Bryce sat at his desk in the living room of the manor, his feet up on another chair that sat askew next to him. He had sat in the late morning, after crawling out of bed in his rumpled clothes and splashing some water on his face. He remained there as the sun slowly dipped towards the west. It was almost setting, now, and the twilight had the tinge of eternity that only autumn sunsets possessed.
Bryce tinkered with one of his bugs, as he had been doing for hours. He had taken it apart, and put it back together again. It was almost all apart, now, and he absently considered putting it back together again. It was all so much busywork for his hands while his mind ran in profitless circles.
He had woken up alone very late this morning in someone else's bed. To the old Bryce, as he now considers the man he was before he took this blasted job, that would have been ideal. It would have meant that he had experienced a good shag, and was now spared the embarrassment of introducing himself before he left. But this was no stranger's bed, and what would have transpired, had he not woken alone, would have been an awkward and annoying fishing for explanation rather than an introduction. Bryce's lips tightened. He had not spoken with Hillary this morning, and the butler had left no note, merely a polite explanation to Lara that he would be taking a trip and would be gone for a few days. Bryce needed no note to know that Hillary was upset with him. He knew the other man well enough to know what small gestures shouted upset; last night's mud-stained bedclothes still on the bed Bryce woke up in; his shoes, belt, and keys dropped carelessly on the ground next to him.
Bryce did not understand the reason for the upset. He had made so many changes to his life since he had become involved with Hillary. He had given up other men. He kept a semi-regular schedule. He only went out drinking when he was utterly at the end of his tolerance level for boredom, and always came back home to Hillary afterwards. Hell, keeping the same job for as many years as he had was a massive lifestyle change. And yet, he still was able to irk the other man, far too often.
He could leave. It had been his original plan, after all. The packet he had saved up was larger than what he usually accumulated before moving on to another job in another city. With Hillary away, there would be no need for explanations or goodbyes. Just a new home, a change of scene, new friends, new lovers. Bryce grimaced as he twisted the plastic casing in his hands far too aggressively, causing a small tab to go flying. He put his right hand flat on his knee, and started a mental count to ten.
"You know, Bryce..." a voice came from behind him. He turned to see Lara standing there, finished with her afternoon workout, sweat running down her forehead. "...I think, if I bought you some plutonium, you could make me one of the world's nuclear powers."
"You'd like that?" Bryce asked. He was never quite sure when Lara was joking.
She smiled, and took a sip out of a bottle of water she held. "I've always wanted to join the UN."
"Peacekeepers, eh?" Bryce muttered. He turned back to his bug, picked up his screwdriver, and started to methodically put it back together again. He heard Lara's footsteps beside him. She walked to the chair he was resting his legs on, tapped his foot with her bottle, and sat down when he swung his legs back onto the floor. She said nothing, merely looked at him, steadily.
"It's all to cock," he muttered. "And I don't know how yeh always know when it is."
"It's a secret feminine intuition technique called 'talking to people'," Lara replied. She paused. "And listening to what they say in return, actually. I think that's where the big secret lies."
Bryce did not ask who she had been talking to, or what she had heard. He had a rather good hunch that he knew the answers to both. "Is it always like this?" he asked, still assembling the bug with painstaking care. He tried to elaborate as she merely sat and stared. "I done more fer him than I've done fer anyone else, and he still gets..." he waved his hand, trying to convey the general absence of Hillary-ness on the premises.
"Don't put too much stock in my advice," Lara grumbled, turning the bottle in her hands. "I haven't kept a lover for more than a few months at a time." Bryce watched her slender hands move as they both sat in silence.
"What do you want?" Lara asked after a few minutes.
This was not a question Bryce had been expecting. He thought for a moment, tapping a screwdriver on his knee and looking straight at Lara's impassive face. "I want Hil'ry, I guess," he muttered.
"Well," she said with a smile, "it certainly makes it easier when you're clear on what you want." She stood, looking down at him. "If I want an orange, I go to the grocery store. If I want an ancient set of Mayan prayer beads, it's a little bit more complicated than that." She stretched, catlike, and walked up the stairs. The low murmur of a shower drifted down some minutes later.
Bryce folded his hands in his lap, and looked at the long streaks of ruddy light flung from the west-facing windows. So bluntly rational. Costs and desires. The relative value of what he paid was never an issue; the price was absolute. It was both absurdly simple and frighteningly unequivocal.
Bryce thought of the worth, to him, of all he had paid so far, and contemplated the cost of all he had still to pay. And on the other side of the equation, just one man.
He sat, shuffling equations in his head, as the sun dipped down and darkness covered the study.
Bryce was sitting in a very similar position at a very similar time of day a week later when Hillary walked in. He had a bag slung over his shoulder, and the expression he was wearing was the one expression of his that Bryce could not read. It was the one that he wore to greet guests, and Bryce considered it as much a part of his uniform as the vest, tie, or gold watch. Hillary must have put it on before walking in, because it did not change when he saw Bryce sitting at his desk. Hillary only paused a moment, looking Bryce in the eyes, before turning and walking up the stairs towards his room. Bryce sighed, looking at the transmitter in his hands while he debated whether to follow. If not, though, why had he stayed?
Bryce carefully laid out the screws and connectors that were in his mouth on the desk, in the appropriate order, and put the transmitter beside them. There was procrastination in his precision, he recognized, as he painstakingly put his tools away. He put the rest of them aside and walked up the staircase, feeling like he was crawling up it on his hands and knees.
He made as little noise as he could walking into Hillary's room, and sat down quietly on a chair in a corner. He knew Hillary had heard him. The other man had laid his bag on his bed, and was unpacking it in his mind-numbingly painstaking manner. He made no acknowledgement of Bryce's presence, and Bryce merely sat and watched. At least he hasn't told me to leave, Bryce thought. However, his silence resounded in the moderately-sized bedroom.
As Hillary came close to the end of his unpacking, Bryce took off his boots and his belt, setting them down on the floor. Hillary's back tensed, and Bryce caught a look of annoyance in profile as the butler pulled his dopp kit out of the bottom of the bag and set it on the nightstand. He had discarded the wholly unreadable expression, and Bryce was grateful for small mercies. He walked over to the far side of the bed and sat down gently, pulling his legs up and settling back with his arms behind his head. He watched as Hillary's expression moved from irate at Bryce's intrusion to bemused at the inaction that followed. Bryce closed his eyes and waved at the book that sat on the nightstand. "Read to me, would yeh?" He paused. "Please."
A few minutes later, after Hillary had put away his bag and carefully stowed his shoes, his soothing voice replaced the awkward silence, far into the night.