#concerns?

William smiles, tiredly, glancing down at the chapped fingers crooked around the tarnished silverware.

“Yes,” he says. “I know.”

“Don’t they hurt?”

“I’m used to it.”

He smiles again, after he says it; I’m used to it, don’t worry. He eats fine, does not wince as he moves and flexes the cracking skin, but it does not take long for them to bleed; sluggishly, slowly, pearling along tectonic lines, pooling in creases and knuckle dips.

Niccolò returns to his dinner, and watches him. The tap of his foot is at odds with the clink clink clink of his knife, the scrape of his fork along his chipped front tooth. His shoulders droop but his face does not, hair still pinned back, eyes sleepy and far away. His freckles seem to twinkle under the flickering of the candlelight, making those blue eyes into something sparkling.

“You should sleep,” Niccolò says, swallowing. “You’re tired.”

William finishes the last of his plate, and smiles, again, small and pretty and tired, still, but the gentle kind.

“It is my turn with the washing.”

“Yes,” Niccolò agrees, “but you are sleepy. And your hands are chapped.”

William says nothing more, only hums, but he kisses Niccolò’s forehead as he passes, gentle, squeezing his shoulder, and sets his dishes on the counter by the sink, untouched.

“Goodnight,” he calls from the bedroom, as Niccolò’s hands are slippery from the soap, and warm.

“Goodnight,” Niccolò responds, and turns back to the sink. He can hear the bed springs creak, and William sigh, and he smiles, waiting on the snores. They do not take long. He hums along to them as he finishes, washing up the pots, too, and the oven, and the counters. Soon the kitchen is sparkling and the sun sits low on the horizon, and he dusts, too, having noticed the griminess floating among the golden rays.

At the end of it his hands are smarting. The soap clings to his skin, even as he rinses them, and he tries to avoid picking at his knuckles, rubbing the skin; reddening them further.

He tries to imagine this, day in and day out; bedpans and food trays and cutlery and surgical knives, all dirtied, all reused. Stinging lye soap and coppery bleach. Aching, chapping hands, curled to bleeding, stretched to tearing; worn through elastic.

He retreats to his study, frowning.

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