Author note: Danke for the feedback! I have a few of these already written, so they will go up relatively quickly - and then trickle off as I have to start making them up again.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Bryce wondered, irritably, how long it takes a broken leg to heal. It's all very well for a quack to toss a figure at him, but measuring a figure up against a man's life doesn't drive it home. Every day that he struggles to get the splinted limb successfully out of bed, every day he hobbles from the trailer to the study, every day that the unexpectedly unbending leg kicks over a carefully arranged pile of circuitry, is an eternity, and he fumes about it.
Lara is apologetic and solicitous, and her pity rankles. She blames herself for his reckless action, which only makes him feel more culpable in turn. He spends his time working on an abrasion-proof, waterproof, shockproof, Lara-proof phone. He should stick to what he knows. Too much trouble comes from dabbling in adventuring.
And Hillary, apparently, agrees. The butler is all stiff formality, now. He speaks to Bryce when spoken to, and his answers are terse. The rapport that he had felt beginning between them, at last, was gone in an instant. We often wonder, when something goes terribly wrong, just when the moment of change came. Rarely do we get to know the answer. Bryce did, and he had plenty of time to review it.
The hospital. His leg treated, his stomach past hope. It tossed and flipped as he replayed the last few hours between two lenses - the self-flagellation of too-much-revealed, and an agony of hope that it had been serendipitous. And then Hillary had walked in; filthy, but with his everpresent quiet dignity, and had kissed Bryce solidly and sweetly. And Bryce, with startlement layered on existing fear and new indecision... hadn't kissed him back. He sat there, mute, as Hillary drew back, frowned, looked down, and left. And Bryce lay there mute for some time after. And quiet had lain over both of them like a shroud since then.
xxxxxx
Bryce sat at his desk with a circuit board in front of him. A soldering iron smoldered on a stand to his right, and he held two tweezers in his hands. He had been working on the same circuit for over an hour. The wires danced out of his grip and flitted their own unruly way, aping his thoughts. He took one of them in his right tweezer and tried to bend it under an existing wire. He pinched too hard, and the tweezers skittered out of his grasp. "Bugger!" he cried in exasperation, throwing the other pair after it. He pinched the upper part of his nose between slender fingers, and sighed.
"Time for a break, I think."
Bryce looked up to see Lara standing in the doorway, smiling gently. Bryce shrugged. "Eh, some days, they go together, and some days, you have to force 'em."
"How true," she said, walking over to the desk. She stopped behind Bryce's chair, and started to rub his shoulders. Powerful fingers dug into his back, and he gasped. "Dear lord, you're tense. Your knots have knots."
"Yes...I...think...I...am," Bryce grunted between kneads. "I...think...I'm...going..to..have...bruises."
Lara eased the pressure as she continued to rub. She bent close to his ear and said, quietly, "I'm not blind, you know."
"Come again?"
"It might be presumptuous of me to guess at how you feel, but I have known Hillary all of my life." He stiffened under her hands, and she put them gently on top of his shoulders. "I don't know exactly what happened while I was off in Egypt. But I can see how it affected him. I've seen how he looks at you when you are not paying attention." An edge of steel crept into her voice. "I have grown to like you, Bryce. But I will not stand by and let him be hurt." Bryce pulled her hand off of his left shoulder and turned his chair to face her. "Lara... It ain't that simple. I think he's a mighty attractive bloke, I do. I've had my share of attractive blokes, and it's been a laugh. But now this..." He waved his hand to indicate the study, the manor, Lara. "This is the longest I've had a job. Blimey, this is the longest I've lived in one place since I were a kid. An now, this? It terrifies me, all of it, I have ta say, Lara." He was almost choking by the end. The air seemed stale, and the sun outside far, far away.
Lara sighed. "This is not a choice I can make for you, Bryce. You're a big boy." She smiled impishly. "Technically."
She stepped back and picked up one of his robotic insects. "I have had my share of attractive blokes, too." She tickled the 'belly' to activate it and set it down, watching it skitter off along the floor. "Pity that they've all been moral garbage on legs."
xxxxxx
Several days of reflection on this conversation had not improved Bryce's mental state. He sat in his trailer, playing WWII combat simulations. It was 3am, he was not in the least bit sleepy, and his commando had gone through more lives than a herd of cats. He put the joystick aside and glanced reflexively at the manor. He was rather surprised to see a light on in the second story. He could not tell, from the outside, which of the eighty-some rooms was lit. It was most likely a spare room that had somehow been left with a light burning on accident, he told himself. He grumbled and debated for a few minutes, but eventually hauled himself out of his chair, pulled a black T-shirt on to accompany his boxers, and hobbled his way out of the trailer and across the lawn.
He paused to disable the security system at the door, and walked stiffly up the long, ornate staircase. The light shone out from a door he knew very well from this side.
He stood outside of it in the cool, dark corridor for a few minutes in indecision. He heard pages rustling inside. Finally, he knocked at the door.
On hearing, "Come," he turned the crystal knob and pushed the heavy hardwood door open. Hillary sat in bed, on the covers, in a dark dressing-gown. A heavy book with yellowed pages sat in his lap, and he was looking at it instead of Bryce. "I thought you were going to stand outside all night."
Bryce shrugged and walked quietly over to the bed. He sat on the edge, and looked at Hillary's left hand, which lay on the coverlet next to him. It was pinned and unbandaged, and pink lines from the freshly healed cuts showed where scars would form.
"I dunno, man."
"You don't know what?" The voice was harsh.
"I just... don't." He couldn't express it. He lifted the hand in his, and as the sleeve fell away, he saw an older white scar twisting over the top of the forearm. He ran his fingers over it, and looked at Hillary. The butler was looking at his face with the intensity of a painter reviewing his subject. He had a small scar on his jawline, and Bryce traced it with a slender forefinger. "I don't..." He swallowed as he parted the nightgown to run his fingers along four parallel slashes that shone dimly white in the lamplight. "I don't want to give you any more of these, man."
Hillary dropped the book and grabbed the hand in his. "It's my choice." He pulled Bryce down, and Bryce swung his legs up and put his head on Hillary's chest; he felt abruptly exhausted.
"My choice," Hillary repeated softly, stroking Bryce's hair. Bryce closed his eyes and fell asleep to the steady thrum of Hillary's heartbeat.