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

The barest nod, the eyes still staring up in to his own. Teddy’s skin had a faint, delicious roughness of stubble. 

Teddy said, “I really am glad to see you.” His voice was quiet and low, as though it came from far away. There were shadows underneath his lips, made by the candlelight. 

How had Richard forgotten those shadows?

Richard bent down and kissed them. Teddy gave a moan as though he had longed for nothing but this very thing for every moment of the months they had spent apart, yes, he moaned and fell forwards against Richard’s lips, and chest and hands. 

And so, for some time, some enchanted, endless time, they kissed. Teddy’s hands were at his neck, in his hair, across his shoulders. Their bodies had pressed close and it was as though all the sense, all the austere loneliness of Richard’s life fell away in a wordless, physical comfort. He was safe. 

Together, they were safe.

And what did it mattered if, when running his fingers through Teddy’s cropped hair it was when he tugged at the elf-locks, or caught tugging caresses at the boy’s ears that Teddy moaned, that he clutched tighter and his kiss became more passionate? 

It was mastery which bound them together as much as tenderness, and why should he deny his Teddy that? 

It felt as though he could deny him nothing.

Soon, though, very soon, such innocent caresses were not enough, and Richard was unlacing Teddy’s shirt, pushing him away for the moment it took to pull it off over his head, dragging him back again to marvel at the tousled cloud of his hair, to taste his collar bones, to see the fine, dark-blond hairs upon his chest, his shoulders, his...

Richard stopped. 

For there, on Valance’s left arm, was a long crescent of injury, laid deep in a starburst of scar tissue so new it was still angry and shining. 
Richard’s grip tightened, which made Valance tip his head backwards in bliss, made him give a long, low sound of complete surrender that seemed somehow practiced. Somehow contrived.

“Oh, Dickie. Yes, god, yes” 

Richard said nothing. Did nothing. 

Valance’s eyes fluttered open, yearning. “Dickie?”

“What,” Richard said, “is that?”

And something closed over Valance’s expression. He smiled a nasty, little smile, “What does it look like, old man?”

Richard struck him hard across the face.

As Valance’s head snapped to one side, Richard stared, for an instant, appalled, at his own hand - but there was something else rising in him, something more powerful than remorse. He had grabbed Valance’s face, yanking it back towards him. “Answer me.”

With schoolboy sullenness, Valance said, “Why, it’s a bullet hole, Dickie, or what’s left of one. Now take your hand off my chin.”

Fear. 

The awful fear of his every dark imagining confirmed. The thought that, but for the grace of a few inches, they might not have been standing here together, that they might never have shared that kiss.
 
“And how, how precisely, did you receive a bullet wound?”

“Because someone fired a pistol at me.” Valance knocked Richard’s hand away with contempt. “Obviously.”

Richard slapped him again. “Where?”

“In a duel.”

“How dare you?” He spoke before he gave himself the chance to consider his words, had already seized Valance by the shoulders and shoved him across the room, shoved him until his back was hard against a wall, raised up on his tip-toes, and Richard the one holding him there. “How dare you risk your life like that?”

“Why, Dickie, I didn’t know you cared.”

One of Richard’s hands flew, slamming straight in to Valance’s bare stomach, up and under the ribs. 

Valance coughed, eyes watering, that fierce defiance of his faltering just a little. 

“You think this is a game? You think I am prepared to lose you to some reckless bravado? Turn around.”

“What?”

“Turn around,” Richard released Valance’s shoulders, stepped back, every muscle quick and hard with fury. His prick was white hot, and he had felt his emotions layered upon each other, excitement, terror, anger. 

Love. 

“Turn around and put your hands on the wall.”

“Oh, come now, Dickie, you’re not Head Boy anymore.”

“On the wall.”

Slouching and sullen, Valance obeyed.

Richard grabbed the back of his neck and squeezed, forcing Valance to look upwards as Richard’s nails dug into his flesh. “Good God, you haven’t changed, have you? I might not be Head Boy anymore, but you are clearly still a vicious little trull who thinks ten minutes of whoring can get him anything he wants.” Richard’s breath trembled and hissed. “I won’t have it, Valance. You are still mine. Do you hear me? Mine.”

Valance said nothing, but his eyes closed and the cursed sneer fell from his lips.

Richard was fool enough to think it was sincere. 

“I will not have you risk yourself like that,” he said, calmer. “Is that clear? I will not lose you.”

Valance said nothing, only swallowed, his stretched throat moving with the motion of it.

“But it seems like you need a reminder. You need to remember who and what you are to me.” Richard strode to Valance’s desk where, beside the pistols, there lay a riding crop.  It was a showy sort of thing, with the Westlehill Arms marked out in gold upon the pommel. 

He brought it back with him. 

When he touched the tongue of it against Teddy’s back, Teddy arched to the pressure of the cold leather on his skin. 

“I am a gentleman,” Richard said, “and I take responsibility for the things I own.” 

He cracked the crop down of Teddy’s bare skin, saw him arch and shudder, saw the red welt spring up, stark. 

“You are mine, Valance.” He raised the crop again. “My responsibility. But you seem to have forgotten that. You’ve fallen back in that old sickness of yours.” 

And then he said it, the words that he always been a signal behind them, that same, old schoolboy madness: “So take your physic, like a good boy.”