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Mr. Norrell was in love.
He did not, of course, quite understand this. All that he knew was that these last few weeks had been a whirlwind of delight unparalleled by anything he had ever experienced, except perhaps the first time he had ever successfully done magic. And yet as glorious a moment as that had been, he had been utterly alone in the experience of it, with no one to share it with – he had not even had Childermass in his service yet.
The arrival of Jonathan Strange into his life was by its very nature a disavowal of his loneliness. He was not the only magician – and to see Mr. Strange weave magic in his wonderful, unique, elegant way was such a singularly spectacular experience that when he thought of it later, when Mr. Strange had, regrettably, returned to his own home, it often brought a flush to his face and set his pulse to racing.
Somewhat to his embarrassment, Mr. Norrell found that it was not only Mr. Strange’s magic to which his thoughts endlessly wandered. He often found himself pondering the details of the other magician’s countenance: the way his brow arched just so, the width of his smile, which seemed almost out of proportion with his face, the twinkle of his eye; and how all those features worked in concert to display, vividly, a dizzying array of emotions. Wonder, surprise, thoughtfulness, flippancy, boredom – and a vast number which Mr. Norrell found he could not even categorize. He found it difficult as it was to understand other’s emotions, and Mr. Strange seemed to feel everything so keenly.
He also often caught himself picturing the way Mr. Strange moved. It seemed as though there were constantly a great store of energy within him gradually unspooling in fits and starts. He was prone to jerky, uncoordinated bursts of movement; he was still for a period of time, and then all at once seemed incapable of ceasing motion. It was as if his skin were not quite big enough for his soul.
These observations, along with a countless other little details of which Mr. Norrell was unaware he had made note until they reared up within his imagination later (Mr. Strange’s particular scent, the inquisitive tone his voice struck as he began to ask a question, how he often drummed his fingers when he was reading a particularly complicated passage), began, after a little time had passed, to somewhat trouble Mr. Norrell. He had never held such a fascination for another person before; except perhaps for the Raven King, in his youth, but the Raven King was hardly a person, after all. He could not get enough of Mr. Strange’s company, and in general even a little company of anyone but Childermass was far too much for Mr. Norrell’s comfort. Childermass’s company was only desirable to him because he barely made himself noticeable most of the time. Mr. Strange was eminently noticeable. He was like a signal flare in the darkness.
When said darkness was all around, and Mr. Norrell was tucked into bed, awaiting sleep, thoughts of Mr. Strange seemed to crowd in on him even more thickly. He thought of how the sensation of Mr. Strange’s magic filled him with a sort of tingling anticipation and excitement. The way he often ran his fingers through his hair and stretched his long limbs after performing a spell. Even, most peculiarly, the way he blew out a candle, with so much intention, his lips pursed and his eyes closed so that the dark eyelashes fell across his cheeks; how his breath might tickle against one’s hand if one were holding the candle out, as he himself had been doing just that day …
Mr. Norrell gave a little gasp, for he suddenly realized that his train of thought had produced an extremely unexpected – and undignified – physical result. For a moment he lay completely and utterly motionless, caught somewhere in the spectrum between shock and mortification. It was not that Mr. Norrell did not occasionally suffer these urges – they came to him rather less frequently than they had when he was a youth, but they came nonetheless – it was that generally speaking, they did not come when he was thinking of magicians of his acquaintance, or indeed anyone of his acquaintance. Mr. Norrell’s bouts of restlessness (as he vaguely thought of them) did not usually have any person strictly associated with them. They were like a sneeze or a sudden muscle cramp: a physical inconvenience that had no meaning whatsoever, but which simply must be dealt with expediently. (This was perhaps not entirely true. As a very young man, Mr. Norrell’s fevered wonderings had, with alarming frequency, strayed to John Uskglass. But as Uskglass was essentially a figure of legend whom – to Mr. Norrell’s deep regret at the time – he was unlikely to ever meet, it did not feel much like imagining a person, so much as imagining a vague, amorphous blur of shadow and magic and wicked intent.)
Now he found himself in quite an uncomfortable position, in more ways than one. Mr. Norrell closed his eyes tightly. He was deeply embarrassed by his ungentlemanly behavior, for he was quite certain that this was not in the least all right. Yet he found he could not stop himself from sliding his shaking hands down the length of his own body, which was covered, of course, by a sturdy linen nightshirt. However, the bed and the covers had conspired together to ruck the hem of the nightshirt up rather higher than it would have been had Mr. Norrell been upright, and so it was not very long before his fingers brushed against his bare thighs. A shudder passed through him. It had been some time. Eyes still closed, he smoothed his hands along the tops of his thighs, then slowly trailed them in between, spreading his legs a bit under the covers to make room. He was very warm. He often got overheated when engaging in this behavior, but he always kept the blankets pulled up. Now he found himself idly imagining that if Mr. Strange were here – if it were his hands rubbing circles into the tender skin near the join of leg and hip – he would fling the blankets aside in an instant. He hadn’t realized that he had himself had done just that until he felt the sudden shock of cool air on his legs, and his eyes snapped open. In the short time he’d had them closed, his eyes had lost their adjustment to the darkness, and he felt blind and lost. The room was very quiet except for his own harsh breathing. He kicked plaintively at the blankets now pooled around his feet, torn between hiking them back up or pushing them the rest of way off. After a moment’s struggle, they slid down too far for him to easily reach anyway, and so it was decided.
Meanwhile, one of his hands had drifted up to cup his privates and he hadn’t quite realized when he had done it. It was as though his own hand did not belong to him. The pressure was teasing, slightly comforting, and just a bit exciting, especially when the hand – his hand – began to massage his testicles. His head dropped back and he let his eyes flutter closed again. Bending his knees, he widened the stance of his legs, and let his other hand encircle his member and squeeze, just slightly.
If Mr. Norrell had been thinking very hard, he might have noticed that his actions this evening were somewhat atypical of his usual modus operandi in these affairs. Ordinarily the whole business was conducted with the utmost haste, with Mr. Norrell red-faced and embarrassed of himself. But Mr. Norrell was not thinking very hard, or rather, he was spending most of his mental powers increasingly on thinking of only one thing, and that, of course, was Jonathan Strange.
As his hand began to caress the length of his prick, he wondered to himself how Mr. Strange would handle it. Would he be assured and forthright, or fumbling? Surely not the latter. Mr. Strange was a man of the world – had gone Cambridge – everyone knew what went on there and Oxford more often than not – or so they had always said, and Mr. Norrell had thought it was best that his infirmities and damnable nature had kept him from going to university, except, perhaps, on late nights such as these, when he wished otherwise. But yes, Mr. Strange would certainly have no shyness in these matters. He would grasp it firmly (Mr. Norrell did this now); he would circle the head like this, maybe; he would set a steady pace – just so. Mr. Strange’s other hand would drift lower, meanwhile, sliding down to a place that Mr. Norrell had never quite had the courage to venture, though he had thought of it from time to time. He brushed a knuckle against that secret, shameful place and Mr. Norrell was surprised by a sudden keening sound, and was even more shocked when he realized the sound had come from himself. He paused for a moment, coming back to himself, then with determination, brought his hand up to his mouth and wet his finger as best he could, and then returned it to its former place.
As he went to work, he thought again of Mr. Strange’s magic. It was intoxicating. He found it difficult to keep his composure whenever his new pupil cast a spell. He wanted to laugh joyously, or embrace him, or even dance. It felt warm, like a hot drink on a cold day, or as though one were sliding into a steaming bath. There was something wild to it, something not respectable, which terrified and thrilled him. It made him feel – it made him feel like this.
Everything had gone hazy and indistinct. At some point he had turned over and was propped up on his knees, hot face pressed into the pillow, hands working away wildly, in the most undignified position imaginable (certainly not one he had ever been in before). His hips were jerking wildly, moving in a manner which he could never have learned about in any book or treatise, some primal rhythm his body instinctively seemed to know. …One has a sensation like music playing at the back of one’s head – one simply knows what the next note will be. He became aware of a wretched, almost animal-like sound emanating from his own mouth, and desperately he bit onto the pillow to stifle it. He was so close. He could feel it – and he could feel – oh – Jonathan – Jonathan – and his magic!
He tumbled over the precipice, and the fall was sweeter than any he’d ever experienced before. His mouth came loose from the pillow as his body jerked and contracted, and he could not stop himself (nor indeed did not even conceive of doing so) from letting out a shaky, wild groan. His eyelids fluttered and eventually shut. For a moment he was perfectly still, and then he collapsed, body aching and singing and twitching.
In the thereafter, the heat that had inflamed him rapidly cooled until he was shivering, and likewise the full impact of what had just happened finally settled into him. He opened his eyes and sat up, catching his breath, and was filled with repulsion and embarrassment. He felt filthy – in more ways than one. How could he ever look Mr. Strange in the face again? How could he stand to be in the same room with him when he worked magic? Everything was a mess. He didn’t know how to clean it. He longed to call for Childermass to fix everything, but knew he could not. He would have to be responsible for it himself. For a moment he nearly wished that he did know how to compel a troop of fairies to do the washing, as the ridiculous rumor about his magical feats had once insinuated.
In the end he settled for bunching all of the sheets up and pushing them to one end of the bed, rinsing his body off the best he could with water from the basin, and curling up on the bare mattress with the coverlet draped over him. He closed his eyes tightly and tried to clear his mind, but found he could not, for he kept thinking of Mr. Strange, and how much he dreaded the idea of seeing him the next day … and how much he longed to behold him. And that was indeed the worst of the whole thing – for though Mr. Strange’s presence in his life had caused him such terrible upheaval, he did not think he could ever bear to carry on without him again.
It took some time for him to drift to sleep that night. But when he did, he slept deeply, and when he woke the next morning, he had an unusual certainty that all his dreams had been pleasant, though he could not remember them in any specificity. There was only a vague sense of peace. In the light of morning, furthermore, his predicament did not seem so dire as it had the night before. And so it was with a renewed sense of eagerness that he readied himself for the day, once again anticipating Mr. Strange’s imminent arrival at Hanover-square. He had many plans in store for his pupil. And if at times he might find himself thinking of the shape of Mr. Strange’s lips, or the straight line of his spine through his clothing, or the tingling sensation that prickled along Norrell’s skin when they stood very closely – well, Mr. Strange would never know; no one might.