Chapter Text
Downton Abbey at Christmas was a sight to behold: the building like a great, glowing bauble perched atop a pristine snowy scene; the tree in the hall all a-twinkle with lights and tinsel and perfectly placed ornaments; the smell of cinnamon and ginger floating through the rooms. It was cosy and merry and beautiful and Thomas hated it.
It hadn’t exactly been a good couple of years; the devastating departure of Jimmy, the ignominious failure of the ‘choose your own path’ treatment and then, the more recent unspeakable events that had left Thomas more of an outcast than ever before. Combined, it had all sapped away any jolliness, mirth or goodwill Thomas had left. Everyone else’s happiness only made his own misery sharper by comparison.
Thomas sat in his favourite rocking chair (and really, who has a favourite chair if not a sad, lonely old man?) by the warm glow of the fire and smoked, staring into the ripping, marbled orange of the hot embers. Soon even this simple pleasure would be no more - pity would only keep him safe for so long then he’d be out on his ear. The job search was still fruitless but it was hard to put his heart and soul into it when he didn’t want to leave.
In the new year he’d have to redouble his efforts; he didn’t know how much longer they’d tolerate him intruding on their kindness. It hurt his heart to know he was intruding in the only place he’d called home since he was a fourteen year old lad.
Andy was sitting at the table laughing and talking to the hall boy Albert about something or another - neither of them paid Thomas and his misery any mind.
“Albert? Andy?” Baxter said, peeking around the door from the corridor like a timid mouse on the lookout for the cat, “Mrs Patmore is making hot chocolate, would you like some?”
Both men made happy noises in the affirmative.
“And what about you, Mr Barrow?” Baxter added.
“No thanks,” Thomas replied. He didn’t even look up from the fire.
Baxter sighed softly; “Are you sure? It smells heavenly.”
“I don’t like it,” Thomas lied. In truth he had a fiendishly sweet tooth and adored hot chocolate, but in his melancholia he couldn’t bring himself to enjoy the things he used to. Even smoking held little pleasure any more and was done like a chore to satisfy his craving and ease his nerves.
“What do you mean you don’t like hot chocolate?! Don’t you like fun?” Andy asked with an incredulous tone. He hadn’t meant it callously - the lad didn’t have it in him - but it cut through Thomas’s weakened defences like a hot knife through butter.
Or a razor through a wrist.
Thomas got up from the chair and wordlessly walked out into the yard. He lit another cigarette and leaned against the wall - his usual spot always felt so empty now, without Jimmy’s youthful exuberance and dazzling blue eyes and constant whirl of motion. For a while it had been their spot and the thought made Thomas’s chest ache as if he’d breathed in a lungful of something cold and mortally poisonous.
He wasn’t there long before Baxter ventured out to find him - Lord knew she was persistent and had the patience of a saint. He couldn’t bring himself to be unkind to her anymore, even if sometimes he wished she’d leave him to wallow.
“Here,” she said, handing him a steaming mug. “Don’t think you can pull the wool over my eyes, Mr Barrow.”
The hot chocolate smelled incredible; sweet with a hint of cinnamon and spice and he was thoroughly tempted.
“I remember a little boy who once got into awful trouble for eating all the chocolate his Ma had brought especially for Christmas.”
Thomas gave her a wan smile. “Yes, and he got a right good hiding for it.”
“Maybe so,” she smiled, “but you won’t convince me he’s lost his sweet tooth.”
Thomas sighed; she was too nice and too insightful by far. “Fine, yes, thank you,” he ground out and took a sip. It was like drinking liquid bliss. He didn’t want to enjoy it.
“Are you dreadfully unhappy still?” Baxter asked, so quietly Thomas wasn’t sure if he’d imagined it.
Thomas clenched his jaw. “I’m fine,” he said, not convincing either of them.
“It’s alright not to be, you know.”
Thomas took a long gulp of the hot chocolate so he didn’t have to speak for a moment. It burned his tongue and his throat on the way down. Good.
“What difference does it make if I am or not?” Thomas eventually replied. “There’s nothing to be done about it. Nothing I haven’t already tried at any rate.”
Baxter eyed him warily. “Does Jimmy still write?”
Ah, and that hit a nerve. “Yes,” it wasn’t exactly a lie. He did write, just very sporadically and - well, as he’d always been when he was here in person, he still blew hot and cold. In one letter he’d be overly pally, to the point of sentimentality, as he talked of how they were best mates and how he missed this or that thing they used to do together, only for the next letter to be brusque and cold and only half a dozen lines long. And there hadn’t been a letter since before...it happened. He supposed it was to be expected that Jimmy would eventually move on with his life, even if Thomas was too pathetic to do so himself.
It seemed even from a distance the ex-footman was still managing to upset Thomas’s humours.
“You should tell him,” Baxter said.
“A fine letter that would make; “Hello Jimmy, I took a razor to my own wrists mate, but I couldn’t even do that right.”
Baxter just regarded him with those blasted kind eyes. “Pushing me and everyone else away won’t help.”
Fed up, Thomas snapped; “They’re the ones pushing me away - they’re making me leave!” and stormed off inside to find something to occupy himself. There were always jobs to be done in the run up to Christmas.
Over the next couple of weeks Thomas scarcely had time to be maudlin - there were parties, soirées, Lady Edith’s wedding and the servant’s ball to make arrangements for, and Carson had placed the bulk of the organisational work firmly on his shoulders. For a man who insisted he didn’t need an under-butler, he sure didn’t mind palming his work off to one.
Thomas stared at the wine ledger with tired eyes - there was to be one final party on Christmas Eve, which was only two days away, before the blessed lull of the big day itself. With the family seeing to themselves for most of Christmas Day, Thomas knew if he could just get the last-minute details for Christmas Eve in order, he’d have a couple of days of coasting along until the big build up to the servant’s ball, then Edith’s blasted wedding.
He’d never much liked Edith - as a young woman she had been as unpleasant as Mary but without any of the natural charm her sister had to make up for it. When she’d been left at the altar though - well, even Thomas felt badly for her then. No one deserved to have their heart so publicly ripped out and thrown around. In recent years she’d matured though, and become more likeable - Thomas suspected it was a lot to do with the disappearance of Mr Gregson, her long trip abroad with Lady Rosamund, and the appearance of her not-so-mysterious ‘ward’. But to see even the unlucky Edith about to get married to someone who seemed to love her dearly (and appeared to be a damn decent chap at that, with the bonus of being a damn marquess) just made Thomas feel more alone and wretched and unlovable.
Even bleedin’ Edith was getting her happy every after.
Thomas rubbed at his wrists with the back of his knuckles; the scars itched something chronic, even though they were almost fully healed. He wondered vaguely if his mind was making up the itch to remind him of what he’d almost done and should probably do again and get it bloody right this time. He knew where the key to the shotguns was kept. That might be easier. He sighed, pushed both his spiralling thoughts and his tiredness aside and tried to focus on the work - it wasn’t as if he had anything better to do.
His concentration was broken by music floating down from the servant’s hall, only for it to end with a horrible piercing scratch. Mr Matthew’s old gramophone had been dug out for the upstairs lot, but had needed some repair and so had spent a few days in the servant’s hall whilst Thomas organised its service. Obviously the engineer had arrived to fix it, as the sound of a jazzy piece he didn’t recognise permeated the walls before being cut short by that same hideous scraping noise.
It split his already aching and befuddled head and he marched into the corridor and towards the servant’s hall, his face thunderous, ready to tell the idiot gramophone man to turn the bloody thing down.
Andy was standing over the gramophone, peering intently at the engineer as he fiddled with the disgorged insides of the machine and Thomas stopped, his heart momentarily forgetting how to beat in his chest - he knew that coiffed golden hair, the line of those muscled shoulders - he’d know them anywhere.
“Jimmy?” he gasped and the former footman looked up from his work, fixing Thomas with one of his brilliant smiles.
“Hullo Mr Barrow,” he grinned and Thomas couldn’t help but smile in return. Andy looked between them, confused.
“What - how are you here?” Thomas gaped.
“I’m fixing your gramophone,” Jimmy replied, as if he were a bit simple, “like you hired me to.”
“I’m sure I’d have noticed if I had?”
Jimmy smirked; “Well it were technically me boss who you hired, but when I saw the call had come from the one-and-only under-butler at ‘Downton bleedin’ Abbey’, I convinced him to send me instead.”
Thomas noticed Andy staring at them and said; “Andy, Jimmy was a footman here before you. Ah - fetch us some tea, would you?”
Andy nodded then disappeared off to the kitchens. Jimmy was out of his seat the second Andy left and stepped into Thomas’s space, taking his hand to shake it firmly.
“You didn’t think to tell me you were coming?” Thomas said, and coughed, embarrassed at how broken his voice sounded.
“I thought it would be more fun to surprise you,” Jimmy replied, Thomas’s hand still clasped in his grease-smeared one. He placed his other hand purposefully on Thomas’s elbow. “I wanted to see the look on your face.”
And he leaned in and embraced Thomas, who stood stock still, stupefied, for a long moment, before allowing himself to place a careful hand in the centre of Jimmy’s back.
“I’ve missed you,” Jimmy breathed, smelling of oil and wood - it reminded Thomas of the back room of his Dad’s clock shop. Thomas thought he must be dreaming; any moment he’d wake in his lonely little room and this would all have been a precious but painful fantasy.
They broke apart, both blushing, and Thomas said; “I still don’t understand - the last I heard you were in London at that club - and the shop I called about the gramophone was in York?”
“I didn’t want to say anything until it were settled,” Jimmy shrugged, “and it’s why you haven’t heard from me for a bit. I were busy rearranging me whole life, Mr Barrow.”
“Thomas,” he corrected.
Jimmy gave him the warmest of smiles and Thomas was hit squarely in the chest with how much he still loved the former footman. More than ever, if that were possible. It took all the wind out of him and he had to clench his jaw hard enough to hurt to stop from crying.
“Thomas. I’ve got a little place of me own in York and a good job - it’s all fiddly bits and you’d be better at it than me, but it’s alright really and it’s bought me here,” he was rambling now, bouncing on the balls of his feet with nerves, “and just a bus ride away instead of three hours on the blasted train, so you won’t be gettin’ rid of me again.”
Thomas blinked. “You’ve moved to York?”
“Oh bloody hell, keep up Thomas,” Jimmy laughed and, like that, it was as they’d never been apart.
“I’m - I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’re glad and you can’t wait to spend your half-days in York with me,” he said, all false bravado, the fingers of his left hand drumming against his thigh like he was playing a piano - a tell of his.
Thomas didn’t have the strength to even pretend to be coy; “I’m very glad indeed, Jimmy. I just can’t quite believe you’re here.” He couldn’t bear to tell him he’d be out of a job soon enough and might have to move away.
Jimmy leaned in so closely that Thomas could’ve counted his eyelashes. “It’s a Christmas miracle,” he breathed, his eyes darting down to Thomas’s mouth. Jimmy swallowed thickly and licked his bottom lip, and for a moment Thomas thought he was going to kiss him.
He pushed the thought away; it wouldn’t do him any good to get lost in impossible fantasies.
Of course, Mrs Hughes chose that moment to walk in to the servant’s hall. “James? Is that you?” she said, surprised.
Jimmy stepped away from Thomas and gave Mrs Hughes a winsome smile. “Hullo Mrs Hughes. I’m here to fix the gramophone.”
“Well, isn’t that something?” she said with a smile. She gave Thomas a knowing glance. “It’s good to see you’re doing well.”
“I am Mrs Hughes, though all the better for being back here for a visit,” Jimmy gave Thomas a very fond look. “I’ve missed you all.”
“I bet you have,” Mrs Hughes chuckled, her eyes still firmly on Thomas.
Andy reappeared with the tea, Daisy and Mrs Patmore in tow, all eager to see the former footman. Jimmy exchanged pleasantries with them, but he sat very close to Thomas and every time Thomas looked at him he found Jimmy was already staring in his direction.
Baxter appeared and Jimmy immediately gave her a cheeky wink - to Thomas’s surprise she nodded back to him, like they shared some secret. Which was impossible of course, as they barely knew each other.
“What’re ya doin’ for Christmas then Jimmy?” Daisy asked.
“Spendin’ it on me ownsome I s’pose,” Jimmy sipped his tea, “don’t have anyone in York to spend it with.”
Thomas was about to say something stupid and soppy, but Mrs Hughes beat him to it.
“Then you’ll come here,” she said, “we can’t have you spending Christmas Day all on your own now, can we?”
“Mr Carson wouldn’t like that,” Jimmy said.
“What wouldn’t I like?” Mr Carson said, entering to see an unapproved gathering in the servant’s hall. His eyes fell on Jimmy and his face rearranged itself from mere disapproval to utter contempt. “Ah, never mind, I can see for myself.”
“Jimmy is here to fix the gramophone - that’s what he does now,” Thomas said, defensive - he wasn’t about to let old Carson chase Jimmy away when he’d just got him back again.
Carson looked at the half-drunk tea things and the gramophone with its innards still disgorged all over the table. “Does he really,” he said dryly.
“Mr Carson,” Mrs Hughes interrupted, “may I have a word please?” She inclined her head towards the corridor and Carson nodded - they both stepped out. Daisy started talking to Jimmy again and Thomas strained his ears to try and hear the conversation between Mrs Hughes and Carson, but couldn’t quite make it out.
Eventually Mrs Hughes re-entered and said; “We look forward to you joining us for Christmas James.” She gave Thomas a conspiratorial smile and headed off. It seemed Mr Carson, like many men before him, was powerless against the will of his wife.
Everyone gradually drifted back to work and Jimmy and Thomas were left alone in the servant’s hall. Jimmy sat down in front of the gramophone and started cleaning off some unidentifiable parts. Thomas fiddled with his cuffs and watched Jimmy work.
“So...gramophones?” Thomas said.
“Gramophones. And wireless radios,” Jimmy nodded, inspecting a tiny gear. “You’d like it y’know, it’s all putting little broken things back in order. You’d be good at it too - like you are with watches and clocks and that. Gramophones are simple really, it’s the wireless what’s complicated.”
The compliment warmed Thomas’s insides, but he said; “This dog is too old to learn new tricks.”
Jimmy reached out and took hold of Thomas’s left wrist. “Not too old, not by half,” he said, suddenly very serious, “and much too young to die.” He turned Thomas’s hand over and popped out the link from his cuff in one quick movement of his skilled hands - Thomas tried to pull away but Jimmy held him fast, marking the white of Thomas’s shirt with grease as he folded back the cuff.
And so Thomas’s shame was revealed; a raised and still red two-inch scar running up his up forearm from his wrist. Jimmy stared at it intently, brushing his fingers over the skin in a barely-there touch. He laid Thomas’s hand on his knee then repeated the process with his right wrist; stud popped out, cuff folded back, fingers ghosting over the sensitive skin of Thomas’s inner forearms.
He wanted to tell Jimmy to stop - he felt so exposed under his intense scrutiny he might as well have been naked. He was a stupid, old man who’d tried to take the coward’s way out and had failed even at that.
When Jimmy eventually looked up Thomas was shocked to see he was crying, silent tears wetting his cheeks.
“I should punch your eyes! You were goin’ to leave me?” Jimmy ground out, equal parts angry and hurt.
“You left me first,” Thomas spat back, then looked away, ashamed. It wasn’t Jimmy’s fault - yes, it had all started with his departure but there was so much more wrapped up in it than just that. Choose Your Own Path, the business with Andy, Carson’s continuous and callus threats against his position - they were things Thomas could’ve borne individually, but altogether they’d proved too much even for him.
Jimmy gave a strangled sort of sob. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here but, I am, but Christ Thomas, you never said - you never told me everything was so bad.”
“I didn’t want to trouble you.”
Jimmy grasped Thomas by the shoulders and shook him. “We’re supposed to be mates - best bloody mates - who can you trouble if not your best mate, Thomas? From now on you’ll trouble me with every little thing that goes though your bleedin’ head, alright?”
Thomas blinked at the ferocity of Jimmy’s outburst and the emotion behind it. Jimmy wasn’t one for such outwardly showy displays, unless it was of anger. He sobbed again, this time not bothering to try and hide it, and roughly pulled Thomas into his arms.
“I’ll try Jimmy, I will,” Thomas said quietly against Jimmy’s shaking shoulder. He didn’t much care for talking about his feelings - he hadn’t really had the opportunity to practice it much in his life and it left him feeling naked and raw and stupid if he even attempted it. The rejection that usually came hand-in-hand with it didn’t help. And if he actually were to tell Jimmy about the dark paths his thoughts walked sometimes, it would probably frighten him half to death. Or away, at least.
“I’ve moved halfway across the country to be nearer to you, you mardy old git, so you bloody better,” Jimmy sniffed, still holding Thomas in his arms.
Thomas must’ve heard that wrong, because there was no way Jimmy had changed his job and moved to York just to be closer to him. “What?” Then, once it occurred to him; “Wait - you knew didn’t you? How did you know?”
“You’ve got more friends here than you think,” Jimmy replied, finally drawing back to look at Thomas with watery eyes.
“Baxter,” Thomas said. So that explained the conspiratorial wink then.
“She wrote to me a few weeks ago. I very nearly jumped on the first train here, job be damned, but I realised I wouldn’t be doing either of us any favours if I added to our worries,” he finally released Thomas and sank back into his chair, wiping his face with a sleeve. “D’ya have a smoke?”
“Course,” Thomas said, fishing the pack and lighter from his pocket and pressing it into Jimmy’s hand. Some things never changed.
“Ta,” Jimmy said - he lit two and gave one to Thomas, a reversal of their old habit where Thomas was usually the one to do the lighting. They smoked in silence for a few minutes, Jimmy’s eyes flicking down to Thomas’s loose cuffs at regular intervals.
“If you want to ask something,” Thomas said, “ask it.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Not any more.”
A small nod. “Was it painful when - when you?”
“Yes. But only for a moment. Then it was just falling asleep.” That was the most Thomas had ever said on that subject in one go. He took a very shaky drag on his cigarette.
Jimmy looked at his lap. “Why?”
“I hurt and I had nothing and my life was empty,” Thomas replied, honestly, “I couldn’t see the point anymore. I’d never have anything or anyone and—“ he shook his head. “I can’t Jimmy. It’s too - I still hurt so much. I’ve still got nothing and no one and I’ll have no job soon neither and - Christ, it’s like someone’s hollowed me out, scraped away everything I used to be, and filled my insides with nothing but misery.”
Jimmy was quiet for a very long time - his cigarette burned all the way down to his fingertips and he had to drop it into the ashtray before it caught him.
“I’m sorry,” Thomas said, at a loss.
“Don’t apologise for Christ’s sake,” Jimmy said. He scrubbed his face with his abused sleeve. “You’re wrong about one thing though - ah, no, three things actually. First, you’ve got me.”
“Jimmy—“
“Shut up for a minute alright? We’re best mates, ain’t we?”
Thomas nodded.
“The very best, an’ you’ve always been there for me. I’m sorry I’ve been lackin’ in that department but I won’t throw away this second chance, alright? You’ve got me now, forever an’ a day if you’ll have me. No other bugger could put up with me the way you do anyway,” he gave a particularly shit-eating grin.
“No one else is stupid enough to.”
“I think it shows very good taste, actually.”
Thomas couldn’t help but feel a sliver of hope rise at Jimmy’s words. He made sure to quash it. “Ok, so what were the other two things I was wrong about?”
“Well, you’ll just have to wait and see ‘bout those.”
Eventually the gramophone was fixed and Jimmy couldn’t eke out his stay any longer - Thomas walked him out the back to where his little van was parked up. It had ’Vickers Gramophones’ painted on the side in a green very similar to Thomas’s livery waistcoat.
“You know how to drive?” Thomas asked.
“Yeah, it’s not hard?” Jimmy replied, stowing his tools. Thomas begged to differ but didn’t voice it. “Here—“ he handed Thomas a business card with the address and telephone number of the shop on it. “I’ve got the flat above the shop so that’s my address an’ all. In case you wanted to pop by. I mean you’d be very welcome. Whenever. Any time. The shop shuts at five and I’ve not got nothin’ to do in the evenings ‘cept drink and smoke so you’d be savin’ me money and me health if you came by.”
Thomas grinned at that - Jimmy couldn’t have been more obvious if he’d begged. “I will,” Thomas said and Jimmy grinned back, “but probably after Christmas now - I’ve got too much to do.”
Jimmy looked a shade disappointed but shoved his hands in his pockets and said; “Well I’ll be back for Christmas anyway, so I’ve only gotta wait two days to see you again.”
“I’m sure you can manage.”
“I’m not so sure,” Jimmy bumped his shoulder against Thomas’s, “I’m runnin’ out of smokes for a start.”
They just gazed at each other for a while until Jimmy pulled a disgruntled face and said; “Right, I really have to go or I’ll be in trouble,” but stayed rooted to the spot, his eyes fixed on Thomas’s. “I err—“ he held out his hand for Thomas to shake and the under-butler was instantly transported to the night after the fire, when they’d shared a much more maudlin goodbye. He must have slipped and let his face show something of his thoughts, as Jimmy’s stepped in close and put both his hands on Thomas’s biceps.
“Thomas, what’s the matter?” Jimmy said, “you look all—” he gave a vague little gesture with his head, his mouth twisted over to one side in worry.
“I just - this reminded me of when you left, is all.”
Jimmy looked pained. “I’m comin’ back - I promise I’m comin’ back this time,” he said and squeezed Thomas’s arms; he could feel the heat of Jimmy’s palms through his sleeves. “Thomas. I promise.”
Thomas nodded, feeling a bit ridiculous. “I know.”
“Right,” Jimmy said, pulling away and clambering into his van, “I’ll be back on Christmas day Mr Barrow! Like the fuckin’ Christ!”
Thomas barked out a laugh and the last glance he got of Jimmy before he drove off was the erstwhile footman’s ridiculous grin beaming at him out of the van window.