Micha said nothing. His head was bent over his task, a curl of dark hair falling forward across his brow. When he was done, he leaned forward a little more and lightly kissed Thomas’s fingertips.
“I’m so sorry I smell like a dead horse,” whispered Thomas, freshly dismayed by the state he was in and Micha’s tenderness. “That cannot be very attractive.”
Micha glanced up with a rare grin. “You’re wearing clothes you’ve slept in, you’re covered in blood, and your face looks like you walked repeatedly into a wall. Attractiveness went out the window some time ago.”
“Well, my face was not much to celebrate to begin with.”
Micha pushed himself to his feet. And then he was in Thomas’s lap, heat and solid strength, and the sweet shock of his closeness. “I happen to like your face. So don’t go getting it punched again.”
Thomas smiled and split his lip open.
“I can’t believe what an idiot you are,” muttered Micha as he dabbed up the blood and cleaned the wound. His words were angry, but his hands were careful. Even loving. And what little pain they caused was salved almost immediately by the proximity of his body.
“You should see George.”
“Gave him what for, did you?” asked Micha, with a wry look.
“Absolutely. I did some serious damage to his fists.”
Micha actually laughed, and Thomas half-suspected he was being humoured, but he was too warmly contented to care. He closed his eyes and let himself be tended. When he opened them again, Micha had put the water bowl aside and was simply looking at him, his expression softer than usual but typically unreadable. “There. All done.”
He would have moved, but Thomas caught him and held him. “Don’t go.”
Micha cleared his throat. “This isn’t terribly comfortable, you know,” he grumbled. But he stayed.
Finally, he asked, “Does it hurt? I think ... I might have some laudanum somewhere?”
Thomas reached up and touched his lips to Micha’s. “How good you are, but I’m fine.”
“Not good. And I hope it was fucking worth it.”
“Not really.” Thomas sighed. “My poor brother. I grieve for his pains and can do little to alleviate them.” He reached out and ran the rough fold of his fingers across the edge of Micha’s cheekbone. Micha’s lashes fluttered, and he let Thomas touch him, without protest. “How little we truly know of other people’s lives,” Thomas went on. “We think we understand, but we don’t. We just see the crudest shadows.”
Micha shrugged. “Maybe it’s better that way.”
Thomas was silent. Perhaps Micha was right. Perhaps there were some things that were better left unknown. But Thomas had kept his peace for years, and it had brought him no closer to happiness. “Micha?”
“What?”
“George told me something ... about you.” Thomas felt the tension that suddenly rolled through Micha’s body, as though he had slipped a blade between the man’s ribs. “He said you knew Mrs. Clark? In her previous life.”
“I haven’t fucked her.” He sounded as sharp and brittle as glass.
Given how reluctantly Micha spoke of anything to do with himself, or his past, Thomas had half-expected a denial, though not of this particularfamiliarity. “It would not trouble me if you had,” he said gently. “I have no claim on you.” He paused. “What concerns me is that you would betray her to my brother, knowing full well the likely consequences.”
Micha turned his head away, showing just the shadow of his profile. “I didn’t think he’d try to force her.”
“But you must have seen the precariousness of her position.”
Micha was trembling now, with some volatile combination of anger and fear. He untangled himself from Thomas, the convulsive movement rousing from temporary slumber a jangling collection of bruises and minor scrapes. “What do you want from me?” he snarled, almost stumbling in his haste to get away. “Contrition? ‘Oh forgive me, sweet benefactor, for my moral lapse’?”
Thomas stared at him, shocked by the sudden change, the loss of the care he had sacrificed for his question. “Of course not. And I’m not your benefactor. I am your—”
“My what? What are you, Thomas? My keeper? My patron?”
“Your lover? Your friend? Am I not these things?”
Micha’s whole body hunched. “I don’t know. It seems to depend on whether or not you like my behaviour.”
