Work Text:
Pain. It lances down his back and sends lines of fire up every nerve ending. The world is foggy, but he thinks he's moving, the mud and gunfire and barbed wire flickering, flickering until it's replaced with fluorescent lights and bleach.
His voice is hoarse from screaming, his body heavy, every breath sandpaper in his chest. His eyelids are drooping. Somewhere beyond his consciousness he hears a voice, a pleading, the steady beat of hands on his heart.
"Havers."
He knows that voice - another life, another man. Rain and coffee and gunpowder, rattling breath in his chest and then and now and white sheets and soft voices and starch and death and dying and-
"Havers."
His eyes flicker open. His chest feels wet, a seeping, a bleeding down into his very bones. A pale face and steel blue eyes and callused hands cupping his face, holding him like something precious, a diamond scraped from the mud of the trenches.
"Teddy?" His voice is a broken thing, a baby bird fallen out of its nest. There's a gasp, a sob, an aching feeling deep within his soul.
"Shh." A finger on his lips, a craving for more. "Save your breath. We're alone. We're safe."
He takes a heaving gulp of air, chest burning. "Teddy - what - what are you doing here?"
Sharpness and a cold breeze and that stabbing feeling in his limbs. "This is a military hospital. They brought you back here after -"
He's sinking again. This is it, death, finally wrapping him in its icy embrace. It's been waiting for him all these years, lurking around every corner, bone white fingers clasped around his heart.
He's being shaken and he's here but he's not and there are lips on his, just a brush, a whisper, and then he's somewhere else entirely.
"William. Good morning."
Sunlight hits his face, and he's in the bed at Button House, sleepy eyed and heavy with warmth and in the arms of the man he loves.
"Morning."
He nuzzles deeper, trying to hold on, to get a grasp on time, to clench his fingers around the slippery grains and quench the ebb and flow. Blue eyes on his own and life and breath and then he's sliding again, golden light fading to harsh white.
A shaking hand on his Captain's arm, moments snatched back from the jaws of the void, tears wiped from his eyes with powder-stained fingers.
"Teddy. My Teddy."
Teddy's other hand brushes his cheek. "That's right. It's me. I'm here, and I'm not going to leave, not ever. I promise." A broken sob, teardrops on his face, salt on his lips.
A bird on a branch, a gun in his hands, an aching and a tearing and the loss of some intrinsic part of himself. He died long before the bullet, the first time his fingers closed on that trigger.
"William. Look at me, William."
Tears shining in dark eyes and weathered cheeks and bandages. His head hurts and his thoughts are foggy and he can count the seconds he has left, feel the fever running its fingers through his mind. "Teddy. I love -"
A gentle touch stilling his lips, whispered promises that cannot be kept. "Don't say that. Don't tell me now. Tell me in a month, in a year, when we're safe and together and all this is just a distant memory."
"Teddy -"
"No. No, don't talk like you're not going to be here." A shaking sigh, silver hair beneath his fingertips, cloudy vision and premature grief. Words whispered so quietly that they're barely more than a puff of breath. "Don't talk like you're going to die."
Lips on his knuckles, hands in his hair, blue on bronze, shore on sea, a cottage and a maybe and a future that's so close he could taste it, the salt-crisp air and pebbles as smooth as ice clasped in his fist.
Teddy catches his heart, kisses his brow. "Promise me something. Promise me you'll never leave me."
Gaze on the ceiling, a crack in the plaster, dust in his lungs. "I promise. I'll never leave, because I'll be in every dawn."
"No -"
"I'll be in the sea, in every beautiful horizon, every breath you take, every spring flower. I'll always be with you, no matter how far you travel. I'll be the blur of sunrise, clouds smudged in the sky, wind in the trees and a feather in the wing of a bird."
"William. I won't need to remember you in nature, because you'll be beside me to see it all."
A sad smile, shared knowledge neither of them will admit, a sagging of his chest and a rasping cough that comes from somewhere deep within him. A hand wrapped in his, fingers that squeeze tightly and promise never to let go.
Teddy's voice, close to his ear. "Next spring, when the flowers come out, we'll go down south. We'll leave the war behind, go somewhere they've never heard of us, see the world. We'll laugh and talk about our memories and make new ones, and you'll be there, always at my side."
Beautiful words, stories in his head, a spoken melody that lulls him to sleep. A slowing of his heart and a fading and a bright light beckoning him upwards, singing in his cooling blood.
A voice breaking, still continuing, hands intertwined long after his own have gone cold. A future that will never happen, pretty promises, a kind hearted man, an unspooling of destiny at his feet. Teddy doesn't leave, even when they come to take William away, bones cold, eyes streaming, screaming like a dying thing.
Warmth and Button House and morning. Coffee and hands locked and oil lamps burning low. Lips on his and matching heartbeats and love and safety. A future that won't come, but maybe that's alright, maybe this was always how it was meant to go.
An end, and a beginning, and a breaking and a loss and a memory, a life full of love and a heart full of joy. A goodbye, but not a sad one.
A thank you.