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The solitude of the servant's hall at night was a comfort; in front of the fire, with a cup of tea and a novel, Thomas could briefly envision he was in a home of his own choosing. With summer's humid tendrils grasping at every doorway, the amount of time Thomas would be able to spend with his imaginings was growing slim. The heat would start to sink into Downton and warm even the comparatively cool servant's hall well into the evening.
Thomas had kept up the pretense of reading his novel until he was sure all the staff had gone to bed. In their absence, the words slurred off their pages in front of him until he abandoned the open book in his lap to stare into the dwindling fire instead. His breaths evened out, slow and steady - his body awake, but his mind relaxed and blank watching the dancing of the flames.
Time slipped away from him as the fire died out, until he abruptly felt he was being watched. Startling out of his trance, his head jerked up to see Jimmy, eyes wide at being caught.
"I- I just came down to grab a magazine," Jimmy said. "Couldn't sleep." His wrinkled sleep clothes and mussed hair gave Thomas some idea as to how long he'd remained in the hall past bedtime.
Thomas picked up his own cup and drained his cold tea to unstick his mouth, tacky with disuse. "What time is it?" he asked, voice cracking.
"One," Jimmy said. He shuffled further into the room to look at the small pile of magazines on the servant's table, shoulders hunched with exhaustion.
"Well, then," Thomas said as he stood. "That's gone my bedtime and all. I'll just-" the teacup and saucer in his hand rattled as he gestured "-goodnight, then."
As he rinsed out his dishes and set them to dry, he realized he'd left his novel in the servant's hall. Steeling himself, he listened for any sounds of Jimmy still being downstairs - at the silence, he took a breath and went back in.
Jimmy stood by the chair Thomas had been slumped in, holding his novel and reading the back of it. He jumped when Thomas cleared his throat.
"Do you like Agatha Christie?" Thomas asked.
"I, uh- I've never read any of her stuff. Mysteries, innit?" At Thomas' nod, he continued. "Don't read much mysteries, they're always the same. Except for Holmes, those're good."
Thomas' eyebrow lifted. "You may want to give her a try. I doubt you'll find it to be much like any other mystery."
"Aren't you reading it?" He held it back out, but Thomas shook his head.
"I've already read it twice; you're welcome to it."
Jimmy's nose scrunched up the way it did when he was confused. "What's the point? If you already know how it ends."
"I like it. Reading it the second time, you can see the clues she laid out. And the third time... I guess I think about what I would've done differently, if I were them." Thomas wished he could glance down, or look away from Jimmy at all. "Go ahead and keep it - I'd best get to bed."
Without waiting to hear a response, Thomas pulled his eyes away from Jimmy and resolutely walked up the stairs. He lay awake for a long time after stripping his livery, thinking about how Jimmy looked in the dying glow of the fire - like he was warmer than the flames ever were and just as likely to burn him.
The servant's quarters were in the attic, and heat rises. Thomas pulled only the sheet over himself and tried to sleep.
---
As expected, summer hit the abbey like a tidal wave, crashing against the house and seeping through all the cracks at the doors and windows, baking the very stones of the building. Even Alfred, the stubbornnest of the footmen, could be found down to his braces in the evenings. Carson's words seemed to have boiled out of him along with all the water in his body; he frequently took dinner in his pantry, either to ignore the state of undress the male staff were in, or to shed his own tails. While the maids would typically be atwitter over Jimmy with his shirtsleeves rolled back to his elbows and dealing cards, the heat made them all too irate for their stares to linger.
Thomas wished he could say the same. The heat boiled his blood, sure enough, but unlike the others, it made him restless. The early hours of day when the ground was cooler and the heat of the attics had dissipated was the only break in the current. He'd taken to waking up and being outside before the first hallboy, walking laps around the grounds before the sun baked them. The alternative would be to wank himself raw every night, sweat soaking through his mattress, and he would still have to sleep there afterwards and attempt to walk without bowlegs the next day. The ferocity of his own desire under the onslaught of the heat had Thomas reconsidering the foolish idea of a stint in India to visit his cousin.
Jimmy seemed to have scuttled off for good after their strange, near-friendly conversation by the fire, but Thomas' memory of the intense way Jimmy'd looked at him after their last tryst was carefully nestled in his heart, weeks and nearly months after the fact. Jimmy's face was perpetually twisted in annoyance over the heat - he seemed the most put out above anyone about the heat's effects on his hair. Sweat dampened the top of his head in the evenings, separating his golden coiffed curls, placing the thought in Thomas of pressing his nose to the top of Jimmy's head to breathe him in-
An icy cold, wet sensation pressed against his bared forearm, nearly startling him into knocking over the glass of water pushed against him.
"You alright, Mr. Barrow?" Daisy asked. Her hand still kept the glass steady.
"Is anyone in this bloody heat," Thomas replied under his breath. "What's this, then?"
"Her ladyship's ordered extra ice for every other day this week, so Mrs. Patmore and I can keep the desserts as cold as we can, but-" Her eyes darted around the few people in the servants hall: Jimmy, Alfred, Anna, Bates. All of them had empty or nearly empty glasses by them. "-we thought we could do with some refreshment using the extra extra, is all."
Thomas nodded tightly. "Thank you, Daisy," he said, and her already flushed face brightened before she raced back to the kitchen.
A scoff from Jimmy came from the other end of the table. "Couldn't pay me to work in a kitchen in regular times, let alone in this buggered heat," he said. His next card flipped onto the table with a loud crack.
"Well, lucky for you, you'd burn water if you tried," Alfred said.
Thomas, for once in his life, bit his tongue. He shared a look with Anna across the table, and next to her Bates was suppressing a smile with a tuck of his head, focusing on mending a shirt.
Jimmy scowled at Alfred, and flipped the next card in his direction, smacking it against the back of his hand. Alfred yelped and pulled his hand back, shaking it out.
"Oops," Jimmy said, smiling flatly. "Sorry, mate, that one got away from me."
"Boys," Anna said. "Truce. We're all miserable in this heat, we don't need to make it worse."
Jimmy, heedless of consequences, turned the focus of his ire. "Tell that to Mr. Barrow, flirting with Daisy like he isn't-"
"That's quite enough," Bates said, sharp. Jimmy stopped midsentence as though his string had been cut. "It's as Anna said - we're all worn thin with this blasted weather, but getting at each other's throats won't help."
Jimmy's eyes glanced to Thomas, startlingly dark and blue, and pulling him instantly into his memories. When Jimmy looked down at his cards to gather them, Thomas drained his glass - the water was still chilled, but not a chip of ice remained.
---
Thomas' body was damp with cooled sweat as he peeled off his slept-in undershirt and button-shorts; the chill from the damp garmets quickly cooled any ideas his body might've had in his sleep. The window was open, letting in the only breeze the day would see in the nautical twilight. He gave himself a cursory birdbath with the warm water in his wash bowl before hanging his undergarments to dry and redressing for his morning walk.
As he pulled up his linen trousers, his door opened and shut behind him. He spun around, heart racing, hand holding the open fastening of his trousers.
"Jimmy?" He said incredulously. "What in the-"
"Just- shut up, alright?" Jimmy hissed at him. "Keep your bleedin' voice down." His eyes were huge, darting around as though he couldn't stop looking at Thomas and wanted to look anywhere but. His hair was still disheveled from sleep, or from a night spent tossing and turning; his light sleep clothes were different shades in patches where they stuck to him with sweat.
Thomas scoffed and turned his back to him, ignoring his racing heart from the scare and picking up his long-sleeved linen undershirt. "This is a new one, I'll grant you that," he said, bittnerness sliding into his voice. "Accuse me of flirting with Daisy, then nearly calling me a queer before Bates of all people rushes to my honor-" he pulled the shirt over his head "-and now you're breaking in to my bedroom at illicit hours when we all ought to be asleep?" He tucked it into his trousers, fastening the top button to hold it in place as he grabbed his button-up. "What will the hallboys say?" he said, turning to face him again as he shrugged it on over his shoulders.
Except Jimmy was nearly right in front of him, rather than by the door. Thomas reeled backwards. "Christ, make some noise, much," he muttered.
"You said it," Jimmy whispered. "We all ought to be asleep. Why're you up, then?" His eyes asked to grab Thomas' attention, but Thomas refused to hold it for more than a second.
"Go out for a walk this time," Thomas said. "Get my head on right before the heat hits. Given your little display yesterday, you ought to try it-"
"Or what?" Jimmy challenged. "What does that mean, get your head on right?"
Thomas finally met Jimmy's gaze, feeling a muscle in his jaw twitch at his irritating persistence. He took a step closer to Jimmy, using every advantage the scarce few inches of his height gave him; it felt like giving in, to be close enough to smell his sweat. "I think you know what it means," he hissed.
Jimmy stared back at him, breathing hard through his nose in a stalemate. Thomas huffed a laugh, shaking his head.
"You're insufferable, James, you know that-"
Jimmy grabbed Thomas' wrists as they went to button his shirt. "Don't bloody call me that, Thomas, you of all people know-"
Thomas twisted his wrists out of Jimmy's grip and grabbed his wrists in retaliation, crossing Jimmy's arms in front of himself. "What precisely do I bloody know, huh?" Thomas spat. Jimmy jerked in Thomas' white-knuckled grip; Thomas' left hand twinged. "I know that you're screwing with me, that you don't give less than a toss about me, and that you don't care who you bleedin' hurt as long as you can get ahead."
Jimmy's left hand broke free of the crossed grip Thomas held him in and grabbed a fistful of Thomas' shirts at the collar; before Thomas could do more than get a grip on the front of Jimmy's, he had closed the gap and crashed his mouth onto Thomas'.
Kissing wouldn't be an accurate description of what Jimmy had tried to do, Thomas would later think, in a daze. It was like Jimmy was fighting with his mouth, at first biting down so hard on Thomas' lip he thought it would split like a ripe cherry, then artlessly licking over the forming bruise with a hard tongue - too wet, too scrambled, a mess of sensation.
Thomas let go of Jimmy's other hand to fist it in the back of his hair and drag him backwards by his collar and nape until Thomas felt his back collide against a wall shared with nothing but stone. He hooked an ankle behind Jimmy's Achilles, their bare skin brushing and sending a rush of current up his leg.
He pulled harshly at Jimmy's hair until Jimmy pulled back with a hurt sound, then loosened his grip and pushed their mouths back together, gentler but no less invasive. He let his mouth stay open and lax as Jimmy's tongue immediately pushed back in; his eyes rolled back at the sensation of his mouth being filled, and he couldn't resist the urge to gently suck at the warm muscle.
Jimmy's groan, muffled as it was through their kiss, jerked his own body out of some reverie and he yanked his head back. Thomas kept a firm hold on his collar and nape.
"You are running like a blinded man in the trenches, Jimmy," Thomas said; he knew full well how red and wet his mouth looked after a kiss like that, and Jimmy's wide-eyed, blown-out stare was the proof of it. "Stop running."
"I can't- I- I'm not-" Thomas could feel the tremble start in Jimmy's body, the adrenaline of what he'd done shaking him. He tugged Jimmy forward, just a fraction, and his heart thrilled when he followed the motion.
"Stop thinking, just for now," Thomas whispered, and guided Jimmy by the jaw into a slow, open kiss; and a second; and a third; and a fourth, letting the warm, wet slide of their mouths convince Jimmy's body of the rightness of this the way his own mind couldn't. Jimmy's body stayed frozen, but his head tilted, his mouth moving, following the path of the kisses Thomas laid out.
When Jimmy's body swayed, Thomas abandoned his grip on his collar to place a steadying hand on his lower back; his sway pressed his body up against Thomas', and Thomas felt the full press of Jimmy's arousal against his own. Mindless, he groaned softly.
Jimmy pulled sharply away, their mouths wetly separating as he fully planted both palms against Thomas' chest and pinned him against the wall at arm's length. Thomas licked his lips reflexively, cleaning the slide of Jimmy's mouth that still clung to them, and his lungs emptied when he saw Jimmy mirror the same action.
"Don't-" Jimmy said, hoarse. "I'm not like you, I can't be."
Thomas laughed, a bark of mirthlessness. "Seems you and your prick have different inclinations, then."
"My inclinations work just fine with women, unlike you," Jimmy snapped.
"So that'll be your life, then?" Thomas said. "Inclining and reclining with women in the public eye, but keeping a piece on the side for your other interests?" His right hand came up to cover Jimmy's, slotting his fingers into the gaps and pressing it into his heart.
"I'm not as desperate as you'd think me to be," Thomas continued. He grabbed the hand he held and roughly shoved Jimmy with it; Jimmy staggered to the center of the room. "I won't be your bloody side dish."
Jimmy was disheveled, mouth wet and open and bruised and forehead wrinkled in confusion and anger; Thomas could still see the outline of his cock faintly pressing against his thin trousers. "I-"
"Get the goddamnned hell out of my room, James," Thomas said, voice cracking. "And don't show your face in here again."
Jimmy stumbled backwards until he could grab the door handle; without checking if the coast was clear, he vanished, slamming the door behind him and slamming his own a second later.
Thomas crumpled to the floor and sobbed once, a despairing noise. He shoved his hand down his open trouser front and brought himself off, desperate and quick, pressing a thumb against the slick opening of his cock and whimpering with his release.
If he thought of a gentle mouth, soft breaths, and the scent of sweat not his own that still clung to him, that was between him and breeze from the window, carrying the scent away.
Outside, the sun cracked through the clouds and illuminated his room. The hallboy on duty started to knock on each door, his quiet footsteps flitting from one to the next. Thomas buried his face in the crook of his arm and took deep, shuddering breaths.