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fandomweekly2026-04-19 10:00 am
[#297] Unexpected Kindness (All Creatures Great and Small)
Title: Horizon
Fandom: All Creatures Great and Small
Rating/Warnings: G
Bonus: No
Word Count: 885
Siegfried caught the looks James and Tristan exchanged at the breakfast table: confusion, wariness, and, from Tristan's part, a bit of lingering disappointment. Siegfried did his best to ignore them, pretending to read the morning paper over the rim of his teacup, but he could feel himself blushing hot beneath his beard.
He didn't blame the boys for feeling the way they did; to them, the invitation Siegfried had offered James must have seemed to have come out of the blue. They couldn't have known how long Siegfried had been thinking about it before finally blurting it out the night before, as the three of them had sat in the parlor with Mrs. Hall, each of them immersed in their books, the silenced radio looming like a specter in their midst.
"A picnic? I...I'd love to, Siegfried," James had stammered, setting his book on his lap, "but Mr. Whatley is bringing his dog in to be fixed first thing, and then--"
"Nothing Tristan can't handle," Siegfried had said brusquely, eliciting a look of equal parts pride and apprehension from his brother.
James slowly lowered his eyes back to his book. "Aye," he said, apparently having understood that the matter wasn't up for discussion.
"S'posed to be a lovely day," Mrs. Hall chimed in and turned a page.
***
"Lovely day," James confirmed the next afternoon as the Rover carried them around the bends that led outside of the village.
Siegfried only nodded, hands tight on the steering wheel, lips tight around the stem of his pipe.
***
They had folded their jackets and placed them on the edge of the blanket Siegfried had set out; their waistcoats followed some time later. The bottle of wine they'd split had made them even warmer than the spring sun pouring down on the hilltop from the cloudless sky.
Siegfried leaned back in the spindly folding chair he'd brought for himself and closed his eyes. He watched dark, blurry shapes float behind his eyelids; he thought he heard the irritable, nasally drone of an airplane in the distance, but when he opened his eyes again, the sky was still mercifully empty.
He watched James lean back on his elbows and cross his ankles in front of him, idly twirling a tall blade of grass between his fingers. To Siegfried, it looked like a propeller struggling to spin.
***
"This was very kind of you," James said as twilight began to settle in over the field. His tone suggested that he was trying to nudge the episode to its conclusion. He'd already brushed away the breadcrumbs they'd littered on the blanket and balled up the paper Mrs. H had wrapped the cheese in. "It was nice to..." He seemed unsure of how to finish the sentence. "To get away for a bit."
Siegfried nodded, his gaze distant. The afternoon had been fine: the weather, the food, the wine all perfectly pleasant. But the hours had passed without Siegfried saying any of the things he'd brought James here to say...and now it seemed that he had missed his chance. James was getting to his feet.
"I know how you feel about me joining up," he said. He wasn't walking toward the Rover; he was walking across the blanket in his stocking feet, toward Siegfried. "And I know why. I can't explain it, Siegfried, but it's just something I--"
Siegfried raised his hand to silence him. They'd had this conversation before--Siegfried trying to make James understand that he was needed here, not on the front, that his daft ideas about bravery and duty and heroism all that bosh were just that: bloody daft. But he hadn't been able to convince him on any of those occasions, and he certainly wasn't going to be able to convince him now.
That wasn't why he brought James here, anyway; that wasn't the conversation he'd wanted to have. The fact that James seemed to think it was just went to show how little he understood of Siegfried's feelings, how foolish it was for Siegfried to think that he--not the practice, not the animals, not Mrs. Hall and Tristan--would be reason enough to make James want to stay.
Siegfried's back stiffened in his chair as James continued to pad his way towards him; it was so silent that Siegfried could practically hear the grass bending beneath the wool blanket with each step.
"I'll come back," James said, leaning down and cupping Siegfried's knees in his hands. Siegfried's breath caught. They had been this close to each other before on plenty of occasions, shoulder to shoulder as one of them braced an animal and the other slid their arm inside the beast, hands brushing as they huddled over a creature on the operating table, but never had Siegfried felt the kind of charge that crackled now in the few inches of space between them.
"I have no doubt of that," he managed to rasp. It was true; what he doubted was that James would come back the same person.
His eyes and lungs fluttered as James leaned in closer. Their lips brushed. Siegfried felt his body tip forward; but by then, James had already pulled away. Siegfried watched him roll down his shirt sleeves; then they both lifted their eyes to the sky.
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