London, 17—

“Oh, Monty,” Percy says with a certain wave of sympathy. It’s a tone he takes often, one he pulls from the endless depths of his natural empathy to coddle my poor, spoiled-rotten soul when so much as a sharp pebble is tossed in my path.

“Don’t stare,” I reply, tilting my head so my conspicuous lack of ear will face whatever he says next. His voice filters through my brain as an illegible murmur. Murky and distant but somehow still laced with patronizing concern.

I’m facing the mirror again—the dreaded mirror, who too often displayed the worst of my hungover stares and father’s bruises, and now showed nothing but a common London man with roughly chopped hair. A sober man, admittedly. If an earless one. I frown at the sight.

“Don’t—Please don’t take that the wrong way,” Percy is saying. I can hear him, again, and notice he’s snuck up my other side. His hand rests light on my waist. His face joins mine in the mirror, concerned.

“I know it will come as no surprise,” I reply, “but I was not listening.”

Percy smiles. I watch the reflection of it spread across his face as his chin hooks over my shoulder.

“You’re taking this with stride,” Percy says.

“Do I not usually?”

“I know how you loved your hair.”

“I liked being a gentleman, too,” I say. “By which I mean, it was all pomp and bullocks and useless frills and none of it compares to how much I love you. I’d give up all my hair for you.”

Percy presses a small kiss to my neck. Mumbles, “I’m lucky to have a man who makes every profession of love a grandeur tale of martyrdom and sacrifice.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, “were you not running away with me for my theatrics? They’re all I have left, I’ll have you know.”

“Monty,” Percy says with that same layer of pity that makes me squirm. He runs his fingers through my freshly-cut hair. Tussles it, with a balm of affection. “You look handsome.

I fail to bring up the missing ear or the veining scars that run down its accompanying side or the gentleman’s ponytail chopped sloppily off with a shaving razor now lying limp on the floor. I do tilt my head to kiss him, light, and then harder, before stretching my hand down to scrunch up his nightshirt.

“It’s a metaphor,” I tell him, my lips to his, my hand sliding up his thigh.

“Oh?” he says, letting me indulge in him.

“My fall from grace,” I say, “my tragic descent from nobility. Me, an angel, now settling upon the dusty Earth to live amongst the people I once only gazed down upon. Slicing my hair off so I may no longer have the option to return. And also because it gets remarkably sweaty upon even the most minimal of manual labor.”

Percy laughs. Partially from my words, partially from the hand I place upon his ass.

“Let’s get you into your bed, hm?” he suggests. The air between us is warm and I heartily agree, but when I stumble backwards onto coarse rope webbing and thin cotton I know from rote memory that it is not my bed. It’s not tall nor goosedown nor adorned with a solid cherry frame. It’s dusty, dull, and smells of the London streetside—gifted to us, or rather, Percy, on good faith that we would find jobs and repay our newfound debts. Our landlady was a woman whose skin was of similar consistency to Percy’s own. I got the feeling the favor was an extension of solidarity that all of the aristocratic money in the world couldn’t buy.

Percy collapsed next to me with a tired sort of grace. An arm fell over my stomach. Sudden, so I was forced to gasp in a breath and leave Percy in a fit of laughter.

“I love you,” Percy says. He’s pulled the tie out of his hair, so the dark, tight curls can hang wild around his face. I hope he won’t cut it. I hope I can make enough money that he won’t have to. I’ve hoped many things since abandoning my title. Most of them, admittedly, Percy-centric.

Percy is in the process of pulling the quilt up both of our shoulders when he mentions, “I could have helped you cut it, you know.”

“Haven’t you heard? I’ve been cut of from my lands, riches, and noble title. I’m a man of self-sufficiency now, the lone foreign stranger,” I say.

“Is that what we’re calling it,” he replies.

“That depends.” “On what?”

“How eager are you to let the two of us become one?”

Percy laughs, though again my hand has found his ass. He says, “I suppose a little co-dependency never killed anyone.”