Alexos dozed on the train. He didn’t often travel by train, but then again, he didn’t often travel at all – certainly, when he did travel, it was either with his mother and father, or entirely alone.
He wasn’t accustomed to sharing a booth with a fellow passenger, least of all, several – when travelling with Brydon, he normally stayed alone in the carriage and read, edited through his own notes, whilst Brydon found someone more interesting to chat to in another of the carriages.
With the four of them in here, it was just a little bit cramped – when getting onto the train, Larry had made a fuss of wanting him to be nearest the door, so that he could have more leg room, but Alexos had taken one look at Larry’s already distractible air and fidgeting fingers and knew that he’d be up and down the whole journey, and had little faith that he’d be able to consistently hop over Alexos’ extended legs without jarring or knocking them.
Alexos sat nearest the window, Sutton sitting on the bench to his left, Riggs across from him; Larry took the other opposite bench, and four or five times over the course of the few hours down to Brighton, he got up to stretch his legs, or repeatedly go to the bathroom, or chat to other people.
Harry Sutton had big, broad shoulders, and he was a fat, barrel-chested man packed with meat, muscle, and fat – were he alone in a carriage, Alexos expected that no stranger would ever choose to sit beside him, to settle himself into the small gap between Sutton and the carriage’s side wall or window.
Sutton well-knew how to move and distribute his weight, moved with the keen and clear control of his body and its bulk that many large men in service learned to, let alone men with military training – initially, in sliding into the carriage to settle onto the bench beside him, he’d been very careful, ensuring he wasn’t hurting Alexos… And then, seeing that Alexos was quite fine, his legs outstretched, his face tipped toward his butler, Sutton had relaxed his body.
Suddenly, Alexos was pressured on both sides, sandwiched with the window frame on his right side and the much warmer wall of Sutton’s shoulder on his left, half-crushed.
Larry had said, “Oh, Alexos, there’s plenty of space between Riggs and I!”
“Why, so I can be assailed by sharp edges instead of blunted ones?” Pleasantly blunted ones. More than pleasant – as he sniped at Larry, he made the softest eye contact he could with Harry, and Harry’s returning smirk was subtle, but more than visible up close like this. Alexos could smell his cologne, feel the woollen weave of his travelling suit – like this, the hand not loosely gripping his cane could touch the meat of Harry’s thigh with his fingertips without seeming suspicious or even noteworthy whatsoever.
“I don’t know how I feel about being referred to as a blunt edge, sir,” Harry said mildly, arching one eyebrow.
“Feel free to express your feelings in any diary entry or musical lament you like, Mr Sutton, so long as you do the latter out of my earshot,” Alexos retorted, and across from them, he saw Riggs let out a noise of some surprise, almost a laugh before he managed to clamp down on it and hold it back.
“My edges aren’t so sharp,” said Larry earnestly, and Alexos rolled his eyes, leaning back with his arms crossed loosely over his chest – without asking, Harry laid his coat over Alexos’ lap, fabric a pleasant warmth in his lap, and he softly sighed at the weight of it, at the comfortable compression of his shoulders and his sides, of the fabric over his lap.
It wasn’t even difficult to doze, under these conditions, warm and comfortably confined with the movement of the train over the tracks - Larry tried to make conversation with him a few times, no matter his closed eyes, but Alexos didn’t find it too much trouble to tune the man out.
* * *
Harry normally enjoyed sitting on a train bench without anyone sat beside him, but there was something more than pleasant about the man in question being the young master of the house – with Larry and Riggs across from them, making it something of a full carriage, there was a more than plausible deniability in it.
Within a few minutes of them coming aboard and the train beginning to move, Alexos was not merely dozing, as he’d advised he likely would – he was quite asleep, his cheek rested on Harry’s shoulder, and what a warm, pleasant weight it was.
Larry had gotten up to walk down the corridor, and Harry leaned his head back against the carriage wall, looking across at Riggs, who’d removed his copy of The Man Who Laughs from his bag and was paging through it, scanning the pages. He’d been wringing his hands this morning, only a few chapters before the end but voicing aloud that he felt terrible about the idea of taking a library book out of the Foxes’ house and Alexos, who’d been limping past in search of grease for some contraption he’d been up working on early in the morning in the kitchen, had all but rolled his eyes at the younger man and said he couldn’t give a toss if he stole the thing and sold it on Brighton’s literary black market.
Riggs had flushed bright pink, and Sutton had watched Brydon assure him a bit more gently that it would not be an issue for him to take the book with him given that they were going to be coming back so soon – and even were they not, that they would have more than enough faith in Riggs’ ability to dispatch any borrowed book back by post if there was a need to return it urgently.
Now, Riggs was glancing across the carriage at both of them, and Harry reached across to ensure the carriage doors were properly closed.
“You’re one of us, are you not, Mr Riggs?”
“One of you, Mr Sutton?” Riggs repeated, his lips parting, and Harry smiled faintly at him. He liked Riggs very well, thus far – the young man was somewhat bland in his manner and affect, but he was dutiful and sensible, and he seemed to do very well at managing Lawrence Kidd. He was timely and very well-organised, had insisted on travelling at a time of day where there wouldn’t be too much of a crowd at the station – Larry became very nervous in crowds – and he kept copious and prodigious notes.
Riggs kept a diary and a pocketbook, both written out in a personalised shorthand, and Harry had noticed this quality of his, had immediately thought of Alexos’ own tendency to write out his diaries in Greek, making them illegible to any who didn’t have his background of study. It didn’t seem that Riggs used his pocketbooks for any failure of his own memory, because he tended to remember most details off the top of his head, but Harry did occasionally see him page through one to check a detail – ordinarily an allergy or a peculiarity about a friend or guest’s preferences. He was a very good cook, according to Larry, and served him good and varied meals; he was a musician, played guitar as well as singing; and of course, he was very well-read.
They’d talked a little in the house, of course, chatted pleasantly over the servants’ hall table.
Riggs had no particular vices that Harry had made out, or none that made him inappropriate as a valet, anyway – he had a tendency when he was overtired to curl locks of his hair about his fingers, but that was just endearing, and he didn’t do it outside of the servants’ quarters. If anything, Harry felt the young man was overly self-effacing, and too modest – he seemed shy about beginning conversations with Brydon and Harry at first, but he was getting better at it. He didn’t in general seem to start conversations with anybody, usually just waited for someone to speak to him, and Harry got the impression that the young man wasn’t accustomed to people doing so, that he enjoyed his relative solitude, or at the very least, sought it out.
“You don’t smoke, do you, Mr Riggs?”
“No, sir, my mother abhors tobacco.”
“Are you very close with your mother?”
“Quite close, sir. I write to her regularly, I visit her on my days off.”
“Does she have that silent and unspoken sense, as some mothers do, that her son is an invert?”
Riggs’ jaw dropped, his eyes widening, and he looked immediately to Alexos, who was now fast asleep and even snoring softly, his cheek a warm weight on Harry’s shoulder. There was no excellent way for a man like him to recline in a train seat, tall and lanky as he was, and Harry knew that later in the evening, he would no doubt want to give him a massage and do his best to work the tension out of his body from being folded in his place.
“Mr Sutton—”
“One of us, I said,” Harry repeated quietly. “Mr Kidd and I are acquainted outside of our circles as young gentleman and butler, Mr Riggs – and I am well-familiar with the crowd he socialises with in Brighton.”
Riggs’ lips remained parted as he looked between Harry and Alexos both, searching Harry’s face and then carefully examining Alexos’ own slack features, as though he might infer from his expression in sleep some truth he wouldn’t or couldn’t whilst the man was awake.
Harry well-knew the feeling. It occurred to him in a faint and distant way that the vision he was permitted of Alexos sleeping on his shoulder, visible in the reflection of the carriage window, was not one he would soon be able to enjoy again. He ached to be able to move into his bedroom at any hour of the day without reproach or commentary – he had seen Alexos sleeping, and would continue to, but he wished he could simply sit and be in the room with him, see him so relaxed.
When would Alexos be able to observe Harry as he slept? See Harry’s expression slack in unconsciousness, hear his tired mumblings, and all the rest? He supposed they were as yet affianced – such mutual appreciation for a partner in sleep was for the already-married.
“Did Mr Kidd tell you?” Riggs asked quietly. “About me?”
He was still a young man – thirty or so, himself, a little younger than Alexos.
“He told me some things about you,” Harry said. “He said he was very frustrated with you at first – I met his previous valet, Mr Habberley, I don’t know that you ever had the pleasure. He was a rather scatterbrained and older gentleman, and somewhat workshy – this worked very well for Larry, going unnoticed. He was very nervous about you, about your professionalism, your devotion to the work. He’s not excellent at judging the social cues of relative strangers, of course, lacks the unspoken instinct that many men have for understanding without it being said that they are of a kindred inclination – or that which some women have for their sons.”
“Oh,” said Riggs, seeming somewhat anxious as he repeated, “Frustrated?”
“It was short-lived, I assure you,” Harry said. “Once he realised you were no threat to him, that you could be trusted.”
“I would never betray him,” Riggs assured him – he’d gently laid his bookmark in with the pages of the book, and was now holding it gently against his chest, clutching at it in the way some children might hold a stuffed bear or doll. “But I’m not, ah… He invites me to parties, sometimes. Or, or social gatherings intended for…” He subtly bit the inside of his lip. “My mother is quite frightened of my getting arrested, Mr Sutton. Her brother was arrested when she was a young woman, he got sentenced to hard labour, and he died still in a camp, it was awful, I… I never met him, but his ghost hovered over me like a shade when I was a boy.
“She knew before I did. Long before – she used to impress upon me how important it was that I perform my duties very well, she wanted me to enter service from the out, she didn’t want me working in a factory or even an office. I didn’t really understand why she was so strict with me, or… not strict, she wasn’t punitive or angry, more that she really impressed on me a work ethic that I realised she didn’t on my sisters, or seem to expect of other young men. When I was a little older, once I was twelve or thirteen, the first time a boy…” He trailed off, his eyes becoming distant for a moment, and then said, “It’s not that I fear reprisal from her, Mr Sutton, she’s not my keeper or my gaoler, but I can’t lie to her, and there’s nothing that gives her such fear as the idea of my suffering as her brother did. I may have made implications to Mr Kidd that I am, um… Celibate.”
“Yes,” Harry said quietly. “He mentioned that one evening you were in the same bar as him by happenstance, and he got that impression from you.”
Riggs’ thumb slid across the cover of the book, stroking down its leather binding, over the gilt writ into it. He looked to Alexos, still asleep, and Harry saw the expression in his face, studied it, ached at the sight of it – there was a want there, a craving, hardly deep enough to be called love or affection, but the quiet yearning was damn-near palpable.
“The two of you are involved?” he asked softly.
“My uncle arranged that Mr Fox and I should be affianced to one another, after a fashion,” Harry said. There were few men, even other like-minded ones, that he would be so frank with – he hadn’t even explained the particular arrangement to Larry, and had no desire nor intention to, but Riggs was a different sort of soul, a different man entirely. “There are no marriages between men like us, Mr Riggs, but we can get as close as we can – as your mother desired that you should enter service for its relative camouflage, my uncle safeguarded both myself and Mr Fox in arranging a like match for us.”
There was a mistiness in Riggs’ eyes as he took this in, his desire softer now, broader in its scope – and at the same time, inspired with a little more hope and warmth.
“I’ve no doubt it must be difficult, being so close to the light, so to speak, and not being able to step within it for fear of how it might burn you. Working for a man like Mr Kidd, being in and around his social circles, and that of their servants, too.”
“Somewhat,” Riggs allowed, “but it’s not wholly bad. There’s a soothing element to it, knowing that that world is there, within such easy reach.”
“And seeing that they’re not suffering unduly, either,” Harry said, inclining his head. “That the world is not quite so catastrophic as your mother might fear, so long as people take care not to be caught.”
“Would that it were only care that ensured one’s safety,” Riggs said. “Mr Sutton?”
“Mr Riggs?”
“Are there many men out there like Mr Fox?”
“Sleeping on a bigger man’s shoulder, you mean?”
Riggs’ lips twitched, and he looked down at his lap. “Men who speak so… I don’t know, so frankly, of their desires, their opinions.”
“He’s a coarser man than one would expect of him, being a young gentleman and a scholar, isn’t he?”
“Coarse, yes, but not violent,” Riggs said quietly. “I might find a coarse man on any dock, but Mr Fox’s eloquence, his handle on his own feelings…”
Harry smiled faintly at the idea of Alexos not being violent.
“Mr Fox is well-accustomed to being treated somewhat cruelly by the world – as a consequence, he works as best he can to be gentle. He’s aware of his own power and influence as a gentleman: he is conscious that he might wield this over you very easily, and he has no wish to.”
Riggs’ brow knitted together, and he looked at Alexos again, more critically now, pensive, considering.
“But to answer your question, yes, I’ve no doubt there are other men you might find that please you in the way that he does, that make you feel seen, assured, considered, in the way that he does.”
There was a faint pinkness in Riggs’ cheeks.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
“Mr Riggs, I’m not jealous, nor angry with you. At such a time as you feel safe to, I wouldn’t discourage you from making your own advance on Mr Fox – I don’t know if he would engage or not, but he’s not untouchable.”
Riggs seemed baffled. “But your… marriage…?”
“We’re not a man and wife, Mr Riggs – the rules are different for a matelotage like ours beyond the need for secrecy or the peculiarities of our sex.”
“I don’t know that I want such things,” Riggs said. “Not to insult, merely— Merely that I think I should like something more… traditional. Were it available.”
“It may well be,” Harry said. “I wish you every luck and consideration, Mr Riggs – and you can always reach out to me, if you’d wish.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Riggs. “It means the world, I hope you know.”
Harry smiled at him, reaching across and very gently touching his knee, just for a moment – not gripping at it, but touching his kneecap with the backs of his knuckles, an assuring touch without any further intimacy. Riggs’ smile was full of warmth as he inclined his head, then cracked open his book again.
“Hullo,” said Larry loudly a few minutes later, opening the door with a clatter that shocked Harry out of his own slight doze. “Would anyone like to play canas—”
“Shut up, Larry,” Alexos growled, opening bleary eyes only for a moment, and then crossed his arms loosely over his chest to go back to sleep, leaning against the back wall again.
Larry settled quietly into his seat again, and Harry said, “If you keep your voice down, Larry, I’ll play Blackjack with you.”
“You’d feed bacon to a dog even the fifth time he came begging,” Alexos muttered under his breath.
“Judging by the width of Aristaeus, so would you,” Harry retorted, and Alexos barked out a sleepy laugh, shaking his head.
Across the space between them, Harry shared a smile with Andrew Riggs, and then Riggs looked back to his book as Larry set out a tray and the cards between them.
