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Tintin’s idea of a holiday tends to be somewhere more rural than Amsterdam. Somewhere in the mountains, perhaps, or by the coast. Usually the latter is more agreeable to the Captain, but it is his idea this time to take a city break. Tintin is almost completely healed from a gunshot wound to his calf, but is still under the doctor’s advice to take it easy and not overexert himself. It was altogether a minor wound, and Tintin has had worse, but the doctor and the Captain are most insistent.
He has been recuperating in Moulinsart, icing his leg and trying to keep it elevated. He weathers it well enough, indulging the Captain’s fussing, the regular inspections of his stitches and changing of his bandages. The whole thing reminds Tintin of nothing so much as of when he was sick as a boy. Hit by a van, he had had to relearn how to walk after months in a hospital bed and a trip to Lourdes in the hope of a miracle cure.
Waiting for his stitches to be removed, the Captain piles Tintin into his old wheelchair, which they thankfully kept.
‘One of us will need it again, one of these days, you mark my words,’ said the Captain darkly. ‘If we’re very lucky it will just be another sprained ankle, but who knows with your hair-brained adventures.’
‘If you think so, Captain,’ Tintin had laughed.
He is grateful for the Captain’s foresight now, as they go for strolls in the grounds with its flower beds and neatly manicured lawns, and in the woodland surrounding the estate.
When they come back from walks, Milou is often covered in mud. Tintin used to relish the task of cleaning him up again. A simple, repetitive task. Something to busy his body and quiet his mind. Something that speaks directly to the reassuring constant of Milou’s energy, his curiosity. There are few things that Tintin cherishes more at the moment than the steady beat of Milou’s paws out in the fresh air, watching him run and jump and play. He cannot be the one to clean him up now, cannot risk his stitches. So he watches on, trying to keep his amusement to himself as he listens to the Captain grumble and curse as Milou fusses and struggles. Even once clean, Milou’s white fur remains grey until it dries, stretched out on the rug at Tintin’s feet, or curled up with the cat by the hearth.
They take to spending each day in a different room of the house, in between walks around the grounds. They read in the saloon, play chess in the study, re-explore the cellar where once they found treasure. The château is big enough to hold back the feeling of confinement for a while. Tintin thinks of his little flat on Labrador Road, with its close neighbours and busy traffic. He wonders who lives there now, how his old landlady is doing.
Home has always been an intangible thing to him. The flat was a place to stop, a place to keep his books and whatever clothes he didn’t take with him on his travels. An address to have. He has always found it hard to be in one place for too long, feels restlessness itch under his skin. Being stuck in a mile radius for days on end gnaws at him, but he pushes it firmly to the back of his mind.
In the attic, Tintin finds some boxes of forgotten memorabilia, untouched since his move. Old books, newspapers, clothes in need of repair. His childhood rosary, worn wood painted black and peeling.
***
When the stitches are finally removed, Nestor books them rooms in the Grand Hotel and they fly the next morning into Schiphol airport. Milou is fidgety as always on his lead, and once on the plane chooses the Captain’s lap over Tintin’s in protest.
Any residual annoyance Tintin feels slips away as he watches the Captain soothing Milou with his rough hands and gentle words.
‘There now, mon petit, it’s for your own good you know.’
It reminds him of the Captain’s bedside manner when he had refused to let Tintin walk up the staircase alone. Nestor would wrangled the wheelchair up the stairs, as the Captain pulled one of Tintin’s arms over his shoulder, his own arm around Tintin’s waste to help him hobble up the stairs to the first floor without putting too much weight down on his left leg.
‘I could probably manage by myself,’ Tintin had said the first time, pulled flush to the Captain’s side, more because he felt he ought to object rather than because he did.
‘Be grateful I’m not carrying you up there like a newlywed.’
Tintin snorted. ‘Then we would both be incapacitated.’
‘Right, that does it,’ the Captain barked. ‘I’ll show you incapacitated, young whippersnapper!’
He hoisted Tintin up into his arms and carried him the rest of the way over the peels of Tintin’s laughter, Milou’s excited barking and Nestor’s worried protests. He had complained of a bad back later that evening, which he had insisted was unrelated, but otherwise they both managed to come out unscathed.
‘Next time, lift with your knees and not your back,’ Tintin had suggested.
There is something inherent in the Captain’s nature that speaks of gentleness and roughness in equal measure, which sends warmth spreading through Tintin’s chest. With his hands and lap free on a flight for once, he hides his smile behind Baedecker’s Amsterdam.
***
They switch between Tintin’s native French and The Captain’s native English easily in conversation. Though Tintin’s English is not bad by a long stretch, it is nothing compared to the Captain’s easy fluency in French and he wants to take every opportunity to improve. Here in Amsterdam, and indeed in many counties, English is far more useful.
‘Goedemiddag, mijne heren. Welkom to the Grand Hotel,’ says the clerk as they check-in. ‘You have two adjoining rooms on the second floor. A bellboy can take you up.’
‘Bedankt. No, thank you, we’ll manage,’ says Tintin, looking around the sweeping lobby with its classical dark wood features and highly polished floor. He glimpses the dining room with its red silk walls and matching table cloths, napkins folded into delicate origami-like shapes and startling white by contrast. It’s a far cry from the relatively simple places he used to stay when he travelled by himself.
The rooms themselves are equally impressive, with more imposing flocked wallpaper and the same kind of dark wood making up the four poster bed frames. One of the rooms is larger with an ensuite, the other a shade smaller but complete with mini bar.
‘You must have the en suite, lad. You wake up the earlier of the two of us, it’ll be less bother to share the bathroom that way.’
‘Very generous, Captain, thank you,’ says Tintin. He knows, with wry amusement, that the siren call of the mini bar has already ensnared the Captain, just as he knows that not a franc of his own money will be accepted in repayment for this trip. He has finally given up on trying to settle his debts with the Captain. He’s heard the gruff words ‘what’s mine is yours’ too many times to count, knows the Captain feels indebted to him for his fortune and his estate. If Tintin does not feel worthy of the generosity, it’s something he’s having to make his peace with.
***
In the absence of wilder scenery, they go for walks around the city. Amsterdam has always reminded him of something like a film set. Everything has an almost quaintness about it, with less of the scale and grandeur of cities such as Paris or Rome, or the spacious urban sprawl of Berlin. The houses lean just so against each other, crooked in a way that Tintin knows is authentic but looks almost like a facade you could push over in a Buster Keaton film. Perhaps some of this designed quality comes from the geometric layout of the canals that the city runs along, which from the air had the look of a labyrinth.
When they find a cafe to stop in for lunch, even the photographs on the walls of the canals frozen over in winter and turned into a makeshift ice rink have a surreal, dreamlike quality of too good to be true. Leaning on the railings of one such canal, the sun blares down on their shoulders, and Tintin wishes for a moment that they’d come in winter. He’s not sure his leg is up for that kind of strain, though, and they can always return later in the year. He thinks back to earlier that morning when they went down for breakfast in the hotel, and the Captain had cursed up a storm after slipping on the marble floor. He smiles - perhaps ice skating is not such a good idea after all.
***
That first morning everything has the dreamy stillness of an unseasonably warm spring, of a gentle holiday long earned. Unable to take him into the Rijksmuseum, Tintin leaves Milou with the Captain, who is more interested in the hotel bar for the afternoon than a lengthy trip around a museum.
‘In fact, he only died undiscovered because he died so young. He was on the verge of great artistic fame when it happened. His earlier work was disregarded, frankly, because it was bad. It was rotten luck that he deteriorated mentally as his work blossomed. He was well connected, his brother was an art critic. It was only a matter of time, let me tell you. But perhaps his tragic reputation has-’
Tintin listens in with interest to the couple next to him as he meanders slowly around the long gallery. He’s only had a few hours in the museum, which is incredibly large and he thinks he’ll have to come back again on another day. He’s barely scratched the surface of the various art galleries. But perhaps it’s for the best. The first thing he saw was a collection of model ships and antique weaponry, which he thinks will interest the Captain after all.
He wanders back to the hotel, the westering sun turning the streets around him to gold. The heat of the day is fading earlier this evening, and with it comes the welcome arrival of a fresh breeze. A sea change, he thinks the Captain might call it.
***
When he arrives back at the hotel, he can tell from across the room that the Captain is already deep into his cups. It looks as though he has arrived late enough to have missed the Captain’s initial amicable tipsiness, and the dangerous brash drunkenness that follows. From what Tintin can make out from his slumped posture, he seems already to have slipped into the maudlin that sometimes comes over him a few too many drinks in. More unusual is the fact that he seems to be in conversation with a blonde woman who is perched on the barstool next to him. A strange and indescribable feelings washes over Tintin as he watches her lay a consoling hand on his shoulder.
The rest of the lobby is largely empty, save for a couple of patrons here and there. Regardless, the pair at the bar do not seem to notice Tintin as he approaches.
‘There is a reason I have not returned to our motherland, Capitaine. Not all countries have such medieval laws,’ she says with a clear cut English accent that makes the word capitaine sound weirdly foreign to his ears.
It’s not hard to make out what they are saying and Tintin finds his interest piqued against his will. Ignoring the squirm of guilt, he slows, lingering behind them. ‘Snooping’, as the Captain calls it, is a hard habit to break, but Tintin has found it to have saved his life on more than one occasion.
‘I’m the closest thing to family that boy has. It cannot go on,’ the Captain mutters into his glass.
‘If you are in love, Capitaine, why do you not simply tell your young companion? He might be more understanding than you think.’
Tintin’s breathing stops.
‘Milles sabords- I couldn’t- I could never- impose that on him-’ The Captain stutters to a halt, the blustering so familiar as he loses the wind in his sails. But so alien now that Tintin is overhearing it, locked out.
The Captain? In love? And unable to talk to him about it? Perhaps he wants Tintin to move out of Moulinsart, and that is why he is struggling. How long has Tintin been imposing upon his hospitality?
The château is the first true home he has ever known and the thought of leaving it, of giving up his place to another, is like swallowing ice, the numbing chill travelling down his throat and pooling in his stomach.
‘To ostracise him like that-‘
At that moment, Milou, who is curled on the floor beneath the Captain’s stool, raises his head and sniffs the air. He spots Tintin immediately, lets out a happy bark and bounds over the short distance to jump and dance around his legs.
When the Captain turns to look, the woman’s hand slides off his shoulder and his face turns ashen. Tintin is near enough now to see the deep red neatness of her nail varnish.
‘Tintin- I- How long-‘
Tintin hoists a smile that he does not feel.
‘The museum closed so I came back to join you. It’s later than you think, Capitaine.’
The Captain glances at his watch.
‘Yes, I- I see that.’
Tintin can see thoughts storming around his head, his expressive face as readable as ever as he tries to deduce how much Tintin heard.
‘Are you going to introduce me to your friend?’ he asks brightly, determined to be less transparent. He thinks he is succeeding, does not think it is obvious that it feels like the world is falling away from beneath his feet. He has never had such acute sympathy for the Professor’s vertigo before now.
‘I- of course. This is-‘
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Monsieur Tintin, but I’m afraid our acquaintance must be short-lived. My companion is waiting, I’m afraid,’ she gestures over her shoulder. Another women, dark haired, wearing slacks and a boxy jacket, descends the stairs with a couple of suitcases in hand. ‘It has been good to talk to you, Captain.’
She offers them both a charming, perfectly painted red smile, before turning to join her companion. Tintin watches her leave, watches her slip her arm through the other woman’s as they make their way towards the door.
***
Tintin lies awake. That evening, after some awkwardness on his part and some determined normalcy on Tintin’s, the Captain seemed to decide that Tintin had not overheard anything important. The Captain had not been quite so drunk as Tintin first thought, and they spent sometime playing chess with the little portable pieces that Tintin tends to pack when he is going away somewhere for pleasure. Both of them were distracted, however, and the game was short-lived.
He tries to figure out who could be the object of the Captain’s affections. Is it some society woman, someone who might attend the same functions the Captain reluctantly goes along to? He has never mentioned anyone to Tintin. Certainly not more than once or with any kind of special inclination. He does not often invite anyone in particular over to the house, though sometimes parties or events are hosted there. Tintin has always assumed that generally the Captain prefers it when it is more or less just the two of them. Even the Professor, whom the Captain values more highly than he usually lets on, drifts in and out. From convention to conference to laboratory, he lives in his own little world. Keeping himself to himself, whilst Tintin and the Captain travel and explore and save each other’s lives in-between bouts of peaceful domesticity that Tintin now realises he has come to value just as much as the adventures.
Perhaps he should have seen this coming. The Captain is, he supposes, a very eligible bachelor. He is kind and strong and brave. And aren’t most men in want of a wife? Only the Captain has never made the slightest suggestion of it.
It feels almost alien to him. It is natural, he reassures himself, this roiling feeling that has taken residence inside him. As the Captain had said, he is the closest thing that Tintin has to family.
In the morning he wakes from a troubled night. Strange dreams plagued him, though he is only left now with vague images and sensations. He remembers being tied to a chair in the château’s kitchen by skilled hands and heat prickling under his skin. He keeps his mind carefully blank and, skipping his usual morning exercises, gets straight into a cold shower.
***
Tintin finds his thoughts draw to the little church on the outskirts of the village, back home in Moulinsart. When they are there between adventures, Tintin likes to venture out on his motorbike with Milou on the back in his basket. The world is quiet in the green countryside, tucked away from any major city and without much traffic on the road. When the magnolia tree in the graveyard is in bloom, the fallen petals carpet the ground in pink. On week days the church itself usually stands empty. He takes a pew, and doesn’t stop Milou when he jumps up beside him. Old memories live on in this place, memories from his boyhood long ago and far away. All churches feel connected in a way, all consecrated ground the same underfoot.
He reads about the schuilkerk, the hidden church, in a leaflet he picks up idly at the hotel reception. Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder. Our Lord in the Attic.
From the outside it looks like any of the other townhouses facing the canal in the old city. He enters and makes his way through the preserved lower floors, the kitchens, bedrooms, and hallways of centuries long past. A secret door in the living room takes him up the steep and narrow spiralling stairs, which opens out to reveal the clandestine chapel in all its miniature glory. All the usual trappings of beauty and worship are here; there is an altar of gilt and marble, pink finishings, ornate paintings. Usually, the scale and grandeur of churches threaten to dwarf Tintin entirely. Here, he feels strangely outsized.
Visiting the Lord in the attic feels a little like visiting a grave. Or, he supposes, like visiting a distant relative. There is a sense of awkwardness, obligation, and a muted grief that does not overwhelm but neither can he quite shake off.
He thinks about abstinence and the sins of the flesh. In the little church at Moulinsart, he sometimes sits in the empty confessional. Here, he just stands before the alter and watches the candles flicker. He has never been able to consciously lie to himself or ignore clues that he knows are there. He hasn’t confessed to a priest since he was a boy, but silently now he confesses to himself.
He still knows the prayers but there is no one now to absolve him.
Stepping out into the sunlight, he spots the Captain smoking his pipe and sitting with Milou at a table outside a little cafe on the other side of the water. Despite everything, he smiles as he heads across the bridge to join them.
***
That night after the Captain retires to the adjoining room Tintin lies awake once more, feeling seasick as though the hotel room rocks and sways around him. Tintin’s sea legs aren’t bad, but he has never had the Captain’s natural ease aboard a turbulent ship. He sits up, hoping to ease the queasiness of his stomach.
Feeling a little relieved, he gets himself a glass of water from the en suite and walks over to the window, hoping some fresh air will help him further. Milou stays curled up on the end of the bed, though he is not asleep he merely watches as Tintin leans onto the window ledge and appreciates the air on his flushed skin. The night is pleasantly cool, and beautifully clear.
The moon is near full and seems particularly large tonight, particularly bright. The perfect counterweight to its dark hidden side, which has only ever been seen by himself and the eyes of four other who remain alive to tell the tale. He finds it makes him feel strangely homesick. It’s not a sensation he’s particularly familiar with. Perhaps he is anticipating the conversation he must have with the Captain that seems to inevitably lead to his expulsion from Moulinsart, or perhaps he just misses the clarity he had then. His younger self who sent radio transmissions from the surface of the moon, who corrected the rocket’s flightpath and always knew, somehow, what he was doing.
He knows he must be the one to approach the subject. But French or English it matters not, all words stick in Tintin’s throat.
***
Tintin had thought himself not particularly interested in sex. Free from temptation, he never looked at girls the way other boys do. Sometimes he has been known to wake up in the night with a familiar hardness between his legs, though if he ever has dreams he rarely remembers them. He does not think about anyone when he touches himself. This all starts to fall apart around his ears.
He dreams of their time in the desert outside Morocco. Scorching sand beneath his back, the Captain’s heavy body pinning him down, hands big and strong around his neck slowly cutting off his air supply. He jerks awake, hot all over as though the sand still burns into him, still feels pinned in place by that phantom weight. He groans into the pillow, further frustrated and embarrassed when he realises that it is morning and the en suite is occupied.
The Captain emerges from the steaming bathroom in his vest and underwear. His face is ruddy from the heat of his shower, and Tintin finds himself staring. The hair on his arms and his chest. The muscle of his arms, his shoulders. He already has on his socks and garters and he starts to pull on his trousers and suspenders, covering his calves, his thighs.
‘Morning, landlubber. Thought you were still asleep. Having a lie in, are you?’
Looking at the Captain has always made Tintin feel like a boy, slender and covered in no more than a dusting of light hair. Heat slips once again into his stomach, and panic into his mind. Tintin can only keep staring. His legs are tingling and words will not come. Perhaps this, finally, is what madness feels like.
The Captain merely chuckles at Tintin’s lack of response. He is in good spirits this morning, the wind back in his sails.
’All yours,’ he says, when Tintin makes no response.
‘Oh, yes,’ says Tintin, finally sitting up in bed and quickly turning away to grab his toiletry bag. ‘Yes, of course. Sorry about that, in a world of my own.’
The steam submerges him as he enters. They’ve shared smaller spaces, of course, tents and prison cells and slept huddled together for warmth in frigid mountain air, but this feels closer somehow. More intimate. He takes another cold shower.
***
Sleep is something Tintin can rely on himself for. Disturbed nights were few and far between, even in tents or different time zones, but now he tosses and turns. Drifts off and starts awake again. His eyes itch throughout the day and he feels off his food, picking at the plates put before him. Indecision grates on him. He is not one for wavering, but his usual certainty seems to have deserted him. It will not last long, he knows. His nature will not allow for it.
Still, he finds himself jumpy, tensing up every time the Captain puts a hand, warm and large, on his arm or back. Every time their legs brush on the tram. Have they always been so prone to touching? Always sat so close? Almost definitely, but somehow he has not noticed it, not felt it before now. His lingering discomfort contorts painfully every time the Captain smiles at him, a terrible double edged knife of reflexive happiness and then remembering. He finds himself feeling claustrophobic inside his own body, contemplating the meaning of separation between two people. He feels anchored in the moments when they touch, though he knows it is a false comfort. One about to be taken away from him.
‘Are you alright there, boy? You’ve been on edge all day. Is it your leg paining you?’
‘I’m fine,’ Tintin says, forcing a smile.
He wanders around that day in a daze. They alight at the city’s largest park, where Milou chases squirrels with his usual enthusiasm and gets them into trouble with a local family who are trying to enjoy an uninterrupted picnic. The situation nearly devolves into a shouting match between the Captain and the father of a small boy who is terrified of dogs, before Tintin manages to intercede. Trying desperately to act as though nothing is wrong, as though he does not carry any forbidden knowledge around like a weight in his chest, he takes the Captain’s arm.
‘Come along, Captain. It’s not worth the effort,’ he soothes as they make their way back towards the road. ‘Let’s find a spot for lunch.’
***
The afternoon passes by in the same slightly surreal fashion. They visit the Bloemenmarkt, boarding the floating stalls and seeking out rare and unusual specimens. Tintin is delighted by the bonsai trees, which remind of time in the East, and the Captain picks out some Queen of the Night tulip seeds.
‘Nestor can add these to the flower beds, won’t they look delightful next to the white roses? Or we could bring back a selection and we could have an entire Dutch bed.’
Tintin tries not to dwell on the Captain’s use of the word ‘we’ and the casual presumption of their shared ownership. He throws himself into the hunt for tulips in all different colours and shades, grateful for any distraction.
The walk back to the hotel is not long, but Tintin finds himself reluctant to return. He cannot face the hotel bar again, which feels too much like returning to a crime scene, or another night of disturbed rest. Not yet.
Walking past one of the little pubs that are so numerous in the city, Tintin pulls the Captain inside. Unsurprisingly, he’s met with little resistance. The wooden interior is decorated with Heineken beer matts on the wall, and filled with little round wooden tables and chairs. A candle is alight in a red jar on each table beside a wilting flower. Though not one for over-indulging, Tintin has always found the cheerful ambience of a pub tin the early evening to be soothing.
Tinin finds a table in the corner, settling in as the Captain heads to the bar and returns with two brimming pints. Milou curls up between their feet, as good as gold until the next table spills a drink and Tintin has to pull him onto his lap to stop him lapping it up.
‘We all have our vices, eh, Milou?’ the Captain chuckles. ‘Present company excluded, of course,’ he adds, his smile free and easy as he teases.
The evening passes easily, and Tintin finds himself feeling more ease than he has since he overheard that fateful conversation. Maybe, he thinks tentatively, everything will turn out ok. If this gentle camaraderie can still exist between them, despite the churn of his insides. Perhaps he can learn to live with it. He might even be able to rent his old flat out again. Return to travelling and exploring alone. He cannot pretend that it is a happy prospect.
The Captain, perhaps sensing his mood’s downward turn, or perhaps his tongue has simply been loosened by drink, regales him with stories of the sea. Some of them, Tintin has heard before, and some of them he is quite sure have been enhanced in the retelling, but he always enjoys listening to the Captain’s yarns.
After his second pint, he starts to feel a little unsteady. He has not eaten much and the world has taken on that telltale drunken blur around the edges of his vision. More than anything, he feels overwhelmingly tired, the lack of sleep and dozy affects of the beer working together on him. They stroll back along the cobbled streets, stopping occasionally to admire the rippling reflections of lights upon the water. Their shoulders brush as they walk, slightly unsteady, and the Captain sings some meandering shanty under his breath. Tintin does not recognise it, but he thinks perhaps there is a sadness to it.
***
Back at the hotel the Captain chuckles from the doorway, watching on as Tintin sits on the bed and struggles with his shoes in the encroaching gloom.
‘What happened to my model Boy Scout? Can’t even undo his own knots now.’
Tintin does his best to turn the flare of heat in his stomach to annoyance as he gives up on his laces and tugs the still tied shoes off his feet.
‘Your English is much better than mine,’ he says, apropos of nothing. He is thinking back to the conversation between the captain and the English woman in the bar two nights past. If the captain is bemused by his sudden change of conversation, he doesn’t show it and is still smiling indulgently at Tintin, still amused by this rare loss of control. Of late, Tintin has been hauling around his usual control like a stone about his neck that he longs to shed.
‘You forget, lad, that I was raised in Bristol for a while before relocating.’
‘I don’t forget,’ says Tintin, knowing he is being petulant. He feels as if he is watching himself from the outside, critiquing his own slightly inebriated behaviour but unable to alter it. Frustration and lack of sleep are getting to him. He yawns and flops backwards onto the bed, knees dangling over the edge.
‘Has your leg been bothering you?’
‘A little.’
He flexes his knee, pulling his injured leg up to his chest and extending the right out straight. The calf has been feeling tight. In truth, he’s probably been over-exerting it.
‘You should’ve said something earlier. We should be taking the tram more,’ says the Captain as though he can read Tintin’s thoughts.
‘Hmm,’ Tintin hums, non-commital.
‘I know you don’t like to admit to human foibles, but even you have your limits, you know.’
Tintin huffs, half frustration and half amusement. He swaps his legs, extending his left leg out long and pulling the right to his chest.
The Captain disappears for a moment into the bathroom. He emerges, a tube in hand and approaches the bed.
‘Here,’ he says, puling Tintin’s extended left leg to heighten the stretch. ‘How’s that?’
‘Fine,’ says Tintin, and if he’s slightly breathless he hopes it just comes across as a side effect of the pain.
The Captain repositions him again, taking the left leg by the shin and pressing it back up against Tintin’s torso, holding the right down to the bed. He is all but pinning Tintin to the bed, would be if he just lowered his own weight, could so easily settle between Tintin’s thighs. Tintin grips the bed covers and closes his eyes, trying to hide the increased rhythm of his breath and grateful for the deep shadows of the room that hide his face.
‘Tell me if this is hurting you.’
‘No, not hurting,’ he says, and to his credit his voice comes out almost normal.
The Captain pulls down his left sock, easing it off his foot and positioning Tintin’s foot braced against his chest. He unscrews the tube and applies some of the heat rub to Tintin’s calf. The smell is instantly familiar, reminiscent of aniseed and gasoline.
‘There now, moussaillon. Is that better?’
He can feel the hard planes of the Captain’s chest under his foot, the firm but gentle massage easing the healing muscle. He swallows.
‘Oui, Capitaine. Merci.’
He catches Tintin’s eye, and must see something there for he freezes. They are trapped there for a moment, the Captain’s hand with a loose grip on Tintin’s bare ankle, Tintin’s foot still braced against him. Tintin can feel the outside of the Captain’s knee against his inner thigh of his other leg. His still socked foot brushing the leather of the Captain’s shoes.
‘I- I’d better-‘ His grip on Tintin’s ankle tightens a fraction but he makes no other move.
‘What’s her name?’ The question spills out of him before he even knows he intends to ask it.
The Captain frowns.
‘Who’s name?’
’The woman that you’re in love with.’
The silence in the room is almost total. Neither of them are breathing, which Tintin can be sure as the Captain’s chest has stilled beneath his foot. A car drives by on the road below, sending its headlights flashing around the room to momentarily illuminate the red of the wallpaper.
It is Tintin who breaks the spell. He is amazed by how steady, how calm he sounds now that the moment has come.
‘I heard you in the hotel bar. You said-‘
The Captain’s grip on his ankle flexes again.
‘If you want me to move out of Moulinsart, you know you only need ask. It is a big house, but I don’t think there is enough room for me as well as your chatelaine.’
‘No.’ It seems an age before the Captain replies, though it is probably mere seconds. It comes out hoarse, not much more than a whisper but loud in the perfect stillness of the room. ‘I don’t want you to move out. Moulinsart is your home.’
‘But whoever she is, this other woman, she cannot-‘
‘Tintin, there is no woman.’
Tintin still feels as though he is barely breathing, his muscles all tensed for fight or flight though which he is not sure. The Captain must be able to feel it under his hand, against his chest. The ridiculousness of the position they’re in to have this conversation laps at the corners of his mind.
‘Oh.’
The stillness in the room is almost like a spell. A moment trapped in amber that neither of them seems able to move past, even as Tintin starts to fit pieces of the puzzle together in his mind. Finally the Captain is the one to break it, tearing his eyes away from Tintin’s.
’Part of me always assumed you knew, and were just being kind. It seemed too obvious for you to have not put it together yourself.’
Perhaps it was the obvious conclusion, after all. He feels stunned, blindsided, his mind still speeding.
The Captain sighs, and gently lowers Tintin’s foot back down onto the bed.
‘I never meant to impose anything on you. I’m s- I’ll see you in the morning,’ he turns to leave, heading for the door that joins their rooms.
‘Don’t,’ Tintin sits up. ‘Please. Stay.’
‘Don’t make this harder, lad. I can live with this. It doesn’t have to change anything. You know I would never-‘ His back is to Tintin, his hand on the door.
Tintin stands, follows him to the door. Places a hand on his shoulder. He can feel the tension there.
‘What if I want you to?’
Slowly, the Captain turns to face him. The doubt is writ plainly on his face, the disbelief in what he is hearing. He can all but see the Captain trying to negotiate with himself a way he can have misunderstood.
Tintin leans forward, reaches up to pull the Captain’s head down and when he is met with some resistance he screws his courage to the sticking place and pushes up onto the balls of his feet to press their mouths together. It is a chaste kiss, no more than a dry pressing of their lips. He pulls back a little, slipping back down to the flats of his feet. His hand is still on the back of the Captain’s neck, warm skin against his own. He is still so close, he could all but count the Captain’s eyelashes. Slowly, he feels a hand come up to his waist, so light it is almost hovering there rather than touching. He can feel their exhalations intermingling between them, the Captain’s breath on his lips like the ghost of their brief kiss.
’Tintin-‘
‘I do. I want you to.’
The Captain screws his eyes shut, as though just hearing the words is a blow to him.
‘How long?’
It is Tintin’s turn to falter. ‘I- I don’t honestly know,’ he huffs a laugh.
‘Is it worth it, lad, a life lived in the shadows?’
Tintin laughs. ‘All your usual melodrama is still in tact, I see.’
‘Tintin-‘
‘Yes,’ he cuts him off. ‘Yes, it’s worth it.’ A pause, and then ‘have you done this before?’
’Not this exactly. There is a difference between what men do at sea and on land,’ he looks at Tintin, searchingly. ‘And everything is always different with you.’
He leans in again, and this time the Captain lets himself be pulled down to meet him halfway, tightening his grip around Tintin’s waist. There is an edge of urgency to the kiss as well as a careful exploration. It is open mouthed, wet. Tintin shivers against the Captain’s chest. They are both panting when they pull apart.
‘Please. Stay with me tonight?’
The Captain gives no answer but tips Tintin’s chin up to meet his lips again. One hand at his jaw, the other still at his waist in a grip that is now almost bruising.
He wonders if his body has always been capable of this. It is nothing like touching himself. Perhaps he never knew his body till now, never explored its uncharted territories. Did not know about this sensitivity, or that reaction. Did not know that the Captain touching his throat, the hair at the back of his neck with his mouth and his fingers would make him feel uncontrolled in this way, would produce those shudders. He finds himself with his back up against the door. He has generally managed to avoid being overpowered in fights, made sure to be quicker and more alert than his opponent. It is something else altogether to allow it to happen in this way.
Tintin does not know what his body if for, if it is for running and shooting and writing, for space travel. Or if it is for this give and take, this negotiated surrender.
***
He wakes to the soft sound of rain falling, and the cool morning breeze from the open window on his face. It’s cold in the room outside of the bedcovers, but he can feel the warmth of the Captain’s body pressed against his back. He lies there, unmoving, unsure of the time, watching the stationary raindrops on the windowpane that almost glow in the crisp light of the white sky. He feels the steady rhythm of the Captain’s breath behind him like the reassuring rise and fall of the sea.