Bennett carefully stroked along the red lines which covered Jethro’s back. Subsequently he eyed the face of the sleeping man, and a smile played around the corners of his lips.
He remembered the laborious path the other one had had to cover, and Bennett was glad that he had been able to help him with his sober mind. Only this way he had been able to support Jethro, to wipe away his tears and to endure his curses with stoical serenity.
Although the man had left the rehab clinic on his own feet, the firm compression clothes still were a permanent companion in his life, as well as the constant physiotherapy in order to regain his agility.
Bennett listened to the man’s breath, and he enjoyed the silence in the house. They had four weeks they could spend on their own. Kate and Aethel had set off for a trip to Australia in the hope to recover a little bit of her family, even when they were separated by numerous years. In the meantime, he addressed Mrs. Reddington by her first name only. She had decided that things had to be straightened out as long as she was alive.
The old lady had scared the hell out of him, because after Jethro had returned home, she handed out to him a dismissal without notice. Bennett noticed the attached check only then, when his heart had already stopped beating. It was an amount of compensation which enabled him that he would never have to work again.
Aethel hadn’t accepted any objections. She merely had added that a dismissal at such a short notice had to be balanced adequately. Subsequently she had announced that it would be self-evident that Bennett as Jethro’s partner should live with them.
Bennett still adjusted her chair. He brought her tea and drove her to her bridge evenings which she attended again in the meantime, but he felt much quicker as a part of the family than he had ever believed it to be possible.
“I love you,” reached his ears.
Bennett focused on Jethro’s face, and he looked in his blue eyes.
“I love you, too,” he replied softly, and he closed the lips of the man with his own ones.
-The end-