Chapter Text
he’d never been so far north before.
it hadn’t struck him, really, until they first started seeing bergs floating on the horizon, like some monoliths of old. it had thrilled him, at first, a strange new sight on a much-anticipated adventure; the white was dazzling, the cold, pale sunlight catching on the ice and half-frozen sea, and he’d thought, maybe this is what heaven looks like.
and then, it had hurt.
“i didn’t know,” collins insisted, even as goodsir carefully tied the strip of linen at the back of his head, covering his eyes. they stung, even closed and covered, like a burn. he said as much.
“well, that is essentially what it is, mister collins,” goodsir responded gently, fussing with the knot for a moment before his hands dropped away. collins couldn’t see a thing, but he heard goodsir close by, the rustling of his clothes as he moved and the steady, even tempo of his breathing in the quiet sick bay. “like when you skin burns from spending too long in the sun, except in this case instead of your skin, it was your eyes.”
“wasn’t even looking at the sun,” collins says, quiet because it felt as if the hushed atmosphere necessitated it, his fingers curled over the edge of the seat of the chair he was settled in. he worries at a stray splinter with his fingernail. “even i know that much.”
“it must have been the ice, then,” goodsir says, unperturbed by collins’s morose tone. “did you spend overlong looking at the ice? it works in the same was as light reflecting off of water, except more concentrated; i’ve read that light is caught by crystallized structures in ice and snow and reflected back almost--”
“doctor goodsir,” collins interrupts.
“i’m not a doctor, mister collins, you know that,” goodsir says to him, but he sounds a bit embarrassed, a bit put out at having his tangent interrupted. still, once of his hands comes to rest against collins’s back, against his shoulder blade, the other cupping his elbow as he helps the diver stand. “do you need help back to you bunk? i can’t imagine navigating without sight is an easy task.”
gently, collins shakes him off. “i’ll be just fine, doctor. i’ll get one of the lads to help.”
if he tried hard enough, collins was sure that he could imagine what goodsir looked like in that moment: frowning gently, his displeasure offset with concer, because that’s the type of man that he was: just so earnestly good that collins ached with it, sometimes.
“i’ll help you,” goodsir says, and it’s not a question this time. his hands are back, one cupping collins’s elbow and the other pressed lightly to the small of his back; his fingers curl into collins’s jumper, just slightly.
collins smiles, a tiny quirk of his mouth before it’s gone again. “thank you, doctor.”
“i’m no doctor, mister collins. i really do with you would call me harry.”
“then thank you, harry.”