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It is a night like any other when the American cowboy scientist arrives at his door with a rag around his hand, the back of it bloodied, the cloth stuck fast to his skin. Where an older bruise has faded, just healed at his jawline, another develops, a deep, fresh red.
Reid lets him in, locks the door. Turns to find Jackson at a halt in the dark parlor, awaiting direction. He doesn’t want to dirty any furniture, spill any blood on the fine carpets, he says. Reid scoffs. “As if I would bat an eye. This is a bachelor’s home now.”
He leads Jackson to the kitchen and helps him into a wooden chair. He gestures to the man’s waistcoat, burgundy and paisley, now torn and thick with filth from men’s boots. He winces at the thought of Jackson lying in an alley, defenseless, surrounded by those bent on terrorizing him. He unfastens the waistcoat and pulls it gently from his shoulders, down his arms. “Sore?” he asks. “You looked like you’ve been kicked.”
Jackson hisses a yes, fumbling with his shirt buttons. His torso is mottled with bruising, Reid realizes, as the shirt hangs open.
“Do you need protection?” he continues. “I can have Artherton send—”
“I would not lead these men to your door in coming here, Reid,” he interrupts. “They do not pursue me.”
“Their…business with you is finished, then?” Reid’s tone is hopeful.
“For now at least.”
Jackson watches Reid from behind eyelashes sticky with grime. Edmund fills a bucket with warm water and readies a sponge. Without saying a word, he tilts Jackson’s head and works at his brow. He clears his eyes of gunk, swiping at his closed lids as gently as he would a child’s. This tenderness both assures and surprises him: he’s assured, because such attentiveness befits the man he knows as Edmund Reid, but he’s also surprised that such care is directed, without hesitation, at him.
“Jackson. Jackson?”
He jolts from his thoughts as Reid gestures for his hands. Once taken, he pats them clean. He notes the dirt gathered under the man’s fingernails—packed, he knows, from Jackson’s grabbing for purchase as he was beaten—but he leaves them in favor of more pressing matters. His worst injury, the gash on his hand, is deep and needs stitching.
“Can you manage?” Reid knows Jackson’s other hand is still on the mend. Broken fingers.
Jackson flexes said hand, thankfully his dominant, and gives a resigned nod. “I think so.”
Reid brings him a kit and lights a match, dousing the tip of a needle in its flame.
“Light me a cigarette while you’re at it.” Jackson adds, “Please.”
“Where?”
“Pocket.” Jackson’s mouth is set in a grimace as he eases the needle in, his skin puckering.
Reid looks around for his jacket, but realizes Jackson didn’t have it with him when he arrived. Jackson shifts in the chair, leaning sideways, cocking a hip. “Ah.” Reid thinks nothing of it as his hand reaches down into the man’s trouser pocket to retrieve a small, silver cigarette case. He thinks nothing of kneeling at his side to place one on his lower lip and light it for him, smoke stinging his eyes as Jackson draws and puffs to stoke the flame.
He clears his throat, blinking the sting away. “All I have is whisky for the pain, or,” he watches carefully as Jackson, growing paler by the second, finishes another stitch, “a small draught of laudanum.”
Jackson considers. “Give me whatever you can spare.”
Reid returns in a moment with the laudanum, poured into a tall shot glass. “Here,” he murmurs, holding away the cigarette, and tips it into Jackson’s waiting mouth.
In a moment Jackson is calmer, his shoulders less tense, and he finishes his last suture just as the final coil of cigarette ash falls into his lap. Reid is refreshing the water, which has grown cold, when Jackson hazards a question.
“Can I beg another favor from you?”
“You don’t have to beg.” Edmund shocks him with a smile, his first of the evening. “What is it you need? Name it, and it shall be yours.”
“I will not be returning to Tenter Street, at least for the foreseeable future. I require other sleeping arrangements.” Jackson removes his shirt fully as Reid pulls up another chair to assess the rest of the damage. He squeezes excess water from the sponge, from which rises faint wisps of steam. His eyes fall closed as he centers all his remaining focus on the sensation of heat, pressing against his bruised rib cage, his sore flesh. Reid supports him with his other arm, held under his armpit, palm against shoulder blade. The pain wracks his frame, but as Jackson shudders forward, the solid weight of Edmund is there for him to fall against.
“I would have you here, of course,” says Reid. He’s pulled away and Jackson struggles upright. “Come.” Reid’s hand at his elbow stirs him forward, and his head starts to fill with that wrapped-in-cotton feeling as the drug begins to take effect.
He is dimly aware of a room on the main floor, of a wardrobe creaking open, the scent of cedar assaulting his senses; of a lamp at the side of the bed, bathing the scene in a cast of golden light. His trousers are slipped down, his boots removed. He sees Edmund is the same as he, trousers off, shirt opening button by button. He doesn’t miss the face Edmund makes when he pulls the fabric from the shoulder that was burned, crushed.
Laudanum loosens his tongue, always has. “Those men know me for what I am,” he says out of nowhere. Edmund has fetched two of his own shirts—one for himself, one for Jackson—and is slipping one of them, cotton and soft, over Jackson’s head. The American swims in it, his shoulders narrower, his chest and waist slimmer than Reid’s.
“They know the safety Susan offers. The secrets she keeps.”
Edmund watches him. Listens without comment.
“I do love her,” Jackson rushes to add. “But she is not the full extent of my tastes.”
“Jackson, I understand you bed with other women…”
"She." Jackson emphasizes. They are both seated on the edge of the mattress and his hand trembles as it grips the edge of the quilt. "She is not the extent.”
“Jackson,” he says again. “If you are telling me what I believe you are telling me, then…”
“Then you would not have me in your bed.” Jackson stands. “I…would not embarrass you, Reid.”
“Jackson. Jackson. ” And damn it all if the American craves the sound of his name in Edmund’s mouth. Not his real name, but still, the name he knows for him. He looks down at the hand that encircles his wrist. “I will say it again. I would have you here. Always—if you are in need, or even when you are not. Come to me.”
His eyes sting. He thinks of plans to flee, to take himself and Susan far away from this place, to vanish as if these last three years had never happened. To return to America, come hell or high water. But he doesn’t know if he’d recognize himself, that Matthew Judge who fell in love with one Caitlin Smith and who rode the stars, their shared dream, into sunset. He doesn’t know that man anymore, but he does know a man named Homer Jackson, and perhaps that man is who, deep down, he’s always been.
Edmund sighs. “We can talk more in the morning. Lie down now. You must rest.”
“Rest with me.” Jackson somehow thinks it less awkward to frame it as a command rather than a request.
“I will.”
The bed is large enough for the two of them, but small enough that sharing requires touching, which is just as well for Jackson because there is no fire lit in this room and it is freezing. They both face to the right, Jackson orienting himself based on Reid’s position, who tries not to press too much weight on his injured shoulder, and for a moment they lie unmoving, inches apart.
“Thank you, Edmund,” he murmurs against the pillow, “for not asking questions.”
“I trust you will tell me all in good time. When you are ready.” He repeats, gently, “I trust you.”
Jackson’s wordless answer is to press himself back against Reid, and Reid’s body answers him with a shift forward, tucking his knees behind his legs. Reid pulls up his shirt and the front of him, lower stomach and below, is bare and warm against Jackson’s lower back. Jackson melts into it, and it is the last thing he remembers before lowering himself into the inky dark of sleep.