xvi. In which Arthur fixes a watch #2
“Ha,” Arthur said under his breath. The hairspring was bent. Some other parts would need realigning when he put the watch
back together, but they seemed intact. In need of oiling, was all.
It took a great deal of time and no little amount of swearing, but at last he worked the kinks out of the hairspring. He put
the watch back together, realized he didn’t know what time it was, decided he didn’t care, and wound and set the watch to
the time he thought it most likely to be.
The watch started ticking. This time, it didn’t stop.
Letting out a breath, Arthur sat back and stretched. His shoulders, neck, and upper back ached from hunching over for so long,
but he felt the sense of accomplishment that always came from successfully fixing a timepiece and rarely from anything else.
Calyx had wound around Ira’s feet while Arthur was working and now emitted a faint humming that seemed almost like snoring.
Despite its proximity, Arthur smiled, pleased with himself.
“It works.”
Ira avoided Arthur’s gaze. “I see.”
Arthur’s smile faded. “Is everything all right?”
“I thought—before. I thought you were angry with me.”
Arthur stared at him blankly. “Before?”
“When you started working. When I said . . .”
“Oh—you said something. Before. I didn’t, er, I’m sorry, I . . .”
Charlotte and the children were used to the way Arthur sank into his work. The time that might pass before he surfaced, in
which he hardly noticed anything anyone else did or said. It happened whenever he worked on a timepiece, whether he was oiling,
cleaning, or repairing it, and frequently when he read a romance novel. If the villagers didn’t find it odd, it was because
they never saw it happen, since Arthur was not in the habit of repairing watches or reading novels in the village square.
“Whatever it was,” he said, “I wasn’t ignoring you, I just . . . I get so focused, sometimes, that I don’t—things don’t register.
It was nothing to do with you. I get that way when I’m doing something I like.”
Ira relaxed marginally, his eyes flickering toward Arthur. “And you like clocks?”
“I love clocks.”
Arthur turned toward him, leaning in. At Ira’s feet, the humming paused. A tendril telescoped out of Calyx, swaying in Arthur’s
direction.
“When I was ten, Dad told me I could shadow him while he visited patients. I’d been asking for ages. I wanted to be like him,
you see, so I had these grand ideas about becoming a doctor one day. It was hopeless, of course, I come over all faint at
the sight of blood, I’m really very useless, but anyway—I think he suspected that, but he let me shadow him anyway. And sure
enough, the first patient we visited, Dad had to let some blood, and I nearly passed out at a cut of the lance. So Dad sent
me outside for air, but it started raining, and I ducked into the general store to wait.
“Well, old Mr. Armstrong had gotten a clock—couldn’t’ve been prouder of it, either, thought it gave the place some distinction since none of the other shops had clocks. But that day, it’d stopped working, and he had it opened up on the counter when I walked in.”
Arthur rubbed the engraving on his father’s watch.
“I don’t know what it was. The cogs and gears, the way it all fit together just so, the ticking when he’d gotten it working—I
fell in love with everything about it. I still love it. The ticking is so—” He flushed, smiled ruefully. “Sorry, I—that was
a lot.”
Ira’s brow furrowed. “It wasn’t.”
“I didn’t mean to talk so much, I know you don’t care about clocks, probably, I just—”
Setting the shirt aside, Ira touched Arthur’s wrist. Arthur shut up. His skin prickled with embarrassment. It had been a long
time since he’d rambled at someone outside the family that way; he’d learned decades ago to keep himself contained around
everyone else. He’d known since boyhood that it annoyed people.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “You didn’t want to know all that.”
Ira’s hand was still on his wrist, warm and gentle. Arthur didn’t know what to do with that; in his experience, men didn’t
touch each other this way. Once, on an impromptu house call with his father, he’d gone to the home of an old fisherman whose
friend was languishing in bed. The fisherman had touched his friend’s hand, but so briefly and secretively—when George’s back
was turned—that Arthur almost thought he’d imagined it. And even their thighs pressed together had been too much for Cormac.
Yet Ira seemed to think nothing of it.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I like that you love clocks that much. That you love anything that much.” He let go of Arthur’s
wrist, to Arthur’s simultaneous relief and disappointment. “What is it, about the ticking?”
Arthur gave a small smile, his embarrassment fading. “Don’t get me started. You’ll regret it.”
“I don’t think I will. I’ve been alone a long time, except for Calyx.”
Arthur ran a hand through his hair. “You’re not what I expected. From Dad’s stories.”
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know.” Not quite true, but Arthur was unwilling to admit to the romance-novel-cover fairy prince he’d been carrying
in his head for more than thirty years. “Something more mythic, I suppose. But you’re just a person. Antlers and paws and
plant-guardian-pet thing notwithstanding.”
The corner of Ira’s mouth twitched, but he said earnestly, “All I’ve ever wanted to be was a person.”
“What do you mean?”
Ira busied himself with his sewing. He’d cut one shirt apart to add fabric to another.