Hello everyone! Here comes the next chapter:) A big thanks to the kind guest who left a sweet review on the last one! This one is pretty fluffy so I hope you will like it! Have fun!
Chapter 2: Fireflies
1918
"Thomas, wait," John, the barman, says, setting aside the glass he was cleaning. Thomas pauses in his movement to look at the man. He is tall and muscular and has frequently caused strange, wrong thoughts in him in the past. Even now, the look of the white shirt hugging him tightly and the sleeves rolled up to the elbow is not conducive in helping Thomas to function normally.
John is about to say something else, but only now appears to notice that the boy is making a daring attempt to transport six pints from the bar to their table at ones and closes his mouth. He takes the three remaining beers still on the counter with an effortlessness that only comes from years of practice and wordlessly shoos Thomas ahead, most likely fearing for his glasses. When they arrive at the table - at the far right of the window, which has become their regular spot over the last year - Thomas is relieved to see that every glass arrives undamaged and full.
"Here you go, boys," John mutters as he sets down his share and has disappeared back towards the bar before Thomas has a chance to thank him.
He stands there for a moment watching him go, until Leon pulls him into a chair beside him so he turns to the action at the table, where Richie is in the process of pushing one of the pints to everybody.
"Here's to us," he then says solemnly, raising his glass. Thomas can't quite judge whether he means it or not.
Richie grins to the group after they have all had a drink, then his gaze lingers on Thomas and he raises the pint again, pointing it in his direction.
"And to you, Nightingale. I don't know if I'd have done as well on the exam without our practices."
"No need. I was just returning the favour for maths," Thomas says truthfully, but feels moved, nonetheless.
Briefly, he remembers the time when Richie saw him as a rival, but over the past few years they have found not only a lot in common, but also a friend in each other. Instead of focusing on trying to outdo each other, they've spent the last few months supporting each other as studying for their final exams.
Thomas looks around and is forced to notice that it's not just Richie who changed. There's Nigel, perhaps the bravest of them all. Thomas can't help but admire him, even if his mother wouldn't approve of him admiring a young man with a reputation for being able to steal anything if he wanted to. In recent years, Nigel had demonstrated his talent more than once. From which they all benefited in the form of sweets, comics and occasionally even answer-sheets for exams. When it comes to their final exams, however, Nigel claims that he didn't cheat.
Then there is Walty, always loyal and fair and most importantly too kind-hearted for his own good. He is at all times ready to protect you, even though he lacked more in physical strength than anything else. He was the first to patch you up when you hurt yourself or - for the grace of God - upset Mister Wood. He was also the only person here who ever saw Thomas cry after his sister Eliza died suddenly the winter before last. Walty noticed at a glance that there was something wrong.
Actually, it's a wonder Leon passed. He has been a hard-luck guy as long as Thomas has known him, being always the one to get caught. He must have collected more punishments than all of them put together, until the masters themselves didn't even bother. Thomas, however, would never go so far as to say that Leon was a bad practitioner.
Ever since Thomas had first seen someone practising, he could almost feel the magic. Each new formae is almost physically tangible to him, like a change in the air. This is not normal. In fact, Thomas never had any difficulty learning a spell, he simply spoke what the magic whispered to him, named it and let it guide him. The only other person who can instantly pick up a foreign forma and use it himself is Leon. But magic doesn't talk to him, it is much more like it is shouting at him, so that most of the things he does don't succeed.
From today's exam - the last exam that makes them qualified practitioners - his face now only bears one eyebrow, since the other was burnt off him by a failed fireball. The other boys never understood Leon and often made jokes about his magical abilities. Thomas doesn't. He knows Leon is stronger than all of them, from the first day his friend managed a forma. It was so powerful that Thomas thought the ground would break away at any moment... But when he looked at the time, when he was eleven, no one else had taken any notice.
"So, gentleman," he says now, and Thomas looks up from his glass. "Any plans for the future? Because now our dear Tommy I-am-thinking-about-graduation-first Nightingale's answer isn't going to cut it."
Fortunately, Leon seems to know all about his actual potential in controlling magic, because since the last school year, he often drops that after their graduation, the real life would begin.
Thomas could never understand why. They would all, more or less, work for the Folly. This means that some higher-ranking member would decide whether to send them to the Foreign Office, the Colonial Office or the Home Office. There was hardly any freedom of choice for what they would do once professionally. And otherwise... certainly no one here really planned to start a family, at least not Thomas. It's unusual for members of the Folly, though there are always affairs, as they learned from alumni. Thomas, admittedly, would have liked to do without the stories of Brian Anderson chasing a new girl every week and strongly wishes he could justify it with decency.
Eventually his gaze finds David, and this is where the problems begin.
"Well," the latter says, catching him staring. A grin appears on his face. "I don't know what Tommy will do, but I have some plans. Many in fact. Maybe too many for one lifetime."
"Spit it out already, David," Richie joins the conversation. "What are you gonna do?"
"I want to travel. A lot, but especially within the empire to do research. Study the fae and rivers and anything else that falls under Demi-Monde to prove my theories and find new ones."
"Of course, you would," Richie groaned.
Since they've all kind of become friends, they've accepted David being obsessed with physics and their ensuing fate of hearing formulas and theories and equations not just in class. Not that anybody really understands what he's talking about. David is simply brilliant.
"I'd like to go to New York one day," Walty says, shrugging his shoulders. "It's simple, I know. But I've wanted to go to America for as long as I can remember. You know, really go with a passenger ship and everything."
"I don't know if I could do that," Thomas interjects. "Travel across the sea, I mean."
"Because of what happened to the Titanic?" asks Richie, raising an eyebrow.
"No... I get seasick pretty easily," he admits, slightly embarrassed, thinking back to when his father once took him sailing. David has to laugh and Leon frowns.
"But how else are you going to get to America? Well, I would never fly. Did you hear they're using planes to drop grenades now?" he says. "Wild horses couldn't drag me into one of those things. I don't trust anything that floats without magic."
David opens his mouth and Thomas immediately knows he wants to argue that planes do not float, but then he seems to change his mind at the last second.
"What about zeppelins?" he asks after a second.
"No way!"
"And hot air balloons?" asks Thomas, and David nods appreciatively.
"Nev- wait a minute! I've done that before, when I was a kid! That's all right. After all, I know how it works!"
"Really?" asks David with a grin. "So you can explain how magic works? Not how to use it, but where it comes from?"
"I-" But quickly Leon gives up, pouting briefly before his expression brightens. He was always optimistic. "So, Thomas, what do you want to do someday?"
That seems to interest them all suddenly, because the side conversation about rugby that Nigel and Richie started to have falls instantly silent. Worst of all, though, is David's look. Thomas hopes he's been able to hide well enough over the last few years that the boy can make him nervous as hell, but at moments like these, looking at him almost as challengingly as he did three years ago, he wonders if he suspects something.
He is spared the embarrassment of having to give an answer, however.
"A round of shots to celebrate, boys. I wouldn't want you to be left high and dry," says John, the bartender, standing in front of their table again. The boys beam at him and proclaim silly declarations of love that Thomas would never dare to utter. Not in jest and not to a man. That would pretty much reveal him. Nigel goes one step further as he hands out the shots and declares John the sole heir to his family's entire estate, as if he were not sixth in the line of succession.
John doesn't even pull a face, but just stands there waiting for them to calm down. He is used to them, after all. Finally, with a meaningful expression, he puts down the tray he has been holding.
"Congratulations on your graduation," John says, placing a hand on the expensive-looking bottle that stands next to the stacked glasses. "You're not the first and certainly not the last students to have gone drinking here at least weekly, but definitely my favourite. Me and my wallet will miss you guys."
"Aw, we'll be sure to come visit you whenever we're in the area!", Walty says.
The others murmur similar assent until John nods gravely and returns to the bar.
Thomas picks up the bottle and waves it so he can read the label. There is a cheer beside him, from Leon, who has been watching him. It is whiskey.
He looks up to find David grinning at him. Immediately afterwards, Thomas takes the shot.
"Another round!" shouts Walty badly drunk a few hours over the heads of the other people in the pub.
"Not for me," David says, standing up with surprising ease for someone who is, after Thomas and Walty, a clear loser in their drinking game. He waits briefly for Richie and Leon to finish their little performance of the song Over There before continuing. "I'm going to take my leave for today, gentlemen. I need some fresh air."
The boys jump up and all give David a hearty goodbye. Thomas realises that this could be the last time they all see each other. That they will no longer share meals, homework and a dorm room, since they are now fully educated. That the world is open to them and each of them will go in a different direction.
Everything that has grown between them over the past six years ends tonight.
But now that David is saying goodbye, the friends' impending separation seems surprisingly beside the point to him. For even though he has given him enough reason to question and worrying about his own thoughts in the past years, Thomas realises that he can't let David go now. Not just like that.
"I'm also going to leave," he says.
Thomas forces himself to stand, considerably more inelegantly than David as his field of vision wavers dangerously for a moment, but he finds stability holding onto the surface of the table.
The boys begin to bid him a solemn farewell too, but Thomas only takes them in in a daze as David decides to do so, putting an arm around his shoulder amicably and a host of false thoughts take over his mind.
"Let's go together, shall we? You look like a breath of fresh air would do you good too."
The rest are done with their goodbyes and half about to sit down for another round, but Richie gives them a thoughtful look.
"Just a moment," he says, his face strangely serious. Richie rises from his chair again and stops in front of Thomas and David. The expression on his face almost resembles that of the Dean when he congratulated them on their graduation earlier today. His gaze moves from David to Thomas and back again before he says, "I won't let a brother go without a drink for the road."
With that, Richie reaches back to the table and unceremoniously thrusts the half-empty whiskey bottle into David's hand. Then he touches each of their shoulders and squeezes once.
"Take care, you two."
"Until we meet again," Thomas says. On his tongue lies the strange taste of a certain if equally uncertain future. Richie nods briefly before letting them go.
"Finally some peace and fresh air!" David says as they make their way out of the pub and are standing on the deserted village street. Only a few lanterns fill the void. He no longer has his arm around Thomas, making the summer night seem colder than it should be.
They begin to stroll down the cobbled street, just as they have done countless nights before, until they both simultaneously realise that they would not get back through the night gate to Casterbrook this night. Not tonight and not ever again.
David stops at a lamppost and leans casually against the metal. He probably has somewhere to stay today, too. Thomas could walk to his Uncle Stanley's house, just a few streets away and David once mentioned that he had a cousin or an aunt or something in Stockenchurch.
"Do you maybe fancy going for a walk?" asks Thomas before he can stop himself.
Something flits across David's face and Thomas is very sure for a moment that he's going to decline, but then he pushes himself off the lamppost.
"Sure," he says with a smile and holds up the bottle. "We also have some unfinished work to do here."
It's the first real conversation they've had in private for three years and Thomas is reminded that David is not only brilliant, but also quite funny. They wander each of the streets at least about three times as they talk about their families, their convictions and lots of school memories. At one point they laugh so loudly that a woman shouts at them from a window, and at another they are so startled by the barking of a guard dog in a fenced-off garden that they almost throw a fireball at the fence. Eventually, however, they dare to leave the village and walk to the small lake nearby.
Leaving civilisation is less frightening when they discover that a park has formed around the lake and the carefully laid pebbled paths are lit with a few lanterns, the lights of which look like little fireflies in the distance among the reeds and weeping willows.
They spend a while disturbing the smooth black surface by throwing flat stones as they take turns with the bottle. The taste still burns Thomas's tongue and guts and he grimaces steadily, but a multitude of pub visits prevent him from coughing at least. Still, he drinks and tries not to justify it too much with the fact that David's lips have touched the same opening of the bottle.
"You haven't answered the question, by the way," David says suddenly, as his stone bounces five times across the water.
"Huh?"
Thomas looks at him. They are up to their ankles in water, trousers rolled up. Their shoes and socks are a little off to the side in the grass. The lantern only reaches half of David's face.
"What do you want to do someday?"
Thomas shrugs, turns to the lake and throws his stone. It jumps unnaturally slowly and only as it sinks into the depths does he dare look back at David.
"You said you would travel? To expand your research, I mean. Perhaps I could come with you? Help you?"
David laughs once. Short and melodic - it's much deeper now than it was back in the dorm. And it hurts. But David is right about that, of course. How could Thomas possibly be of any help to a genius like him. The thought seems so ridiculous to David that he doesn't even formulate a proper response. Instead, he throws the next stone. It skips seven times.
"You're blushing really hard," David says an hour later.
Thomas is aware of this. He drank far too much this night and isn't used to whiskey. Although, spending time with David will eventually include the drink. Maybe someday he will have built a tolerance.
They sit in the grass a little away from the lake, where the light from the lanterns barely reaches them but is enough to see the face of the other. The bottle is almost empty.
Thomas suddenly recalls all the dumb things he said tonight. About leaving London behind, traveling with David to help him with his studies. Help him by accomplishing his goals. All David did was laughing. Thomas can't blame him at all.
After all, Thomas is the one who was always responsible and calm. But tonight, feelings spoke out of him, caused by this disgusting burning stuff. No, not caused. They never disappeared; he used to be very good at ignoring them. But now everything is clear. There must be something wrong with him, thinking about that kiss for three bloody years.
About David, who sometimes touched him when no one was looking, kissed him, when no one could witness it, and then at some point stopped. Thomas never knew why. It wasn't like he ever tried to resist. He'd take everything David gives him. But nothing has happened in years. There were only glances and Thomas was desperate enough to interpret something into them. What an intolerable behaviour. Childish, embarrassing – pathetic.
But he just can't help himself as Thomas looks up to meet David's eyes. They carry the same warmth as three years ago in the night at the dorm. He can hear their younger selves whispering and giggling now. Feelings burning and traitoring in his chest. More blood runs through his cheeks and he raises his hand ashamed.
"Don't hide it," David says and is suddenly much closer than Thomas remembers. He catches his hand in a gentle grip. "It suits you. The blushing I mean."
Thomas feels his warm breath on his face. A thousand small bonfires exploding on every inch of skin. A burning shiver runs down his back. David moves forward and Thomas' eyes widen. He needs to move, to retreat, because David would without any doubt hear the treacherous beat of his heart if he would come one centimetre closer. Time freezes for a moment, and he finds himself totally at his mercy – immobilized and breathless as if he would witness everything through the eyes of another.
Then David reaches his ear and Thomas flinches slightly as his lips briefly touches his earlobe.
"Oh, Thomas," David breaths, his voice trembles with awe. And Thomas breaks under his spell. Desperate to not move a single finger. If he gave in now, he would provide so much evidence of those feelings he harboured that he would never be able to talk himself out. And David is drunk. He probably doesn't know what he was talking about. But then David's voice, his matchless voice, vibrates again in his ears.
"You look so sweet."
And Thomas breaks, loses himself in this living vestigia; throws himself into whiskey and whispers as his hands find David's chest, his heart beating so real against his fingers, as their lips finally meet.
So, this is it, Thomas thinks, already counting the seconds till David releases, that this is nothing but a mistake. He is not wrong. He withdraws from him. Sitting on his knees in the grass, while Thomas can't recognize himself anymore, hands still clinching on David's shirt. He locates himself half on the lap of the other boy, shaking, while burying the face in his neck. Thomas is too afraid to look up, too afraid to see this doubtlessly disgusted look on David's face.
He tries to stop trembling, tries to breath slowly but his body decides to turn against him. Finally, Thomas forces himself to lose the grip. Their eyes meet. David doesn't look disgusted. His eyes catch the warm light of the near streetlights, and a smile begins to bloom on his face. His warm hand begins to caress soothing circles on his back and the other finds Thomas' cheek to wipe away the single tear that escaped his eye.
For a brief moment, all he wants is to bury himself in David's neck again, but the following kiss – burning, soft lips on his own – helps him to let go of this wish. Every voice that spoke against this unnatural wonderful incident, this untrue reality, has died. Everything feels so right.
Here they are. Between towers, walls, castles, and cathedrals under the night sky. And everything breaks as David pushes him slowly back into the grass. His hands are everywhere. Touching, discovering, experimenting. Thomas is unable to tell why. There is nothing to conquer. Right here, under the stars, their short mortality is a painful delight, burning like whiskey on his tongue and he would give David everything.
