Chapter Text
The air was hot and heavy, trying to force itself down into James’ lungs in the guise of breath.
He wanted to run, so he did. He turned on his heel in unison with the dancers and swept his way out onto a balcony. (There was always a balcony at a party like this.)
He stood under the stars and gulped. The air was still warm, but fresher; the spring had sunk into it out here. James could taste it in the back of his throat. The wet earth, the tender leaves. No salt on the air, but he ached for it. He burned for cold air that would get stuck in your lungs, eat at you inside out, rip your air from you quick and biting. He gulped again.
This world is too hot.
His fingers scrambled out, caught at the stone railing, and clung. He focused on the slight damp chill of the stone, welcomed it, threw open his doors and pulled the cool in deep. He flung his eyes to the stars and landed on Polaris. Spotted Mirfak after that, and Aldebaran was quick to follow. Procyon and Sirius. The pairs and the followers, linked and swirling, caught in their dance, pinned to the glass orb above James.
He still ached, but the feeling had shifted. He closed his eyes and blotted out the stars. The star snipped forever is quiet. If he kept his eyes closed the dancing had stopped.
He pushed his forehead to the balustrade and breathed only from his mouth.
When he stood back up, he found Alphard and breathed. He didn’t look, but Francis was there beside him. James wondered if he was looking at the same star, or one of the pairs.
The damp lingered on the skin of his fingers, just enough for the temperature difference to register.
“Sort of feels like we just… went in a big circle.”
James glanced at him, flicked his eyes over Francis in twilight. “Not really.”
Words so quiet they hardly shifted the air around them. Francis paused, leaned on the railing and looked out over the gardens, a sea of dark greens and topiaries cresting, catching moonlight in their thick leaves.
“Alright, not really.”
James leaned beside him, cast his eyes out over the flowerbeds. In the light they all looked purple. James wondered how they would look in the sun. A cacophony of clashing colours, all reaching for the same sunlight, greedily drinking down water and shooting their roots deep into shared earth, jostling and jockeying for position. James could almost hear it. The flowers surviving against each other, drinking and sinking and spreading.
“Sometimes I almost miss it.” James didn’t know he was going to say it before he did, but. There it was.
“Is that why you want to go back?”
“I told you why I want to go back, Francis.” A pause, a soft breeze. Too soft, like chiffon blowing across his skin. He longed for the bite of arctic air and hated himself for it. “Sometimes I can’t stand it here. It’s just so…”
“Crowded.” Francis finished for him. There was no judgement in his tone. James leaned into him, drawing a warm line between the two of them, from wrist to elbow to shoulder. He thrummed.
“Yes,” James breathed. “Crowded.”
“And loud. And warm. And full of expectation.” Francis let out a low breath, saying soft as anything, “There’s a simplicity to old snow that I didn’t appreciate before.”
“There’s so much to everything here Francis… The people, the power… the weight. I can’t-- I can’t stay . It doesn’t make sense anymore. “
“I can’t either.”
“What-- make sense of it, Francis?” Something swept up in James, helping him to tease, “Darling, you never could .”
Francis grinned at him, rueful and bright and honest. Conversation was so easy when one was saying what they meant.
“While that is true ; I did mean stay.” The night stopped mid-sway.
“You… Are you going to come with --?”
“No, James. Not that.” He shuddered. “Never that.”
He turned from where he had been facing out. He now was looking in, at James and the heart he had left wide open between them.
“Ah. Yes, I see.”
One of the pitfalls to saying what you meant, it seemed. It echoed in him. ‘Never that’ .
The heart between them stuttered, and Francis must have seen it.
“Not… Not because of you James. Because…” He took a moment to gather up his pieces, affix them into phrase, into words. “Because no matter how that place may feel looking back on it… It wasn’t calmer. It was simple because we had one goal: to survive. And that’s--” Francis looked up at the sky, and James tried to track where he went. There were too many to tell.
Francis’ gaze fell back to earth. This time it was easy to tell where he was fixed. James couldn’t look away.
“I want more than that now.” It was honest. The whole honest conversation was knocking the breath out of James again and again. Like playing sports when he was a kid, over and over it had tackled from him. Over and over he wrestled it back, only to lose it again.
“Oh.”
“And I... I want you there, too. You know that-- don’t you, James?”
“Sometimes I think I was meant to die there.”
“What about where you are meant to live? ”
The answer to that was becoming glaringly, achingly obvious. By Francis’ side. With him. In this ‘more’ he so badly wanted and deserved. Deserving it right beside him.
James still couldn’t say it. Couldn’t let the words come out.
“Where?” He said, hoping the world’s axis wouldn’t tilt if his answer went unsaid, if his meaning had backdoors built into it, secret passageways laced through it.
“The country.” It was light, meaning just as little and just as much as James’ question.
“Will…” Now this. This question could be a nail in James’ coffin. But if he didn’t ask, what was the point of any of this? What was the point of just surviving? “Will Miss Craycroft be amenable to such a move?”
Francis broke into an aching smile. Understanding washed up against their banks, flooded them over.
“I don’t think Miss Craycroft has any say in the matter of where we live.”
James couldn’t help but smile back, lopsided and real. He felt a little like his compass was no longer whirling. In some capacity, Francis wanted him. It was something to be placed on the scales, and it held rather a lot of weight.
“You still know me here, Francis.” James said, reaching to touch the paper under his clothes, drew it out, held it reverently. Francis glanced at the page, just long enough to assure himself he knew what it was. “You still know more of me than any other. No matter where we are.”
“And you me, James. Really and truly.”
Above them, the stars followed their course, drawn along by the pull of the universe, swelling and rolling across the cosmos in predictable patterns. Observed and known enough to navigate sure and true around the overwhelming speck they both called home.
Neither looked up.
***
Inside the ballroom Ann surreptitiously drew the curtains leading to the balcony. She was glad James and Francis had finally sorted themselves out, but thought some privacy was in order. The lovesick expressions on their faces were charming, yes, but would give them away to anyone who glanced over for longer than a second.
Anne swanned over to her husband, pale mint dress sweeping over the floor, and drew him away from the boring clutches of some of the members of the admiralty with a coy smile.
James swept her up in his arms with a smile so wide his eyes shut. Ann huffed a laugh, rubbing a thumb over his pink cheek.
“Darling I was wondering..”
James tilted his head as he twirled her to the violins, arms secure around her waist. “Yes?"
“It’s just… our summer house. Do you really think we need that much space? The London house is plenty big for us, you know… I was wondering how you would feel about selling?”
“The one in Norfolk? Darling, your garden --”
Ann patted his shoulder comfortingly, “I know, dear. But I have some buyers in mind that would enjoy it rather more…” Her she grinned, hopeful and joyful at her husband. “I do think they’d let us visit.”