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“Mother Mary’s Christ-dripping cunt,” Francis says.
The disembodied voice speaks again. “I REPEAT: YOU HAVE BEEN DEEMED SUPERFLUOUS TO THE NARRATIVE AT THE CURRENT TIME.”
“Yes.” Francis is very tired. “You keep saying that.” He’s aware that in all likelihood he’s speaking to himself, and trying to remember if there’s any history of… instability, in their family. Not in the Croziers, he doesn’t think. But one of his Graham aunts had converted abruptly to Catholicism and joined a nunnery. Was that a cover for madness? It doesn’t look like he’ll ever be able to ask, now.
“INTEREST IN THE HICKEY POLYCULE HAS INCREASED TO THE POINT THAT IT IS NOW THE PRIMARY NARRATIVE FOCUS OF THE STORY,” the voice says. Can it be part of Francis’s own mind, if he has no idea what the bloody hell it’s on about?
“Go dtachtfadh an diabhal thú,” he says to it.
“THERE’S NO NEED TO BE RUDE,” says the voice. It sounds faintly injured. “YOU WILL BE PROVIDED WITH SEVERAL TROPES WITH WHICH YOU MAY ATTEMPT TO RECOVER YOUR POSITION: HURT/COMFORT, OF COURSE, OR PERHAPS ‘SICKFIC’ WOULD BE MORE ACCURATE. FORCED PROXIMITY. SHACK IN A SNOWSTORM. ONLY ONE BED—”
“Yes; that’s grand, thanks.” Francis is more interested, at this point, in the environment his mind has conjured up. It appears to be some sort of rustic hunting lodge: one room, dominated by a massive fireplace, with the aforementioned only-one-bed in a corner, and two worn-looking armchairs by the hearth. The windows are glazed, which is fortunate, because snow is indeed swirling around thick and fast outside.
It’s obviously some sort of hallucination, unless he’s died and hell is stranger than he’d ever dreamed—but he puts that thought from his mind: he refuses to be dead. No; he is very much alive, and he’s irritated that this of all things is what he’s hallucinated. Why not Italy? Why not the pensione in Florence where honey-lemon light had woken him each morning, and the fragrance of jasmine had drifted in through the windows each night?
“IF I MAY OFFER A FINAL PIECE OF ADVICE. AUDIENCES WILL TOLERATE A SLOW BURN, BUT IT MUST BE A BURN. YOU CAN’T JUST IGNORE EACH OTHER FOR PAGES ON END AND THINK YOU’LL RECLAIM THE NARRATIVE. SERGEANT TOZER IS AT THE PUMP EVEN AS WE SPEAK, STRIPPING NAKED TO THE WAIST WHILE MESSRS HICKEY AND GIBSON LOOK ON.”
Francis’s head is beginning to ache. Why is the voice blathering on about Tozer? What audiences? And who exactly is he meant to be ignoring? There's no one else here. He frowns and looks around the room again.
“I WILL LEAVE YOU NOW. GOOD LUCK, AND REMEMBER THE TROPES.”
There’s—oh, Christ, there’s someone asleep in the bed.
Who in hell’s name is in the bed?
For a brief, queer moment he thinks: Sophia? and wonders that his heart squeezes with something more like resignation than delight. He pads quietly over to the bed and leans over the form resting there—dark hair splashed over the pillow, face drawn tight even in sleep.
It's Fitzjames.
Francis pulls hastily back. He makes it to one of the armchairs by the fireplace and falls into it, mind racing. Why is Fitzjames here, in Francis’s private hallucination?
He tries to recreate events as best as he can: he had been in Terror’s great cabin, looking sightlessly at a map that told him nothing he didn't already know: namely, that they were doomed, because his last-ditch effort to make Sir John take the Arctic seriously had failed. Because he, Francis, had failed. And then the walls had started to spin and he'd closed his eyes against a sudden feeling of sickness, and when he had opened them he'd found himself in the one-room lodge, and a strange disembodied voice with oddly flat intonation was droning on about “superfluity to the narrative.”
He's positive that Fitzjames wasn't in the bed when he first arrived. He's less sure why his mind has conjured him here now.
He's starting to feel sick again, and his hands are shaking, and at first he thinks it’s nerves, until he realises: it's been several hours, now, since his last drink of whiskey. He staggers to the cupboard he's just noticed to the side of the fireplace and throws it open. Surely dream-whiskey might help, given that he’s in a dream?
There's neatly stacked firewood at the bottom of the cupboard, and supplies of food on shelves above, including a ewer of water. There's no whiskey. No spirits or alcohol of any kind.
Outside the snowstorm is still raging.
The floor rises up to meet Francis, and he collapses into a faint.
He drifts into consciousness to the feeling of a cool, damp cloth being drawn over his forehead. His mother? But no: she's dead. “Mother,” he gasps, to tell her she must leave, she can't be with him, here in the realm of the living.
“Hush,” someone tells him. A deep voice, English; not his mother at all. “Hush now, Francis. I'm here with you. You're all right.”
He spews up bile, chokes on it. Tries to apologise, but can’t get the words out.
His not-mother strokes his hair and soothes him, this time with words in a tongue he almost recognises. It sounds like Spanish, but slurred and sideways. Who are you, he thinks, but sinks back into sleep before he can ask.
His bones feel as if they’re breaking and his skin hurts everywhere it’s touched: even the press of the bedclothes upon him is too much. He cannot bear it, except he must bear it. There is no end and no relief and no respite. The pain follows him even into his sleep.
His not-mother is kind to him, spooning water into his cracked mouth when he surfaces into wakefulness, and singing him quiet, lilting songs.
He is so very cold.
Francis comes back to himself little by little. He is confused, at first, thinking he’s on board Terror, and calls out for Jopson. Jopson has seen him in every sort of state and won’t mind that he’s sour and sticky with sweat, with breath that could fell an ox. As he wakes more fully he realises he is not in his bed-cabin at all, but rather in the one-room lodge. The nightmare house, the dream, the mad landscape he has been trapped in now for far too long. He groans.
The snow is still coming down thickly outside, but he is hot, too hot. He throws off the bedclothes.
James Fitzjames rises up from one of the armchairs by the hearth, shaking off sleep, handsome and golden in the firelight, and Francis remembers: the strange things the voice had said, and finding James asleep in the very bed he now occupies. A hot bolt of shame pierces him at the realisation that it was Fitzjames who nursed him through his… illness, and he looks away. Christ, he had called out for his mother.
“Thank you,” he says, his voice gritty from disuse. “I do not well remember the past few days, but I recollect enough to know that they cannot have been. Pleasant. For you.” There. The unpleasant duty done. Now Fitzjames can mock him, throw Francis’s gritted-out gratitude back in his face, and they will be once more upon their familiar footing of dislike and contempt. He waits, braced, for the attack.
“It was no bother,” Fitzjames says, and he must be lying but he sounds sincere. Francis glances at him, surprised, and quickly looks away again. Fitzjames’s handsome face is tired: he must have been sleeping on one of the chairs, while Francis sweated out his whiskey poison. Christ. Gratitude is a stone in his throat. Fitzjames goes on, mercilessly. “I told you all of my best stories, and you didn’t complain once.”
Is that—a joke? Francis thinks it is. He assays a small smile.
“I sang to you too,” Fitzjames says, “which you would never have countenanced had you been well. Really it is I who must be thanking you, for making such a complaisant audience.” Fitzjames is smiling, and Francis is unmoored. He does not know how to navigate this place: how to talk to a Fitzjames who invites him into his jokes.
Fitzjames comes over and perches on the side of the bed, and smooths a hand unselfconsciously over Francis’s forehead. Of course: Francis has no clear memory of it, but Fitzjames must have touched him as a matter of routine, while he was unwell. It is no great thing, for Fitzjames to rub a thumb over Francis’s temple, sweep the hair back over his head. It doesn’t matter.
“Your fever’s gone,” Fitzjames says quietly. “Would you—and here I must say, now you’re back to yourself, Francis, that you are not to take this as an insult—would you like a bath? It may make you more comfortable.”
Francis closes his eyes and nods. “Thank you,” he says again, helplessly.
The cupboard, which appears to be of a somewhat magical disposition—Francis does not think he would have conjured so whimsical a thing, and yet surely he must have—yields from its depths a battered copper slipper tub, and a kettle to heat over the fire. The ewer of water, fortunately, refills itself, animated by the same strange powers as the cupboard, and Fitzjames heats endless kettles, pouring them into the tub one by one, as patient as any servant.
Francis is ashamed to discover he is too weak to walk from the bed to the hearth by himself, and leans heavily on Fitzjames, aware of the stink of his own body, turning away that his flushed face at least may not be perceived. Fitzjames eases him into one of the armchairs and then stands before him and—
Francis realises that Fitzjames means to help him undress, and presses his eyes shut. He does not think he could remove his own clothes without assistance, and God knows it’s nothing Jopson hasn’t done before, when Francis has been in his cups, but something about the thought of Fitzjames not only seeing Francis without clothes, but stripping them off himself—
Francis cannot think about it. He focuses all his attention on his own body, which though not much beloved is at least familiar to him: the feeling of the grimy nightshirt being drawn over his head. A hand at his shoulder, nudging him to stand. His smallclothes being drawn gently down over his legs, and a hand gripping his hand, steadying him as he steps out of them.
He is completely naked, before God and James Fitzjames, and shivers with an emotion he cannot identify.
Fitzjames helps him step carefully into the bath and he hisses at the heat of it, stinging against his cold feet, kissing feeling back into his toes.
“Oh, is it too hot—shall I add some cool water?”
Francis shakes his head, lowers himself carefully down until he is sitting, his back resting against the high back of the bath. His stomach, in this position, is undeniably paunched, and he loathes himself for wishing it weren’t, for stretching back with his shoulders, and reaching with his toes, that he might look leaner. The water is a blessing around him, warm and gentle. “It’s lovely.” He tilts his head back and sighs. “It’s perfect. Thank you, James.” He smiles at a thought, and shares it with James almost without thinking. “Is there a needle and ink in that cupboard, James? Perhaps it would be easier if you could tattoo ‘Thank you, James’ onto my forehead and save my breath, at the rate I’ve been saying it.”
James kneels beside the tub, an answering smile in the corner of his cheek. “I can check for you, Francis, but though it pains me to say it I cannot think such a tattoo would add to your beauty.” He pauses thoughtfully. “Now, one that said, ‘Dear James, your judgement is impeccable and I was wrong ever to doubt it, and every occasion on which I’ve disagreed with you is a matter of immense regret to me’—that would be very fetching, I fancy.”
“Mm, but rather hard to fit onto my forehead,” Francis points out. They meet each others’ eyes, smiling. Francis looks away first.
James fetches a flannel and a cake of soap (scented with almond, a kindness from the cupboard Francis had not expected). He dips the flannel into the water, lathers it on the soap, and proceeds to gently wash the back of Francis’s neck.
Francis is, of course, perfectly capable of reaching his own neck, even in his current weakened condition, but he finds he cannot ask James to stop. Or rather, he does not want to: the soapy flannel glides over his skin so soothingly it is all he can do to lie limp and savour it. He sighs, and James brings the flannel around to his chest.
He moves it in small circles, thorough, soaping all of Francis’s neck and shoulders, paying particular attention to his collarbones, before moving down. Francis has always been sensitive, there—Sophia had thought it very amusing, and liked to bite him, clamping her small teeth onto his nipples and twisting them. James does no such thing, of course, but the motion of the flannel is arousing in its own way. Francis is aware of his nipples hardening, his cock beginning to take an interest. A better man would ask James to stop. Francis bites back a moan, and closes his eyes.
James’s hand stills. “Do you wish me to stop, Francis? You have only to say.”
Francis, keeping his eyes shut, shakes his head. “Do not stop.” His voice sounds rough, to his own ears, and he can hear too the unevenness of his breathing. The room is otherwise very quiet.
The flannel hesitates at the top of his stomach, then glides lower. The sensation on his skin seems heightened, with his eyes closed: James’s knuckles bump against Francis’s hard prick and the brief touch is enough to send a wave of arousal through him.
James says again “Tell me if you wish me to stop, Francis,” his voice uneven. His hand closes around Francis’s cock. The drag of his palm over Francis’s length, the squeeze of his fingers: Francis realises he’s babbling in Gaeilge again, telling James how pretty he is, how good he is, how much Francis loves the feel of him. His crisis is rushing upon him, the pleasure building in sparking waves—
“THIS IS A MARKED IMPROVEMENT,” says the voice. “ALTHOUGH I WOULD ADVISE YOU TO BROADEN YOUR REPERTOIRE BEYOND MANUAL STIMULATION IF YOU WISH TO REMAIN COMPETITIVE. EVEN AS WE SPEAK, MR HICKEY AND SERGEANT TOZER ARE SPIT-ROASTING LIEUTENANT IRVING.”
Francis’s eyes fly open and he jerks back, sending a wave of water sloshing out of the tub. James is staring at him, white-faced. He looks as though he might faint. “Francis—what—I,” he stammers.
Francis nods at him, keeps his face and voice calm, as he might if he were gentling a frightened middie. “It’s all right, James. Let me finish my bath, and I’ll explain.”
He finishes washing himself, briskly; wraps himself in the dressing gown James had laid out on one of the armchairs; finds tooth powder and a brush in the cupboard and makes his mouth fresh again. He takes what looks to be a freshly-baked bread roll and tears into that, too, suddenly famished.
James is sitting in the other armchair, staring straight ahead, still pale around the mouth. He shakes his head impatiently when Francis offers him some bread. “I thought I was dreaming, Francis. But I know—I would not have dreamt that voice, which means I am awake, and so I must be mad. Or are we in hell?” He looks desperately at Francis. “Where are we, Francis? And what the devil did the voice mean about Irving being spit-roasted? Is the man being eaten? What is happening, Francis, I do not understand and I—” His voice is rising in panic and Francis steps towards him, pulls him up and wraps his arms around him, keeps one locked around James’s waist and with the other strokes a gentle hand up and down his back. He wouldn’t do this for a middie. Wouldn’t have done it for James, before this strange interlude.
“It’s all right, James,” he whispers. “Easy. Easy, now.” Eventually James’s breathing calms and Francis draws him over to the bed, settles them down on the mattress with James’s head tucked into Francis’s shoulder. He tells James of his own experience arriving in the hunting lodge, and the voice’s strange instructions. “At first I thought perhaps I was mad,” he says, “but I feel as sane as any man; and I believe you are too, James.”
James is resting a hand on Francis’s chest, on the bare skin between the lapels of his dressing gown. “Have you read Descartes?” he asks, his voice dreamy.
Francis rolls his eyes. “No,” he says, “but I thought Deshorse made some excellent arguments in his latest treatise.”
James reaches up and flicks his ear. “That was abominable,” he says severely. “To the point, Francis: Descartes considers what a man may know, may really know, relying not upon the evidence of his senses, which may be mistaken. After all, he may be dreaming, or an evil demon may be enchanting him. But regardless, the very fact that the man thinks shows that he can know one thing for certain: that he himself exists. Cogito, ergo sum.”
“Mm,” Francis says. “So I exist, then, but what about you, James?”
James huffs out an amused breath. “I am choosing to take it on faith that you are real, Francis.”
They fall asleep together, breathing in time, James’s breath warm against Francis’s neck.
They are woken by the voice, early the next morning: the sun is just beginning to slide through the windows, and birds somewhere near are singing. It’s not snowing anymore.
“THIS IS MOST DISAPPOINTING,” the voice says. “YOU SHARED A BED FOR AN ENTIRE NIGHT WITH NO SEXUAL ACTIVITY? IT’S LIKE YOU’RE NOT EVEN TRYING.”
Francis makes eye contact with James, and looks deliberately towards the cabin door. James nods. They slide out of bed, make their ablutions, get dressed: the voice berates them the whole time. Francis finds a rucksack in the cupboard and fills it with food; James decants the ewer into a flask.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING? YOU CAN’T LEAVE THE SHACK. WITHOUT ARTIFICIAL CONSTRAINTS HOW IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP MEANT TO DEVELOP? THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS. STOP. STOP!—”
Francis and James ignore it. Together, they walk to the door of the cabin and step out into the unknown.