Chapter Text
Ten days had passed since Francis’s last drink.
Though the surgeons got busier and the frequent bouts of emesis now occurred less and less often, James still visited every night, either to sit with Francis in silence, read to him, or simply talk to him the way they might have over an evening smoke at the club.
Tonight, he was deep into their newest novel.
“Mr. Collins readily assented, and a book was produced; but, on beholding it (for everything announced it to be from a circulating library), he started back, and begging pardon, protested that he never read novels. Kitty stared at him, and Lydia exclaimed. Other books were produced, and after some deliberation he chose Fordyce's Sermons.” James let out a breath that was meant to substitute for a laugh. “Well you may gasp, ladies. All occupants of this room might die of horror rather than be lectured by an oily young clergyman. Ahem. Where was I – ah, yes: Lydia gaped as he opened the volume, and before he had, with very monotonous solemnity, read three pages...”
“Speak Fordyce, an’ die.”
Glancing up with a gasp, James caught Francis’s eyes, open and fairly alert. “Francis!” He was momentarily so grateful that his throat closed up with relief. With effort, he forced himself to relax, to breathe.
“How do you feel?”
Still lying on his side, Francis grumbled out a wordless noise, clutching the blankets in both hands, which were in turn tucked close under his chin, as if he were a feverish child. “Like shite.”
“No wonder.” James tried to smile at the man, but found it came off strained; indeed, he could hardly force his mouth open to speak. “You – I don’t think you’ve eaten properly in days.”
“Oh.” Francis visibly steeled himself against the cramps in his stomach, and made a pained noise. “Don’t talk of food.”
“Well – what – what shall we talk of, then?”
“Bloody fucking anything.”
James bit the inside of his mouth in an attempt to control his first instinct, and made a light jest of this reply. “His Irish temper returns at last.”
“Mmph.” A pause. “Water.”
Setting his book aside for a moment, James got up to help Francis take a sip of icy water; it was nearly too much for his stomach to handle, judging by the way Francis stiffened and pushed the cup away after less than a second of drink. After taking several harsh breaths, the Irishman finally relaxed.
“Any more?” asked James.
“No.”
He helped settle Francis against his pillows, mopped his face with a fresh cloth, and untangled the sheet from between his bare legs.
“James,” came the soft croak after a couple of minutes.
“Hm?” James moved back towards the desk chair. "What can I do, Francis?"
Francis’s eyes were still open; he held James’s curious gaze. “Keep reading?”
“Ah.” Fitzjames did smile, this time, much as he tried to temper it. “Yes, of course.” He could not resist throwing in one last jest. “Never thought you’d request hearing my voice.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” Francis shut his eyes. “Not really listening.”
“Naturally. Then I alone shall find out what’s happened to our esteemed heroines.”
Picking up the book again, he cleared his throat, and began to read, adopting a high falsetto for Miss Lydia. “Do you know, mamma, that my uncle Phillips talks of turning away Richard; and if he does, Colonel Forster will hire him. My aunt told me so herself on Saturday. I shall walk to Meryton to-morrow to hear more about it, and to ask when Mr. Denny comes back from town."
“Wha’s poor Denny done to deserve her?” came the grumble from the berth.
“Thought you weren’t listening,” remarked James in a sly undertone.
“‘M not.” Francis shifted on his back, and settled both hands over his chest. “Don’t care.”
##
The Second Sight did not just show Francis the past.
One night, Francis drifted off to the sound of James’s voice, reading that bloody book as animatedly as if he were being asked to script the damn stageplay, and saw an image so incomprehensible that even his witchy Papist Memo Moira might have considered it accursed.
Here, he regarded the Captain’s berth as if from a great height and distance; here on his back, propped up against two pillows, lay Fitzjames, completely bare, although his lower half was covered mainly by blankets. His dark hair spilled across half-frozen linens and a pinkish flush dusted his still-vaguely-tan cheeks and chest. He was panting as breathlessly as if they’d been hauling for days on end. And atop James lay Francis himself, positioned nearly between the other man’s legs so that only his shoulders and the back of his head were visible.
Although most of his own body was covered by the blankets tangling together at the end of the berth – thank God for that – the obscene context was abundantly clear.
What Francis could not understand was why they had landed here at all.
On the berth, the vision of James clutched at one of his hands, just above the blankets, as the Francis of this mirage laved kisses down the Erebus Captain’s strong, lean abdomen. As Francis did this, James laced their fingers together and gripped Francis’s hand with a panic now-bordering on desperation. The gesture, small as it was, prompted as visceral a pulse of desire as anything Francis had ever felt for a woman.
“Francis, please. Take me.”
A pause. His fingers tightened around the back of James’s palm.
“You’re sure?”
As tender a question as he had ever put to Sophia, in similar circumstances. Francis could still remember the sweetness and the agony of her soft curves pressed up against his body in the candlelight of his room, desperately trying to stay silent in the dark; and yet somehow now, in a Captain’s berth – on one of Her Majesty’s ships! – two senior wardroom officers had managed to steal a moment of their own together.
But how? And when? And why?
The James of his vision had given an answer; the Erebus Captain was already pulling Francis up toward the pillows. Seeing James stripped of his affectations was near-mesmerizing; Francis could not stop watching the way Fitzjames’s entire body stuttered and trembled with every breath. Awe-struck, he marveled at the manner in which his own hands traced so lovingly down James’s sides...
Jolting awake, a temporary panic consumed him, wherein he could not remember where he was, and if he was alone in his bed; within seconds, the details came into better focus: he could pick out his berth, the desk, and Fitzjames in the chair with his legs propped up on the middle of the rail, fully clothed, having stopped reading halfway down the page.
“Francis? You all right?”
“I, ah.” He swallowed, tried to breathe. “Just a – a dream. Sorry. Erm. Keep on.”
James’s brows drew down into a puzzled shape, clearly concerned, but if he had particular worries that plagued his thoughts, or had viewed any part of what Francis himself had just glimpsed with the Second Sight, he kept such observations to himself, and continued reading.
##
“Eurgh.”
Francis groaned softly as he hobbled back toward his berth from the seat of ease, blanket slipping from his shoulders as he slowly walked forward. God damned horrors. Two weeks ago he could’ve walked clear across King William Land and now he could barely make it to the toilet to piss without stopping to rest at the table.
Well. Perhaps he couldn’t have walked across King William Land stone drunk. That was why he’d done this, after all.
Inside the berth, he could just glimpse a pair of black-booted feet, and a pair of long limbs flopping every which way within the confines of the desk chair. How in god’s name Fitzjames could sleep like that, Francis would never know.
The door to the berth opened; Francis expected to see Jopson when he glanced up, and instead met Edward’s shocked gaze.
“Captain! I was only – ”
“At ease, Edward.” Francis raised a hand, winced, and then fumbled for the nearest chair. “Sure you were only dropping in.”
“I am so glad to see you, sir.” Edward quickly took a seat in the chair nearest him, looking for all the world like an enthusiastic ship’s boy, despite the officer’s uniform. “The men have been rather concerned, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“No concern is necessary.” Francis could not help casting an amused look back toward the berth, where Fitzjames was now snoring audibly. “Although perhaps they should see about that one, there. I am beginning to suspect he’s abandoned his post.”
“Who has?” Edward rose from his chair slightly, and peeked around the corner, just enough to glimpse James’s boots before sitting back down. “Oh, Captain Fitzjames. Of course.”
“Been here often, has he?”
“We’ve certainly been seeing a fair bit of each other lately.” A small smile tugged at Edward’s mouth. “Think LeVesconte might have him shot with an arrow at any moment.”
“Arrow?”
Francis could not temper his initial reaction. Had he said something in his fever delirium? Did Edward truly understand what he had intimated?
“Like the, ah, African warrior tribes? Hypnotic-tipped darts, and all that nonsense.”
“Ah,” said Francis, and tried to smile, although his mind had gone straight to mythological sources. Cupid’s bow. Damned ridiculous. “Well, if he has done, we may yet hear about it.” Hearing an almost infinitesimal shuffle inside the berth, he raised his voice. “Only the man sleeps like a damned paralytic.”
No answer came from inside the berth save for a soft, low exhale of amusement. So Fitzjames had heard.
“Lieutenant Little?” came a hesitant voice from outside.
Edward glanced aft, awkwardness pulling at his strained gaze. Francis saw he was keeping the lad from his duties, and so waved a hand to dismiss him.
“I’ll not keep you any longer, then, Lieutenant.”
“Thank you, sir.” With a rueful smile, Edward got to his feet, and gave him a nod. “We shall speak again later.”
Knowing how unsteady he was on the best of days, Francis waited until the door had closed again to get up from his chair, and begin the long trek back to the berth.
James, from within: “I can help you, Francis.”
“No.”
Even this much left him winded. Francis made the long shuffle back to the doorway, gripping the frame tightly; by the time he glanced over at the berth, clearly apprehensive at traveling the remaining distance, James had already risen and was extending one arm to him.
“Don’t let’s mimic our dear Miss Bennet now.”
“Jesus Christ.” Begrudgingly, Francis allowed the man to wind an arm around his shoulders, and to help him up into the berth. By the time he crawled back up toward his pillow, his arms shook wildly and his head spun like a top. “Should have known you’d start quoting that ridiculous thing at all hours of the day. Next you’ll attempt to walk to Rosings bloody Park.”
Fitzjames’s eyebrows rose so high they nearly disappeared into his hair. “Rosings Park?”
“Or whatever the damn name is,” Francis said quickly. “Sure I don’t know.”
“Of course,” agreed James in a calm, neutral tone. This was contradicted by the small smile now stretching over his face, which seemed positively giddy though it represented but a twitch of amusement. “Naturally, I shall keep a weather eye out for the imitable Lady Catherine, our dear Miss de Bourgh, and all the rest.”
“Mmph.” Francis settled back into the blankets. “And Colonel what’s-his-face.”
“Yes.” Fitzjames had the audacity to snort aloud. Francis closed his eyes to keep from seeing the merry, derisive smirk now directed his way. “How on earth could I forget our most beloved military man, Colonel what’s-his-face. Why, if only we could recall our players’ names as well as those given to their insufferable aunt’s grand houses.”
“God in heaven.” Francis cracked one eye open. “Are you going to read any more or will you simply stand there and torture me forever?”
“In truth, I think I much prefer the torture,” said Fitzjames airily, but went to fetch the book from where he had dropped it on the floor.
##
But this idea was soon banished, and her spirits were very differently affected, when, to her utter amazement, she saw Mr. Darcy walk into the room. In an hurried manner he immediately began an enquiry after her health, imputing his visit to a wish of hearing that she were better. She answered him with cold civility. He sat down for a few moments, and then getting up, walked about the room. Elizabeth was surprised, but said not a word. After a silence of several minutes, he came towards her in an agitated manner, and thus began, “In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Francis hissed, squinting down at the page. Even balanced against the back of the berth, he found it rather difficult to read for long. He needn’t have tried it at all, had James not nodded off in the middle of a chapter. “Darcy, you absolute cock-up!”
Impatient, he quickly scanned the next few paragraphs, convinced there was going to be some hideous turn of feeling in which the new lovers made their disgustingly happy vows, but instead – instead –
“Jesus bloody Christ. She’s actually turned down ten thousand a year.”
And appeared not to regret this decision to boot!
He continued reading, and took comfort in one small point of fact. Although Sophia’s refusals – plural – had stung deeply, at least he himself had never been accused of ungentlemanly behavior. Or been stupid enough to insult a lady’s parents whilst in her particular company. Point, Francis Crozier.
He scanned the following page, and the next, and the next, and found he was rather absorbed by the contents by the time he reached a new chapter.
“Take the damned letter, idiot. He would not have sought you out otherwise.”
A soft, sleepy murmur came from the middle of the bunk, where Fitzjames had nodded off directly into the blankets. He had now been sleeping propped against the side of the berth for nearly an hour. One lanky arm stretched lightly across Francis’s knees. His head was pillowed next to Francis’s right thigh.
“Reading ahead, old boy?”
A lock of dark hair fell across his face and into one eye as he turned to meet Francis’s innocent expression. Francis could no sooner glimpse James in such a disheveled state than remember the other, more shocking picture still vividly lodged in his memory, which he had sworn to forget at the swiftest possible opportunity.
But imprints from the frozen linens were still pressed into James’s cheek and his usual guileless charm wrapped as loose and unfocused around his body as was the blanket tucked around his shoulders, and suddenly Francis knew not where to look, or what to say.
“Thought you were s’posed to wait,” said James now, as if Francis simply had not caught his earlier remark.
Wait for what ? Francis nearly asked, but managed to hold his tongue just in time.
“Not if you plan to sleep all night,” he answered lightly, ignoring the fact that he was, as yet, still not cleared from convalescence.
Unless he could convince Jopson to let him out in time for first sunrise, in which case Francis might try to beat back a clear path onto the quarterdeck using only this book, a mass of half-frozen blankets, and his empty porcelain basin, frostbitten fingers and toes be damned.
“But now I’ll not know the amusing bits,” James complained as he sat up, rubbed a hand across his jaw, and stretched his arms above his head. His eyes slipped closed as he did this. “Has that Darcy finally wisened up? Or is Colonel Fitzwilliam ahead?”
With astonishment, Francis noticed first that the man had actually slobbered on a small patch of the blankets whilst sleeping, and second, that apparently he was not bothered a whit by such a thing. In fact, Francis now seemed to care more about glimpsing the pale thread of skin briefly exposed between James' shirttails and the top of his trousers than he did about decorum.
God in heaven. What the hell was happening?
“Well,” with a grudging noise, as he averted his eyes from James’s lean, still-striking form, “suppose I could be persuaded to go back a few pages, if you’re so desperate to hear the middle of the tale.”
“Oh ho.” Fitzjames gave him a coy, falsely-wide smile; in past, Francis might have scorned him for that, were he not now completely certain this false charm was no more than a private game between friends. “Indeed he is a jolly good fellow. Making such a heralded sacrifice at such an inconvenient time.”
“Ah, sod off.”
“Why, I wager I could post a letter to the Admiralty at this very minute – ”
Francis had to bite the inside of his mouth to hide a smile. “Do you ever cease such endless, dreary repetitions?”
“ – informing them of the heroics that have been done this day, within the confines of the Captain’s berth itself. Nay, I shall inform our company directly, and make particular note of it in my next Divine Service. Our most generous leader, Captain Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier, has seen fit to turn back a mere ten pages in our shared book, all for the love of me.”
“Sit forward a little, James.” Francis closed the tome, held it upright, and mimed tossing the spine toward Fitzjames’s head, pitching his voice in a deadpan manner. “I should like to catch you square on the nose if possible.”
And Fitzjames laughed – genuinely laughed! – clutching his sides like he had just been told the best joke in the world. All traces of priggish morality vanished from his face, and in those few moments of shared humor, Francis swore he glimpsed the searching, vulnerable soul still hiding beneath its manic mask of geniality, and loved the man all the better for it.
“Here,” he said, and softly tossed the book towards his legs, where it nudged up against one of Fitzjames’s hands. “You do the honors.”