Safe Harbor

T
HE
sky over the port is a flat, pale gray as the
Diamond
eases into the harbor. For now, the weather’s holding, but it’ll probably turn to snow tonight. Most of the crew are excited about getting in; the
Diamond
is registered out of Boston, so a lot of them are coming home.

Technically, Blake is one of that number, but he doesn’t share the excitement. There hasn’t been anything here for him for years. He goes through the motions of tying up lines, furling sails, doing his part to bring the ship in, but he doesn’t have the heart for the other men’s laughter and teasing. They’re mostly packed already and go piling off the ship, joking and jostling each other, while Blake ducks back below decks to finally pack his bag.

This is the first time he’s been home for Christmas since he was sixteen, and he’s not looking forward to facing it. Too many memories of those easier years, when Dad was still alive, and when things weren’t so damn complicated with his best friend. When Blake hadn’t realized yet that he wanted things Tom would never be willing to entertain. They were inseparable back then, having snowball fights in the street, tumbling flushed and freezing into Tom’s grandmother’s kitchen for hot cocoa afterward, tramping along behind Blake’s father on the quest to cut down the perfect tree. It’s always lonely coming back to town, but Christmas is the worst.

Brooding alone on the ship won’t pass the time any better than going into town and finding a room, though. Blake shoulders his bag, tugs on a cap, and climbs up on deck to go face his fate.

Gulls wheel overhead, screeching, on the lookout for the leavings of the fishing boats. The harbor is busy, cargo being loaded and unloaded, business still moving on Christmas Eve. Laden carts creak as they wobble away from the docks, horses plodding along stoically with their burdens. Haphazard piles of snow from the last storm have been shoveled out of the way to sit heaped in corners. Somewhere in the distance, barely audible, it sounds like someone is caroling. Blake sets foot on the gangplank and makes himself take the first step.

He’s halfway down the plank when he realizes there’s someone waving to him from the dock. Someone bundled up against the chill, tall and black-haired, with a bright green scarf fluttering as he waves frantically. Blake misses a step.

Then he recovers, and he’s rushing down the gangplank before he can think twice. “
Tom
?”

“Welcome home!” Tom calls. His cheeks are pink with the cold, he’s grinning like a fool, and if he was good-looking at sixteen, then he’s
stunning
at twenty-three, broad shouldered and strong jawed. “You made it in time!”

“How did you know I would be—” Blake starts. Tom hugs him before he can get any further, crushing the wind out of him and nearly stealing his balance.

“You’re home in time for Christmas,” Tom says, sounding so happy, so
relieved
, that Blake doesn’t even know how to respond. “I’ve been on pins and needles for the last week hoping you’d make it, you know.” He pulls back far enough to get a good look at Blake, still holding him by the shoulders as if he thinks Blake might run given the chance. Blake tries not to fidget under the intensity of his regard. The last time they saw each other, the sun hadn’t yet darkened Blake’s complexion nor bleached his hair from honey to straw, and he’d had a fair bit of baby fat to his cheeks that hard sailing has burned away. “Sailing certainly seems to agree with you,” Tom says at last. “You’ll want a shave, though, I imagine.”

Blake swallows hard, finding his voice. “You’ve been waiting for me to come back?”

Something pained flits across Tom’s face for an instant. “For ages,” he says gently, before he recovers his bluster. “You can’t just walk out on being a fellow’s best friend, you know!”

“Oh.” Blake has to look down. “I—I’m sorry for leaving. I wasn’t…. I never meant to hurt you.”

Tom squeezes his shoulders. “All is forgiven on one condition.”

It already feels like they’ve never parted ways. Blake’s heart aches with the longing that he’s spent years ignoring. He raises an eyebrow in a deliberate show of skepticism. “One condition, hmm?”

“You’ve got to come home with me and help me with Gran’s Christmas pudding,” Tom says, straight faced. “I’ve had a beast of a time defeating it without you.”

This shore leave is going to break Blake’s heart, but he can’t resist. He closes his eyes, nodding. “Lead on, sir.”

T
OM
and his grandmother still live in the same sturdy brick row house they had the whole time Tom and Blake were growing up. When the two of them scrape the snow off their boots and duck inside, it smells of sweet baking spices. Blake’s mouth waters.

“Gran, I found him!” Tom calls as he hangs up his scarf and starts on the buttons of his coat.

“Just in time, too.” She comes out of the kitchen still wiping her hands on her apron, smiling at the both of them. She looks almost like he remembers—a few more wrinkles, and the last iron gray in her hair has given way to white, but she’s spry and lively and still has a twinkle in her eye. “Welcome home, Blake.”

“Thank you, Alice,” Blake says. “It’s good to be back.” It’s true; he’s spent years telling himself that he had to simply abandon this life, but now that he’s here again he realizes how much he’s missed it. He lets Alice embrace him and kisses her on both cheeks. “The house is a bit smaller than I remember, I have to say.”

“And no wonder!” Alice says. “Look at you, all grown and handsome. Barely a trace of the little boy you used to be.” She lets him go, looking him up and down with an embarrassingly frank appraisal.

Tom elbows him in the side. “Let’s take your things upstairs, shall we?”

Blake picks up his bag before he thinks to ask. “I’m staying here?”

“Of course you are,” Tom says as he starts for the stairs. “You’re going to be here for Christmas morning.”

Blake follows, the stairs creaking under him in exactly the same spots he remembers. “I don’t have gifts to put under the tree for either of you.”

Tom shakes his head. “Don’t be daft,” he says. “You’re
here
.” He opens the door to the room directly across the hall from his. “I’ve gotten my best friend back for Christmas. What could I possibly want more than that?”

“What did I ever do to deserve you?” Blake asks as he follows Tom inside. There’s a lump in his throat he can’t seem to swallow.

“Don’t stay away so long next time,” Tom says simply. He sounds calm, but also as serious as Blake has ever heard him; his quiet, straightforward moments have always been rare.

Blake looks at the floor. “All right,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

Tom claps him on the shoulder. “Don’t brood about it, either. Just get yourself cleaned up and come down to celebrate.”

“I will,” Blake promises. “Thanks.”

He listens to Tom’s footsteps retreating down the hall, his mind reeling. This barely feels real. He’s been gone for seven years—has told himself he wouldn’t ever have a chance to come back here, after the way he took off—and now Tom is treating him not only like he’s forgiven, but like there was nothing to forgive in the first place.

Blake unpacks his spare clothes, going through the motions as he tries to reconcile himself with the idea that this is really happening. Even the quilt on the bed is familiar. Things have
changed
, yes—God, the way Tom filled out in the last few years is proof enough of that—but in so many ways it’s still the place he remembers.

He takes his shaving kit to the washroom at the end of the hall so he can get rid of the last week’s worth of scruff on his cheeks. He studies himself in the mirror when he’s finished up. He’s leaner than Tom now, long limbs and wiry muscle, his cheekbones high and defined. The same sun that bronzed his skin has also given him the first premature lines at the corners of his eyes from squinting out over the water, but he doesn’t look so bad. Rough around the edges, maybe, even after he’s clean shaven, but not bad.

Cleaned up and more or less presentable, Blake stows his kit and heads back down the stairs. He can hear Tom laughing in the kitchen, loud and joyous, and his heart skips a beat. How could he have thought it was a better idea to leave? Even if he can’t have everything he wants, even if Tom will never look at him as anything but a dear friend, just being
near
him makes life seem so much less empty already.

“What kind of trouble are you getting up to in there?” Blake asks as he follows the sound. He gets a face full of flour for his pains.

For an instant he stands stock still, blinking, staring at Tom’s desperate attempt to keep a straight face. Both Tom and Alice are the worse for pastry-fighting, it appears, flour-besmirched and grinning. Blake does the only reasonable thing: he returns fire.

He scoops up a handful of flour from the capsized bowl on the kitchen table and tackles Tom with it, grinding the mess enthusiastically into Tom’s hair. Tom laughs, rolling with him in a halfhearted struggle to escape, and Alice has to take a quick step backward so they don’t collide with her.

“You don’t fight fair at all!” Tom protests as he scrambles free. He’s still grinning, though, and Blake can’t help smiling back. His heart is pounding, and he imagines he can still feel the heat of Tom’s body everywhere they were just touching.

“Now, you hardly have room to complain, after that ambush,” Alice says, winking at Blake. “Looks to me like you started the trouble yourself.”

Tom ducks his head sheepishly, dusting the flour out of his hair, and Blake wishes he could lean over and kiss him. “Can’t I claim it was your bad influence?” Tom asks.

“Things haven’t changed a bit around here,” Blake says. He and Tom climb to their feet, and he accepts Alice’s offer of a damp towel to wipe his face. “You’re as bad as he is.”

“Growing old’s no excuse for growing up,” Alice says, rescuing the overturned bowl before it can pitch down to the floor. “But if you have that much energy to burn off, why don’t the two of you go bring in some wood for the fireplace? Make the parlor nice and cozy by the time these cookies are done.”

“Sounds wonderful,” Blake says. “It’s da—er, it’s awfully hard to stay warm on shipboard this time of year.”

Tom nods briskly. “Consider it done, then! We’ll have you warm and toasty in no time.”

The woodshed is behind the house, in the tiny square yard that’s mostly taken up with Alice’s garden in the warm season. Now it’s mostly snow-covered, with a muddy track between the shed and the house’s back door. Blake and Tom each gather up an armload of firewood to carry back to the house, and in no time they’ve stoked the parlor fireplace from sleepy to burning bright. Blake stands in front of the fire, warming his hands, and sighs in contentment.

Tom comes to stand beside him, hand on Blake’s back. “You look happy,” he says softly. “I’m glad. I worried, you know, that when I did manage to track you down at last you’d be angry about it, or… or tell me that you didn’t want anything to do with me anymore.”

“No,” Blake says. “God, no.” Tom hasn’t moved his hand. It’s such a small touch, but so maddening. “It was never anything you did. I was a wreck all on my own.”

“It must have been terrible,” Tom says, his voice still gentle, as if Blake is a stray cat who might bolt at the first loud noise. “Losing your father like that. I know I missed him terribly, and I can’t imagine how much worse it must have been for you.”

Blake nods, not looking up from the fire.
You never figured it out
, he wants to say. The factory fire that took his father’s life was part of what drove him away, it’s true; grief made him unreasonable, made the world seem like a cruel place designed to deny him happiness. So when he realized he was falling for Tom, the easiest thing to do about it was to flee before he could be hurt again. “It was hard,” he admits. “But maybe it would have been easier if I’d come back a little sooner. So… thank you for tracking me down.”

“My pleasure,” Tom says. He seems about to say more, but then the creak of floorboards behind them announces that Alice has come to join them in the parlor, and instead he steps away. “Is that our promised payment?” he asks, eyes lighting up.

“It most certainly is,” Alice says as she sets a plate of molasses cookies down on the parlor’s small table. “Soup’s on for supper tonight, and we’ll have the Christmas goose tomorrow afternoon. You
are
staying for dinner tomorrow, aren’t you?”

Blake holds up his hands in surrender. “I’m beginning to think I’m staying until I’m given leave to go,” he says. “I would be honored to have Christmas dinner here.”

Alice nods. “Good. That’s settled, then.” She seats herself in the armchair near the fire, where she has a quilting project tucked into a basket.

Tom takes a chess set down from a shelf near the window and gives Blake a smile. “Care for a game?”

“Anytime. Mind if I trounce you?” Blake retorts. He was always the quicker of the two of them at strategy games when they were growing up.