hands stuffed in his pockets. His face was doing something odd and complicated that Jamie couldn’t figure out.
“Come have a drink,” he coxed softly.
“Okay,” said Blair at last. “Okay.”
The flat was small and sparse but clean. It took a bit of gentle bullying but Jamie eventually got Blair out of his ruined jumper. He left the younger man with a damp cloth to clean his face, then filled the sink with cold water and left the offending garment to soak.
He cleaned himself up, then stepped back into the main room to find Blair by the window. The gaslight from the street below barely reached the cracked window but the moon was full and the sky was clear. The pale light wrapped around Blair. He’d grown into his features in the last year, just as Jamie guessed he would. The last boyish corners had faded to sharp edges. He’d filled out some too. The vest he’d had under his jumper left little to the imagination.
His jaw flexed as Jamie came to settle opposite at the window. He stubbornly kept his eyes out over the rooftops. He scrubbed the cloth over his knuckles again and again until Jamie reached out and caught Blair’s hands. He felt the flinch, felt Blair abort pulling away a hair too late. Still, he let Jamie touch and that was something.
“You’re making them bleed again,” he chided softly. He pulled the cloth from stiff fingers and wiped gently at the bead of blood that had welled fresh between split skin.
He wasn’t sure what had changed in the last year. It sat heavy and unsaid between them; it would remain unsaid unless Blair offered it up. He’d known the man like this for fewer hours than he had years to his name. He had no right to ask.
He brushed his thumb over the sharp bone of Blair’s wrist. He stepped closer but a hand planted firm against his chest. This was no back alley fumble, fast and desperate and over as quickly as it began. This was different than that, Jamie knew it. Behind closed doors, this was damning and dangerous.
“No one can see in,” he whispered.
“I don’t…” the man stuttered. His hand flexed against Jamie’s chest. “I can’t…You’re not—” The words were bit off harshly, teeth clicking.
Jamie saw to the truth of it now, at least in part. “Ah,” he murmured. “So it’s love then, is it? Whose the lucky fellah?”
In hindsight, he should have seen the punch coming. It cracked across his jaw and fresh pain bloomed over his already bruised eye. The second came swift on the heels of the first. The wrestling match that followed culminated in a painful sounding elbow to Blair’s ribs, a nasty slap across Jamie’s jaw, and one broken side table.
It was probably the table that did it. An angry knocking on the door had both of them freeze. Jamie bore the sharp admonishments of Mrs. Williams from downstairs, properly bashful. He was so very sorry and yes, he knew what time it was but he’d foolishly left the window open and a squirrel had found it’s way inside. Poor thing; caused ever so much of a raucous.
He found Blair still sat on the floor where their fight had ended. He didn’t move when Jamie came to stand over him. His knuckles were bleeding again. “I am happy to fill many a role,” said Jamie icily, “but being your punching bag will not be one of them.” And then, because it felt like it was true and because he could be a cunt too. “Don’t fucking use me to punish yourself.”
Blair didn’t meet his gaze as he got to his feet. He mumbled something under his breath and made unsteadily for the door. Jamie reached to stop him and this time Blair well and truly flinched. “Fuck, just…at least stay for that drink,” Jamie found himself saying.
He knew he’d done the right thing—however insane that might be—when Blair turned to him looking truly bewildered. “Why the fuck would you want me to stay?” he blurted out.
Jamie supposed that was fair. They weren’t friends. They were barely acquaintances. He was pretty sure the balance of time spent punching each other now firmly outweighed time spent doing anything else. But that lack of self-preservation made Jamie simply shrug. “I actually don’t mind your company when you’re not hitting me in the face.”
Blair looked at him like he was insane and he supposed that was fair too. “Come on,” he said. He reached past Blair to snatch a bottle of gin from the sideboard. “Let’s see how many shots it takes before you’re quoting Whitman.”
Jamie ended up on the couch and Blair took up residence on the floor. He leaned back against the cushions by Jamie's hip. They passed the bottle back and forth silently for a while. Jamie made sure their fingers didn't touch. The room started to spin a few sips in and Jamie since closed his eyes against the wave of it.
“The years to come seemed waste of breath,” he heard Blair mutter softly. “A waste of breath the years behind. In balance with this life, this death.”
Jamie cracked an eye open. “Whitman?” he croaked.
“Yeats.”
“An Irishman.” It wasn’t meant to be an admonishment, simply an observation.
‘You asked for poetry,” snapped Blair, always primed for a fight.
“I asked for Whitman but I suppose Yeats will do,” he mused. He sat up just enough to take a swig from the bottle before passing it back. “What’s the rest of it?”
Blair’s throat rolled around the gin as he took a long pull. “I know that I shall meet my fate, somewhere among the clouds above,” he recited.
Jamie closed his eyes again and let Blair’s voice wash over him. He really did have a lovely voice, low and rumbling with that unique biting cadence. It was a sad sort of poem, futile in the face of certain ends. The poet felt indifferent to his fate, as if nothing he was nor might have been really mattered. Jamie said as much.
“And yet he fights,” Blair said. “Not for love or glory, nor country nor king.”
“For what then?”
“For the simple delight of it,” replied Blair with bared teeth. “Nothing but you and the air and the sudden fucking end.”
“Sounds lonely,” murmured Jamie.
“We’re always alone, in that 'be-all and end-all',” mused Blair. “Might as well get used to it now.”
“Is that truly how you feel?” he asked. The younger man shrugged. “Blair—”
“I’ll not have you psychoanalyze me. Not with us both in our cups and you painfully under-qualified.”
“Well I don’t think you’re a waste of breath,” grumbled Jamie, quoting the poem back as he grabbed at the bottle.
Blair held it just out of reach. “Then you’d be in the minority,” he said and finished it off, arse that he was.
Jamie let his hand fall. It hit the floorboards next to Blair’s hip with a soft thump. “What a dreadful thing to say.”
“Truth often is. Now sit up before you fall and give Mrs. Williams another reason to be cross with you.”
Jamie folded himself back up onto the couch proper. The ceiling swirled above him. It seemed to fall closer and closer until he blinked and then it reset. The little water stains in the plaster almost looked like stars if he let his eyes blur. “I don’t think I understand you,” he confessed softly.
“And in that, you’ll find yourself in the majority,” drawled Blair.
Jamie scowled. “I don’t like this conversation anymore,” he declared. “You’ve gone all morose. I blame the gin.”
Blair snorted. “And what sort of topic would His Highness prefer?”
Jamie grinned at the plaster stars. “Tell me about your fellah.”
“He’s not ‘my fellah’,” Blair sneered. A knee-jerk, a defensive reaction long practised.
“Tell me about him all the same.”
He was quiet for long enough that Jamie almost fell asleep. When Blair did speak, his voice was so soft Jamie had to strain to hear it. “Bright star, would I were stedfast as though art—Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night; and watching, with eternal lids apart; like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite.”
“He must be a special lad if he’s got you quoting Yeats,” mused Jamie.
“That was Keats,” Blair corrected automatically. Then softer. “Aye, that he is. A dark haired, dark eyed Belfast boy." A whispered confession said to the dark and the gin, like he’d forgotten Jamie was even there.
He couldn’t stop himself from asking. “Does he know?”
“I can only pray he does not.”
Jamie wasn’t sure what he meant by that but he had a feeling he’d pushed his luck as far as Blair would let him with this conversation. A bold drunken impulse seized him. He reached out and let his fingers brush the crest of Blair’s shoulder. He felt the man tense.
“Stay,” he whispered. “I’m not asking for anything,” he added quickly. “I’ll sleep on the floor. Just stay.”
Don’t be alone. Just for one night.
“I’ll not have you sleeping on the floor,” snapped Blair. “You’re not a dog.”
“Neither are you.”
“On the contrary,” he drawled. “I am but a dog and a mad one at that.” He licked his lips, glancing up at Jamie and away again. “I have the unfortunate habit of howling at the moon, especially when it is full and I’ve a belly full of gin.”
Jamie was reminded of the little leather book his mother always kept on the mantle above the hearth. It was filled with pages well worn by gentle hands, words soothed into the candlelight on stormy nights. They sat heavy, as if Blair’s mere existence was trying to wrest them from Jamie’s memory.
“Yet in spite of all this, I have moments of bliss.” It was one of the few poems he actually knew by heart. “For I cherish a passion for bones; and though doubtful of biscuit, I’m willing to risk it; and I love to chase rabbits and stones.”
The words were stamped on Blair’s soul, as if they’d been waiting for Jamie to meet the man so he could say them aloud. They tumbled out faster than Blair could get his defences up. He stared at Jamie openly now. His face was carefully blank but his eyes betrayed him. They betrayed everything.
Oh, how it hurt to be seen, to be known.
“But my greatest delight,” he continued, “is to take a good bite, at a calf that is plump and delicious; and if I indulge in a bite at a bulge, let’s hope you won’t think me too vicious.”
Time suspended itself for them, hovering and holding it’s breath. Jamie held his breath too, lest he spoil it. But nothing is meant to last forever. He let his hand fall. Blair looked away.
“You, ah, I don’t know that one," he rasped.
“Dylan Thomas,” he answered. Blair shook his head. “A Welshman. Seems you need to expand your poetic horizons,” he added lightly, giving them both an out.
Blair grabbed it with both hands. “Then I must endeavour to do better,” he said dryly.
The quiet that followed felt strained at the corners, but not enough that either of them rushed to break it. The night was beginning to crawl towards day. Jamie eyes felt gritty and he was still frightfully drunk.
He was grateful that the expectation for the morning was to simply battle the hangover he’d surely have. Perhaps in the evening, he’d find the lads he’d unceremoniously abandoned on the night of their shared victory. He’d have to come up with an excuse for that. He hoped the bar fight hadn’t become noteworthy news. He didn’t think he’d been recognized. Blair certainly hadn’t, but that didn’t mean—
His thoughts spiralled out of sync as he felt a weight press against the side of his knee. He looked down, surprised to see Blair had tilted his head far enough back to make contact. Blair's fingers were tense against his knees. His face was doing that thing again; that complicated thing Jamie couldn’t figure out.
“No need to sleep on the floor,” said Blair softly.
The bed was small and lumpy. Jamie lay down first, having quickly stripped to his pants and vest. Blair moved slower, fingers hesitant over belt and buttons. Jamie looked away, giving the younger man time and privacy.
He felt the bed dip but nothing more. Blair sat on the edge, back to him. The knobs of his spine showed through the thin cotton of his vest. Jamie kept quiet and let the man go to war with himself. Some battles couldn’t be fought on another’s behalf.
When Blair finally moved, it was faster than Jamie could react to. The mattress springs shrieked and then a heavy weight settled across his chest. Pomade-stiff hair tickled his chin. “Not a fucking word,” growled Blair.
Jamie didn’t. He let his fingers scratch through the short greasy hair. He found comfort in the gentle repetition and hoped he was giving a sliver of comfort in return. It wouldn't be more than this, but it could be good, just for an hour or so at least.
POEMS
- Respondez! — Walt Whitman
- The Sleepers — Walt Whitman
- An Irish Airman Foresees His Death — William Yeats
- Bright Star — John Keats
- The Song of the Mischievous Dog — Dylan Thomas
- Be-all and End-all — Macbeth, William Shakespeare