My Home From Home (ManxMan)

Chapter 15

    He sighed grudgingly, not wanting to leave the warmth by the hearth in his room; but he knew he had to. Putting out the fire, he stalked down from his room, down to the kitchens as he hummed quietly to himself.

"Good morning." Henry felt his heart ache in his chest as a familiar voice beckons him; he glanced up towards the kitchen table to see Thomas in his uniform, cutting up little Danny's eggs, pea-meal bacon, and sausage into manageable pieces with a knife and fork.

"Good morning." Henry sang cheerily as he sat down at the table across from Thomas and helped himself to the platter of breakfast in the centre of the table.

"You seem to be in a good mood." Thomas noted with a polite smile.

"I'm excited, is all. I've got my first house call this morning." Henry was practically grinning ear to ear, he'd never taken a house call whilst working at the hospital, and there wasn't really much opportunity for house calls on the battlefield for obvious reasons. "I'm calling round to the McDonoughs."

"That's exciting." Thomas nodded to himself, taking a bite of his toast as his eyes silently glanced Henry up and town. Thomas hummed to get Henry's attention, reaching for a serviette to dab her cross around his mouth as he politely finished his morsel of food with a furrowed brow. "Hang on, you're not going outside like that are you?"

"Heavens, you sound like nanny." Teased Henry with a chuckle between bites.

"Nanny?" Thomas' deep brown eyes shifted to stare at Henry scrutinisingly as Henry realised he'd just made a potentially detrimental mistake to his false covert story.

"Erm... Nanny? Nanny as in Grandmother." Henry reiterated as calmly as he could, acting as though it were obvious. "It's what us common folk call our grandmother." Henry assured casually though he couldn't maintain eye contact as he lied straight to the Constables face.

"Ah, okay." Thomas nodded, giving Henry a false feeling of satisfaction that perhaps the handsome blond bought his falsities. "Anyway, you can't go out like that, you'll freeze."

"I reckon I'll be fine, it's got a fur trim." Henry assured him flippantly, earning him a cocked brow from the handsome uniformed constable.

"Open your coat for me?" Thomas asked curiously, letting out a disappointed huff as Henry opened his coat to show no fur lining. "No, no That won't do...Having only the fir trim isn't enough, have you anything lined with fur?" Thomas tutted, before bending down to glance under the table, noting immediately that Henry was wearing black leather boots. "As well, you can't go out in those boots, they'll be ruined. I'll tell you what, when we're done with breakfast I'll see what I can do for you."

"Oh erm... thank you." Henry smiled slightly, lowering his gaze down to his plate and prayed that he wasn't blushing; he'd never really had anyone who wasn't related to him or paid to care for him actually do so.

    After breakfast Henry was lead by Thomas up to Thomas' bedroom and instructed to remove his fur lined tweed coat., he watched as the handsome blond in crimson red silently creaked open his cupboard and stared at it with narrowed eyes as though scanning for a single item in particular.

"There you are." Thomas muttered to himself, his eyes illuminating as he reached through to pull out a dark brown coat and turning back towards Henry. "This should do nicely. Let's see if it fits, eh?" Thomas dusted off the coat lightly and manoeuvred himself behind Henry. Henry's spine tensed up as he could feel Thomas' breath tickle the back of his neck as the man stood behind him and slipped the armholes of the fur lined coat over his limp arms.

    Thomas moved round to Henry's front, pulling the fur trimmed lapel up over Henry's collar so it sat properly over his shoulders. Henry stared blankly up at the handsome blond as Thomas' manly hands still firmly gripped on the lustrous brown muskrat fur. Thomas' deep brown eyes fixated on Henry's sapphire blue gaze as Henry's eye darted between his widened and ladened with confusion; his lips lightly parted . Their breathing deep and slow as they stood petrified like statues; mindlessly staring into each others eyes. There was a mere inch between them, so close that they could feel the residual effect of each other's breath; yet in that moment the proximity was on neither of their minds.