Ash woke a few times, weak but coherent. He tried to get Blake to leave, to go home; Blake said, “I hope you’re not trying to tell the Earl of Thorns what to do; I do precisely as I please, haven’t you heard?” and attempted to get him to consume some weak broth, a sip of tea, a bit of toast.

Ash managed a few swallows, but shook his head, and curled back up into the pillows. “You must have appointments ... celebrations, parties, readings ... meetings with your publisher ... you’ve only been back in London a day ...”

“Two days. I don’t give a damn about the celebrity, you know that. And I have an appointment. Here.”

That made Ash laugh, which turned into a cough. He fell asleep again, after a while.

Blake sat there beside him, aching with uselessness, desperation pounding his body like bruises. Everything he could do, everything he’d done, every adventure --

He couldn’t solve this. He couldn’t go on an expedition and come home and write a successful story for this. He couldn’t make the words go the way he wanted.

He should’ve come home sooner. Ashley had missed him. Had needed him. Had been trying to cope with a new title, a dukedom, a life completely unexpected, versus university spires and libraries and a life tucked away in Oxford halls. Had worked himself to exhaustion through all of that. And Blake hadn’t been here, because he’d been running around islands and glaciers and mountains, falling into beds in various countries, gathering decadent hedonistic stories for the next lurid memoir, and the next --

He’d always planned to come home. He always had come home: not his own empty hideous house, but Ash’s, which had meant Oxford, scholar’s rooms, cozy chairs, late nights and brandy and himself scandalizing Ash with stories, appreciating each astonishment or scolding or question about history, secretly tucking each reaction away into that longing tiny hole in his heart.

He’d always had that, at least. He’d thought he always would.

Ash might not be here much longer. They might not have any more of that always.

“No,” he said aloud. “No.”

The loose honey-and-silver light of the cloudy afternoon faded, dwindled. Night came on, thick and muffling. Blues, blacks, obsidian and velvet. Inside the bedroom, heat burned and shivered.

Ash woke up enough to tell him that this was ridiculous, entirely minor, Blake overreacting. Blake just shook his head, throat tight; and made him drink more broth. That had to help, didn’t it? Some nourishment?

Sitting in the chair beside the bed, he told Ash about ruined castles along winding rivers, and fairytale forests, and dazzling views over snow-laced ravines. He told Ash the story about the viscountess and her pet monkey and his best hat, and he told it in his best self-deprecating tone.

A thought tugged at the back of his head. Adventure. Explorations. The stories he did not tell, the moments he’d been happy.

An authoritative Scottish voice. A hand on his head, as he knelt and looked up and stopped thinking. Simple silent bliss --

Green eyes. That voice. And Cam was a physician. Perhaps a good one, from the kindness, the skilled hands --

He couldn’t ask. Impossible. They’d spent one night together, and they did not even know each other. He had no claim on Cam at all; he did not even know the man’s last name, and Cam did not know his.

But Cam was here. In London.

And Blake trusted him. Perhaps foolishly, perhaps imprudently, but nevertheless that was a truth: he did not believe that someone who’d seen him so sharply, who’d known so clearly what he needed, would be anything other than good at healing.

Maybe that was wrong. Maybe that was naïve. But maybe it wasn’t.

It’d be a second opinion, at least. From another physician. And Blake would do anything, including write to a lover he’d spent one night with, and beg and plead and humiliate himself if he had to, if it’d mean Ash was safe.