Archive of Our Own ^beta

The dress is gorgeous—soft under his fingertips, running the whole length of his body and pooling on the floor at his feet. He’s seated in a chair, watching himself in the mirror, the way the deep burgundy complements his skin, how elegant he looks. It’ll be a laugh when he strips off his clothing, puts the dress on and fastens it up in the front—but he’ll look lovely, because this is a finer dress than any costume he’s ever worn, this is a dress tailored for him. This is a dress where men will look at him and smile, but some of the smiles will be with admiration, some of the smiles will be ones of wanting, and maybe, just maybe, someone will look at him and feel—

A lock of his hair has fallen over his face. James frowns, reaches up to brush it back, and it comes off in his hand entirely. Blood wells to the surface of his skull, and he stares at himself in the mirror as it beads, runs down his forehead in a ruby-red rivulet, down his cheek onto his jaw, where it runs forward and drips from his chin onto the white surface of his gloves.

He can’t breathe.

He swallows. Gags on blood.

Lets go of the dress, and runs his other hand through his hair, and it all just—falls out, hanks of it landing on his shoulders, and more blood welling to the surface. When he opens his mouth, his gums are purple, swollen, and there are deep pits in them where his teeth used to be. The whites of his eyes have gone red, and there is more blood running down his face now. When he looks down at the dress, he can see the place on his torso where he’s bled right through the velvet, burgundy gone black with it, and more of it welling to the surface every time he breathes.

James Fitzjames wakes panting, his entire body covered in sweat and the sheets tangled around his legs.

*

There are exactly two ounces of whisky poured into the glass. It’s a rich amber colour, and the candlelight flickers along the surface of the drink. The glass itself is cut crystal. It was a careful pour, touching only the bottom of the glass, and so the sides of the glass are still dry. The scent of the whisky is evident—peat and oak, mingled together, and aged beautifully. It’s a fine single malt, and it will not burn at all going down. The still-open bottle sits beside the glass. It is full, but for the two ounces which have been poured out.

Francis Crozier sits in the chair in a near-empty flat in the black of night, and he does not drink.

The clock strikes midnight, and then one a.m. Two a.m. Three.

(At twenty minutes past three, he thinks he hears a shout from upstairs—but he does not move. There are no further noises.)

When the clock chimes five, the sun is starting to filter through the curtains on the windows. It is only then that he pushes back his chair, and picks up the glass for the first time. The weight of it is familiar and comforting, the edges of the glass fitting perfectly into his hand, even though he no longer feels the shape of the crystal under his fingertips.

The motion of carefully pouring the whisky back into the bottle is still unfamiliar, but Francis knows that he just needs to give it time before this, too, will become muscle memory.

*

James can feel the wound pulling in his ribs, clenches the banister tighter as he descends the stairs. The companion wounds in his bicep ache with the increased tension. It’s an old wound. It has shut for the final time.

He takes another step down the stairs. He has healed. He is well. This is his life now—he is on land, and he is safe.

(It’s an old wound.)

The parlour is empty. He glances at the clock on the wall. It’s well past noon. There was no reason to expect that Francis would be here, and consequently, his absence should not be a surprise. James stands, blinking, at the foot of the stairs. Glances down at his hand on the banister. His knuckles have gone white.

The bottle of whisky on the sideboard is still full. The seal is broken—but the seal has been broken since the first night, and the bottle has remained full. There are two place settings on the table, one still covered—breakfast, set there by their landlady. James contemplates turning around, going back upstairs. He’s exhausted, somehow, even though he’d laid in bed for the better part of twelve hours, which is a luxury he never allowed himself while on active duty—and never before while he was off either.

He takes a deep breath, takes his hand from the banister.

(His other hand is across his body, pressing at the place where he was shot. He looks down, turns his hand over. His fingers are clean. He’s not bleeding. He rubs them together anyways, and they are dry, dry, dry.)

There’s his usual spot at the table, in front of the covered place setting. He wonders if Francis waited for him to come down this morning. There’s a newspaper folded next to the place setting, but it’s facing toward the chair where Francis sat, as though Francis had read the paper, folded it, and then pushed it across the table for James.

James glances at the door, but it’s quiet in the hall beyond. Wherever Francis is, he’s not here.

He sits down in front of the empty plate. Pushes it aside and pulls the covered plate over, and then reaches for the paper.

He fancies he can smell a hint of Francis’ shaving soap, but it’s probably a hallucination that his body hasn’t quite purged out of his bones yet.

*

The parlour is blazing hot when Francis returns, but otherwise dark. He starts shucking his jacket before the door has even closed fully, but his numbed fingers aren’t as steady on the buttons as they used to be, and he curses as he fumbles them once, twice, a third time.

“Damned frostbite,” he grumbles.

“Francis?”

Francis looks up sharply, relaxes once he recognizes the shadowed shape in the chair by the fire. “James,” he says. “God, man, I’d thought the room empty—shall I light a lamp?”

James murmurs something unintelligible before clearing his throat. “Sorry,” he rasps. “Must have fallen asleep.”

An image flashes across Francis’ mind, unbidden—James, asleep but restless, wracked with fever even though they were in the middle of the Arctic, his entire body shaking as he pressed against Francis, the heat perceptible even through their layers of clothing. And then, on its heels, a second image, this one welcome, but bittersweet—James, again, asleep and still on the Enterprise, the fever finally broken, and his body laid out on a cot this time, one that he didn’t need to share with Francis.

Francis clears his throat, pushes the thoughts back. “Well, I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

“Don’t be,” James says, adjusting the blanket draped over his legs, and pulling his chair a little closer to the fire. “Shouldn’t be falling asleep in a chair.”

(He’d been so warm, then, burning up with fever but still clutching at Francis’ coat in his delirium—and Francis had let him, then, and he would let him again now, because there had been a time where they had both thought James would drift away completely, and Francis would have been left with nothing but a corpse wearing fancy boots, forever rid of James’ wit and his charm and his full-bodied laugh, even though there’s been precious little of any of the three lately.)

Francis shrugs off his jacket, hangs it on the coat rack before walking over to take the chair opposite James, in front of the fire. Leans his walking stick against the arm of the chair. Rolls up his shirtsleeves.

James leans back in his chair, brings his hand to his forehead, and then—stops, puts it back on his thigh. He sighs heavily, closes his eyes, and tips his head to the ceiling. “I’m horrible company tonight, Francis, I’m sorry.”

“I’ve spent much of the day discussing the many failures of the expedition,” Francis admits. “And the remainder of it walking around London trying to stop thinking of it. Paragons of good cheer, the lot of us.” He traces the carving on the arm of the chair, unable to feel the details under his fingertips. “I should have gone to visit Lady Franklin, I just—couldn’t bear it.” The admiralty had been enough, the endless questions, the repetition of things he’s said before and will say again. The places they had failed, the mistakes they had made, and all questions pointing toward the one that everyone refuses to ask, yet bludgeons him with anyway—how dare you fail to save Sir John?

How dare you return to England without him?

In front of Francis, James shifts in his chair. He looks tired, his hair still awkwardly parted to hide the patches where it had fallen out, and the short bits stubbornly poking through as they regrow. It’s hard to look at him now—not because of his appearance, but because of what Francis remembers and no longer has. He should be—he should be engaging James in conversation, he should be trying to cheer him up, he should be doing anything other than what he’s doing, which is letting James disappear back into his miserable reverie, and taking advantage of the time to catalogue the things about him that Francis once had in the Arctic, and no longer has now that they’ve returned home.

The length of James’ body, pressed up against Francis’ in the sack they shared once the tents were left behind.

James’ arm, flung around Francis’ shoulder as they trekked through the endless rock toward a horizon that neither got closer nor further away.

And the irregular beating of James’ heart, underneath Francis’ palm, an indicator that no matter what other symptoms he showed, no matter which wound had begun to bleed and no matter whether he had spat teeth into his handkerchief earlier or just great clots of blood—no matter what else had happened that day, James was still clinging to life, and Francis felt the proof of it against his bare palm.

James is facing the endless snow of the Arctic, and there are twin sundogs shining in the sky.

They’re pulling the boats, and the strap digs into his shoulder and his hip as he drags his body relentlessly forward. James doesn’t feel the cold, but it’s not much of a relief, because this dream is punctuated by the sound of Hickey laughing, a horrific empty noise echoing off the rocks and making his teeth ache.

He glances back, over his shoulder. Hickey is in the fore of the boat. He is wearing James’ coat, wearing James’ boots, wearing a blood-smeared grin that is Hickey’s own. Goodsir is kneeling in front of him, eyes shut, face at peace.

Hickey is holding a knife to Goodsir’s throat.

“Keep moving, James,” Hickey says softly, in an accent that isn’t at all Irish, and his laughter continues to echo off the sky. “You know I’ll cut his throat.”

James is facing the endless snow of the Arctic, and there are twin sundogs shining in the sky.

The strap digs into his shoulder, digs into his hip. He can feel blood trickling down his side, but he won’t tell Francis yet, not yet.

(Hickey’s laughter echoes off the rocks.)

James’ feet are bare, burnt black with the cold, and swollen. They’ve started to crack across the tops, like the molten rock oozing through black crusted lava he’d seen at Graham Island. Francis is beside him, the collar of his coat up, staring straight forward at the horizon.

James knows he’s going to collapse. He’s had this dream before. He always does, and it goes like this—he collapses, and he reaches for Francis, and Francis is there. Francis is there, and he puts his hand on James’ face, and the sound of Hickey’s laughter fades and James watches the reflection of his own ghoul-thin face in Francis’ eyes as he breathes his last breaths. Francis holds him while he dies, one hand on the side of his face, and the other hand pressing down on his throat.

James stumbles, his foot slipping in his own blood, and goes down heavy on one knee, the bone splintering with a loud crack. He reaches for Francis, like he always does. Catches hold of Francis’ sleeve, like he always does.

Stares in horror at the empty coat that he’s holding.

There is nobody beside him.

There was never anybody beside him.

He is alone in the Arctic holding Francis’ coat. He spreads it out on the rock, patting it with his numb hands, searching for something, anything, searching for any trace of Francis—but the only thing inside the coat are loose teeth, falling to the ground and landing, tk-tk-tk-tk, against the rocks.

*

Francis taps the glass, watches the whisky shudder in it.

It’s four a.m.

It’s four a.m., and he’s been sitting here since ten p.m., because there was no point in going to bed when he could feel that it wasn’t going to be a good night.

He’s worried about James, who is a shell of his former self, who has said nothing about anything that’s happened in the Arctic, either before or after they had abandoned the ships. It isn’t that Francis is lacking in people to talk to—he has Blanky, he has always had Blanky, Blanky and the thankful look on his face as he is swarmed by his missus and his children, and that in and of itself is enough for Francis to know that he was right, whatever the admiralty says, Francis knows he was right—but he wants to drink, badly, and he wants to prove, just as badly, that he’s over it. So he sits, and he inhales the fumes of his favourite whisky, and waits for the time to pass, for the morning to come. Six a.m. should suffice, eight hours of suffering should be enough penance for the evening, enough time to go back over every single one of his sins, the mistakes he made on Terror and before, all of the—

There’s a muffled shout from upstairs, and Francis stands so abruptly that he bumps the table with his thigh, whisky sloshing out of the glass and onto the table. His walking stick clatters to the floor and he doesn’t bother picking it up, just limps to the stairs and is halfway up them before he realizes what he’s doing—but fuck it, absolutely fuck it, he swears that was James, and if he opens the door and James is sleeping, he’ll just pretend that he was disoriented, or having nightmares of his own, he’ll pretend—

—Francis comes to a halt outside James’ door as everything crashes down on him abruptly. What on God’s green earth is he doing, standing outside another man’s bedroom in the wee hours of the morning, when there is absolutely no excuse for such behaviour—

There’s another noise from the bedroom, and Francis grits his teeth, opens the door halfway. “James?”

Another dry retching sound from within, and then a heavy sigh. “Well, you may as well come in.”

Francis opens the door hesitantly.

James is sitting up in bed, his hair a mess and the whites of his eyes visible. He’s wiping his mouth with his sleeve, but Francis scans the sheets surrounding him out of habit, and there’s no evidence that he was sick. The room is warmer than it should be, and the lamp on the bedside table is still lit. James is breathing audibly, ragged, the sheets tangled around his legs.

“Are you alright?”

James’ eyes are wide, and he blinks a few times, drags his sleeve across his face again, and steadily looks at a point over Francis’ shoulder. “I’m...unwell.”

Francis takes a few steps forward. “Did you, er. Want company.”

James doesn’t object, only gestures vaguely with his hand.

Francis takes a few more steps, winces as he sways on the remainder of his right foot before correcting his footing.

“Sit down,” James says, finally. “Please.”

There is a chair next to the door. Francis doesn’t glance back at it, and sits on the foot of James’ bed.

“You’re still dressed.”

“I am.”

“We’re not in the Arctic anymore,” James says, his voice light but wavering a little. “You can undress for bed.”

“I don’t have a nightshirt as nice as yours,” Francis says, without thinking. It’s the kind of thing that he wouldn’t have said before the Expedition, the kind of thing that he would have swallowed back, words he would have eaten before giving voice to them. The kind of thing he wants to say now, because this is an opportunity that he didn’t think they would have—by all rights they should have died there, frozen into the ice, corpses turned to the cold sun in rictus grins.

(Instead, he gets this—James in an expensive nightshirt, undone at the chest exposing his collarbones, wide enough at the neck that if Francis were to tug at it, it would slide partially off one shoulder, down his bicep.)

James blinks back at him. His hand twitches up toward his hair, goes back to his thigh and twists in the bedsheets. “You don’t need to…”

“I wasn’t,” Francis says softly. It’s too far to reach for James’ hand, to still his fingers where they pluck at the linens.

But Francis reaches out anyway, pats the sheets blindly until he touches James’ body. Feels out the shape of his ankle, the curve of his calf. Lets his hand rest there, heavy, getting used to the feeling of James against him through the layers of fabric—something he hasn’t felt in a long time.

Something he thought he might not feel again.

“I should let you sleep,” Francis says softly. “It’s late.” His hand lingers on James’ calf. He wants, badly—but James isn’t well, and four a.m. is not the time for the words that they didn’t say in the Arctic, because James hadn’t been well there either, and Francis can wait.

They have time, now, for him to wait.

“You should sleep too,” James says. He clears his throat.

“Right, then,” Francis says. He squeezes James’ calf, a movement he hopes is reassuring, and then stands, limps out of the room without looking back.

*

The missing teeth aren’t obvious when he keeps his mouth closed.

The shaking in his hand, though. There is no amount of changing his grip on the razor that will hide the tremor in his hand, and every time James brings the razor to his neck, he winces before it touches the skin, and puts the razor back down again.

By the time he hears Francis moving around downstairs, he’s ready to give up on it entirely. He lets go of the razor, lets it fall next to the basin, and picks up his gold and blue paisley dressing gown from where it hangs on the back of his chair. Belts it tightly around his waist, over the nightshirt Francis had admired last night, sets his jaw, and goes downstairs.

Francis is sitting at the table in his shirtsleeves. He sets the paper down the moment James comes down the stairs, turns his entire body toward him, and James regrets not having gotten dressed, not having made more of an effort to shave, not having just stayed in bed.

“Thank you for last night,” he says, because it’s easier to say that than it is to say what he’s actually thinking, which is—thank you for the Arctic, thank you for dragging me across the desolate rock toward the sun, thank you for holding me up when I was falling down, thank you for giving me your handkerchief when mine was soaked with blood, and I’m sorry I never gave it back to you, I’m sorry I can’t give you anything back—

“I wasn’t…you’re welcome,” Francis says, his gaze going to the sideboard a moment before re-focusing on James. “Did it help?”

“Yes,” James lies. The second batch of nightmares, after all, hadn’t been Francis’ fault any more than the first ones had been.

Francis is still watching him intently. He taps his fingers on the table, and then brings his hand to his own jaw, rubs his thumb along his jawline. “This is different.”

“Couldn’t shave this morning,” James admits. He takes his hand off the banister, holds it flat so that Francis cannot see it shake. “Be a poor way to thank you for dragging me out of the Arctic if I cut my own throat accidentally.”

Francis looks at his hand, and then nods, stands. “Well, we can’t have that. With me, James.”

And it’s so easy to just listen, because Francis is clear-eyed and in his element here, with no sense of hesitation, and nothing that he’s holding back. James is lost, a compass spinning with no north to point to—but Francis is moving with purpose, and that purpose is the only reason that James is alive now, and he’ll follow that purpose again without a second thought, even if it’s straight to Francis’ bedroom, to the chair in front of the basin, even as Francis gestures for him to sit, picks up his own razor.

James hesitates—and then, seeing Francis hesitate as well, he sits. Closes his eyes, tips his head up and exposes his neck. Waits for the brush and the foam, but what he gets, first, is Francis’ callused fingers, tracing out the length of James’ jaw, touching his chin and tilting his head. Then Francis takes his fingers away, and James sways into him.

“Steady,” Francis says softly. He shifts so that his body is pressing up against James’ shoulder. “I’ve got you.”

He should have stayed in bed this morning. Should have listened to Francis go about his routine through the closed bedroom door, should have listened for the creak of the front door as it opened and shut, ghosted downstairs in order to soak in the remnants of Francis’ afterimages like he always does, because Francis’ actual physical presence is overwhelming.

(There is no place else than James would rather be than right here.)

It’s a familiar ritual. Warm water on a cloth Francis presses to his cheeks, shaving foam steadily applied. James keeps his hands in his lap, presses them firmly against his own thighs so that he can pretend that he isn’t shaking, so that he can pretend that Francis is doing this for a reason other than pity. (He wishes Francis was doing this for literally any other reason.)

When the blade touches his jaw, James’ breath catches.

“All right there, James?”

He exhales, breath shuddering out of his lungs. Opens his eyes.

Francis is watching him, pale eyes steadily meeting James’ own.

“All right,” James says softly. “Sorry.”

“Not necessary,” Francis says. He brings the hand not holding the razor to James’ shoulder, pats him awkwardly, and then slides his hand down to James’ arm, squeezes.

James takes another deep breath. It’s less fortifying than he would like it to be, but Francis’ hand on his arm is there for another two breaths, and that helps more than anything. When he’s ready, he closes his eyes again—and it was the right decision, because now he has Francis’ full attention, one hand holding the razor and one hand steadying James’ face, and James just…relaxes into it, lets it happen, focuses on listening to Francis breathe and leaning into him, just experiencing everything that’s happening, like the pressure of each individual fingertip on the skin underneath his ear, and the sharp slice of the razor, purging him of his failures, and the pull of his dressing gown—

—Francis has his knee on the chair. His knee is between James’ legs, tugging the fabric of James’ dressing gown tight.

Experimentally, James closes his knees, just slightly. Just enough to confirm—yes, there it is. The hardness of Francis’ knee, the length of his calf.

Francis hesitates with the straight razor, and James opens his eyes, gazes up at Francis.

(Breathe in, breathe out. Francis will hold him while he dies.)

“Tell me if the blade is pulling,” Francis says, then, and his eyes drop back to James’ face, and the blade descends again, but the moment isn’t lost.

They’re breathing in unison.

*

There are voices in the parlour, and Francis hesitates outside the door to the flat for a moment, listening. The person currently speaking is soft-voiced, and Francis can’t hear any words in particular—but then he hears James laugh, and suffers through a series of conflicting emotions before setting his shoulders, and opening the door to the flat.

(They’ve built a sanctuary here, he and James, and it was foolish of Francis to believe that it would be forever untouched.)

He could go out again. The door is open, but no one has noticed him yet, he hasn’t stepped inside, he could just—

“Francis! Harry, one moment—”

Francis steps inside to save James the trip—but James is already standing, halfway across the room, and he’s actually smiling, which nearly stops Francis’ heart in his chest. Certainly, his mouth is tighter than it used to be, almost completely closed with just a hint of teeth visible, the shadow of the gaps on the bottom—but he’s gorgeous like this, and when it’s all directed at Francis, it’s almost overwhelming.

“Francis, come sit—Harry has come to see us, and he’s brought sketches from the book he’s working on.”

James’ hand is on his arm, squeezing firmly, and Francis just—stops. Stops breathing, his heartbeat stilling in his chest, everything echoing like the scrape of stone against stone. James’ eyebrow quirks upward, his head tilts just slightly, and he’ll pull away, in the next breath, he’ll pull away—

Francis puts his hand over James’, squeezes. “At least let me take my hat off,” he says. James exhales with relief, and it’s enough to let Francis’ next words come out honest instead of petty. “Harry—it’s good to see you.”

Goodsir grins at him. “Good to see you too, Captain.”

Francis winces, hand gripping his walking stick tighter. “I wish—”

James is already talking over him. “He stopped by earlier this afternoon, and we quite lost track of time—but I’m glad you’re back, you can catch up as well—he’s only just showing me his sketches of mollusks, and I thought you might wish to see them—I’ll pull up a chair.”

(There’s a difference here, though—James’ hand is lingering on the small of Francis’ back, applying pressure to direct him toward the fireplace, even though Francis hasn’t demonstrated any hesitation. Neither James nor Harry are remarking on it, so Francis won’t say anything either, even though he can feel his face flushing as though he’s drunk.)

“Come on, then,” Francis says gruffly, if nothing else to encourage both of them to stop staring at him and smiling—he only has the capacity for one of the two men at once, and both at the same time is entirely too much cheer for him to process. “Let’s see the sketches.”

The chair that James pulls up for him is perhaps a little closer to James than what’s entirely proper—but Harry says nothing, and James says nothing, and Francis won’t deny himself of James’ proximity, smelling as he does of Francis’ shaving soap, and knocking his knee against Francis’ at intervals when he’s particularly excited about something.

Francis does his best to concentrate on the sketches, but it’s more difficult than it should be. Goodsir’s work is just as neat as usual, his eyes just as bright with enthusiasm—and that’s comforting in and of itself, because there was a point on the expedition when that light had started to fade, when the harsh realities of the situation they were in had started to press down on his mind, but he looks as he did at the beginning of the expedition now, and Francis doesn’t realize why until Goodsir turns to the next page in his sketches, and then visibly flinches, flicks at one of the pages with his fingers to cover it with another, sending half of them sliding to the floor.

James picks them up, hands them back without comment, but Francis just stares at Goodsir, because he’s seen what’s on the following pages, even if James won’t acknowledge it.

“You’re going back,” he says, and the words stick in his mouth like the leather of his boot.

Goodsir inhales, and then says nothing, his fingers glancing over his own pages as he rearranges them.

James’ hand is on Francis’ knee, and it’s the only thing grounding Francis from the tidal wave of emotion that is threatening to suck him under. He’d only just barely pulled them out of the Arctic in the first place, and they weren’t whole, there had been so many deaths, there had been loss, James will never be what he was before they’d gone on the thrice-damned expedition, and—

“—nature studies, then?” James is asking, his voice a study in charm and warmth even as his hand moves steadily on Francis’ knee, his thumb rubbing beside the bone. “You gathered so much research while we were there, I suppose much of it had to be left behind.”

“My brother Robert is on this expedition as well, we’re, er.” Goodsir glances toward Francis, and Francis steadfastly looks away. “In addition to the…primary purpose of the expedition, I’m planning to—there’s a secondary party that will be departing the ships—I was hoping—”

“Your dictionary,” James says, sliding his hand up to Francis’ thigh and squeezing before gesturing to Goodsir’s papers. “You’ll be looking to complete it, then.”

Goodsir exhales. “Yes. I was hoping…well...I’d like to send it back to England, have it published.”

“You’ll have to come visit us when you return,” James says. “Tell us what you’ve learnt, I have no desire to wait for the publication of your book.”

Goodsir smiles, and says nothing, and Francis wonders if he plans to return at all.

James opens his eyes, and stares across the desolate rocks of the Arctic. The sky is dark, and the northern lights flicker above them, and everything is otherwise silent—until there’s a deep sigh, hot breath exhaled across his neck, and James smiles without self-consciousness, because this is one of the good dreams.

Francis is lying behind him, his hand possessively curled around James’ body, slipped between the layers of James’ clothing so that it rests on his chest. His face is buried in James’ hair, his cold nose nuzzling at the back of James’ neck. They’re pressed together, bow to stern, and James feels the closest to alive that he’s ever felt, the entire time in the Arctic, the entire death march, as he gets more and more ill—

—no. He won’t think of that.

(This is one of the good dreams.)

Behind him, Francis sighs into his hair, grinds his hips up against James in a slow, heavy press. His prick is hard, rutting up against James’ arse as though he would have him like this, bear him down into the stones, make him human again. His breath is heavy and warm, his hand possessive, his body sturdy and solid and alive in a way that James may not ever feel again—

—no.

(This is one of the good dreams.)

“James,” Francis breathes behind him, and his voice is weighted with everything they’ve had and lost and given up and left behind, with the ships and the tents, with Victory Point and the way they’d breathed each other’s air before breaking apart, are we brothers, Francis? and they are something more than that, they are closer to husband and wife than they are to anything else, they are one soul separated into two bodies and then pulled back together in the dead air of the Arctic, and James is—

—this is one of the good dreams. This is one of the good dreams, and James’ cock  didn’t work in the Arctic, lay flaccid between his thighs as Francis ground against him and James encouraged him with movements of his own hips, as much as he could manage considering how badly his body hurt, but this is a dream, and just because his prick hadn’t worked in the Arctic doesn’t mean that he can’t have this now, doesn’t mean that he can’t—

—James slides his hand down his body, undoes his trousers and reaches for his own cock, hoping against hope that he’ll be hard, that he’ll be able to reciprocate, that he can roll over and rut his cock against Francis’, that the dream of it will be better than the reality was, that James will be—

—his hand touches warm wetness.

He looks down. Pulls his hand from within his trousers.

His hand is covered in blood—a deep, thick, syrupy red that drips from his fingertips, stains the sleeping bag beneath them.

“All right, then, James?”

He’s not all right.

He’s bleeding out.

Already, he can feel the blood loss hitting him. His head spins, his mouth is dry. He feels ill, right down to the bones, is suddenly conscious of the puddle of warmth that he’s laying in, prays that Francis hasn’t noticed, that Francis won’t notice—

“Keep going,” he rasps. “Fuck me, Francis. Please.”

—oh, god, there’s so much of it, endless blood, and his hand is covered with it, his arm dripping. He puts his hand back between his legs—it’s a dream, maybe it’ll be different the second time—and instead of his own body, there is nothing there but wet mush, disintegrated flesh punctuated by pellets of iron, he can feel the individual vertebrae of his spine, he can—

“James, are you all right?”

—barely breathe, tastes iron and raw meat on his tongue, more of those damned pellets, and he reaches for Francis’ hand to steady himself, but it’s not there anymore, there’s just the flutter and heave of his own chest as he struggles for air, drowning in his own blood, wasn’t worth dragging across the Arctic if he’s going to die now anyway, can’t even tell Francis how deep the regard is that James holds for him, how much and how deeply James lo—

“James!”

James opens his eyes, squinting up into Francis’ pale, lamp-lit face. “Am I—?”

“You’re alive,” Francis says. “You’re alive, James.”

*

“I wish you wouldn’t,” James says.

Francis wrings the cloth out over the basin, doesn’t turn back to face James. “Are you asking me to stop?”

“You always get me at my worst, Francis.”

“I’ve never minded that,” Francis says. He wrings the cloth again, even though all the water is out over it. Delays turning around until he can get the rest of the sentence out, because if he turns now, he’ll be too taken by the sight of James, sans nightshirt, and he’ll choke on his tongue again. “There was a time I didn’t think I’d have you at all. I used to lie awake at night counting your heartbeat, your breaths…”

There’s a pause, and then James chuckles. “Well,” he says, sounding amused for the first time in a long time. “Not only that.”

Francis turns around, holding back a scowl, but James is looking back over his shoulder at Francis, a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and that’s alright, then.

(Maybe James is thinking about it too.)

Francis approaches the bed again with the cloth, presses it to the skin of James’ back, and continues to wash the sweat from his body, losing himself in the motions of it, and trying not to think about anything other than what he’s doing right now, except that his other hand has come up, involuntary, rests on James’ shoulder.

James tilts his chin to his chest, raises his hand and shifts his hair off the back of his neck.

Francis leans in, runs the wet cloth along the small of James’ back, right above the place where the sheet is gathered. His lips are so close to the nape of James’ neck, but he finds himself paralysed. It would be so easy to press his lips there, it would be so easy to lean in just a little bit closer, it would be so easy—but he’s ice-bound, unable to move any further.

After a moment, James lets go of his hair, lets it fall back across his neck. Francis does scowl, then, when he turns back to the basin, sets the cloth down. Makes a face at himself in the mirror, because there is waiting—and then there is this, when he’s fairly certain that James would be receptive, and instead, he’s just—unable to do anything about it.

“Third drawer, please,” James says softly. “Right-hand side.”

Francis obeys by instinct, bending and sliding open the drawer, wishing he had more light, because the entire drawer is full of white garments, silk and lace and things that are soft under his calloused fingers. The nightshirt he takes from the drawer feels like it has no weight in his hands, and he desperately wants to see what James has lovingly folded and put away here, wants to be let into the private parts of James’ life. He takes a step backward, and then another. Extends his hand out behind him, watches in the mirror as James takes the nightshirt, and then stretches his arms above his head, slips it on and lets the fabric pool around the white sheets still covering his hips.

(The newly-healed bullet wound in his ribs is visible, and Francis wants to splay his palm across it, hold his hand there, because he remembers how it felt when he realized James was bleeding and he hadn’t known, all those nights spent with his hand on James’ heart when it wasn’t his heart that was injured, it was the bleeding from his ribs, the slow ooze of it out into his clothing where it would freeze the next day, only to re-open the moment James moved.)

“It was a nice dream,” James says mournfully. “Right up until it wasn’t.”

Francis hesitates, and then sits down on the edge of the bed, still facing away from James, very nearly back to back, but close enough that their hands could touch. “What were you dreaming of?”

“You,” James says honestly, and Francis squeezes his eyes shut.

“The Arctic?”

“The sack we shared.”

Francis inhales, ragged. Blindly moves his hand on the sheets until it nudges up against James’ thigh, curls his fingers into a fist and rests it there. “I’ve thought of that too.” Not dreamt, no, because he does his best not to sleep until his body forces him into bed, and he lies there, dreamless—but there are many waking hours in the day, even more at night, and plenty of time to think.

“I don’t regret it,” James says, and his hand finds Francis’, curls overtop and squeezes it tight. “I…hope that you don’t—”

“Never,” Francis says fiercely. “How could you—God, man. I—”

“…look at me?”

The lamp highlights all the angles in James’ face, the sharpness of his jaw and his cheekbones exaggerated by the weight he’s lost and not yet gained back, and Francis’ vision blurs for a moment until he blinks and it clears, only to blur again. “I should have done better by you,” he rasps. “I should have—”

“No,” James says, reaching for Francis and pulling him close, pressing their foreheads together. “You brought me home. You brought me here, I live because of you, I…”

Francis inhales to speak, and his breath catches in his lungs. James has one hand on his back, and the other clasping Francis’ own, the remaining fingers gently intertwined, and Francis exhales all the hurt and agony in one long, shuddering breath, slumps into James and buries his face in fabric too expensive for Francis to even consider owning, James’ hair tickling his nostrils.

He should—speak, he should say something, he should—but he can’t, everything is agony and breaths that won’t quite come and a horrible knot of emotions that make him feel as though his ribs have been broken, as though his entire body is falling apart, because would it be worthwhile to say anything—and if it would be, what is there to be said? How to sum up the depths of this, how to ask for something back which he had never deserved in the first place and most certainly doesn’t deserve now, how is he to move forward when these are uncharted waters, and he is the worst person to put in charge of such a situation, considering what happened—

“There, there,” James says, voice low in Francis’ ear. “It’s all right. There’s nothing the matter between us, Francis, not from my end of things—and if there’s anything that I can help with—”

“God no,” Francis mutters, conscious that when he pulls away, James’ nightshirt will be damp, conscious of everything he is exposing to James, and unable to feel guilty about any of it, even though he knows he should. “There’s nothing the matter between us, James, I just thought—”

“Yes?”

Francis sits up straight, blinks and carefully stares at a point over James’ shoulder. “What we had in the Arctic—you were ill, then, James. I didn’t want you to have regrets—your reputation, once we returned—I haven’t managed this well, I haven’t managed any of this well—”

“Francis, I’m ill now,” James says. “And I don’t want you any less than I did then. I’d have taken you into my bed the first night in this flat, if I’d thought you’d have had me.”

Francis blinks. Meets James’ eyes.

James’ mouth twists. “I’m afraid I’m rather attached to you, Francis Crozier. And I’m equally afraid that as I felt this way prior to coming down with scurvy, I’m likely to feel this way when I’m well, if I ever am. And I’m perfectly happy to live separate lives—well, I wouldn’t be happy about it, but I could tolerate it—but I would really prefer not to, if you still have any bit of positive regard for me.”

This is it. One move in the wrong direction, either toward James or away, and Francis could destroy the entire thing, have it fall apart in his hands. There is a path through, there has to be a path through—but, God, it is like navigating a ship between two icebergs, and he no longer has the confidence to do anything that delicate when there’s so much more now at stake. He swallows. Weighs his options, and comes up empty. “James…”

“I know,” James says, “it’s awful.”

“It’s nothing of the sort.”

“Pardon?”

Francis leans forward.

James’ lips are soft and still under his own, and there’s a moment where Francis fears that he’s doing it wrong, that years away from it have made him forget, entirely, what it is to love someone—and then James whines, presses in close, and kisses Francis back.

It’s a chaste kiss, and still it feels as though the air has been knocked out of Francis completely. James’ eyes are half-lidded when he pulls back, and Francis is quite certain that his own hands are shaking, that his legs won’t hold him if he were to try to stand, but there’s nothing that could convince him to stand right now.

“Francis,” James breathes.

Francis brings his hands up, cradles James’ face in his own, kisses him again, soft and gentle.

Downstairs, the clock chimes three.

“Stay with me tonight?” James asks, lips moving against Francis’ own.

“Yes,” Francis says, without hesitation. “Yes, James. Yes.”

When they lie down together, Francis smooths James’ hair away from the nape of his neck, presses his lips to James’ skin, and James sighs, presses in closer against Francis’ chest.

It’s easier to sleep than Francis thought it would be.

*

James wakes when the mattress shifts. “You’re not leaving?”

“Er, no,” Francis mutters from behind him. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

James reaches behind himself, gropes blindly until he captures Francis’ arm, pulls him back in close. “Then what are you…oh.”

“Oh,” Francis repeats sardonically. “Thank you for that, James.”

Francis is hard, steady and solid behind him, and James’ breath catches in his chest. “I should be thanking you, I think.”

“Please don’t.”

“Is this so different from the Arctic, then?”

“It’s six in the morning, James—good god, I’m an old man, don’t lead me on like this.”

James grins into his pillow, rolls his hips back into Francis again. It’s not like the Arctic at all—it’s better because they’re in a bed, it’s better because they have last night’s intimacies to build on, it’s better because he isn’t the only one that’s been wanting this, it’s better because Francis has wrapped his arm around James, tugged James up against him, and buried his face in James’ hair where James can feel his breath, hot and quick, on the back of his neck.

(It’s better because James isn’t dying any faster than usual.)

“I’m awake if you are,” James says.

“I believe it’s quite clear that I am,” Francis mutters into his hair. “You’ve got no sense of decorum.”

“I think it’s bigger here than it was in the Arctic.”

“Not wearing my slops.”

“I think you could probably—”

“James,” Francis says. Slides his hand up to James’ shoulder, and then rests it gently on his neck, over his pulse. “Deep breaths.”

“Francis, I—”

“Deep breaths, James.” Francis grinds up against him, solid and inexorable. “I’m not leaving. I won’t leave.”

James takes a breath as instructed. It’s not as steady as he’d expected it to be. Then another, and then another, letting Francis’ hand around his throat ground him, calm him down. “I want...the Arctic, again.”

Francis stills behind him. “Which part?”

James squeezes his eyes shut. “The shared sack,” he admits. “You, pressing against me. I want...it went so badly in dreams, I just…I wanted it again, I want it again… I can’t have those dreams be the most recent experience, not if...”

There’s a pause, and then Francis exhales behind him. Shifts his hand down to James’ chest, over his heart. “I want it too.”

“Thank God,” James says, pressing his hips back against Francis again. Oh, he’s hard. They’d been wearing too many layers in the Arctic, he hadn’t realized...or maybe he’d been too delirious to remember it, but it’s better, with fewer layers between them, just the cotton of James’ nightshirt, and the linen of the shirt Francis had kept on, because he had refused to borrow anything from James last night. It’s different than the Arctic—but James has had time to think, since, and he wants it more, now, than he did then, and he wanted Francis then, so much.

(That distinct pain in his ribs, blood pooling underneath him.)

James bites down on his lip, reaches for Francis’ hand and clasps it tightly. “I’ll go easy on you the first time,” he says, voice shaking enough that the joke doesn’t quite land with the levity he intends it to have. “We don’t have to...we can just...like we did before.”

(He’s not going to reach down between his own legs. That’s not relevant right now. The only thing that matters is making Francis happy, is keeping Francis here.)

“Maybe that’s just as well,” Francis mutters. He shifts, puts their clasped hands on James’ hip.

“One thing,” James says quickly, trying to ignore the feeling of dread curling in his stomach. “Before we go further. Promise me—promise me one thing.”

“Yeah?”

“If I’m bleeding…you’ll tell me?”

“…James?”

“I can’t look,” James says, disentangling his hand from Francis’ and tugging at his nightshirt, baring his thigh under the sheet, then his hip, then his ribs. “Promise me you’ll—” His hand stills, the nightshirt gathered under his shaking fingers. Clenches his fist tight, like that will erase the tremors.

He’s steadied by Francis’ hands on his shoulders. They’re strong hands. Wide. Blunt fingers. He touches James like James is a precious and fragile thing, carefully mapping out his skin like he’s measuring the distance between James’ sensitive points.

“You’re alive, James,” Francis says. He curls his right hand around James’ throat again, lets James relax into the comforting thump of his own pulse against Francis’ palm. His other hand drags down James’ side, down his ribs. Tugs the sheet out of the way, and then rests on the place where James is— “It’s nicely scarred over. Do you want to see?”

James swallows. His head is spinning.

Francis presses his lips to James’ shoulder. “Look,” he says softly. “Look at my hand.”

James glances down his left side, conscious, suddenly, that his nipples are peaked and sharp, visible through the nightshirt. Francis is holding his hand there, palm up, fingers extended. His palm is dry. No blood. James lifts his arm a little, looks down at his own torso.

The wound is closed.

“Christ,” James says, and it comes out like a sob.  “Pinch me, Francis.”

Francis curls his arm around James’ chest, tugs James back against him. His other hand drops from Francis’ throat down to his hip, pinches him sharply there. “You’re awake. You’re alive. I’m in your bed.” He swallows, audibly. “If you’re…”

“Please,” James says.

(Francis doesn’t remark on how his voice shakes, and it’s a kindness that makes it hard for James to swallow past the lump in his throat.)

Francis kneads James’ hip with his right hand, breathes into James’ shoulder. “I’ve got you.”

James still starts when he feels Francis’ other hand, sliding down his spine, cupping his arse. Francis’ fingers are thicker, stronger than his own. It’s been years since James has had this, since he’s been touched with any kind of tenderness whatsoever, and he’s already a shuddering mess. Francis’ fingers are clumsy, the movements unpractised, but he’s holding James steady by the hip, and James exhales, tips his head back and rests it on Francis’ shoulder.

“You’re beautiful,” Francis says. Presses his lips to James’ forehead, to his hairline, to the place on his scalp where he’d started to bleed, the place where his hair fell out in chunks and even now is growing back in awkwardly. “God, I wish you saw yourself the way I do.” He takes a breath. “Wish I knew what I was doing.”

James is just about to open his mouth, reassure Francis—but his breath catches in his lungs when Francis grips James by the hips, draws him back against Francis again, against the hard line of Francis’ prick, with only Francis’ shirt between them now.

“Don’t ruin your shirt on my account,” James says. “Christ, Francis.”

“Damn the shirt,” Francis says. “I don’t care about the shirt.” He rolls his hips against James again, breath coming hot and quick.

James inhales, exhales in a low moan. This is what he’s been missing, what he’s needed, what he’s been longing for all these months. Francis, pressed up against him, Francis, breathing in his ear. The part where his body is useful for something, instead of just a thing he possesses and is all too aware of the ways in which it is falling apart. Francis is holding onto him tightly, like James is a lifeline, and James feels like he matters, like there’s a purpose to him being here, that maybe being dragged out of the Arctic wasn’t a waste, because Francis needs him right now, Francis is holding onto his hip like it’s keeping him grounded, Francis is breathing his name and dragging his hard cock against James’ arse, his other hand creeping up James’ back, squeezing his shoulder before slinging his arm across the front of James’ chest, holding him there, holding him steady, keeping him safe.

(The hand on James’ hip shifts forward, a little, curls around to the front of James’ body, and James makes an indistinct noise, rolls a little more onto his front and tilts his hips back into Francis. Holds his breath until Francis’ hand moves back to his hip, squeezing unsteadily before shifting up to his ribs, thick fingers dancing clumsily along the skin there, and then sliding down to James’ thigh, holding him there. Would that they’d done this before James had got ill, when he’d still been fit, when he’d had more confidence than most men. Would that they’d done this earlier so that James could have been there for the worst of Francis, could have weaned him from the alcohol, weathered his fits of temper, would that they’d had more time, but instead, Francis gets the worst of James, and James gets the best of Francis, and it’s not fair, it’s never fair, it’s—)

“You feel wonderful,” Francis says from behind him. “Are you—”

“It’s good for me,” James says. He braces himself on the mattress, moves his leg back and hooks it around Francis’. The movement shifts the angle slightly, and Francis’ next thrust drives his cock against the cleft of James’ arse, the linen damp now, and it sends a shudder of pleasure through his body. “Yes, Francis, like that—harder, please, you won’t hurt me—”

“Make a fool out of myself,” Francis mutters breathlessly. “Got more stamina than this usually—what do you want—”

“Find your end,” James says, deliberately pitching his voice low. “Show me what I mean to you, please—I want this to be worth something, I want—to be worth something to you—”

“James, you’re—” Francis starts—and then his breath catches and he tugs James against him, hard, and there’s a sudden burst of warmth at the small of James’ back. His hand spasms on James’ thigh, his lips pressing against the nape of James’ neck, through his hair. “Everything,” he says, after a long pause. “And you were right about the shirt, I should have removed it.”

James laughs into the pillow, feeling the tension drain from his body. “You can still take it off now that you’ve made a mess of it.” He glances over his shoulder just in time to catch the deep scowl on Francis’ face. “For me?”

He half-expects Francis to object, but instead, Francis just groans, presses his lips to James’ shoulder. Takes his left hand from James’ hip and shifts behind him, cursing his own buttons in a low mutter before sitting up.

“I want to look at you,” Francis says. “Would you be willing to lay on your back for me?”

“Are you certain?” The question comes out plaintive, even as he wishes to bite down on the words, swallow them back. But everything is too close to the surface, now—he’s held together right now by threads and bits of string, stitched into a patchwork. “I’m not who I used to be—”

“I admire who you are right now,” Francis breathes. He reaches out, rests his hand on James’ hip again, but puts no pressure on him. “You survived. You lived. You’ve overcome a great deal, and you continue to persevere.”

James squeezes his eyes shut again, rolls onto his back. Tries not to think about everything he’s exposing like this, ribs visible and scars still pink where they’d re-healed. Meets Francis’ eyes, and—oh.

Francis is looking at him with a gaze that cannot be interpreted as anything other than sheer admiration. He’s half out of his shirt, his broad chest exposed in a deep vee, but his hips hidden by the long tails of linen which haven’t been arranged with any decorum, the wetness soaked into them clearly visible. James shifts in bed, feeling some of that same wetness on the small of his back, and revelling in it. He feels wanted, before, during, and especially now, especially as Francis brings his hand forward, tugs lightly at the ties at the neck of James’ nightshirt.

“You don’t need to get undressed,” Francis says. “Not if you don’t like to, but I, er.” He looks away a moment, face flushing red. “I’m aware that I wasn’t a very…sporting partner there.”

James tilts his head, but doesn’t catch Francis’ meaning until he looks back, deliberately looks between James’ legs, and then goes even more red.

And then, as if he hadn’t made his meaning clear already, Francis puts one hand on James’ thigh. “May I touch you?”

James shuts his eyes a moment. “It’s…” he starts. “I don’t think…”

“Right,” Francis says. “Right, I—”

James opens his eyes, sits up quickly and grabs Francis by the wrist before he does anything foolish, like button his soiled shirt back up and leave James’ bed. “No, don’t. It’s just—the scurvy. I couldn’t—I wasn’t able to—it’s…”

Francis arches an eyebrow. “You’re aware that doesn’t appear to be a problem at present?”

James looks down at the same moment Francis does, and blinks in confusion.

His prick is hard, pressing up against the bedsheets.

“I, um.” James swallows. “I may not be able to maintain…”

“I don’t care,” Francis says. He plants one hand on either side of James’ hips, leans forward, nuzzles at James’ chest. “I would dearly like to touch you, James. Anywhere you’ll let me.”

James inhales, his breath ragged. He closes his eyes again, tries to take stock of his own body, but it’s still a foreign thing to him, a thing liable to betray him completely, a thing that he cannot trust, cannot fully believe in—but he believes in Francis. “Distract me,” he says, eyes still shut. “I don’t want to think about it.”

“I’ll do my best,” Francis says, voice low. The bed creaks as he shifts, and then his body—his completely naked body—is pressed up against James’, his mouth going to the place where James’ neck meets his shoulder, and his hand braced on James’ chest, palm covering his nipple.

James arches his back into it, tilts his chest up into Francis’ palm, tips his head to allow Francis greater access to his neck. Francis presses his advantage, his body heavy atop James’, and it grounds him. James is conscious, for the first time, of how steadily his heart is beating, of his breath, coming in sharp pants, catching whenever Francis nips at him with his teeth. It’s a series of crests and troughs, increasing in intensity as he becomes more and more aware of his skin, the way it stretches over his body, the way his heels dig into the mattress and his hands clutch at the sheets. “Francis—”

“That’s right,” Francis murmurs into his neck. He palms James’ chest again, his soft cock pressing up against James’ hip. “You’re stunning, I don’t know if you know that.” He presses his lips to James’ neck, sucks a deep kiss above his clavicle. “I’ve wanted this for so long.”

James presses up against Francis again, curls his arm around and puts his hand tentatively on the back of Francis’ head, pressing him closer to James’ body. Francis goes willingly, kisses James harder. “Can you—” he starts. “I want—” And then words fail him completely, falling to pieces at the back of his throat, crumbling the same way that his body crumbles in his nightmares—and he bites down on his lower lip, gropes blindly until he finds Francis’ hand, and presses it to his ribs. Francis murmurs something pleased against his neck, grips James firmly.

This is it, this is what’s been missing. Francis’ body pressed against his own, grounding James in his skin, in his bones. Francis, breathing in his ear, his wet lips moving gently on James’ skin, teeth sharp against him, tongue soothing the slight sting of it afterwards. His hand, on James’ ribs. James reaches for him, puts his hand over Francis’. Shuts his eyes, pushes Francis’ hand down until his rough fingers are rubbing at James’ hip.

(James’ breath is coming faster now, sharp pants, his heart racketing against his chest—but it’s controlled. Francis is here, his weight a comforting press, and James won’t fall apart.)

James whines, throws his head back against the pillow. He wants—he needs—

“Lower,” he gasps. “Francis, can you—”

He’s hard. He’s still hard.

(He’s not bleeding.)

Francis Crozier has his hand wrapped around James’ cock, and James is losing himself to the pleasure of it, his head pounding in his ears, his breath catching in his chest, as Francis twists his hand, kisses James’ neck, coaxes him into something that James isn’t entirely certain he can—

“Beautiful, James,” Francis breathes, and James comes, the pleasure sudden and overwhelming, his vision whiting out.

Lies on the bed blinking at the ceiling, conscious that it’s happened and completely unaware of the how of the entire thing. He looks down at himself, at the mess he’s left on his stomach, at the way Francis is idly tracing his calloused fingertips through it, smiling vaguely down at James, at his softening cock.

“You alright, there, James?”

James swallows, clears his throat. “I, uh.”

Francis glances up at him, his eyes impish and a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “That went well, I thought.”

James exhales, feels his entire body relax. Reaches for Francis, and pulls him in close, presses his lips to Francis’ hair. “Thank you,” he murmurs softly.

James’ vision blurs—but Francis, to his credit, just nestles into James’ chest, and doesn’t say anything.

*

Francis is whistling when he comes back into the flat, hangs up his hat. It’s possible that the wildflowers were overkill, but he’s also betting that there’s a chance James is going to enjoy them, and after last night and this morning, Francis feels fairly confident in playing his hand.

Oddly, though, James isn’t downstairs. He’s not upstairs either—his bed is neatly made, but he isn’t in it. Francis is frowning by the time he heads back downstairs, turning the narrow box he’s holding around in his hand, trying to remember if James had said anything about having any appointments today. He nudges open the door to his own room, stuck in his own thoughts, sets the box down on his dressing table and puts the flowers down beside it, leans his stick against the wall, glances up at himself in the mirror—and rather than his eyes lingering on his own face, and the deficits he usually catalogues there, his eyes are caught by the irregular lump reflected in the bed behind him.

He turns, leans up against the dressing table. “James Fitzjames,” he says calmly. “Are you sleeping in my bed?”

James starts awake with a jerk, sitting up sharply and blinking before he curses softly. “Francis,” he says. “You’re back.” He’s only partially dressed—shirtsleeves, embroidered braces, the modern trousers he generally wears, and silk slippers.

“I’m not opposed to finding you here.”

James frowns, hand twitching up toward his hair before he puts it back in his lap. Then he makes another face, brings his hand up to his hair and carefully runs his fingers through it, working quickly and gently without making eye contact. Thus arranged, his hand drops back to his lap, where Francis watches it intently, catalogues every shift of his fingers on his trousers. “I didn’t intend to be found here sleeping.”

“I kept you up last night,” Francis says. “This morning.”

“Well,” James says, and he looks up, eyes meeting Francis’, and then sliding to the side. “Flowers?”

“Oh.” Francis glances at them, shifts to the side to hide them from view. “Yes.”

James tilts his head. “Who gave them to you?”

“No one,” Francis says—and then, seeing the look on James’ face, he quickly elaborates. “I bought them.” Reaches behind himself, picks up the flowers and the box both, offers them out awkwardly, suddenly conscious of all the ways he’s overstepping. “For you.”

James looks at his hand, and then makes eye contact, his face going slightly pink. “Really?”

Francis steps forward, pushes the items into James’ hands, and then retreats back to the dressing table. “No need to gift me anything in return,” he says, awkwardly. “We hadn’t discussed whether we might want to…”

James clears his throat, starts carefully opening the box. “Well, as it were. I might have—had something in mind. It’s, er. Not nearly as nice—”

“None of that,” Francis says brusquely. He moves away from the dressing table, sits down on the bed and puts his hand on James’ ankle, sneaking his thumb under the hem of his trousers to touch his bare skin. “For all you know, I brought you nothing but—”

James’ breath catches.

Francis squeezes his eyes shut. God, he hates this, the precipice where the question has been asked but the answer has not yet been received, hates it because even when he feels confident in the expected answer, he’s not always right, he has been wrong before and he will be wrong again—

“It’s beautiful,” James breathes.

Francis glances at him sidelong. The flowers have been placed on his lap, and he’s absently touching them with one hand while the other hovers above the open box. The sunlight coming in through the window is glinting off the polished handle of the straight razor cradled in velvet within.

“You saw the note—”

“I am, as always, at your service whenever you may have need of me,” James reads aloud. His face is quite pink when he looks up.

“I hope you don’t think it’s tactless.”

“Bold, perhaps,” James says. He looks slyly up at Francis. “And am I to get your knee between my legs every time you shave me?”

“If you would like,” Francis says.

“You realize I usually shave prior to getting dressed.”

“Scandalous.”

“You expect nothing less of me.”

Francis grips James’ calf firmly, and then makes to get up from the bed. “Well, that’s that, then, I’m pleased that you like it.”

“You haven’t asked me what I had thought to offer you,” James says from behind him.

Francis stops. Hesitates. “You don’t owe me.”

“Be that as it may,” James says. “I did have something in mind. Somewhat…more than what we did this morning.”

Francis looks over his shoulder back at James.

James raises an eyebrow at him, offers him a shy smile. His hand is resting overtop the wildflowers, his fingers curled around the stems and his thumb stroking the bottom-most leaves. “This morning, when I had thought that I might not…perform as you may have liked, there were…other parts of my anatomy I was willing to offer you.”

“Good Lord, James.”

James grins at him, then, and it’s only faintly tinged with the anxiety that has plagued his face since—since Carnival, if Francis is to be quite honest about it.

(Francis, for his part, is very conscious of how hot his face feels—and just as conscious of how insistently his prick is pressing at his trousers.)

“If you’re interested,” James says, in that tone of voice he uses when he’s expecting to be dismissed—and that is a rare thing too, and Francis winces the moment he recognizes it.

(How long has he been this acutely aware of James, and how is it that he has never consciously noticed?)

“I am,” Francis says softly, watching James toy with the straight razor, lifting it carefully from the box and opening it. As his hand shakes, the light glints off the blade irregularly, and Francis cannot stop thinking about James’ face, tilted up toward him. James’ neck, exposed so that Francis can watch the beat of his pulse in his neck. James, vulnerable and lovely, eyes closed, trusting Francis entirely and completely. “Interested.”

“But?”

“…I haven’t, before,” Francis admits. “Well, I have, but…” It had been different, then. With women, and although he’s certain the mechanics of it are similar, the process of beginning is entirely unfamiliar—and, after all, this is James, who is wholly unlike any person he has ever been with before, and that makes it—

“It’s not so different.” James closes the straight razor carefully, places it back in the box with the utmost of care.

Francis exhales heavily, tucks his hands into his trouser pockets for lack of anywhere better to put them, creating enough room for his hardened prick in the hopes he has the chance to sound remotely intelligent for the remainder of this conversation. “You’ll give me some leeway?”

“I’m not likely to kick you out of my bed at this point,” James says.

“I should hope not,” Francis replies, “but you’re in mine at the moment, and if I’m kicked out of here, I’ll have to go sleep in front of the fire.” He takes another breath, turns back to James.

James offers him a shy smile, swings his legs off Francis’ bed, and stands. There’s a moment where Francis fears he’ll leave entirely—but instead, he merely comes to the dresser, sets the flowers down with tender care. Arranges them slightly differently, glances at their reflection in the mirror, that small half-smile still playing about the corners of his mouth. It’s a lovely expression on him—and one that Francis wants to see more often.

“Well,” James says. “We can’t have that, can we. You’d be terribly cantankerous the next morning, I wouldn’t want to inflict that on myself.”

“If I were to be a disappointment…”

James’ mouth twists. “I’ve already been more of a disappointment to myself than you could ever be to me, Francis.” He looks down at his own hands before frowning, coming back to the bed, and sitting down at the head of it again. “I suppose I presume that now would be a good—”

“Yes,” Francis says, approaching the bed and putting his hand on James’ shoulder. “Now is as good a time as any, I think. Is that the reason you fell asleep in my bed in the first place?”

“It’s not the reason I fell asleep,” James says. “But it is the reason I—”

His mouth is just as soft now as it was this morning, and Francis drinks him in, urges James’ mouth open, moves his hand over James’ and seeks out his buttons.

James groans into his mouth, shifts on his bed. One of his hands comes to Francis’ wrist, grasps him tightly.

(God, if Francis had only known that James would yield like this for him. They’d wasted so much time at each other’s throats, they’d wasted so much time not in each other’s beds, and the time they have now is a gift, a gift that he absolutely refuses to squander.)

He reaches down for the buttons of James’ trousers, his fingers scrabbling at fabric instead.

“Sorry,” James says breathlessly. “Let me—” He grasps Francis’ wrist, shifts his hand over to the side. “Just here.”

“Damn modern trousers,” Francis mutters. He kneels on the bed, one knee between James’ legs. Kisses him again, warm and deep, his tongue gently nudging against James’ own, but avoiding any exploration of his teeth or the rest of his mouth. The buttons underneath his fingers are unfamiliarly placed, and it takes him longer than he wants to pluck them open, but James’ panting urges him on, makes him bold, and Francis knows he is unjudged for his lack of dexterity.

When Francis pulls back, James’ eyes are wide, the pupils fat—and when he nudges his knee forward, just slightly, he can feel the warmth and beginning hardness between James’ legs. He reaches down, cups James there gently, kissing the side of his face, the sharp edge of his jaw, the place where his pulse beats, rapidfire, in his neck.

James makes an odd gasping sound against Francis, and Francis brings his other hand up, cups the side of James’ face to steady him. “There you are,” he breathes softly. “I’ve got you.”

James tilts his hips, his fingers brushing against Francis’ as he shifts the flap of his trousers out of the way, tugs at the tails of his shirt, and then grasps Francis’ wrist, presses it inside his trousers, presses it to hot naked flesh, lets Francis take measure of him again—his thickening prick, his balls, the curve of his arse, all of it warm, warm, warm.

Touching James makes him feel drunk—but Francis has a clear head right now, his arousal a humming joy in his blood that isn’t compromising his judgement in any way. Because this is something they get to experience together, something that neither of them will regret the day after, because if nothing else—none of this has been done in haste.

Francis presses his lips to James’ shoulder, runs his thumb down the length of James’ shaft before tentatively curling his fingers around James’ balls, and then pressing his fingers further back, trying to move slowly enough to cover for his own unfamiliarity with this particular portion of James’ anatomy. He touches warm smooth skin, presses further back, touches—

“Well, you’ve found me out,” James murmurs. “There’s more where that came from, though, if you’ll shift your other hand into my pocket.”

Francis hangs his head a moment, swallows. James’ skin, here, in the cleft of his buttocks, is slick, and it sends a rush of heat through Francis’ whole body. Please, let him do right by James here. Give him the stamina to make this good for James, because James deserves to be fucked well.

There’s a small glass vial in James’ other pocket. Francis pulls it out, opens his hand between their bodies and looks at it. It’s thick brown glass with a fancy corked cap, and no label. He’s still staring at it, his brain nothing but emptiness, when James’ hand closes over it. Pulls back a little, watches James brush the cork with his thumb.

“Would you like to take your trousers off?” James asks.

“Will you?” Francis counters.

“Race you,” James offers—and oh, god, there’s no hope of rescue for Francis here, because he’s so enamoured with the look on James’ face that he completely forgets to bring his attention to his own trousers. He’s captivated by James, holding the vial between his teeth, his back braced against the headboard of the bed as he lifts his hips, pushes his trousers down his long legs. Belatedly, Francis realizes he needs to move, and he gets off the bed, watches James shrug his braces from his shoulders and strip the rest of the way naked, kicking off his slippers, unbuttoning his shirt and stripping that off too before tilting his head at Francis. “Is it so bad?”

(The bruises are there, certainly. The scars, healed over again for a final time. Once James had collapsed, it had been Francis who had checked each open wound, cleaned it, bandaged it. Replaced the bandages again once the blood had soaked through. It had been an intricate ritual, a method of keeping James alive, and it had been bittersweet when James had started to heal, and the ritual had no longer been necessary, the planes and angles of James’ body becoming a mystery to Francis again.)

“You’ve left me speechless,” Francis manages. He swallows, forces himself to pull his eyes away from the long lines of James’ body, of his cock, thickening on his thigh.

James looks at Francis, shifts his eyes over to the place where the wildflowers lie on the dresser, and then back to Francis again, his brow still furrowed as he shifts his eyes down Francis’ body before finally relaxing. “That can’t be comfortable.”

Francis looks down, face going hot as he sees the insistent way his prick is pressing against his trousers. Fumbles his way through his own undressing, conscious of all the ways in which his body is not at all like James’—and conscious, more than anything of the insistency of his desire to lay his body atop James’ anyway, to press inside him, to leave James well-fucked and satisfied.

“I want that too,” James murmurs, and Francis realizes he’s said it aloud. “Come here, Francis.” He’s tilting the bottle now, dripping oil onto his fingers, turning onto his side before rising up onto all fours.

Francis puts his hand on James’ hip. “Let me look at you?”

“I don’t want to get oil on your linens—”

“Damn the linens,” Francis says fiercely. “Let me look into your eyes. Let me learn you.”

James takes a deep breath, turns over onto his back. Tugs Francis’ pillow under his hips with the hand that still holds the open bottle of oil. His other fingers are slick with it, glimmering in the light. They’re long fingers, long fingers on big hands, but there’s a grace and elegance to his movements that’s so entirely James. Francis kneels at the foot of the bed, watches entranced as James reaches between his legs, and, with no hesitation at all, slides two of his oil-slick fingers into his own arse. James’ breath catches a moment—and then his entire body relaxes, his eyes fluttering shut.

(There’s a sense of familiarity to the way James moves, and it takes Francis a moment to realize why it appears so strange to him—but then he sees the truth of it. James is comfortable in his own body, here, and Francis does not remember the last time he has seen him as such.)

“It’s not so different from what you’re used to,” James says softly, watching Francis through half-lidded eyes. “It wouldn’t take so long to prepare, usually, only I’m out of practice, and you’re rather…” His gaze drops between Francis’ legs, and his cheeks colour. “Well, you know how you are. I’m sure some woman or other has told you.”

Francis shrugs, noncommittal.

James raises an eyebrow. “Well, I’ll be sure to tell you of your gifts at length, then,” he says dryly. He withdraws his fingers from between his legs, tips more oil into his hand before setting the bottle aside and gesturing with his cupped hand. “Come here, Francis.”

Francis moves closer, the bed creaking beneath him. He hesitates, and then puts his hands on James’ bent knees. James curls his torso up, slicks Francis’ cock with oil warmed by the heat of his palm. Francis’ breath catches, and he squeezes his eyes shut a moment, tries to focus on something else other than the warmth of James’ hand—the cool air of the room, perhaps, or the linens under his bare calves, the slight scent of wildflowers. When he opens his eyes, it’s to see that James is watching him carefully, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and his hips tilted to allow Francis access.

“Slowly, at first,” James breathes.

“Right, of course,” Francis says. He steadies himself at the base of his cock, watches James’ face as he shifts closer, leans forward. Presses himself inward with his eyes locked on James’ face, because watching the place where his prick goes inside James’ body will be the end of him, far too early. It’s easier this way, to watch the play of emotions across James’ face, to pace himself against the way James is breathing. He moves his left hand from James’ knee, drags his fingers down James’ thigh, curls them loosely around the base of James’ cock, heavy and thickening in his grip. He rubs at the shaft of it, feels nothing on Arctic-ruined fingertips, but his palm has retained sensation, and it’s there that Francis feels the warmth of him as he thickens, hardens underneath Francis’ ministrations.

James is tight, hot, slick with oil. It had looked easy, James’ own fingers sliding in and out of himself, but the clench of him around Francis’ cock is nearly enough for Francis to come undone completely. Francis wants everything, all at once—the slow exquisite slide of his cock inside James’ body, going on forever and never bottoming out—but he also wants a hard, quick fuck, his hips driving James down into the mattress, setting them both to gasping and sweating, a quick fumble off the cliff and then a collapse into each other, but this isn’t about him, this has never been about him, this is about James, James, James—

“Go ahead,” James says, voice hoarse. “You wanted to satisfy me—do your best, I give myself up to your capable hands, I—oh, Francis, that’s very good, that’s—ah!”

“Tell me if it’s too much,” Francis manages, shifting his other hand to brace himself on the mattress. His entire consciousness and awareness have contracted down to James, and only James—the look in his eyes, the way his hands grasp blindly at the sheets, his gasps of pleasure, his hard cock, leaking onto his own hip—and it’s here Francis grasps firmly, stroking James in time with the steady thrust of his hips. James arches against him, welcoming him, and it is the perfect union between ship and sea, it is the path through the ice that he’s sought his entire life, it is the feeling of coming home, of settling down, of reaching a point at which he can be happy, right now, just as he is.

“Just—there, can you—oh, Francis, hell, I—” James throws his head back against the mattress, reaches for Francis’ wrist and grabs on as though it’s a lifeline. He’s flushed, now, all the way down to his chest, and it’s enough to knock the breath from Francis as surely as if he’d—but, no, he doesn’t wish to think of the cold now, not when everything is so warm and James is underneath him like this, nearly incoherent with pleasure.

“It’s good?” Francis manages. “You’re—I’m—?” God, the feel of James like this, his arse a tight sleeve for Francis’ cock, as though they were made to fit together exactly like this, and Francis hadn’t known what to expect when they had begun, but now? Now, he is rapidly gaining familiarity with this portion of James’ anatomy, with the heavy hard thrusts that make James gasp underneath him, with the exact angle which makes James squeeze his wrist and moan with pleasure, and he wants nothing more than to study this for the rest of his life, study every single facet of James’ body, all the places that might bring him pleasure, to devote his entire life to the singular purpose of bringing exactly this expression to James Fitzjames’ face, eyes wide with pleasure, mouth open as he gasps for breath, voice breaking as he says—

“There, exactly like that, exactly like—Francis!”

“James,” Francis growls, and he tightens his grip on James’ cock, angles his hips precisely to that place which brings James the most pleasure.

James’ voice breaks when he reaches his end, his hand gripping Francis’ wrist firm, his voice a rush of words, Francis’ own name repeated over and over and over—and when Francis spills inside James, it’s with the relief of knowing that he does no harm, here. That no matter what happened, the failures in the Arctic and before—they know each other, now. James knows him entirely, his successes and his failures, and sees all of them, and Francis sees James in turn.

“Let me feel your heartbeat,” Francis says, and it’s natural as anything for them to curl up against each other in bed, James’ back against Francis’ chest as they were in the Arctic—only this time, the beat of James’ heart is steady, steady, steady.

Francis presses his lips to James’ shoulder.

When he looks up at James’ face, James’ eyes are closed, and he is smiling.

The pit is fathomless, pitch black, a cold wind blowing up from its depth that smells like corpses and rotting meat. James lies on the ice in a velvet dress too thin to protect his body from the cold, and his skin pulls as he shifts, the ice unwilling to let him go.

“James,” comes the whisper from the pit, and he extends his arm out further, reaching into the hole—it was a lapse in judgement, it was a mistake made, Sir John had trusted the command to him, and there were live sailors in the hole, men that needed to be pulled out before they froze, only James cannot reach them, he can see their cold hands reaching up from the depths, skin blue and gaunt and fingers missing, and if he just reaches a bit further, if he just—

“James,” comes the voice again, only this time it’s behind him, this time it is—

“James,” the voice repeats insistently, and James blinks himself awake to the comforting familiarity of his own room. Francis’ broad body is pressed tight to his back, the cadence of his breath steady and regular.

“Was I dreaming?” he asks blearily.

“Arctic tried to take you,” Francis murmurs into his hair. “It can’t have you back, you belong here.”

“Mmm,” James says, shifting in bed, pressing himself closer up against Francis. “I do.” He feels settled in his body—a slight ache between his legs, the remnants of the nightmare scratching at the inside of his skull, but Francis is here, solid and reliable, and James is safe.

“Back to sleep, now,” Francis says. He nuzzles against the back of James’ neck, and then settles one hand over James’ chest, and the other in his hair, gently stroking the top of his head.

When James next opens his eyes, he’s wearing a velvet dress, and standing in a large ballroom.

“There you are,” Francis says, smiling. He’s dressed in all his finery, hat perched on his head, white gloves covering his hands. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“Here I am,” James says. He sees himself as though through a mirror, and he looks well—his hair long and curled, his dress deftly tailored to his height and the width of his shoulders, fine silk slippers on his feet. “Are we to dance, then?”

Francis extends his hand, and James takes it, lets himself be pulled onto the dance floor. He doesn’t recognize their location, nor any of the faceless people twirling about them, but it doesn’t matter.

This is one of the good dreams.

He is in Francis’ arms at last, and here he’ll stay, both sleeping and awake.