Chapter 16 Snowbound Hearts #2
I'd never been brave enough before. Had always turned away at the last moment, fear overriding need. But tonight the whisky hummed in my blood, and Malcolm's words echoed in my ears, and I thought: just once. Just to know what it feels like to be touched by someone who understands.
The stairs down were slick with frost. The smell hit me first, urine and disinfectant and cold stone. Dim bulbs cast shadows that could hide anything. A man stood at one of the urinals, not using it, just waiting. He glanced at me as I descended.
My heart hammered against my ribs.
I moved to a urinal two spaces away. Stood there, staring at the stained porcelain, waiting for something I couldn't name.
The other man shifted slightly. Cleared his throat.
This was how it worked. Small signals. Tiny movements. A language even more coded than Polari, spoken in glances and silences.
He moved closer. I could feel the heat of him, the proximity. My hands were shaking.
And then footsteps on the stairs. Heavy. Deliberate. The particular cadence of boots worn by men with authority.
The other man vanished so fast I barely saw him go, slipping past me and up the stairs with the practiced speed of someone who'd escaped before.
I froze. Couldn't move. Couldn't think past the roaring terror that flooded every nerve.
The boots reached the bottom of the stairs. A torch beam swept the space.
“Evening.” The voice was bored, routine. A constable doing rounds, not a raid.
“Evening,” I managed. My voice sounded strange. Thin.
“Bit late to be out.”
“Train to catch. Needed to...” I gestured vaguely at the urinals.
The torch beam lingered on my face. I could feel him assessing me. Uniform coat. Respectable shoes. No obvious signs of criminal degeneracy.
“Right then. On your way.”
I walked up those stairs on legs that felt like water. Didn't look back. Didn't stop until I was three streets away, leaning against a wall in a dark alley, gasping for breath while my whole body shook.
Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
The whisky's courage had evaporated, leaving only the cold reality of what I'd almost done.
What could have happened. One wrong word, one suspicious glance, and I'd have been in handcuffs.
Career over. Life over. Everything I'd worked for destroyed in a public toilet because I'd been lonely and foolish and desperate.
I thought of Tom. Of what he'd say if he knew. The disappointment. The concern. The way he'd look at me, knowing I'd risked everything for a few seconds of anonymous contact with a stranger.
That wasn't what I wanted anyway. Wasn't what I needed.
What I needed was three hundred miles away, probably asleep in his narrow bed, completely unaware that I was falling apart in a London alley.
The last train was leaving in twenty minutes. I ran.
The estate was quiet when I returned, dawn just beginning to pale the eastern sky. My legs ached from the walk from the station, and exhaustion had settled into my bones like lead. The whisky had long since worn off, leaving only a headache and the lingering taste of shame.
I made my way to my billet on autopilot, thinking of nothing but sleep. A few hours before my shift. Enough to function, if not to feel human.
I opened my door and stopped.
Tom was sitting on my bed.
He looked up when I entered, and something crossed his face that I couldn't read. Relief? Anger? Both, maybe, tangled together in ways that didn't make sense.
“Where the hell have you been?”
The question came out rough, accusatory. Not the greeting I'd expected. Not any greeting at all.
“I could ask you the same thing.” I closed the door behind me, suddenly aware of how I must look. Rumpled. Exhausted. Smelling of smoke and whisky and the particular staleness of overnight trains. “You've been gone for three days, Tom. No word. No message. I thought something had happened.”
“I went to see my family.”
“Your family.” The word came out flat. “In London.”
“East End.” He stood, and I noticed the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands kept opening and closing at his sides. “Mum, Dad, Rose, Alfie. Wanted to check on them. Make sure they were alright.”
“And you didn't think to tell me?”
“It was last minute. I didn't think—”
“No. You didn't.” The fear I'd carried for three days, the worry that had gnawed at me every time I passed his empty room, transmuted suddenly into anger. “I've been going out of my mind, Tom. Thought you'd been sent back to the front. Thought something had happened. Thought—”
“I'm sorry.” He stepped closer, and I caught the look in his eyes. Searching. Concerned. “I should have found a way to let you know. I wasn't thinking clearly.”
“Clearly.” I laughed, hollow. “Neither was I, apparently.”
“What does that mean?” His gaze sharpened, taking in the details. The state of my clothes. The shadows under my eyes. “Art. Where were you tonight?”
I should have lied. Should have said I'd been working late, or walking, or any of the dozen innocuous explanations that would have satisfied him.
Instead, the truth came out. “London. A pub in Soho. A place for men like me.”
Tom went very still.
“You went to London,” he said slowly. “Alone. At night. To a queer pub.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any idea how dangerous—”
“Of course I know how dangerous it was.” My voice rose despite myself. “I know better than anyone. But I needed... I needed to be somewhere I could breathe, Tom. Somewhere I didn't have to pretend. And you weren't here.”
The words hung between us, carrying more weight than I'd intended.
“I wasn't here,” he repeated. “So you went looking for... what? Someone else?”
“No. Not like that.” I ran a hand through my hair, frustrated. “I just needed to talk to people who understood. Who knew what it was like to be—”
“To be what you are. I know.” His jaw was tight. “And did you find what you were looking for?”
“I found...” I thought about Malcolm and David. Charlie with his tapping fingers and his dead brother. George with his arrests and his survival. “I found people who've been doing this for decades. Who've built lives despite everything. Who told me not to waste whatever time I might have.”
“Not to waste it.” Something shifted in his expression. “What else did you do? Besides talking?”
The question cut too close. The cottage. The constable's torch. The way I'd stood there, frozen and terrified and desperately lonely.
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing happened.”
“Art.”
“I went somewhere I shouldn't have. A public convenience. I thought...” I couldn't finish. Couldn't say it out loud.
Tom closed his eyes. When he opened them again, something had hardened in his face.
“You went cottaging.”
“I didn't do anything. There was a man, and then a constable came, and I left. That's all. Nothing happened.”
“Nothing happened.” He laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Christ, Art. Do you understand what could have happened? If that constable had been looking for a reason to arrest you? If he'd decided you were suspicious? Everything you've worked for, everything we've—”
“I know.” My voice cracked. “Don't you think I know? I stood in an alley afterward and shook for ten minutes. I'm not stupid, Tom. I'm just...”
“Just what?”
“Lonely.” The word came out broken. “I'm lonely, and you were gone, and I didn't know if you were coming back, and I thought maybe if I could just... if someone could just...”
I couldn't finish. Couldn't explain the desperate, aching need that had driven me down those stairs. The need to be touched by someone who wouldn't recoil. The need to matter to someone, even for a moment.
Tom crossed the distance between us. His hands came up to cup my face, tilting it toward him, forcing me to meet his eyes.
“I came back,” he said quietly. “I'm here. I'm always going to come back.”
“You don't know that. You can't promise that.”
“No. I can't.” His thumbs traced my cheekbones, gentle despite the anger still visible in the set of his jaw. “But I can promise to try. And I can promise that whatever you're looking for in places like that, whatever connection you need... I want to be that for you. If you'll let me.”
My breath caught. “Tom—”
“I spent three days with my family. Talked to my sister about things I've never talked about with anyone.
Tried to figure out what I'm feeling and what it means and whether I'm brave enough to do something about it.” His voice dropped.
“And the whole time, all I could think about was getting back to you. Making sure you were alright. Telling you...”
“Telling me what?”
He was close enough that I could feel his breath on my face. Could count the faint lines around his eyes, the silver just starting at his temples.
“That I'm done being careful.” His hands slid from my face to my shoulders, pulling me closer. “I'm done pretending I don't feel what I feel. I'm done watching you go off alone to dangerous places because you don't think I can give you what you need.”
“I don't need anything from you.” The lie tasted bitter.
“Yes, you do. And I need things from you too. Things I've never needed from anyone.” He leaned his forehead against mine. “I'm not good at this, Art. Don't know the words, don't know the rules. But I'm here. And I want to learn.”
We stood like that, breathing together, while the dawn light crept through my small window and the estate woke around us.
“You scared me,” he said finally. “Promise me you won't do that again. Won't go to places like that alone. Not when I can go with you.”
“Go with me?” I pulled back to look at him. “To a queer pub? To a cottage? Tom, if anyone saw you—”
“Then they saw me.” His expression was stubborn, jaw set in that way I was beginning to recognise as immovable. “I'm not letting you face this alone. Not anymore.”
“You don't know what you're saying.”
“I know exactly what I'm saying.” He released me, stepped back, and something in his posture shifted. The soldier returning, all discipline and determination. “We're in this together now. Whatever that means, wherever it leads. You're not alone, Art. And neither am I.”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to list all the reasons this was foolish, dangerous, impossible. But standing in my cramped room with morning light turning his hair to gold, I couldn't find the words.
“Alright,” I said instead. “Together.”
He nodded. Once. Decisive.
“Good. Now get some sleep. You look like hell, and your shift starts in four hours.”
“Bossy.”
“Someone has to be.” But he was almost smiling. “I'll bring you tea before you have to report. The good stuff I traded Corporal Harris for.”
“You traded for good tea?”
“I was worried you'd need it when I got back. Didn't know it would be because you'd spent the night gallivanting around London being reckless.”
“I wasn't gallivanting.”
“You were absolutely gallivanting.” He moved toward the door, then paused with his hand on the knob. “Art.”
“Yes?”
“I'm glad you're safe. Even if I want to shake you for scaring me.”
“I'm glad you came back. Even if I want to shake you for not telling me you were leaving.”
He smiled then. A real smile, rare and warm, and it did something to my chest that I didn't have words for.
“Get some rest,” he said. “I'll see you in a few hours.”
He was gone before I could respond, the door clicking shut behind him. I stood in the middle of my room, exhausted and shaky and overwhelmed, and tried to process everything that had just happened.
Tom had talked to his family. Had spent three days thinking about what he felt. Had come back determined to stop pretending.
And I'd spent the same three days spiraling into old patterns, seeking comfort in dangerous places, nearly destroying everything because I couldn't stand the loneliness.
We were a pair. Two broken men fumbling toward something neither of us knew how to name.
But maybe that was alright. Maybe naming it could come later. For now, we had this: promises made in dawn light, hands on faces, foreheads pressed together in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
Together. Whatever that meant.
I fell into bed still wearing my clothes and slept without dreaming.