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One evening, many years earlier, Richard left his college directly after Hall, and walked to another. It was dark enough to need lamps, and the bright, warm glow of candles shone from the windows he passed - those not already shuttered and curtained. On the landing, outside Valance’s room, he hesitated before knocking, but he knocked all the same. 

“Enter.” Valance’s voice, yet somehow, not his voice. This was deeper, more clipped, and accustomed to command than Richard had ever heard it. 

Richard opened the door to see Valance sitting by the light of a single candle, cleaning and polishing a pair of pistols. He was wearing only a loose, white shirt, open at the throat, and a pair of immodestly tight britches, and he glanced up when Richard came in, his hair falling over his brow, face smudged with some trace of grease or gunpowder.

“Dickie,” he cried, that smile coming like dawn as he leapt to his feet, “I wasn’t expecting you. So early, I mean. I wasn’t expecting you so soon. See, I’m not even dressed.”

“I can’t stay long.”

“Well, grab a seat while I get some more light. Drink?”

“I’ll take a port, if you have one.” He watched at Valance, lighting the taper, and saw that the shirt was fine, very fine, flocked all over with hair-thin embroidery, and lace blooming at the cuffs.

And Valance had been wearing it to clean his guns. 

“Do sit down, old man. I’ll only be a moment.”

“I’m a little surprised you’re permitted to have those. The pistols, I mean.”

“Oh, I’m probably not,” Valance admitted with a careless shrug that sent a drip of wax down on to the floor. “You know what a fellow I am for contraband. And don’t look so fierce, you can hardly threaten me with a birch any more.”

Richard felt something cold settle in his stomach. “What do you mean by that?”

Valance snuffed the taper and poured a glass of port from a crystal decanter, “Why nothing at all. Only that it’s been an age. Oh, have a seat, old man, do. I’d forgotten how deuced tall you were and I’m going to hurt my neck staring up at you like this.” Then he came close, holding out the glass with fingers that were still smeared and grubby from handling his guns. 

After a moment, Richard took it. 

“Your health, Dickie,” Valance said, in a soft voice which, for a moment, only a moment, brushed aside that forced triviality. 

“You sent a note,” Richard said. “Last Trinity.” His voice was sterner than he would have liked it to be, but it was that or make himself ridiculous.

“I did?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

“You said you might not make it. That you might not come up.”

Valance nodded, glanced away. “Yes, I did. Well, I suppose plans change, don’t they?” He gave that hard, tight, defiant little smile Richard had seen on his face with every lie he told, every bitter impertinence. “I say, I do hope I didn’t worry you.”

“Not at all.”

“Glad to hear it.” Valance shrugged and began to turn away, to go about some other business. 

Richard had seized his shoulder. “Is that it?” 

Beneath his hand, Valance stiffened, but did not turn.

“Well?”

“Afraid I don’t understand the question, old man.”

“Little presumptuous, wouldn’t you say? To send something like that on nothing but a school acquaintance? Especially as you had someone else write it.”

Valance let out a long huff of breath, let his back give the hint of a slouch. “Maybe I’d hurt my hand somehow. Maybe I was drunk.” 

Richard changed his grip, grabbed Valance’s collar before he knew what he was doing, and yanked him backwards. “You were what?”

Valance wheeled to face him, his eyes bright, so very bright. “I don’t know, Dickie, I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember?”

“You going deaf, old boy? That’s the second time you’ve asked me to repeat myself.”

“How dare you speak to me like that?” he said, before he remembered that this was not his study back at their old school. That this was not how things were between gentlemen, equals.

For the flash of an instant, Richard braced himself for rightful anger, felt the apology already coming to his own lips, “I do beg your pardon, Valance, that was wrong of me.”

But instead, Teddy flinched. 

No, not flinched. His expression, his whole posture changed, and he said – with none of that angry cynicism, “No, of course, Thornton. I... Your pardon.”

Frozen, unsure, Richard nodded.

“And I’m sorry if the note caused any offence.” Those blue eyes were suddenly unable to meet his own, “I missed you, that’s all.” 

Something dangerous opened inside Richard, something that smelt of dusty floors, dripped candlewax, and blood. 

His body had remembered what hot, wet skin looked like, what it tasted like, how it had felt. 

Richard put down the glass of port, still untouched. Said, “Come here.” 

And without hesitation, Valance obeyed. 

The thrill that ran through Richard at that – the sheer, vaulting pleasure of it. He knew, with a certainty, that this secret, this shame, this sin, would walk with him to his grave, and in that moment, he could not care.

With one hand, he tilted up Valance’s face towards his own, and in it he saw that that worship, that surrender, hiding where it always had been. Waiting for him. 

Richard wanted it. 

Not merely to receive it, passive, not even to bask in it, but to live his whole life in the pale gold of Teddy’s skin, in the adoration of his lips and the grateful tears from those gold-fringed eyes.

The weight of Teddy’s entire body seemed to hang from Richard’s hand, as though Valance had lost all will, all tension, all selfhood at Richard’s touch, as though Richard’s hand were the only thing that stopped him falling to the floor.

“Oh, but there’s my Teddy,” Richard said. “I did wonder. Are you going to apologise.”

“I beg your pardon, Thornton. Truly.”

Richard stroked Teddy’s cheek. “Shall we start again?”