Due to a bout of writers block, this is a veeeeeery short chapter but I felt bad for not updating. Chapter 3 is already underway! I'd like to say a huuuge thank you to all of my reviewers and alerters and favouriters, because you don't know how much it means that you all like Louis. The curse of having an OC is that you're eternally paranoid that people don't like them! Also, a big thank you to the lovely WotcherNymphadora who looked over this for me at some ridiculous time of night because I had a freakout over characterisation, and to ScubaKanga who is Thomas and eternal inspiration for him :3
He wasn't supposed to care so much.
How many times had he joked with Sarah about how much he wished the 'pesky little bugger' would leave him alone? Hundreds. But now he actually had, it felt...strange. As if he was missing a limb.
He wondered if the many men he had amputated on the battlefield had felt like this – like something that you had grown so accustomed to in your life that you barely noticed it (be it an extremity or an extremely energetic footman) had suddenly vanished and only then had you realised that actually, you sort of need them.
More than once, he'd caught himself turning to relay some amusing anecdote, or to share a smirk at the idiocy of one of the others and finding nobody at his side and feeling disappointed. He was starting to get annoyed. He wondered, briefly, if the war had changed him. He shook the thought off seconds later, not wanting to admit that perhaps he had changed, and not in a way he had ever anticipated.
He had been prepared for the nightmares, the jumpiness at the slamming of a door or the smashing of a plate. He had been prepared to push people away in fits of depression and anger. What he had not been prepared for was this...this co-dependency. Louis kept him anchored firmly to reality, dragging him out of the depths of his darkest nightmares without complaint every night without fail, even if they weren't really talking anymore.
XXX
In the early hours of Sunday morning, they were both awake again. The clock had just struck one, and Louis had woken him from a nightmare not moments before. He smiled at Thomas, a small smile that didn't really reach his eyes, and turned to move back towards his bed. In a move that Thomas would later blame on nightmare induced delirium, he reached out and encircled his fingers around Louis' slim wrist, tugging lightly to make him look back at him.
He wasn't really expecting the hope he saw in his face, the bitten lip and the almost pleading eyes. Thomas licked his cracked lips slowly, trying to find the right words, the words that could make this better. He was sure that there were three that would definitely work but as he opened his mouth, almost half prepared to say them, all that came out was "Stay."
He didn't expect him to, not really, but Louis let himself be pulled over slowly by the wrist, folding his body up tightly under the covers with his head pressed against Thomas' chest.
They don't say anything else, and if they hold onto each other a little too tightly...well, nobody mentions it.
XXX
Mrs Patmore once called him a 'lost soul'. He wonders if he really is. He doesn't feel lost, but perhaps nobody feels lost. You could be lost without knowing it, he reasoned.
But he doesn't feel lost, not really. He has Louis, and he has Sarah, and they are both there like some warped kind of compass, pulling him out of the dark recesses of his mind with soft words and shrewd sensibility.
XXX
Sometimes there are days when he can forget that the war ever happened. He can lose himself so entirely in what he's doing that it can blot out the ugly memories hanging in the peripherals of his consciousness. Today is one of those days, and when he realises it later that night lying in bed, he'll be thankful for it.
Downton is playing host to a group of England's supposedly great and good, though he and Sarah have already started a betting pool on who's cheating with who and who's going to be under the table by the time they serve the cheese course.
While he busies himself with carrying suitcases to and from the rooms, and occasionally passing off his more menial tasks to the hall boys, he finds time to stop in the courtyard for a quick smoke, hoping that nobody else would notice him.
"Mind if I join you?"
But of course, that was far too much to hope for. He turned his head to find Louis leaning against the wall next to him, strands of his hair already springing out of his slicked back hairstyle and his tie slightly askew, probably from carrying the trunks upstairs. He held out a cigarette to him wordlessly, and pulled his lighter out of his pocket and passed it to him. Louis took both items with a quiet murmur of thanks, and lit the cigarette. They stayed like that for a few minutes, smoking silently, shoulders brushing until Louis spoke again.
"What are we doing?"
"Well, I don't know about you, but I'm tryin' to 'ave five minutes peace an' quiet." He retorted, perhaps a bit sharply.
"No, I meant...what are we doing?"
Thomas didn't have an answer to that. He stared at Louis for a moment, who seemed to be resolutely looking anywhere in the courtyard but at him. He huffed a small sigh, one hand instinctively reaching out and straightening the younger footman's tie, before dropping it back to his side as Louis finally looked up at him.
"I don't know. I 'onestly don't know."
Thomas dropped the cigarette end to the floor, and crushed it with his foot, before making his way back to the servant's quarters as the lunch going sounded, without looking back.
