Page 46 of The Words Beneath the Noise

“To want another man?” Dilly supplied, not unkindly.

The words landed like stones in still water. Ripples spreading outward, touching everything.

“Yes,” I whispered. “That.”

The silence that followed wasn't uncomfortable. It was more like the silence between heartbeats. A held breath. A moment of recognition.

“Oh, love,” Dilly said, and his voice had lost all its sharpness. “That's a big question. The biggest, maybe.”

“And not one with easy answers,” Maurice added. He uncrossed his arms and moved further into the room. “Mind if I ask you something?”

“Go ahead.”

“When did you first know? That you might be... different?”

I thought about it. Really thought, for perhaps the first time, about when the awareness had begun. “I don't know if there was a moment. More like a slow realisation. Looking at men the way I was supposed to look at women. Feeling things I couldn't explain. Couldn't allow myself to feel.”

“And Arthur?” Fortuna asked. “When did you start looking at him that way?”

The directness of the question should have startled me. Instead, it felt like relief. Someone finally asking the thing I couldn't ask myself.

“I don't know that either. It crept up on me. The way he moves. The way he thinks. Those bloody eyes of his, the way they see right through everything.” I ran a hand over my face. “I've spent my whole life not feeling much of anything. Keeping everything locked down tight. And then he walked into my life and suddenly I can't stop feeling things. Can't stop wanting to protect him, to understand him, to...”

I stopped. The rest of that sentence was too much. Too soon.

“To love him?” Dilly suggested gently.

I couldn't answer that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

“It doesn't matter what I feel,” I said instead. “Men like me don't get to have this. We don't get love stories. We get court martials and prison sentences and lives destroyed.”

“And yet,” Fortuna said, “here you are. Seeking out the very people you've been taught to fear and hate. Asking questions you're not supposed to ask. That takes courage, soldier. More than you know.”

“It doesn't feel like courage. It feels like desperation.”

“Sometimes they're the same thing.” Maurice moved to stand beside Dilly, one hand settling on his partner's shoulder with easy familiarity. The gesture was so natural, so unremarkable, and yet it spoke of years. Of history. Of love that had survived everything the world had thrown at it.

“Dilly and I,” Maurice said, “we've been together eight years. Through arrests and near-misses and friends who didn't make it. We've lost people to prison, to suicide, to violence from men who thought they were doing God's work by beating queers to death in alleyways.” His voice was calm, but I could hear the weight beneath it. “And we're still here. Still loving each other. Still finding moments of happiness in the cracks.”

“How?” The question came out hoarse. “How do you keep going? Knowing what could happen?”

Dilly reached up to cover Maurice's hand with his own. “Because the alternative is worse. Living half a life. Pretending to be someone you're not. Marrying some poor woman who deserves better than a husband who flinches when she touches him.” His eyes met mine. “We could hide forever, deny everything, be safe. But safe isn't living. It's just... waiting to die.”

“There was a man,” Fortuna said quietly. “Years ago now. Before my arrest. His name was Thomas, funny enough. Like yours. He was married, had children, the whole respectable facade. And he loved me. Truly loved me, I believe. But he could never admit it. Could never allow himself to be what he was.”

She turned to look at something on her vanity. A photograph in a small frame, old and faded.

“He died in 1919. Influenza, officially. But I think he died long before that. Died the day he decided that being respectable was more important than being real.” She looked back at me. “Don't make his mistake, soldier. Whatever you decide about Arthur, about yourself, don't spend your life pretending to be someone you're not. The world is hard enough without lying to yourself on top of it.”

I sat with that for a long moment. The weight of their words settling over me like snow. Like the quiet accumulation of truth that had been building for weeks, months, maybe my whole life.

“Arthur,” I said finally. “He's special, isn't he? I mean, special to you. To all of you.”

“He's one of ours,” Dilly said simply. “We look after our own.”

“When he first came here,” Fortuna added, “he was so frightened. Like a deer caught in headlights. All that brilliant mind of his tied up in knots because he'd never been allowedto be himself around anyone. Never had a place where he could just... exist. Without apology or explanation.”

“He's braver than he knows,” Maurice said. “Coming to places like this. Risking everything just to feel human for a few hours. That takes a particular kind of courage. The quiet kind that nobody celebrates.”