Over a decade after a not so cordial farewell. Over thirteen years since their first meeting. Two men meet again. A professor. Now with a cane and an aching leg. A former student. Now with a high-paying government job and an attitude as cordial as it is impersonal. In a serene valley, just as the warm spring comes and the flowers bloom… It's the perfect place to heal. But is it the right time? AURELIAN JAMIE The longer Aurelian Jamie lives, the more his regrets seem to pile on. From not spending just a bit more time with his late, loving parents, through not advising his children to stand their ground just a bit more often than he himself had, to almost having cheated on his wife… Merely a year after she cut her own affair short and gave him a chance to make things right. Alas, there is no way to turn back time. No way to go back and set boundaries when he should have set them. No way to go back and try to listen instead of telling others to just lie down and take it. No way to go back and ask her to skip that one shift. No way to reclaim the life he had been building since his mid-twenties. And no way to go back and try to seize the life he got a chance at in his early forties. And he still ruined it all. Both his wife and his shameful, male would-have-been fling are gone from his life now. Or so he thinks. Until he gets an email. An email telling him he'd been chosen for a government project. A classified project, in a quiet valley, under the supervision of… the man he'd trained his own mind to forget. Aurelian doesn't ask why. Or how. Or what for. He packs up, he wakes up before the sun rises, and he hits the road. He heads straight for the facility… But not before he buys a small bouquet of pansies. He hopes it will be enough. Enough to let him see if he could have been enough, too. LUCAS EDMUND DARCY Early thirties. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Shining like the edge of a diamond blade. Pale skin, and no desire to spend time in the sun. A salary well into the six digits. His own apartment. His own car… And a ridiculously expensive vacation home in the middle of nowhere. Maybe not the smartest investment he'd ever made. Lucas Edmund Darcy had no use for this house. No matter how beautiful said nowhere was. But, just like with most tools, you won't find a use for them until you have them. When the Lucas gets assigned to manage yet another government project, in a facility located conveniently close to his useless piece of real estate, he has the chance. The chance to pay back all he still feels he owes that man. That man who used to be his whole world… And who tore that world apart right in front of him. At first, Lucas plans to keep it cool. To keep it professional. Just like that man had once told him to. Until said man shows up at his office door. With a slightly squished bouquet of pansies in one hand. And a wooden cane in the other. *** ONE EXPLICIT SCENE. THROUGH CLOTHES, NO PENETRATION. ***