Lewis Fic: Half a World Away - Part III
Title: Half a World Away
Rating: Teen
Pairing: Lewis/Hathaway
Part III: October in Bangkok
Robbie had forgotten what it felt like, that wall of warmth that claims you as soon as you step outside in the tropics. And the way that day seems to shadow rapidly into darkness without a pause for that hesitation of dusk. Although this is certainly different from the British Virgin Islands. The city seems just as purposefully chaotic as it had been a little while before when his taxi had battled here through that traffic from the airport, but now it’s invested with a different kind of urgency as people embark on the next part of their day.
James had said that he taught at night, hadn’t he? That most of his students came after full days in universities to study at English language schools. It’s a relief to finally be in the place where he is, right in the midst of all this weaving night time chaos that he’s described. And in the end it proves thankfully easy, these last obstacles to reaching him dissolving, as a taxi extracts itself from that slowly moving mass of taillights and is drawn to Robbie where he stands on the street outside his hotel, taking his bearings. And the driver nods in recognition at the address that Robbie shows to him.
It’s even surprisingly easy to get in to the clinic, which isn’t too far from Robbie’s hotel, just as the travel agent back in Oxford had promised. There are no visiting-hour restrictions, it’s more like a twenty-four hour emergency walk-in clinic from what Robbie can see, all calmly controlled activity downstairs, and with just a few rooms for inpatients in the quieter part upstairs. There’s simply a welcome acceptance that he’s here to see his friend.
Robbie takes in, as he follows the young nurse upstairs, that it’s cool, blissfully so, and modern, and then that the short corridor that those inpatient rooms open from is incredibly clean-and then they’re stopping at the door of one fairly spacious white room and he’s being told not to stay too long and that the patient is sleeping but if he wishes he can leave a note-Robbie stops listening. Because James is patchily flushed, apparent even from here, propped up on white pillows and maybe it’s that, the way he’s collapsed back that’s making him look so ill.
The nurse’s footfall retreats and there’s only the hum of the air-conditioning left as Robbie is drawn in, further into the room and over to him. Because the patient is not asleep. They seem to have disturbed him. James rolls his head slightly on the pillow. Robbie makes his way around to the side of the bed that’s uncluttered by the IV stand to lean over him and he watches as James’s eyes start to blink open. James peers up at him, frowning, his gaze not quite focused. Robbie bends over a little more, his eyes on James’s face. He sees the second that recognition hits.
And then James reaches up both arms and grasps him, pulling him down, holding on, fisting his hands into the material at the back of Robbie’s shirt. Robbie is taken by surprise. His back is protesting, hard. But James is warm, very warm against him and he smells like his own indefinable James scent under something antiseptic and Robbie has missed him that much, he suddenly lets himself fully feel just how much he’s missed him. He gets his arms around him in a more gentle hug. James’s breath is a bit ragged against his neck.
And then Robbie is holding on with just as fierce a grip as James’s, getting his arms further round him and pulling him in tighter, forgetting his back and the need to be careful of James, overwhelmed by a surge of protectiveness. Because all of Laura’s half sentences are swirling around his head, completed in Robbie’s own words. If you fly halfway across the world, he might think-that means something else. Do you think it’s fair-to do that to him. It might raise his-hopes.
And as James presses his head into Robbie’s shoulder, dazed enough to just let himself take hold of Robbie like this, something within Robbie seems to give way.
It’s the relief that tells him. Of finally, properly reaching James. Of that thrum of restlessness that’s been a dull undercurrent to his days ever since James left so abruptly, starting to calm at last. And the worse, tightly wound rhythm of anxiety, that’d added to it since he’d first heard James was this ill, starting to unspool. But it’s also a relief to finally succumb to the knowledge of why he’d needed to come here to James, knowledge that Robbie must have been teetering on the edge of for God knows how long but is now resounding with a surety somewhere deep within him. And he can cease trying to convince himself that life is fine really, that this is what life after they’ve left the job is like, and it’s fine. He can just yield to the impossible rightness of this.
James makes a small noise of disbelief and surrenders a little further into his arms, his over-rapid heartbeat against Robbie’s own. And Robbie is being grasped as if he's the answer to a question that’s been eating at James too.
He needs to get him lying back down, he needs to calm James right now. He’s not about to release him yet, so he sinks down on the side of the bed and adjusts one arm around James’s shoulders. He’s sitting straight up and James is lying propped up on his pillows, but he can sort of keep an arm around him all the same. He looks down at James, who’s looking stunned.
“What’ve you been doing to yourself this time, eh?” he asks, shakily.
“How’d you get here?” James asks in wonder.
“The Wright brothers, lad, they invented this marvellous thing-” But James just looks confused. He’s not actually with it at all. His eyelids are starting to rest shut for brief seconds at a time before he blinks rapidly and refocuses that dazed stare on Robbie. He’s fighting off sleep and fever, Robbie realises. He reclaims his arm reluctantly, sliding it out gently from under James. “I’m going to head off now, let you get some rest. Just wanted to see you first.”
James, no mistaking it, looks bereft.
Robbie feels the need to explain a bit further. “I just need to get a bit of sleep, too, lad. Need to lie down.” And have a think.
“It’s early-”
“Well, it’s still daytime on my body clock, but I can’t convince myself what time it is, just that I’ve been up all night.”
“You didn’t sleep last night?”
“No. I was on the plane and then when I landed I just checked in, had a shower and came here.”
“Oh, that’s why you look so old.”
“Hey-”
But James isn’t joking. He’s talking almost to himself and looking drowsily relieved. “You looked so haggard. I didn’t know you hadn’t slept-thought you might’ve been ill and it’d aged you…”
“Well, we’ll see how I look in the morning, okay? After me beauty sleep. Back before you know it.”
“Wear sun cream. And a hat,” James instructs, rather slowly. He’s almost asleep now.
Robbie is amused, despite it all. “I’ve lived in the tropics before, you know, a whole lot longer than you have.”
“Oh, I remember.” Then his eyes jolt open as if something has startled him. Robbie, shocked, thinking he’s in pain, makes a grab for the call buzzer. But-“You didn’t bring that awful shirt?” James says, alarmed.
===
When he thinks back, in later years, to that first surreal night in Bangkok, high up in his hotel room, with the equally sleepless city thrumming its many, disparate rhythms far beneath him, Robbie will always associate his belated awakening about the real shape of this between him and James with a stiff back, with the cool sheets of the overly air-conditioned room, with a jangling, out-of-sync tiredness and yet an edge of something which is almost like arousal. Hope.
At some stage, he presses into service the button that draws the heavy curtains back on their mechanism and a wall of glass is revealed and the slowly moving lights of the city. When he lies back down on the firm comfort of the mattress, those lights below give way to the sky above which is suffused with the remnants of all that illumination, a sky too city-tethered to reveal the stars that are surely there.
===
He doesn’t want to disturb James too early the next morning. So after he’s finally managed to get a few hours’ rest, and given up on the unlikely prospect of any more in favour of a reviving shower and a surprisingly appetising breakfast, he heads outside into that dazzlingly bright heat.
There’s an internet café he’d spotted a few doors down from the hotel, and he wants to let Laura know that James seems as all right as can be expected and that Robbie coming here is all right too. It feels important to reassure Laura when her concern must have been for James, that James was vulnerable and that Robbie, all oblivious, was going to hurt him.
It’s not until he’s sitting in front of a computer, waiting impatiently for it to load his email account, that the full implications of that hit him. Laura had been trying to prevent him from hurting James. Did she think-He’d hurt James already, and she knew that. Her whole attitude of gentle support for James when he’d taken this contract. That sense he’d had that James wasn’t doing this for the right reasons-Christ. His own blinkers had led to James heading off over here. And worse; he doesn’t really want to think about how he’s made him feel to prompt that decision in the first place. Because James had felt that Robbie wouldn’t return his feelings, and he’d been sufficiently convinced of that that he’d never even tried to talk to Robbie.
He gives up on the internet connection, pays the rather disconcerted young man the minimum charge and heads out onto the street. He’ll have to leave Laura until later. He needs to get to James.
===
James hasn’t had the best night either. His own doctor overhears Robbie’s query at the main desk and comes over to greet and update him. Chris, who wants to be known on first-name terms, is a young American with Thai ancestry who’s come out here to work in this clinic. But he also goes out to more far-flung rural areas and volunteers in clinics there on a quarterly basis-seeing a lot of malaria in the process. Which is why he’s letting Robbie know that, Robbie suspects, as a reassurance. He’s submitting fairly calmly to Robbie’s instinctive assessment of him too. Laura was right that James seems to be in good hands.
But it turns out that these fevers that James is having can be quite severe and debilitating; they seem to be cyclical and can spike every so often, and James has been having trouble holding down the medication they want to treat him with, so he’s currently receiving it through that IV, which is also delivering an anti-emetic. And then, confusingly, Chris is also explaining that James is doing better overall this morning. Must be between cycles of fever, Robbie supposes. So Robbie’s not quite sure what he’s expecting when he reaches James’s room. It’s certainly not the reaction that he gets.
“It is you,” James sounds almost accusing.
Robbie halts in surprise at the fierceness of that stare, trained right on the door. “Last time I checked, yeah,” he protests.
“It is.”
Maybe they’re wrong about his fever being better this morning. Maybe he’s still not quite with it. Robbie comes closer, to get a better look at him. James looks right back up at him, the intensity of his gaze not abating.
Robbie doesn’t really know what to say. “I was here-d’you remember? Yesterday evening?”
“No. I didn’t know-the nurses had all changed shift and no-one who’s on this morning knew if I’d had a visitor…I just didn’t know-”
“Well, I’m here, all right. Hope that’s-okay?” Robbie can’t help his voice coming out rather gruff.
“I-” But James looks like he’s really struggling now.
Robbie doesn’t think it’s fever or pain. It hits him that if half of what he now suspects is true, about why James left, then he needs to go quite slowly here. James is ill and quite vulnerable. And beyond that, the very unwelcome thought is starting to dawn on Robbie that he may have his work cut out for him here if James had really so irrevocably decided that nothing was going to happen between them that he’d upped and left Oxford without a word. And that was two months and a whole new life for James ago. What if he’s really let Robbie go by now and moved on? Or what if he’s so firmly in self-preservation mode that he’ll resist even trying with Robbie now? It’s a keenly horrible possibility. And yet-the way that James had reached for him and grasped him when he first saw him-
Robbie looks down at him and lets all of that go for the moment. James is clearly battling with himself, and the only thing that matters right now is easing his mind.
Robbie reaches for one of the chairs that are neatly paired on either side of a small table under the window, and pulls it closer to the bed. Then he drops down into it, doing his best to ignore James’s demeanour which is not exactly encouraging him. He doesn’t think he’ll be too welcome to sit on the bed this morning. And there’s an odd rigidity in James’s long body under the sheets and light blanket that cover him. Is he in pain?
James on his pillows has turned his head and is just looking at him. Robbie can’t help feeling it’s an acute contrast from last night. And it seems impossible that James doesn’t clearly remember that fateful embrace that’s meant so much to Robbie. If it had brought so much certainty to Robbie, then how come James could somehow doubt it? But Robbie does his best to send a grin at him.
“Well,” he starts. “You were pretty out of it, last night. You must have been. Even insulting my sartorial choices, you were.”
James gazes at him and for a moment it seems like he simply won’t comply. That he won’t fall back into the easy conversational patterns that have punctuated all their years together. That he’ll just keep on looking at Robbie with that almost angry, shuttered look. Then-
“That doesn’t sound like me, all right,” he agrees. “Must have been the fever. Or the drugs.” He’s still eyeing Robbie in a manner that Robbie doesn’t much like, but it’s something.
“In particular,” Robbie elaborates, “you were insulting the shirt that I had on, the first time we met.”
He’s watching so closely that he reckons he sees that tiny inward fold of James’s lips, a tell of amusement, almost before James registers it himself. “That shirt. Of course,” James says after a moment. And now he’s angling his head at Robbie, his expression more considering. “I always thought of it as your tropical shirt-well, amongst other adjectives. Although-I generally try my best not to remember it at all. If you were wearing that, it’s no wonder I thought I was having a nightmare.”
“I wasn’t wearing that,” Robbie protests. He’s mightily relieved that James seems to have decided to let himself just relax into this while they get past this strangely difficult first phase. Well, he’s either decided to or pure habit is just taking over. But that highly disconcerting expression is starting to dissolve. Bloody hell, though. If this is just the first part-this is going to be ruddy tricky.
“I have no idea what you were wearing,” James is saying now, frowning. “I just had a sort of a sense that you were here. But then you weren’t, of course-when I woke up properly.”
“Sorry, James.” He really is. He should have left a note. He should have stayed longer. “I’d just arrived and I wanted to see you. Just dropped in before I went to get some sleep. Those plane seats…”
“Yes,” James agrees, rather emphatically.
Robbie gives him a genuine grin. “Can’t be much fun with your long legs,” he acknowledges. “Me back was at me a bit and I hadn’t slept-” and it’s ridiculous, of course it is, because James was well out of, he’s certainly confirmed that now, but stupid as it is “-and apparently I looked so bad you reckoned I’d aged,” he says, aiming for a jokily miffed tone. It might have come out less casual than he planned, because James narrows his eyes at him a bit.
“No,” he says. And he’s finally looking at Robbie quite openly.
“What?”
“No, you haven’t aged. You look tired still-well, it’s still night on your bodyclock-but overall-is it the allotment? You look quite well-like you’ve been spending time outdoors.”
“The allotment,” agrees Robbie. Stupidly relieved now. That’s James, isn’t it? If he spots what might be a sore point, although you’re trying to feel like it’s not, he holds back on his smart comments even as you invite him to make them. There’s still a difference between Robbie’s physical condition and that of his young ex-sergeant lying here on the bed. Even if Robbie is as fit as he was when he was a serving officer and he’s tending to take a bit better care of himself in general now that his time isn’t privy to the strictures of the job. But at least he doesn’t look older to James than whatever mental image James has had of him in his head.
“Where are you staying?”
Robbie names the hotel, which elicits a frown from James after a moment. All of his reactions seem to be slowed down. And it hasn’t escaped Robbie’s notice that he’s failed to lift his head at all. There are fine lines of pain at the corners of those intent blue eyes that really shouldn’t be there. “That’ll add up. I know most things are much cheaper here, but that place is still expensive.”
“Don’t you worry about that.”
“You could stay where I’m living. It’s the other side of the river but-”
“No. Thanks anyway. Have you seen the traffic?” Robbie is never going to complain about a traffic jam in Oxford ever again. “I wouldn’t be here before nightfall.”
“But you don’t have to be so near. You don’t have to come every day-you should be seeing the sights properly now you’re here. Have a holiday. I’m fine, really.” And he’s looking a question at Robbie. He’s also looking far from fine. It hasn’t escaped Robbie’s notice just how weak he seems to be. And Robbie’s worked out what the physical stiffness in his posture is about. He’s shaking a little which would have Robbie reaching for that call button if the doctor hadn’t explained a bit about these particular cycles, with chills preceding fevers. But it’s still quite difficult to watch as James tries to brace his body again to make it less obvious. “Go on a day trip-” he suggests to Robbie. “Or you could even-”
“You trying to get rid of me?” Robbie asks, jokily, affecting not to notice what James doesn’t want him to see.
“I don’t want to get used to-”
A comfort he should not permit himself-“I’ve the hotel booked for the first few nights anyway,” Robbie says gruffly. “No need for me to go anywhere. It came as a package deal with the flights. After that I’ll-”
“Flights aren’t cheap either.”
“Will you stop going on about cost.” Like I’d put a price on you. He shouldn’t have left last night. He shouldn’t have let James wake to further confusion and to simply persuading himself that he was still alone over here. That must be partly why he seems unwelcoming this morning. How long has he spent mulling over this since he woke, through his struggles with these chills and what Robbie suspects is one hell of a sore head?
James is frowning again, those telltale lines around his eyes deepening in sympathy with his perplexity, as he puzzles all of this out properly. “After that?” he repeats. “You’re staying?”
“Be a long way to come for just a couple of days, now, wouldn’t it?” He holds back on saying that all he wants to do right at this moment, with James lying on this bed so ill beside him in this foreign environment, is to get him back to Oxford. Apart from those tremors and the little tilts of his head as he tracks Robbie’s expressions, he looks like he can barely move.
“It’s a long way to come anyway.” And James’s expression goes quite blank as if the answer to the still unspoken query contained there doesn’t matter to him.
“Well, like I said in the first place, you could’ve chosen somewhere a bit closer,” Robbie reminds him gently.
“No, you didn’t.”
“What?”
“No, you didn’t say that.”
“Oh.” He must’ve said it to Laura.
“I’d remember if you’d said that,” says James quite to himself.
Oh, God. Why hadn’t he just let James know he minded him going away? Even if he hadn’t worked out what this was between them, he could have let him know how it wouldn’t be the same not having him around. Acting annoyed and a bit begrudging about his plans, sort of dismissing his ideas, really, wasn’t the same thing. At all. Had that made James feel it was all fairly hopeless? Is that why he hadn’t said something?
And now James, despite everything, is still trying to take care of Robbie in his unexpected arrival here.
“Go to mine. See if you’d like to stay there after the hotel. I could do with you getting some stuff if you didn’t mind? And because it’s a house that gets rented to foreign teachers, there’s a phone plan for making international calls. I’ll tell you and you can write down how you can do it, with my address.” And he nods at the pad of paper and pen on the bedside table that Robbie should have used last night. “Be better than hotel phone rates or sitting in an internet café, trying to talk to Lyn. She’ll be worried about you.”
Now that might be handy. Robbie decides not to mention that it won’t be Lyn he’s talking to. Lyn will have to make do with his emails. Because he has a distinct feeling that Laura holds a few answers here.
“You wouldn’t have to face the traffic to get here, you know. You could take the boat across the river and then get the sky train.”
And James seems exhausted just from that conversation, just from the effort of talking to Robbie. Of still trying to look after Robbie here, in the midst of it all.
===
James’s new accommodation has such a narrow frontage that Robbie, deposited by another obliging taxi at the end of this quiet little street, and utterly confused by this strange numbering system now, has walked past before he registers it. Because there’s a high painted wrought iron fence that extends across the front of the yard. It turns out there’s a gate in it, though, and the bigger key on James’s key ring opens that. And Robbie steps through into a little interior courtyard, finding himself in a sudden oasis of greenery again, the way that keeps happening in the little he’s seen so far of this city. There’s tall bamboo in pots, he recognises that, and a lot of the plants are suddenly familiar from his sojourn overseas.
And there are orchids, hanging in clay pots, a whole long line of them hung from a wire strung all the way to the front door.
He’s back to his return to Oxford all those years ago. The orchids that he’d brought back for Val. His own time overseas had been of some use, it had meant at least that he wasn’t running into reminders of his loss at every turn in Oxford, sudden reminders that used to knock him sideways and take away his ability to function for a moment, in this world without her. Being somewhere she’d never been had helped. But he’d kept coming across things that she’d have loved, like those orchids, or that he’d have enjoyed hearing her opinions on, and it had all been too raw then.
Bringing back those orchids had been a physical link from one world to another. And he’d returned to an Oxford that still resounded just as sharply with loss when he came back to it as it had when he’d left…and then there was James materialising, this new breed of up and coming recruit, with his deference to authority and his attempts to dispatch his duty and get this old, strange DI delivered to Innocent. James, who had ceased to look agitated for a while when he realised what their detour was for, and had vaguely surprised Robbie by getting out of the car. Then he’d stood at a distance in the cemetery and had somehow managed not to intrude. Respectful, that’s what he’d been.
Robbie opens the front door, at the top of a flight of wide, shallow stone steps that’s pleasingly decorated with more greenery spilling out of pots, and he pauses, looking into one long room, sunlight spreading in welcoming fashion through a big window in the far wall, a wrought iron stairs spiralling upwards, compact and neatly beautiful, the whole shaded and cool with more white walls and cool tiled floors but neat dark furniture and framed artwork. And the unmistakeable scattered traces of James. Books-of course-and the guitar, and papers, that must belong to his students, spread across a coffee table, his ipod, he’ll want that…
And just how much has James made himself at home here?
Then he turns his head to look back at this sunny retreat of a courtyard, this obviously well-kept rental property, and Robbie thinks of Oxford as it will be soon, when he gets back, what James would be picturing coming back to if he could be persuaded to come home with Robbie-Oxford in grey, unrelenting November-and his heart sinks.
====
Robbie finds himself bested by the time difference over the next few days. He has to resign himself to waiting for the weekend to come around to hopefully catch Laura, who’s obviously asleep or in work during Robbie’s own waking hours. And he needs to have a proper conversation with her. He can’t figure out why she wouldn’t have told him what was going on with James, if she’d known that part of his struggles when he left Oxford were to do with Robbie. And beyond the questions that he’s got for her, he could badly do with her advice here.
Because James is just thoroughly worrying him now.
They’ve fallen into an odd routine. Well, they’ve always had their own odd routines. But this one-sometimes when Robbie arrives James is heavily asleep and Robbie simply keeps him company for a bit, while he reads his way through this admittedly fascinating Bangkok Times. And James will stir eventually and blink glassily at him, muttering something along the lines of what’re you doing here? Robbie will give him a grin and deliver a response in reassuring matter-of-fact tones-keeping up with international events, lad or keeping them mosquitoes away. And James will frown in that endearingly familiar fashion and then clearly give up, mumbling okay and surrendering to the reach of fatigue and fever once again.
Sometimes that’s all Robbie feels he can do for him. Be there and untangle James from the headphones of that ruddy ipod if he’s fallen asleep with it again. Try and sponge his hot forehead down with a cool flannel. Read him parts of articles from the paper. Get some more water into him if he can coax him upright enough for a little bit-and Robbie likes to think he’s better than the nurses at getting James to do that. They smile at him and check on James a bit less when Robbie’s here. James seems to be rather closely monitored when he’s alone. But they give him and Robbie a bit of privacy, and seem to almost let him look after James a bit. And they let Robbie stay until the worst of it seems to be past and James is sleeping more comfortably in its aftermath.
James seems to gravitate towards him when all his defences are down, always turning his head gradually to find Robbie’s voice, regardless of the position that he starts off in. And sometimes he’ll find Robbie’s arm with a hot hand, if Robbie has pulled his chair close to the bed, keeping Robbie there as James sleeps.
It’s when he’s more alert that things are more difficult to work out. He doesn’t let himself touch Robbie then, he seems to pull back firmly into his own space, and Robbie finds himself pushing back into the chair in response and letting him be a bit. Well, James must be in a lot of discomfort even between these fever spikes, from how the doctor had explained it. He can’t get James to admit much about how he actually feels. “How’re you?” queries, when he arrives to find James more alert, receive a blatant lie of Fine, in response from the patient, and are generally followed with a polite How are you? “Me? I’m hot,” Robbie grumbles at him.
Sometimes, when his fever abates, it’s easier to put on a film so James can vaguely focus on that and vaguely chat as he relaxes a bit. Robbie has found DVDs in a big department store in the thriving modern area that seems to be yet another different city within this city of so many parts. He’s taken to spending some time each day sightseeing, partly to appease James who has obviously been worrying, dog-and-bone fashion, about cost still and Robbie having a proper holiday while he’s here.
And the temples and that palace are wonderful and Lyn sounds more reassured in her replies to Robbie’s own emailed accounts. Still obviously confused by this, but increasingly interested. What Robbie likes best is just sitting at a little table outside a café-and the food here is another pleasure entirely in itself, years of Thai takeaway are never going to do justice to a fairly simple bowl of real noodle soup-and just watching. He’d defy anyone not be fascinated by this place which lives its life on its streets.
The first morning, soon after he’s moved to James’s, that he finally abandons the taxis and tries this alternative route that James has advised, he discovers that there’s even a little makeshift barbers shop around the corner from James’s house, setting up shop under a sprawling tree, rooted under broken concrete slabs that were a pavement before nature, urged on by the warmth of the tropics, began to reassert itself through the cracks in the city. With mirrors hung on a crumbling stone wall and even some sort of battery-operated revolving barber’s pole. Must ask James if he sits down in that chair for a shave and haircut and tries to indicate with his highly rudimentary Thai the highly precise instructions that probably go into that haircut.
By the time Robbie reaches the clinic he’s completely forgotten that. He has a bone to pick here. “It’s freezing on those trains!”
“Oh, yes,” James says. He’d seemed to be half-drowsing almost peacefully when Robbie arrived. Robbie had received a slow, small smile when he appeared and-well, James isn’t smiling that much at him when he’s fully awake. Although, he’s ill, of course, isn’t he? “So it is. Nice and cool.”
“Nice? And cool? It’s bloody Arctic. They blast you with air-con. Then you get off to change trains and you’re up on this outdoor platform and you’re hit by this grainy wind of warm air-and you’ve barely started to thaw out and you get on another one and it’s the bloody same! I needed a coat.”
“That’s true, yes,” James says happily. “I should’ve mentioned that.”
“Oh, you knew.” It’s revenge for Robbie’s repetitive grumbles about being hot. “Should take you on one of them,” he mutters at the rather smug patient. “That’d soon sort your ruddy fever.”
James stretches a little, with the caution of someone whose movements have been constrained by pain. He’s generally been staying so still that Robbie suspects he’s struggling with these muscular aches the doctor talks about. “D’you like the boat?”
Robbie had liked the boat, zig-zagging across the wide river, against the floating traffic and through the slipstream of those huge barges, working its way upstream to various stops. And the way that the city had opened out into white light and space as he’d stood on the deck at the rail.
And who’d want to go back to commuting in their car in the rain in Oxford when they can travel like that to work? He settles into the chair beside the bed and regards James for a moment. But there’s something different now about this room they’re in, which has begun to feel highly clinical to Robbie even underneath all the more domestic touches. There’s a row of cards, and even a basket of bright birds-of-paradise flowers, on the table below the window.
“What’s all this, then?”
James looks shyly pleased. “One of the other teachers was in last night after you left. To drop in my phone which-got left in the school.” When he’d collapsed there. “And he brought some cards from my students-”
“You get on well with them-your colleagues?”
“They’re fine. People come overseas for all sorts of reasons, it’s very-well, no-one probes much, there’s just an easy enough acceptance. Better than a bunch of coppers probing at your seminary background, that’s for sure. There are people from all over the place and all sorts of backgrounds. They’re good to have a beer with in a pavement café at the end of the night-it’s good to unwind after spending the evening in front of a class, you see. It can be quite energising, the teaching.”
Robbie can see how that would appeal to James. Keeping things just at the level of matter-of-fact casualness that he seems to have with his bandmates in Oxford. But it obviously isn’t just the relief of getting on with his colleagues that James must have found appealing in this job. “You must have done well with the teaching, lad.” It wasn’t something that Robbie had thought to ask about-because of course James would be good at it-but looking at this array of cards from James’s students, some of them carefully hand-drawn, all obviously neatly arranged by these kind nurses-he realises that he’s been remiss.
“I don’t know, it’s more about being patient than anything else-and encouraging-when I read the messages I realised I’ve comprehensively failed to get across some of the niceties of English grammar to one or two of them…” It might sound churlish if he wasn’t so obviously holding back a grin. It isn’t the grammar in those messages that he’s thinking about. “Anyway, they’re not my students any more. My classes have been reallocated.” And he looks rather frustrated at that. “But I might land up with some of the same classes next term.”
“Next term?”
“Yes. There’s a new one starting in a few weeks.”
“But you-”
“Should be better by then. They’re letting me decide about committing further.” And, having made that little announcement, he reaches for today’s copy of the newspaper and holds it out in silence. One of the nurses, having come across Robbie reading aloud an article to a half-asleep James a few days back, has taken to extracting a copy from the selection in the clinic waiting room downstairs and dropping it in to James in the morning. Robbie doesn’t think James is requesting that he read to him, though. He seems to want to put Robbie and his reaction to this firmly behind that paper barrier of the spread pages of this broadsheet.
Any time they get near this topic of James’s return-or not-to Oxford, James’s tone and whole demeanour goes flat like this. Although his words have been more non-committal up until now. And Robbie, for his part, has evaded the intermittent, vaguely curious comments obviously aimed at him and the fact of his own continued presence here.
They’ve always been mightily skilled at not talking about stuff, he and James.
And while it’s reassuring to find him like this, more himself, frustratingly himself, maybe-there are still times when he seems to go sharply downhill again. The whole cyclical nature of this illness-it’s bloody stressful and it almost seems to echo what’s going on between the two of them now. The way that Robbie will make progress and James will seem glad to see him and have him here and even surrender to him when he’s feeling at his worst, in sleepy co-operation. But then he’ll push at Robbie, hard, like this, when he’s more himself. Or has more of his defences up. Like he just can’t let himself really give in to Robbie. Or won’t.
===
“What’re you doing here?”
Robbie grins at him, about to come up with a retort, but glad to see him resurfacing even if it’s just for another round of this. He’s come back after lunch and stayed on, late into the afternoon, a bit uneasy. Maybe from James’s words this morning, implying that all this still hasn’t deterred him. That he’s landed up this ill and yet he may still want to stay on. Well, that-or-is he just digging his heels in? Does he actually want to? But James had also seemed to grow tired rather too rapidly today and his chills had seemed worse than usual before he’d dropped off, leaving Robbie to a half-watched film and his thoughts.
“Putting off going back on that ruddy train after the shock of this morning,” Robbie starts to reassure him. Then his attention narrows to the look of James. This time-something about his breathing doesn’t sound right. Robbie gets up and bends over the bed.
“But you shouldn’t be here,” James mumbles, his eyes not focusing properly on Robbie. “You're not meant to be here. I thought I’d left you behind.”
“Course you didn’t,” Robbie soothes. “How could you do that? Wouldn’t let you do that, now, would I?”
“I did, I did-” His voice is rising sharply, he’s getting more agitated, and Robbie glances for the call buzzer, wondering if he should call for a nurse. “I know I did.”
Robbie reaches out instinctively to calm him, letting himself press James’s arm, holding him. “All right. You did. You’re right, James, you did. But then I came after you, all right? It’s all right now.”
“Not all right. Not all right at all-” And he's tugging his arm away from Robbie’s grasp, actually giving Robbie a slight shove away from the bed. And that’s enough. Robbie hits the call button with a sharp jab.
“You shouldn’t be here,” James informs him one more time before a nurse thankfully appears and brushes straight past Robbie over to the bed. Robbie stands back to let her have access to help James properly. James doesn’t seem to notice his withdrawal because he’s already removed himself so effectively from Robbie’s touch. So he retreats to the corridor, still able to hear James’s distressed mumbles below the soothing efficiency of the nurse. But it doesn’t feel like any medication they have to offer is going to fix this.
===
Robbie won’t be getting the courtesy of less frequent checks from the nurses any longer. They’re none too impressed that he hadn’t called them much sooner. But their displeasure softens and gives way in the face of how shaken he must look. Even Chris, once he finally leaves a silently sleeping James alone to talk to Robbie, understandably misreads the source of Robbie’s shock.
“It’s all under control now-if you wanted to go and get some rest. He should be fine. He’ll probably just sleep. I’m on tonight, I could always give you a call later-” Robbie doesn’t want to, though. At all. He has a feeling, as unshakeable as it is illogical but sharply borne of being so resoundingly pushed away by James, that if he does leave now he really will lose hold of him altogether.
And he needs to be here when James wakes up. He needs to see for himself, beyond what anyone else says, that James is James and that he’s all right. He won’t be going anywhere and leaving James lying oblivious in a hospital bed. He’s had that feeling once before, too.
Robbie must drop off in the end, in the chair that he’s pulled back close to the bed and its sleeping occupant, because something calls him out of a muddled dream that drifts away from him as he comes to. When his eyes flicker open, the room is lit by artificial light now and he finds himself being regarded with a drowsy consideration this time.
It’s an unutterable relief.
“Hey,” he says softly.
James blinks at him for a moment. “Sir-”
“Not sir.” It seems to matter somehow.
“Robbie-”
“Let me get them to have a look at you now.”
But James is holding out a hand to halt him. “Were you asleep?”
“Me? Dozed off for a bit, yeah.”
“You shouldn’t sleep in that chair. Because of your back-”
Ah, Christ. He wants to push Robbie away, doesn’t he? But he still can’t stop his concern for him. Robbie can’t work out what to do here. It hasn’t escaped him that James, in his sleep, has turned towards Robbie again, just as he moves and reaches towards him any time his defences are down. But when he’s more able to reason he wants to guard himself more closely. And underneath it all-well, what does he really feel? Robbie feels completely helpless trying to make sense of this. “My back’s fine,” he says gruffly. “I’ll get one of those massages in the morning.”
He's expecting a crack about being careful about what kind of massage parlour he lands up in, but instead James is gazing out the window, at the darkness. “What time is it?”
“It’s late-go on back to sleep, you. I’ll stay here-”
“No, you go, I’m fine, honestly.”
“I’m not going, James.”
“I’ll sleep better if-” He stops.
“You’ll sleep better by yourself, will you.” Robbie tries to keep his voice dead casual. “All right, lad. Won’t disturb you any further. See you in the morning, so.”
He doesn’t get very far. He lets a nurse know that James is awake now. Then he makes his way down in the empty hum of the lift, through the deserted corridor and comes slowly to a halt, leaning against the wall, cool against his shoulder after years of ceaseless air-conditioning, and he seems to absorb the artificial chill. He’s too cold himself now. He doesn’t think he’ll sleep.
He’s stayed and yet he seems to be losing him anyway.
Or else he’s simply being offered what he and James have always had-their own particular mode of friendship-except that it turns out that what they’ve always had has had more to it than Robbie had been willing to see. And now James is effectively removing that. This feeling of losing hold of James, that he’s tried to reason himself out of, since they’d stopped being inspector and sergeant. Robbie hadn’t known that he was onto something there. That he was the one who was being let go of.
It’s in the silent taxi back that it occurs to him that he can do what he’s done before when James has worried him beyond reason. The time difference is going to work in his favour at last at this hour. He’s going to get hold of Laura.
===
“Robbie? What on earth time is it there? Is James all right?”
“Yeah.” Robbie doesn’t know if he is, really. He tries again. “He seems to be slowly on the mend-with a few setbacks, like.”
“Okay,” comes Laura’s reassuring voice.
“He’s just-”
“Robbie?”
“I understand what you were saying-trying to say. About how I should be careful of him, coming over here.”
“What’s happened?” she asks warily.
“I just understood it properly. Soon as I saw him-”
“He was so glad to see you that you realised?” There’s that same note of frustration in her voice that he’d come up against whenever they’d encountered the topic of James over the past few months. Except now he fully understands it.
“No. Other way around. I was that glad to see him that I realised…”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh now, that’s different,” observes Laura thoughtfully.
“Aye, it’s different, all right. That’s one way of putting it. It came as a bit of a shock-”
“Well-at long bloody last,” comes a mutter down the line from Oxford.
“That’s not especially helpful-”
She gives a sudden sigh. “Well, James-he just tugs at the heart strings a bit at times, doesn’t he? With no clue he’s doing it. And he’s so loyal to you, Robbie, even when you’re so oblivious. And he-I sometime feel a bit guilty.”
“Guilty?”
“You and me-I don’t mean guilty about us giving it a try. At all. We’d every right to and that’s what we said, didn’t we, when we called it a day? No regrets.”
“Aye. We did.”
“But it just seemed wrong that something so short for us should cause James so much pain.”
“Pain? It wasn’t pain. He-” He talked me through cooking dinner for you the first time I did it, he was well supportive, he’s pushed at us getting together, on and off, for years when we were dancing round each other. He-
Oh, Christ. This-James realising what was between them before Robbie did-James wanting more with Robbie and Robbie failing to notice-it predates Robbie and Laura getting together. Of course it does. It’s not just a recent thing that Robbie had failed to see for a while before James left. Which means that James has been struggling to deal with this on his own for God knows how long-
“Pain. He supported you and me because he wanted you to be happy, Robbie. But when we got together, he gave up then. And I suppose-well, it was worse for him once we’d finally been together and broken up. And he was no longer even your sergeant. I wasn’t any sort of barrier any more, you were obviously ready to move on and yet-it just didn’t seem to occur to you to see your relationship with him in that light. He must have felt like you never would. And given up hope. And then I guess it just all got a bit too much for him, so-off he went.”
“I wish you’d said to him to maybe talk to me-”
“Robbie, that’s not fair. I tried. I couldn’t come straight out and tell him I knew-he’d have been mortified. I did try persuading him that maybe he could just talk to you properly about-well, your friendship with him and that he should be clearer that he was planning on staying over there more permanently than these three months. Which he very obviously is. I thought that that would maybe make you see how much you’d mind. And that was hard enough to suggest when I didn’t actually know how you’d react if you did grasp how James felt. I didn’t know you’d feel this way about it…” And her voice trails off in considering fashion as she obviously starts to picture properly the prospect of Robbie actually giving in to feeling the same as James. She sounds rather intrigued.
“Anyway,” she starts again, after a moment, “he battened down the hatches of every defence he’s got at the mere suggestion. At me even going near the topic.”
She’s been torn between her loyalties to both of them and her concern for James in his vulnerability and mounting distress. And guilty, despite herself, about their relationship attempt adding to James’s struggle at a time when he was already so burnt out and then eaten up by guilt over Adam Tibbit’s suicide that he couldn’t live with himself without leaving the job he’d been so good at.
And he’d come over here, this far from home and everything he knew, in an attempt to escape from all of it and Robbie too, and find a way to get on with his life. And yet-once he’d got here, he’d just started to talk away to Robbie with those emails, more able to cope with it all with a bit of distance. More able to cope with Robbie again with that distance between them, able to compartmentalise him.
“I think I’m making things worse for him-I’m just upsetting him, being here.”
“Why would you be-” Laura starts, confused, and then stops. “You really haven’t talked to him yet, have you?” she confirms to herself. “Robbie-”
“He’s been ill and-I just don’t know if maybe-he’s trying to make a new life. Okay, maybe sort of a rootless one but then James was never all that rooted in Oxford, was he? And I’m maybe just disturbing him, when he’s made his decisions…”
And if he does grasp Robbie’s feelings and they’re no longer welcome-he’s going to move from vague probing about Robbie being here to full-on defensive manoeuvres. James could send Robbie back to Oxford while he’s still lying ill in a hospital bed.
“He was rooted where you were, Robbie. He could be again. There’s only one way to find out, you know. And maybe it’d help him to know either way. Whatever happens. If you let him know how you feel. You’d need to do it clearly, though. The last thing he can handle is more confusion.”
Unless it’s too late already. And James has finally dealt with the confusion by moving straight on past it and into a new life where he gives no room to these feelings for Robbie. And Robbie should have known better. He should’ve known. He knows James. He should’ve let himself see this and he should’ve known.
Part IV
Rating: Teen
Pairing: Lewis/Hathaway
Part III: October in Bangkok
Robbie had forgotten what it felt like, that wall of warmth that claims you as soon as you step outside in the tropics. And the way that day seems to shadow rapidly into darkness without a pause for that hesitation of dusk. Although this is certainly different from the British Virgin Islands. The city seems just as purposefully chaotic as it had been a little while before when his taxi had battled here through that traffic from the airport, but now it’s invested with a different kind of urgency as people embark on the next part of their day.
James had said that he taught at night, hadn’t he? That most of his students came after full days in universities to study at English language schools. It’s a relief to finally be in the place where he is, right in the midst of all this weaving night time chaos that he’s described. And in the end it proves thankfully easy, these last obstacles to reaching him dissolving, as a taxi extracts itself from that slowly moving mass of taillights and is drawn to Robbie where he stands on the street outside his hotel, taking his bearings. And the driver nods in recognition at the address that Robbie shows to him.
It’s even surprisingly easy to get in to the clinic, which isn’t too far from Robbie’s hotel, just as the travel agent back in Oxford had promised. There are no visiting-hour restrictions, it’s more like a twenty-four hour emergency walk-in clinic from what Robbie can see, all calmly controlled activity downstairs, and with just a few rooms for inpatients in the quieter part upstairs. There’s simply a welcome acceptance that he’s here to see his friend.
Robbie takes in, as he follows the young nurse upstairs, that it’s cool, blissfully so, and modern, and then that the short corridor that those inpatient rooms open from is incredibly clean-and then they’re stopping at the door of one fairly spacious white room and he’s being told not to stay too long and that the patient is sleeping but if he wishes he can leave a note-Robbie stops listening. Because James is patchily flushed, apparent even from here, propped up on white pillows and maybe it’s that, the way he’s collapsed back that’s making him look so ill.
The nurse’s footfall retreats and there’s only the hum of the air-conditioning left as Robbie is drawn in, further into the room and over to him. Because the patient is not asleep. They seem to have disturbed him. James rolls his head slightly on the pillow. Robbie makes his way around to the side of the bed that’s uncluttered by the IV stand to lean over him and he watches as James’s eyes start to blink open. James peers up at him, frowning, his gaze not quite focused. Robbie bends over a little more, his eyes on James’s face. He sees the second that recognition hits.
And then James reaches up both arms and grasps him, pulling him down, holding on, fisting his hands into the material at the back of Robbie’s shirt. Robbie is taken by surprise. His back is protesting, hard. But James is warm, very warm against him and he smells like his own indefinable James scent under something antiseptic and Robbie has missed him that much, he suddenly lets himself fully feel just how much he’s missed him. He gets his arms around him in a more gentle hug. James’s breath is a bit ragged against his neck.
And then Robbie is holding on with just as fierce a grip as James’s, getting his arms further round him and pulling him in tighter, forgetting his back and the need to be careful of James, overwhelmed by a surge of protectiveness. Because all of Laura’s half sentences are swirling around his head, completed in Robbie’s own words. If you fly halfway across the world, he might think-that means something else. Do you think it’s fair-to do that to him. It might raise his-hopes.
And as James presses his head into Robbie’s shoulder, dazed enough to just let himself take hold of Robbie like this, something within Robbie seems to give way.
It’s the relief that tells him. Of finally, properly reaching James. Of that thrum of restlessness that’s been a dull undercurrent to his days ever since James left so abruptly, starting to calm at last. And the worse, tightly wound rhythm of anxiety, that’d added to it since he’d first heard James was this ill, starting to unspool. But it’s also a relief to finally succumb to the knowledge of why he’d needed to come here to James, knowledge that Robbie must have been teetering on the edge of for God knows how long but is now resounding with a surety somewhere deep within him. And he can cease trying to convince himself that life is fine really, that this is what life after they’ve left the job is like, and it’s fine. He can just yield to the impossible rightness of this.
James makes a small noise of disbelief and surrenders a little further into his arms, his over-rapid heartbeat against Robbie’s own. And Robbie is being grasped as if he's the answer to a question that’s been eating at James too.
He needs to get him lying back down, he needs to calm James right now. He’s not about to release him yet, so he sinks down on the side of the bed and adjusts one arm around James’s shoulders. He’s sitting straight up and James is lying propped up on his pillows, but he can sort of keep an arm around him all the same. He looks down at James, who’s looking stunned.
“What’ve you been doing to yourself this time, eh?” he asks, shakily.
“How’d you get here?” James asks in wonder.
“The Wright brothers, lad, they invented this marvellous thing-” But James just looks confused. He’s not actually with it at all. His eyelids are starting to rest shut for brief seconds at a time before he blinks rapidly and refocuses that dazed stare on Robbie. He’s fighting off sleep and fever, Robbie realises. He reclaims his arm reluctantly, sliding it out gently from under James. “I’m going to head off now, let you get some rest. Just wanted to see you first.”
James, no mistaking it, looks bereft.
Robbie feels the need to explain a bit further. “I just need to get a bit of sleep, too, lad. Need to lie down.” And have a think.
“It’s early-”
“Well, it’s still daytime on my body clock, but I can’t convince myself what time it is, just that I’ve been up all night.”
“You didn’t sleep last night?”
“No. I was on the plane and then when I landed I just checked in, had a shower and came here.”
“Oh, that’s why you look so old.”
“Hey-”
But James isn’t joking. He’s talking almost to himself and looking drowsily relieved. “You looked so haggard. I didn’t know you hadn’t slept-thought you might’ve been ill and it’d aged you…”
“Well, we’ll see how I look in the morning, okay? After me beauty sleep. Back before you know it.”
“Wear sun cream. And a hat,” James instructs, rather slowly. He’s almost asleep now.
Robbie is amused, despite it all. “I’ve lived in the tropics before, you know, a whole lot longer than you have.”
“Oh, I remember.” Then his eyes jolt open as if something has startled him. Robbie, shocked, thinking he’s in pain, makes a grab for the call buzzer. But-“You didn’t bring that awful shirt?” James says, alarmed.
===
When he thinks back, in later years, to that first surreal night in Bangkok, high up in his hotel room, with the equally sleepless city thrumming its many, disparate rhythms far beneath him, Robbie will always associate his belated awakening about the real shape of this between him and James with a stiff back, with the cool sheets of the overly air-conditioned room, with a jangling, out-of-sync tiredness and yet an edge of something which is almost like arousal. Hope.
At some stage, he presses into service the button that draws the heavy curtains back on their mechanism and a wall of glass is revealed and the slowly moving lights of the city. When he lies back down on the firm comfort of the mattress, those lights below give way to the sky above which is suffused with the remnants of all that illumination, a sky too city-tethered to reveal the stars that are surely there.
===
He doesn’t want to disturb James too early the next morning. So after he’s finally managed to get a few hours’ rest, and given up on the unlikely prospect of any more in favour of a reviving shower and a surprisingly appetising breakfast, he heads outside into that dazzlingly bright heat.
There’s an internet café he’d spotted a few doors down from the hotel, and he wants to let Laura know that James seems as all right as can be expected and that Robbie coming here is all right too. It feels important to reassure Laura when her concern must have been for James, that James was vulnerable and that Robbie, all oblivious, was going to hurt him.
It’s not until he’s sitting in front of a computer, waiting impatiently for it to load his email account, that the full implications of that hit him. Laura had been trying to prevent him from hurting James. Did she think-He’d hurt James already, and she knew that. Her whole attitude of gentle support for James when he’d taken this contract. That sense he’d had that James wasn’t doing this for the right reasons-Christ. His own blinkers had led to James heading off over here. And worse; he doesn’t really want to think about how he’s made him feel to prompt that decision in the first place. Because James had felt that Robbie wouldn’t return his feelings, and he’d been sufficiently convinced of that that he’d never even tried to talk to Robbie.
He gives up on the internet connection, pays the rather disconcerted young man the minimum charge and heads out onto the street. He’ll have to leave Laura until later. He needs to get to James.
===
James hasn’t had the best night either. His own doctor overhears Robbie’s query at the main desk and comes over to greet and update him. Chris, who wants to be known on first-name terms, is a young American with Thai ancestry who’s come out here to work in this clinic. But he also goes out to more far-flung rural areas and volunteers in clinics there on a quarterly basis-seeing a lot of malaria in the process. Which is why he’s letting Robbie know that, Robbie suspects, as a reassurance. He’s submitting fairly calmly to Robbie’s instinctive assessment of him too. Laura was right that James seems to be in good hands.
But it turns out that these fevers that James is having can be quite severe and debilitating; they seem to be cyclical and can spike every so often, and James has been having trouble holding down the medication they want to treat him with, so he’s currently receiving it through that IV, which is also delivering an anti-emetic. And then, confusingly, Chris is also explaining that James is doing better overall this morning. Must be between cycles of fever, Robbie supposes. So Robbie’s not quite sure what he’s expecting when he reaches James’s room. It’s certainly not the reaction that he gets.
“It is you,” James sounds almost accusing.
Robbie halts in surprise at the fierceness of that stare, trained right on the door. “Last time I checked, yeah,” he protests.
“It is.”
Maybe they’re wrong about his fever being better this morning. Maybe he’s still not quite with it. Robbie comes closer, to get a better look at him. James looks right back up at him, the intensity of his gaze not abating.
Robbie doesn’t really know what to say. “I was here-d’you remember? Yesterday evening?”
“No. I didn’t know-the nurses had all changed shift and no-one who’s on this morning knew if I’d had a visitor…I just didn’t know-”
“Well, I’m here, all right. Hope that’s-okay?” Robbie can’t help his voice coming out rather gruff.
“I-” But James looks like he’s really struggling now.
Robbie doesn’t think it’s fever or pain. It hits him that if half of what he now suspects is true, about why James left, then he needs to go quite slowly here. James is ill and quite vulnerable. And beyond that, the very unwelcome thought is starting to dawn on Robbie that he may have his work cut out for him here if James had really so irrevocably decided that nothing was going to happen between them that he’d upped and left Oxford without a word. And that was two months and a whole new life for James ago. What if he’s really let Robbie go by now and moved on? Or what if he’s so firmly in self-preservation mode that he’ll resist even trying with Robbie now? It’s a keenly horrible possibility. And yet-the way that James had reached for him and grasped him when he first saw him-
Robbie looks down at him and lets all of that go for the moment. James is clearly battling with himself, and the only thing that matters right now is easing his mind.
Robbie reaches for one of the chairs that are neatly paired on either side of a small table under the window, and pulls it closer to the bed. Then he drops down into it, doing his best to ignore James’s demeanour which is not exactly encouraging him. He doesn’t think he’ll be too welcome to sit on the bed this morning. And there’s an odd rigidity in James’s long body under the sheets and light blanket that cover him. Is he in pain?
James on his pillows has turned his head and is just looking at him. Robbie can’t help feeling it’s an acute contrast from last night. And it seems impossible that James doesn’t clearly remember that fateful embrace that’s meant so much to Robbie. If it had brought so much certainty to Robbie, then how come James could somehow doubt it? But Robbie does his best to send a grin at him.
“Well,” he starts. “You were pretty out of it, last night. You must have been. Even insulting my sartorial choices, you were.”
James gazes at him and for a moment it seems like he simply won’t comply. That he won’t fall back into the easy conversational patterns that have punctuated all their years together. That he’ll just keep on looking at Robbie with that almost angry, shuttered look. Then-
“That doesn’t sound like me, all right,” he agrees. “Must have been the fever. Or the drugs.” He’s still eyeing Robbie in a manner that Robbie doesn’t much like, but it’s something.
“In particular,” Robbie elaborates, “you were insulting the shirt that I had on, the first time we met.”
He’s watching so closely that he reckons he sees that tiny inward fold of James’s lips, a tell of amusement, almost before James registers it himself. “That shirt. Of course,” James says after a moment. And now he’s angling his head at Robbie, his expression more considering. “I always thought of it as your tropical shirt-well, amongst other adjectives. Although-I generally try my best not to remember it at all. If you were wearing that, it’s no wonder I thought I was having a nightmare.”
“I wasn’t wearing that,” Robbie protests. He’s mightily relieved that James seems to have decided to let himself just relax into this while they get past this strangely difficult first phase. Well, he’s either decided to or pure habit is just taking over. But that highly disconcerting expression is starting to dissolve. Bloody hell, though. If this is just the first part-this is going to be ruddy tricky.
“I have no idea what you were wearing,” James is saying now, frowning. “I just had a sort of a sense that you were here. But then you weren’t, of course-when I woke up properly.”
“Sorry, James.” He really is. He should have left a note. He should have stayed longer. “I’d just arrived and I wanted to see you. Just dropped in before I went to get some sleep. Those plane seats…”
“Yes,” James agrees, rather emphatically.
Robbie gives him a genuine grin. “Can’t be much fun with your long legs,” he acknowledges. “Me back was at me a bit and I hadn’t slept-” and it’s ridiculous, of course it is, because James was well out of, he’s certainly confirmed that now, but stupid as it is “-and apparently I looked so bad you reckoned I’d aged,” he says, aiming for a jokily miffed tone. It might have come out less casual than he planned, because James narrows his eyes at him a bit.
“No,” he says. And he’s finally looking at Robbie quite openly.
“What?”
“No, you haven’t aged. You look tired still-well, it’s still night on your bodyclock-but overall-is it the allotment? You look quite well-like you’ve been spending time outdoors.”
“The allotment,” agrees Robbie. Stupidly relieved now. That’s James, isn’t it? If he spots what might be a sore point, although you’re trying to feel like it’s not, he holds back on his smart comments even as you invite him to make them. There’s still a difference between Robbie’s physical condition and that of his young ex-sergeant lying here on the bed. Even if Robbie is as fit as he was when he was a serving officer and he’s tending to take a bit better care of himself in general now that his time isn’t privy to the strictures of the job. But at least he doesn’t look older to James than whatever mental image James has had of him in his head.
“Where are you staying?”
Robbie names the hotel, which elicits a frown from James after a moment. All of his reactions seem to be slowed down. And it hasn’t escaped Robbie’s notice that he’s failed to lift his head at all. There are fine lines of pain at the corners of those intent blue eyes that really shouldn’t be there. “That’ll add up. I know most things are much cheaper here, but that place is still expensive.”
“Don’t you worry about that.”
“You could stay where I’m living. It’s the other side of the river but-”
“No. Thanks anyway. Have you seen the traffic?” Robbie is never going to complain about a traffic jam in Oxford ever again. “I wouldn’t be here before nightfall.”
“But you don’t have to be so near. You don’t have to come every day-you should be seeing the sights properly now you’re here. Have a holiday. I’m fine, really.” And he’s looking a question at Robbie. He’s also looking far from fine. It hasn’t escaped Robbie’s notice just how weak he seems to be. And Robbie’s worked out what the physical stiffness in his posture is about. He’s shaking a little which would have Robbie reaching for that call button if the doctor hadn’t explained a bit about these particular cycles, with chills preceding fevers. But it’s still quite difficult to watch as James tries to brace his body again to make it less obvious. “Go on a day trip-” he suggests to Robbie. “Or you could even-”
“You trying to get rid of me?” Robbie asks, jokily, affecting not to notice what James doesn’t want him to see.
“I don’t want to get used to-”
A comfort he should not permit himself-“I’ve the hotel booked for the first few nights anyway,” Robbie says gruffly. “No need for me to go anywhere. It came as a package deal with the flights. After that I’ll-”
“Flights aren’t cheap either.”
“Will you stop going on about cost.” Like I’d put a price on you. He shouldn’t have left last night. He shouldn’t have let James wake to further confusion and to simply persuading himself that he was still alone over here. That must be partly why he seems unwelcoming this morning. How long has he spent mulling over this since he woke, through his struggles with these chills and what Robbie suspects is one hell of a sore head?
James is frowning again, those telltale lines around his eyes deepening in sympathy with his perplexity, as he puzzles all of this out properly. “After that?” he repeats. “You’re staying?”
“Be a long way to come for just a couple of days, now, wouldn’t it?” He holds back on saying that all he wants to do right at this moment, with James lying on this bed so ill beside him in this foreign environment, is to get him back to Oxford. Apart from those tremors and the little tilts of his head as he tracks Robbie’s expressions, he looks like he can barely move.
“It’s a long way to come anyway.” And James’s expression goes quite blank as if the answer to the still unspoken query contained there doesn’t matter to him.
“Well, like I said in the first place, you could’ve chosen somewhere a bit closer,” Robbie reminds him gently.
“No, you didn’t.”
“What?”
“No, you didn’t say that.”
“Oh.” He must’ve said it to Laura.
“I’d remember if you’d said that,” says James quite to himself.
Oh, God. Why hadn’t he just let James know he minded him going away? Even if he hadn’t worked out what this was between them, he could have let him know how it wouldn’t be the same not having him around. Acting annoyed and a bit begrudging about his plans, sort of dismissing his ideas, really, wasn’t the same thing. At all. Had that made James feel it was all fairly hopeless? Is that why he hadn’t said something?
And now James, despite everything, is still trying to take care of Robbie in his unexpected arrival here.
“Go to mine. See if you’d like to stay there after the hotel. I could do with you getting some stuff if you didn’t mind? And because it’s a house that gets rented to foreign teachers, there’s a phone plan for making international calls. I’ll tell you and you can write down how you can do it, with my address.” And he nods at the pad of paper and pen on the bedside table that Robbie should have used last night. “Be better than hotel phone rates or sitting in an internet café, trying to talk to Lyn. She’ll be worried about you.”
Now that might be handy. Robbie decides not to mention that it won’t be Lyn he’s talking to. Lyn will have to make do with his emails. Because he has a distinct feeling that Laura holds a few answers here.
“You wouldn’t have to face the traffic to get here, you know. You could take the boat across the river and then get the sky train.”
And James seems exhausted just from that conversation, just from the effort of talking to Robbie. Of still trying to look after Robbie here, in the midst of it all.
===
James’s new accommodation has such a narrow frontage that Robbie, deposited by another obliging taxi at the end of this quiet little street, and utterly confused by this strange numbering system now, has walked past before he registers it. Because there’s a high painted wrought iron fence that extends across the front of the yard. It turns out there’s a gate in it, though, and the bigger key on James’s key ring opens that. And Robbie steps through into a little interior courtyard, finding himself in a sudden oasis of greenery again, the way that keeps happening in the little he’s seen so far of this city. There’s tall bamboo in pots, he recognises that, and a lot of the plants are suddenly familiar from his sojourn overseas.
And there are orchids, hanging in clay pots, a whole long line of them hung from a wire strung all the way to the front door.
He’s back to his return to Oxford all those years ago. The orchids that he’d brought back for Val. His own time overseas had been of some use, it had meant at least that he wasn’t running into reminders of his loss at every turn in Oxford, sudden reminders that used to knock him sideways and take away his ability to function for a moment, in this world without her. Being somewhere she’d never been had helped. But he’d kept coming across things that she’d have loved, like those orchids, or that he’d have enjoyed hearing her opinions on, and it had all been too raw then.
Bringing back those orchids had been a physical link from one world to another. And he’d returned to an Oxford that still resounded just as sharply with loss when he came back to it as it had when he’d left…and then there was James materialising, this new breed of up and coming recruit, with his deference to authority and his attempts to dispatch his duty and get this old, strange DI delivered to Innocent. James, who had ceased to look agitated for a while when he realised what their detour was for, and had vaguely surprised Robbie by getting out of the car. Then he’d stood at a distance in the cemetery and had somehow managed not to intrude. Respectful, that’s what he’d been.
Robbie opens the front door, at the top of a flight of wide, shallow stone steps that’s pleasingly decorated with more greenery spilling out of pots, and he pauses, looking into one long room, sunlight spreading in welcoming fashion through a big window in the far wall, a wrought iron stairs spiralling upwards, compact and neatly beautiful, the whole shaded and cool with more white walls and cool tiled floors but neat dark furniture and framed artwork. And the unmistakeable scattered traces of James. Books-of course-and the guitar, and papers, that must belong to his students, spread across a coffee table, his ipod, he’ll want that…
And just how much has James made himself at home here?
Then he turns his head to look back at this sunny retreat of a courtyard, this obviously well-kept rental property, and Robbie thinks of Oxford as it will be soon, when he gets back, what James would be picturing coming back to if he could be persuaded to come home with Robbie-Oxford in grey, unrelenting November-and his heart sinks.
====
Robbie finds himself bested by the time difference over the next few days. He has to resign himself to waiting for the weekend to come around to hopefully catch Laura, who’s obviously asleep or in work during Robbie’s own waking hours. And he needs to have a proper conversation with her. He can’t figure out why she wouldn’t have told him what was going on with James, if she’d known that part of his struggles when he left Oxford were to do with Robbie. And beyond the questions that he’s got for her, he could badly do with her advice here.
Because James is just thoroughly worrying him now.
They’ve fallen into an odd routine. Well, they’ve always had their own odd routines. But this one-sometimes when Robbie arrives James is heavily asleep and Robbie simply keeps him company for a bit, while he reads his way through this admittedly fascinating Bangkok Times. And James will stir eventually and blink glassily at him, muttering something along the lines of what’re you doing here? Robbie will give him a grin and deliver a response in reassuring matter-of-fact tones-keeping up with international events, lad or keeping them mosquitoes away. And James will frown in that endearingly familiar fashion and then clearly give up, mumbling okay and surrendering to the reach of fatigue and fever once again.
Sometimes that’s all Robbie feels he can do for him. Be there and untangle James from the headphones of that ruddy ipod if he’s fallen asleep with it again. Try and sponge his hot forehead down with a cool flannel. Read him parts of articles from the paper. Get some more water into him if he can coax him upright enough for a little bit-and Robbie likes to think he’s better than the nurses at getting James to do that. They smile at him and check on James a bit less when Robbie’s here. James seems to be rather closely monitored when he’s alone. But they give him and Robbie a bit of privacy, and seem to almost let him look after James a bit. And they let Robbie stay until the worst of it seems to be past and James is sleeping more comfortably in its aftermath.
James seems to gravitate towards him when all his defences are down, always turning his head gradually to find Robbie’s voice, regardless of the position that he starts off in. And sometimes he’ll find Robbie’s arm with a hot hand, if Robbie has pulled his chair close to the bed, keeping Robbie there as James sleeps.
It’s when he’s more alert that things are more difficult to work out. He doesn’t let himself touch Robbie then, he seems to pull back firmly into his own space, and Robbie finds himself pushing back into the chair in response and letting him be a bit. Well, James must be in a lot of discomfort even between these fever spikes, from how the doctor had explained it. He can’t get James to admit much about how he actually feels. “How’re you?” queries, when he arrives to find James more alert, receive a blatant lie of Fine, in response from the patient, and are generally followed with a polite How are you? “Me? I’m hot,” Robbie grumbles at him.
Sometimes, when his fever abates, it’s easier to put on a film so James can vaguely focus on that and vaguely chat as he relaxes a bit. Robbie has found DVDs in a big department store in the thriving modern area that seems to be yet another different city within this city of so many parts. He’s taken to spending some time each day sightseeing, partly to appease James who has obviously been worrying, dog-and-bone fashion, about cost still and Robbie having a proper holiday while he’s here.
And the temples and that palace are wonderful and Lyn sounds more reassured in her replies to Robbie’s own emailed accounts. Still obviously confused by this, but increasingly interested. What Robbie likes best is just sitting at a little table outside a café-and the food here is another pleasure entirely in itself, years of Thai takeaway are never going to do justice to a fairly simple bowl of real noodle soup-and just watching. He’d defy anyone not be fascinated by this place which lives its life on its streets.
The first morning, soon after he’s moved to James’s, that he finally abandons the taxis and tries this alternative route that James has advised, he discovers that there’s even a little makeshift barbers shop around the corner from James’s house, setting up shop under a sprawling tree, rooted under broken concrete slabs that were a pavement before nature, urged on by the warmth of the tropics, began to reassert itself through the cracks in the city. With mirrors hung on a crumbling stone wall and even some sort of battery-operated revolving barber’s pole. Must ask James if he sits down in that chair for a shave and haircut and tries to indicate with his highly rudimentary Thai the highly precise instructions that probably go into that haircut.
By the time Robbie reaches the clinic he’s completely forgotten that. He has a bone to pick here. “It’s freezing on those trains!”
“Oh, yes,” James says. He’d seemed to be half-drowsing almost peacefully when Robbie arrived. Robbie had received a slow, small smile when he appeared and-well, James isn’t smiling that much at him when he’s fully awake. Although, he’s ill, of course, isn’t he? “So it is. Nice and cool.”
“Nice? And cool? It’s bloody Arctic. They blast you with air-con. Then you get off to change trains and you’re up on this outdoor platform and you’re hit by this grainy wind of warm air-and you’ve barely started to thaw out and you get on another one and it’s the bloody same! I needed a coat.”
“That’s true, yes,” James says happily. “I should’ve mentioned that.”
“Oh, you knew.” It’s revenge for Robbie’s repetitive grumbles about being hot. “Should take you on one of them,” he mutters at the rather smug patient. “That’d soon sort your ruddy fever.”
James stretches a little, with the caution of someone whose movements have been constrained by pain. He’s generally been staying so still that Robbie suspects he’s struggling with these muscular aches the doctor talks about. “D’you like the boat?”
Robbie had liked the boat, zig-zagging across the wide river, against the floating traffic and through the slipstream of those huge barges, working its way upstream to various stops. And the way that the city had opened out into white light and space as he’d stood on the deck at the rail.
And who’d want to go back to commuting in their car in the rain in Oxford when they can travel like that to work? He settles into the chair beside the bed and regards James for a moment. But there’s something different now about this room they’re in, which has begun to feel highly clinical to Robbie even underneath all the more domestic touches. There’s a row of cards, and even a basket of bright birds-of-paradise flowers, on the table below the window.
“What’s all this, then?”
James looks shyly pleased. “One of the other teachers was in last night after you left. To drop in my phone which-got left in the school.” When he’d collapsed there. “And he brought some cards from my students-”
“You get on well with them-your colleagues?”
“They’re fine. People come overseas for all sorts of reasons, it’s very-well, no-one probes much, there’s just an easy enough acceptance. Better than a bunch of coppers probing at your seminary background, that’s for sure. There are people from all over the place and all sorts of backgrounds. They’re good to have a beer with in a pavement café at the end of the night-it’s good to unwind after spending the evening in front of a class, you see. It can be quite energising, the teaching.”
Robbie can see how that would appeal to James. Keeping things just at the level of matter-of-fact casualness that he seems to have with his bandmates in Oxford. But it obviously isn’t just the relief of getting on with his colleagues that James must have found appealing in this job. “You must have done well with the teaching, lad.” It wasn’t something that Robbie had thought to ask about-because of course James would be good at it-but looking at this array of cards from James’s students, some of them carefully hand-drawn, all obviously neatly arranged by these kind nurses-he realises that he’s been remiss.
“I don’t know, it’s more about being patient than anything else-and encouraging-when I read the messages I realised I’ve comprehensively failed to get across some of the niceties of English grammar to one or two of them…” It might sound churlish if he wasn’t so obviously holding back a grin. It isn’t the grammar in those messages that he’s thinking about. “Anyway, they’re not my students any more. My classes have been reallocated.” And he looks rather frustrated at that. “But I might land up with some of the same classes next term.”
“Next term?”
“Yes. There’s a new one starting in a few weeks.”
“But you-”
“Should be better by then. They’re letting me decide about committing further.” And, having made that little announcement, he reaches for today’s copy of the newspaper and holds it out in silence. One of the nurses, having come across Robbie reading aloud an article to a half-asleep James a few days back, has taken to extracting a copy from the selection in the clinic waiting room downstairs and dropping it in to James in the morning. Robbie doesn’t think James is requesting that he read to him, though. He seems to want to put Robbie and his reaction to this firmly behind that paper barrier of the spread pages of this broadsheet.
Any time they get near this topic of James’s return-or not-to Oxford, James’s tone and whole demeanour goes flat like this. Although his words have been more non-committal up until now. And Robbie, for his part, has evaded the intermittent, vaguely curious comments obviously aimed at him and the fact of his own continued presence here.
They’ve always been mightily skilled at not talking about stuff, he and James.
And while it’s reassuring to find him like this, more himself, frustratingly himself, maybe-there are still times when he seems to go sharply downhill again. The whole cyclical nature of this illness-it’s bloody stressful and it almost seems to echo what’s going on between the two of them now. The way that Robbie will make progress and James will seem glad to see him and have him here and even surrender to him when he’s feeling at his worst, in sleepy co-operation. But then he’ll push at Robbie, hard, like this, when he’s more himself. Or has more of his defences up. Like he just can’t let himself really give in to Robbie. Or won’t.
===
“What’re you doing here?”
Robbie grins at him, about to come up with a retort, but glad to see him resurfacing even if it’s just for another round of this. He’s come back after lunch and stayed on, late into the afternoon, a bit uneasy. Maybe from James’s words this morning, implying that all this still hasn’t deterred him. That he’s landed up this ill and yet he may still want to stay on. Well, that-or-is he just digging his heels in? Does he actually want to? But James had also seemed to grow tired rather too rapidly today and his chills had seemed worse than usual before he’d dropped off, leaving Robbie to a half-watched film and his thoughts.
“Putting off going back on that ruddy train after the shock of this morning,” Robbie starts to reassure him. Then his attention narrows to the look of James. This time-something about his breathing doesn’t sound right. Robbie gets up and bends over the bed.
“But you shouldn’t be here,” James mumbles, his eyes not focusing properly on Robbie. “You're not meant to be here. I thought I’d left you behind.”
“Course you didn’t,” Robbie soothes. “How could you do that? Wouldn’t let you do that, now, would I?”
“I did, I did-” His voice is rising sharply, he’s getting more agitated, and Robbie glances for the call buzzer, wondering if he should call for a nurse. “I know I did.”
Robbie reaches out instinctively to calm him, letting himself press James’s arm, holding him. “All right. You did. You’re right, James, you did. But then I came after you, all right? It’s all right now.”
“Not all right. Not all right at all-” And he's tugging his arm away from Robbie’s grasp, actually giving Robbie a slight shove away from the bed. And that’s enough. Robbie hits the call button with a sharp jab.
“You shouldn’t be here,” James informs him one more time before a nurse thankfully appears and brushes straight past Robbie over to the bed. Robbie stands back to let her have access to help James properly. James doesn’t seem to notice his withdrawal because he’s already removed himself so effectively from Robbie’s touch. So he retreats to the corridor, still able to hear James’s distressed mumbles below the soothing efficiency of the nurse. But it doesn’t feel like any medication they have to offer is going to fix this.
===
Robbie won’t be getting the courtesy of less frequent checks from the nurses any longer. They’re none too impressed that he hadn’t called them much sooner. But their displeasure softens and gives way in the face of how shaken he must look. Even Chris, once he finally leaves a silently sleeping James alone to talk to Robbie, understandably misreads the source of Robbie’s shock.
“It’s all under control now-if you wanted to go and get some rest. He should be fine. He’ll probably just sleep. I’m on tonight, I could always give you a call later-” Robbie doesn’t want to, though. At all. He has a feeling, as unshakeable as it is illogical but sharply borne of being so resoundingly pushed away by James, that if he does leave now he really will lose hold of him altogether.
And he needs to be here when James wakes up. He needs to see for himself, beyond what anyone else says, that James is James and that he’s all right. He won’t be going anywhere and leaving James lying oblivious in a hospital bed. He’s had that feeling once before, too.
Robbie must drop off in the end, in the chair that he’s pulled back close to the bed and its sleeping occupant, because something calls him out of a muddled dream that drifts away from him as he comes to. When his eyes flicker open, the room is lit by artificial light now and he finds himself being regarded with a drowsy consideration this time.
It’s an unutterable relief.
“Hey,” he says softly.
James blinks at him for a moment. “Sir-”
“Not sir.” It seems to matter somehow.
“Robbie-”
“Let me get them to have a look at you now.”
But James is holding out a hand to halt him. “Were you asleep?”
“Me? Dozed off for a bit, yeah.”
“You shouldn’t sleep in that chair. Because of your back-”
Ah, Christ. He wants to push Robbie away, doesn’t he? But he still can’t stop his concern for him. Robbie can’t work out what to do here. It hasn’t escaped him that James, in his sleep, has turned towards Robbie again, just as he moves and reaches towards him any time his defences are down. But when he’s more able to reason he wants to guard himself more closely. And underneath it all-well, what does he really feel? Robbie feels completely helpless trying to make sense of this. “My back’s fine,” he says gruffly. “I’ll get one of those massages in the morning.”
He's expecting a crack about being careful about what kind of massage parlour he lands up in, but instead James is gazing out the window, at the darkness. “What time is it?”
“It’s late-go on back to sleep, you. I’ll stay here-”
“No, you go, I’m fine, honestly.”
“I’m not going, James.”
“I’ll sleep better if-” He stops.
“You’ll sleep better by yourself, will you.” Robbie tries to keep his voice dead casual. “All right, lad. Won’t disturb you any further. See you in the morning, so.”
He doesn’t get very far. He lets a nurse know that James is awake now. Then he makes his way down in the empty hum of the lift, through the deserted corridor and comes slowly to a halt, leaning against the wall, cool against his shoulder after years of ceaseless air-conditioning, and he seems to absorb the artificial chill. He’s too cold himself now. He doesn’t think he’ll sleep.
He’s stayed and yet he seems to be losing him anyway.
Or else he’s simply being offered what he and James have always had-their own particular mode of friendship-except that it turns out that what they’ve always had has had more to it than Robbie had been willing to see. And now James is effectively removing that. This feeling of losing hold of James, that he’s tried to reason himself out of, since they’d stopped being inspector and sergeant. Robbie hadn’t known that he was onto something there. That he was the one who was being let go of.
It’s in the silent taxi back that it occurs to him that he can do what he’s done before when James has worried him beyond reason. The time difference is going to work in his favour at last at this hour. He’s going to get hold of Laura.
===
“Robbie? What on earth time is it there? Is James all right?”
“Yeah.” Robbie doesn’t know if he is, really. He tries again. “He seems to be slowly on the mend-with a few setbacks, like.”
“Okay,” comes Laura’s reassuring voice.
“He’s just-”
“Robbie?”
“I understand what you were saying-trying to say. About how I should be careful of him, coming over here.”
“What’s happened?” she asks warily.
“I just understood it properly. Soon as I saw him-”
“He was so glad to see you that you realised?” There’s that same note of frustration in her voice that he’d come up against whenever they’d encountered the topic of James over the past few months. Except now he fully understands it.
“No. Other way around. I was that glad to see him that I realised…”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh now, that’s different,” observes Laura thoughtfully.
“Aye, it’s different, all right. That’s one way of putting it. It came as a bit of a shock-”
“Well-at long bloody last,” comes a mutter down the line from Oxford.
“That’s not especially helpful-”
She gives a sudden sigh. “Well, James-he just tugs at the heart strings a bit at times, doesn’t he? With no clue he’s doing it. And he’s so loyal to you, Robbie, even when you’re so oblivious. And he-I sometime feel a bit guilty.”
“Guilty?”
“You and me-I don’t mean guilty about us giving it a try. At all. We’d every right to and that’s what we said, didn’t we, when we called it a day? No regrets.”
“Aye. We did.”
“But it just seemed wrong that something so short for us should cause James so much pain.”
“Pain? It wasn’t pain. He-” He talked me through cooking dinner for you the first time I did it, he was well supportive, he’s pushed at us getting together, on and off, for years when we were dancing round each other. He-
Oh, Christ. This-James realising what was between them before Robbie did-James wanting more with Robbie and Robbie failing to notice-it predates Robbie and Laura getting together. Of course it does. It’s not just a recent thing that Robbie had failed to see for a while before James left. Which means that James has been struggling to deal with this on his own for God knows how long-
“Pain. He supported you and me because he wanted you to be happy, Robbie. But when we got together, he gave up then. And I suppose-well, it was worse for him once we’d finally been together and broken up. And he was no longer even your sergeant. I wasn’t any sort of barrier any more, you were obviously ready to move on and yet-it just didn’t seem to occur to you to see your relationship with him in that light. He must have felt like you never would. And given up hope. And then I guess it just all got a bit too much for him, so-off he went.”
“I wish you’d said to him to maybe talk to me-”
“Robbie, that’s not fair. I tried. I couldn’t come straight out and tell him I knew-he’d have been mortified. I did try persuading him that maybe he could just talk to you properly about-well, your friendship with him and that he should be clearer that he was planning on staying over there more permanently than these three months. Which he very obviously is. I thought that that would maybe make you see how much you’d mind. And that was hard enough to suggest when I didn’t actually know how you’d react if you did grasp how James felt. I didn’t know you’d feel this way about it…” And her voice trails off in considering fashion as she obviously starts to picture properly the prospect of Robbie actually giving in to feeling the same as James. She sounds rather intrigued.
“Anyway,” she starts again, after a moment, “he battened down the hatches of every defence he’s got at the mere suggestion. At me even going near the topic.”
She’s been torn between her loyalties to both of them and her concern for James in his vulnerability and mounting distress. And guilty, despite herself, about their relationship attempt adding to James’s struggle at a time when he was already so burnt out and then eaten up by guilt over Adam Tibbit’s suicide that he couldn’t live with himself without leaving the job he’d been so good at.
And he’d come over here, this far from home and everything he knew, in an attempt to escape from all of it and Robbie too, and find a way to get on with his life. And yet-once he’d got here, he’d just started to talk away to Robbie with those emails, more able to cope with it all with a bit of distance. More able to cope with Robbie again with that distance between them, able to compartmentalise him.
“I think I’m making things worse for him-I’m just upsetting him, being here.”
“Why would you be-” Laura starts, confused, and then stops. “You really haven’t talked to him yet, have you?” she confirms to herself. “Robbie-”
“He’s been ill and-I just don’t know if maybe-he’s trying to make a new life. Okay, maybe sort of a rootless one but then James was never all that rooted in Oxford, was he? And I’m maybe just disturbing him, when he’s made his decisions…”
And if he does grasp Robbie’s feelings and they’re no longer welcome-he’s going to move from vague probing about Robbie being here to full-on defensive manoeuvres. James could send Robbie back to Oxford while he’s still lying ill in a hospital bed.
“He was rooted where you were, Robbie. He could be again. There’s only one way to find out, you know. And maybe it’d help him to know either way. Whatever happens. If you let him know how you feel. You’d need to do it clearly, though. The last thing he can handle is more confusion.”
Unless it’s too late already. And James has finally dealt with the confusion by moving straight on past it and into a new life where he gives no room to these feelings for Robbie. And Robbie should have known better. He should’ve known. He knows James. He should’ve let himself see this and he should’ve known.
Part IV