jams & fran have several unfortunate meetings on the admiralty steps. jams is affronted & sleepless; fran won't stop looking at him with his EYES. damn them. probably an au.
(very sorry this took me so long! I’ve had….como se dice…some writer’s block, but I hope this satisfies regardless. it’s a bit lengthy, if that’s any recompense!)
James took the steps coming down fromWhitehall two at a time. He kept his eyes on his feet, wary that he should stumble at this pace; having not slept the previous night, nor the one before that. It was good that he kept vigilant. As it was, the unexpected sight of Francis Crozier ascending from the opposite direction nearly threw him off his balance entirely.
“James,” Francis called. A loose smile breaking over his face, Francis crabbed diagonally towards him up the steps, the buttons on his coat glinting in the sun. Curious. They’d never done that before.
It really had been quite some time since James last slept.
“Captain,” James said, too tired to be entirely warm. He didn’t trust himself to call him by his name. “A remarkable coincidence.”
How long had it been since last they’d clapped eyes on one another, let alone truly spoken? Some hectic meetings in the very halls he’d just left. The courts martial. A combined debrief before Barrow himself; full of half-truths and shared glances, but not any real rapport such as they’d had privilege to share on the Ice.
Who was James, after all, to prevail upon a closeness which had sprung up in a setting so alien from the one in which they now found themselves? Even he was not so vain as to presume that Francis Crozier cared to while away his hours listening to James’s complaints of false teeth which ached his jaw, or hair greying before its time, or sleep lost to dark, obsessive thoughts.
“What brings you here?” Francis asked.
He swayed on his feet. “Could we discuss it another day?” he asked. It was curt and sour, like a lemon.
Even when Francis was being gracious, James had always found that he had a detestable way of making one feel somehow guilty for being the recipient of his good will. It was something in Francis’s eyes. In the way they gleamed, sharply, from such a soft and unassuming face. James didn’t have it in him to contend with that look. Who knew what kind of indiscreet things he might admit to, given his current state of mind, under its scrutiny.
Exactly as James had known he would, Francis stepped back. “Certainly,” he allowed.
With that nicety settled, James doffed his hat. “Good day to you.”
There was always a small crowd of Naval men to be found milling upon the Admiralty’s doorstep, and when James was called back the next day to finish settling his business, he found himself scanning their silhouettes out of habit. Not, he maintained, looking for anyone in particular; for he was already late and could not afford to stop for idle gossip. But there was one whose buildwas inescapably familiar.
Francis’s pace as he approached was that of a man who was determined not to be put off. “I had hoped—”
“Haven’t the time,” James said, and cursed himself for it. “Sorry, Francis; I really haven’t, I’m late to see George. Another time. Excuse me.”
At the top of the steps, with a servant’s arm awkwardly outstretched to hold open the heavy door that James had halted before, he turned around, drawn to watch Francis depart as a criminal might watch the building of a gallows. Francis’s shoulders fell, slightly. So did James’s heart.
When Francis pulled his hands behind his back and nodded to a passerby’s hail, as though nothing were the matter, James thought himself more of a coward than he’d ever been before in his entire life.
The next time, Francis laid a more cunning trap.
James had just hailed a cab when Francis seemed to detach himself from a nearby column, a deep set to his brow. “Where are you headed?” he demanded. Without waiting for an answer, Francis called an address of his own up to the driver.
Affront and indecision warred within James. He followed Francis into the cab anyway.
Francis pulled the curtains open and sat forward, hands clasped between his knees, unrelenting in his regard. James knew that broad sunlight did not reflect his visage very well these days. He was suddenly aware of his lank hair; the dark circles which greeted him beneath his eyes in the shaving glass that morning. The sunken pallor in his cheeks. He did his best not to cringe backward into the cushion. It was only Francis, after all.
Lowly, Francis said, “I know you suffer, James. To what extent and by what cause, I know not; but I wish, dearly, that you would tell me.”
“I do not presume—” James abruptly stopped.
Francis Crozier was gazing at him, patient as a saint, with a look of utmost concern.
Damn the man for it; for the understanding and care which emanated from the tilt of his head and the quirk of his lip and every angle of his body besides. It drew James’s reticence from him like a sponge. “I am no longer under your command,” James minced, “and as such, I am conscious that my concerns are no longer your responsibility.”
Something flickered in Francis Crozier’s blue eyes. A sadness that he hid too late. It would have made James’s knees weak, were he not seated.
“That particular bond may no longer be,” Francis said, “but James, I had thought—” he shifted. “I suppose I, too, presumed,” he said, voice gone down to a murmur. “I will intrude no further in your personal affairs, if that is what you wish,” he said.
It was not what James wished.
“Would you truly care to know?”
James gathered up the fears in his breast, shoved them firmly away, and told him.
