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Chapter Text

The Amazon, McGregor quickly learning, is definitely not the best place for multiple layers of custom-tailored wool suits. McGregor groans from where he’s lying face-down on the rough wooden boards and finishes peeling off his shirt. He feels dirty and tacky with sweat and he’s sure he smells like a pigsty. McGregor doesn’t have enough presence of mind to even be embarrassed about the pitiful picture he must make, not when it feels like his skin is boiling off his face. Lily pats his back in consolidation.

McGregor flops onto his back to squint up at Lily suspiciously. Her lips tremble with repressed laughter even as her eyebrows inch upward. “You okay?” She asks.

McGregor groans and throws a feeble thumbs up in her general direction. “I’m just peachy, couldn’t you tell?” Sweat drips into his eyes, which really isn’t pleasant at all. His cheeks grow hot, from embarrassment or the sun or both. “I take it back. I think I’m dying. Please inform our darling family that they’re not invited to my funeral.”

Lily snorts and lowers herself carefully so she’s sitting by the side of his head. “I’m sure they’ve taken to pretending we no longer exist,” she says dryly, “so I don’t think that would be an issue.” And then she places a cool cloth on his forehead.

McGregor whines and pushes into it. He doesn’t even care that it stinks of river water or that he makes a frankly obscene noise when Lily pushes a full canteen into his limp grip. “Lily, I think I love you,” McGregor gasps after a few greedy pulls. Never again will he take the dreary weather of home for granted again. He’d much rather have to take an umbrella with him everywhere he went than suffer through this unbearable heat again.

Lily strokes McGregor’s sweaty hair with a gentle hand, patiently untangling knots that he hasn’t had time to brush out. “If this is all it takes to get you to say the L-word we should definitely do it more often,” she says. McGregor smacks her leg and she laughs, loud and carefree. Then her lips quirk into a devious smile, her eyes turning sharp and knowing. “Although I’m not the one who was insistent on making sure you didn’t get heatstroke.”

“You mean you want me to succumb to a miserable and sweaty death?” McGregor retorts instinctively. Then what Lily actually said rewinds itself in his head twice, pauses on “he” and the only other person on their little boat that she could possibly mean.

“Frank made you sit and nurse me back to health like a swooning maiden?” He says indignantly.

“I thought swooning maidens were usually the ones being nursed?”

“That’s not the point!” McGregor shrieks. His voice has gone up maybe two octaves. as he pushes himself up into a sitting position so he can more comfortably interrogate his sister, he catches the sly smirk she gives him before she hides it beneath half-false concern. “Frank, the same man who nearly got us killed because he was too busy trying to get you to turn back? Frank, the one with the giant murder cat? Are we talking about the same man?”

Lily smirks and shrugs nonchalantly, ducking smoothly when McGregor tries to take another swipe at her. “Do we know any other Franks?” She says thoughtfully. “I only know the one, but you’re much more social than I.” This time, she lets him shove her.

Admittedly, McGregor does feel ten times better than he did meet minutes ago now that he has water in him. Being around Lily soothes the constant itch under his skin and the endless whispers that rise to the surface when he’s alone, too. The ones that say things like freak and sodomite and you deserve to be alone.

Lily brushes her hand against his. When he lifts his eyes from where he’d been trying to stare a hole in this godforsaken boat, her matching blue eyes are concerned. She always knows when he’s in danger of falling back into that dark bottomless pit. “You okay?” Lily asks again. McGregor smiles and ducks his head.

“I am. Really.” He replies honestly. He loves his sister so much it makes his heart hurt with it sometimes. He takes a deep breath and pushes himself up, only swaying a little. Lily rises with him. He can see Frank at the wheel, staring determinedly at the horizon instead of them, presumably to give them some semblance of privacy. In the dying light he looks gorgeous; all sun-browned skin and toned muscles that are visible even under his clothes, brown eyes that almost seem to glow. Something warm and fuzzy begins to unfurl in his chest.

Lily elbows him none-to-gently in his side. McGregor grunts. “I think you just bruised my kidney,” he whines.

Lily rolls her eyes and scoffs. “You’re fine, you big baby. Now stop undressing Frank with your brain and go thank him like a gentleman.”

McGregor’s neck and face spontaneously burst into flames. “What-that’s-I wasn’t-you-!” McGregor manages to splutter. It feels like his mind is experiencing a cataclysmic meltdown, which is most likely why he doesn’t even notice that Lily’s been gently nudging him closer to Frank until she’s mysteriously absent, leaving him to suffer next to a very bemused and very handsome man.

The sound that escapes his mouth upon realizing that he’s suddenly extremely close to Frank may sound like a mouse that has just been stepped on by an elephant, but McGregor maintains that it was simply a stifled gasp. “Frank!” He says as he scrambles to say something less humiliating than what’s a man like you doing in a place like this?

“What’s a man like you doing in a place like this?” McGregor blurts.

Frank stares at him blankly, a tiny furrow between his eyebrows, and looks at the wheel he currently has a firm grip on. “Pants paid me to take her and you to find the magic tree?” Frank says. It sounds more like a question than an actual answer, and why wouldn’t it, it’s not like they’re in a bar and McGregor is buying him a drink, they’re in the bloody Amazon with it’s stifling heat and constant dangers and annoyingly attractive men.

McGregor would rather throw himself into the river riddled with piranhas than continue this train-wreck of a conversation. “Well—yes. Lily did do that, it was just a—never mind.” He wonders if it’s socially acceptable to knock oneself out in sheer humiliation.

McGregor holds up the empty canteen instead. “I suppose I have you to thank for making sure I didn’t pass out?” Frank huffs and turns his attention back to the river in front of them, shoulders creeping up toward his ears.

“It was nothin’,” Frank replies gruffly. “You weren’t gonna pass out.”

“Right. But. It wasn’t nothing to me.” McGregor says. Frank glances at him again, confusion peeking through his stone-faced apathy, like he doesn’t understand why McGregor is still here. For the first time, he wonders if Frank has anyone back at the town that worries about him. Makes sure he isn’t neglecting his own wants and needs when he gets sucked into a project.

McGregor looks away from those shuttered eyes and redirects his attention to the scenery instead. “When you’re not fearing for your life, it really is beautiful,” he says quietly. It feels like anything louder would fracture the moment they’ve somehow fallen into; the setting sun painting the water red and pink and gold, stars only beginning to dot the sky overhead. A breeze had picked up, too, and it playfully tousles McGregor’s already disheveled hair.

In his periphery, he sees Frank turn to look at him fully. He doesn’t acknowledge it, and after a moment Frank takes back the canteen McGregor holds out. Their fingers brush. He wonders if Frank feels the electric jolt the touch elicits, or if it’s once again just him hopelessly pining away for someone who can and won’t ever love him back.

“Yeah,” Frank concedes softly, “it is.”

McGregor smiles.

Chapter Text

At least McGregor’s not at risk of falling into the rapids, this time. Although meeting his fate at the hands of flesh-hungry cannibals isn’t really the best way to go, either. Sometimes McGregor really wishes he’d chosen to face his family’s wrath instead of chase after his sister. The drumbeats that play around them as they’re herded like mindless cattle drill painfully into McGregor’s head and exacerbates the pounding headache he’d woken up with.

Lily looks over at him, tilts her head and frowns at him. How’re you holding up?

McGregor raises his eyebrows dramatically and gestures as much as he can with his hands tied behind his back. Oh, I’m dandy. Really having a jolly grand time, couldn’t ask for more.

Lily rolls her eyes so hard he has to bite back the impulse to tell her they’ll stick like that. Frank, who has been strangely quiet during their trek up through the…tree? Village? Tree-village? stares at them in confusion. “What was that?” He asks. There’s something other than innocent curiosity in his voice that almost sounds like longing. “What did you just do with your faces?”

Lily looks like she wants to punch something. Probably Frank. “Is that really what you’re concerned about right now? Seriously?”

McGregor snorts. He’s a little hysterical, and the look on Frank’s own face is so outrageous. He looks like Lily really did punch him in the jaw. Again. It’s so easy to fall into the snarky back-and-forth one-liners Lily and Frank manage to pull out of their arses that he almost forgets that they have a high chance of being turned into human stew. It doesn’t even sound appetizing, why would anyone willingly subject themselves to that?

With a final nudge from the native’s very pointy sticks, the drums grow louder and stop just as abruptly as they started, leaving a ringing silence in their wake. McGregor’s head thanks them for that, at least. Lily shuffles close enough to brush elbows with him. It’s a useless attempt at comfort, but he appreciates it nonetheless.

The native sitting in the big gaudy chair slams her staff to the ground twice, which effectively makes McGregor, Lily, and Frank tense. She calls out something in a dialect that McGregor has absolutely no hope of understanding. He doesn’t even remember much from his French lessons. “Lily,” he hisses, “Lily, tell me you can get us out of this.” She looks to him and tries an encouraging smile.

It might have worked on anyone else, but McGregor’s known his sister for his entire life, and he knows that she’s terrified. His breath catches in his throat.

The native speaks again. She must be the chief, then. Lily steps forward, always so brave and brash and stubborn, and turns to Frank. “Can you understand them?”

Frank swallows and nods tightly. “Yeah. She said that you need to give ‘em the Arrowhead because it belongs to their ancestors.” Lily hand rises up to grip the Arrowhead tightly and McGregor bites back a miserable groan.

His sister is many things, lots of them good, but when she sets her mind on something there’s not much anyone can do to make her change it. Not even angry cannibal Amazon-warriors. She shakes her head angrily and takes another step forward. “I want you to translate what I say word for word, Frank. Okay?”

Oh no. “Uh,” McGregor says, “are you really sure this is the best idea, because I really do like my limbs attached and my organs inside my body—“

“McGregor. Please shut up.” Lily snaps impatiently. He closes his mouth so quickly he hears it click and tries to brush off the hurt. She rarely speaks that rudely to him. She doesn’t even spare him a glance and starts to talk; it’s Frank who looks at him with wide eyes and maybe some semblance of worry. Still, he turns back and dutifully begins to translate.

Lily talks about how she won’t give up the Arrowhead now, how she can’t until she finds the petals, how she wants to help people and how she’ll return it immediately after. Frank stands next to her, a solid pillar of strength, and McGregor tries to make himself small as possible. It’s quiet as the chief seems to contemplate it, and then she slowly shakes her head.

McGregor’s heart skips a beat then triples in speed. They can’t die now, not after everything and how far they’ve come—

Lily twists artfully against her bonds and snaps them on one of the guard’s spears, grabs it from them, shoves in front of him, and points it at the natives bristling with weapons all in a few quick moves. “You’ll have to get through me to get to him!” She shouts. It must make a strange sight, this small feisty woman who has little to no experience holding a spear against hundreds of trained warriors.

McGregor almost feels offended instead of frightened when they begin to laugh. He’s sure that Lily and he are sporting the same baffled expression; perhaps it’s even more amusing than Frank when he asks a question?

The crowd parts for the chief, who takes off her mask and grins brightly at them. “Frank!” She says in exasperation, and oh. So it was another scam. Those are getting quite tiring, especially with how many heart attacks it feels like he’s avoided in the past five minutes alone. “You tell me you bring crazy lady, you tell me to scare her a little and make her turn back. You did not tell me she was brave!”

Lily’s clenching and unclenching her fists, practically ringing the spear handle. Someone unties his hands and he rubs his wrists gratefully-did they seriously have to impede his circulation?-so he can only watch with ill-contained satisfaction as Lily marches up to Frank and delivers a whomping right hook. “You…” she starts, then exhales angrily. “I can’t believe you right now. Wait, I can, because all you’ve done since we met is lie!”

And then she marches off to who-knows-where. McGregor cracks his knuckles as he approaches. Frank turns to him, wide brown eyes a little shocked. There’s a red imprint where Lily hit him. “What was that about? Nothing happened!” He says like he honestly has no clue what he’s done wrong. It makes anger flare hot and heavy in McGregor’s chest, so he punches him in the face, too. It’s immensely satisfying.

“You’re a dick,” he says, maybe louder than necessary. Then he sighs. McGregor could never stay angry long; Lily was always the one who’d hold grudges for the both of them. “She’s probably going to talk to the chief about the Arrowhead. Come on.” McGregor takes one of Frank’s calloused hands in his without thinking, tugging him away from the spectating crowd.

He can’t really make himself let go, though, not when Frank follows along behind him like a lost puppy. It’s easy to find his sister. It always has been, especially when she’s in a bad mood and practically dares anyone to go and test her. She’s sitting in a cozy little room with the chief, who’s now wearing a large white hat. McGregor’s almost sure that it’s his. He doesn’t have the energy to kick up a fuss about it.

Lily turns to them. Her eyes narrow at Frank, soften when they meet McGregor’s, and widen when she sees their entwined hands. McGregor blushes and yanks his hand away. There’s no way Frank could look disappointed when he does, so McGregor ignores him and goes to sit next to Lily instead. Her thigh presses against his. Her eyebrows wiggle, anger temporarily forgotten. He rolls his eyes and tries to ignore the gaze that feels like it’s drilling into the side of his face.

He listens attentively as the chief translates the carving. “No one’s ever found the tree because they were looking in the wrong place,” Lily and Frank say at the same time, excitement in both their voices. McGregor stifles a laugh when Lily seems to remember herself and scowls darkly, turning her full attention to the map on the table.

“Isn’t there a moon like the writing describes in two days?” He offers. The chief nods. Lily turns toward him quickly and her face lights up.

“McGregor, you’re brilliant and I love you.” She breathes. “I’ll let you paddle the canoe for the second half of the day instead!”

“What?” Frank says, alarmed. McGregor almost echoes him because he does not want to travel the Amazon via canoe, even with his sister. Lily smiles a remarkably fake smile and turns to Frank, clasping her hands together.

“Well, since you only wanted in on this for the money, and I clearly can’t trust you, I figure it’ll be easy to just go without you. Here’s the twelve-thousand. And an extra three-thousand for your trouble.” Then she slams the stack down on the table with more force than what’s strictly necessary. “Come on, McGregor, let’s go.”

He almost wants to refuse just from how lost Frank looks, staring at the money like it’ll solve all of life’s riddles. Ultimately he’s not given a choice when the screams start.

Things are a blur of pain and confusion and grief after that-his foot is definitely broken, and he only vaguely registers watching Frank be stabbed right through the chest by the fucking snake man monster and falling into the water below, hitting about every branch as he went. The chief helps them down to the riverbank, which he very much appreciates. Lily doesn’t want to leave them, which he does not.

“They cannot chase you if you get far enough away from the river!” The chief shouts. Lily looks at him desperately.

“I’ll be fine. Go!”

“I love you,” Lily says, and sprints away. McGregor smiles even as it feels like worry will eat him alive. If she doesn’t come back…with Frank gone, he’ll have nothing left.

The chief urges him through the foliage and helps him over roots. “Your sister will be fine,” the chief tells him confidently. “She is smart and fast and strong. Worry about yourself for now.” Strangely, the certainty in the chief’s voice as she talks about Lily, the fact that she has enough faith in his sister to make it through, calms him down. Not by much, but enough that when they stumble through the undergrowth, McGregor’s able to see the vague human-shaped lump sprawled in the mud.

His heart jumps into his throat. He breaks free of the chief’s strong grip, ignoring her shocked cry, and stumbles over on legs that feel like jelly. He doesn’t want to look but he has to—make sure. That it’s Frank’s…body. He deserves a proper burial, at least. McGregor knows he’s fooling himself, could recognize the hat that’s a few feet away anywhere, but he still rolls Frank over. And then nearly has a fucking heart attack because holy buggering shit frank you’re not dead?

In retrospect, McGregor should have known that Frank would look good even with a literal sword through his heart.

Chapter Text

“So,” McGregor says. Frank pauses in wrapping his foot and looks up. His careful hands are a hot brand against McGregor’s bare skin, and it’s driving him a little crazy. “Immortality, huh?”

Frank snorts, refocusing on binding his foot properly. After much arguing between them, Lily’s gone with the chief to find one of the tribal canoes so she and McGregor can get away from the Conquistadors as swiftly as possible. He’s not happy about it. Of course he’s not; Lily’s his responsibility, even if he’s younger than her. There’s not much he can do with only one foot. He knows it, Lily knows it, and Frank knows it.

He still worries.

“Stop thinking so hard,” Frank says. It takes McGregor a moment to refocus on the present, and that Frank isn’t a very different-sounding inner voice.

McGregor laughs, maybe a little bitterly. “You’ve known me for a few days. You should know that it’s all I do.”

Frank frowns. “Well, you shouldn’t,” he scolds, “because you know it’s not that Lily doesn’t want you with her, right?”

McGregor swallows thickly. That’s not who I’m worried about, he almost says. This time he manages to leave it unvoiced. They fall into an easy quiet again, nothing but birdsong and other sounds of the forest as the sun continues to creep across the sky. He’s not used to…this. Feeling something for someone so soon after meeting them. Forming a tight-knit bond with them.

It’s different but not….uncomfortable. Or strange. Just new. The two of them testing the waters of their budding relationship.

Frank pats his thigh very gently and says in an equally soft voice, “I’m done, McGregor.” It feels like lightning’s struck him or maybe a fire has ignited in his gut; McGregor can’t remember the last time someone other than Lily said his name with so much care.

“Thank you,” McGregor replies. His voice must carry more gratitude than a foot-wrapping warrants because Frank looks up at him and squints. “For this and, well, everything you’ve done for Lily. And me.”

“I only agreed to take your sister and you because she paid well and she had the Arrowhead. Selfish reasons,” Frank insists. McGregor blinks. Has he perhaps found someone harboring more of a poor opinion of themself than he?

“And is that still your only reason?” McGregor says instead of a denial, because if he was selfish he would have taken the Arrowhead for himself and left them in that small Brazilian town. Frank winces and then shakes his head slowly, like it pains him to admit that he, god forbid, cares about people.

Then again, if McGregor had been on this earth for four-hundred years, perhaps he would have thought it better to distance himself from everyone around him too. “Lily wanted you to know that she’s not leaving you behind,” Frank says abruptly.

McGregor inhales shakily. A strange change in topic but not an unexpected one—with nothing but nature around them and time to spare, there’s little else to do but dig into the nitty gritty of the Houghton children’s childhood. “Well, I’m glad,” he responds. His voice isn’t as steady as he’d like it to be. “It would be terribly boring and tedious to be stuck in the Amazon rainforest with angry Germans with torpedos and…. Spanish monsters.”

Frank huffs and moves to sit next to McGregor, brushing his pants free of the loose dirt and dust. McGregor tries not to become hyper aware of the hulking shape of Frank so close he can feel his body heat. It’s a losing battle.

“Before, when I was telling you my interests lie…somewhere else,” McGregor says hesitantly. “You’ve lived a long time. Have you. Ever? With—“

“Men?” Frank finishes dryly. He grins as McGregor chokes on his own words and tries to get out an apology and an explanation at once, which mostly culminates into an indecipherable mass of words. He wants to die.

Frank shrugs, scuffs the ground with the toe of his shoe. “Yeah, a couple o’ times. They didn’t really stick around.”

McGregor goes quiet. He can’t imagine—fumbling with another man in a dark alley somewhere, laughter and joy glowing so bright one would think they could practically glow with it—and to have it ripped away, because they left or died or were married off, just like McGregor would have been eventually if Lily hadn’t taken them far, far away from their family—

“I’m sorry. About them, I mean.” McGregor says wholeheartedly. Frank shrugs again, sways to the side to nudge their arms together encouragingly.

“What about you? Got a househusband waiting for you to bring home a miracle cure?”

McGregor blushes hotly. “No, there’s no one. Not much time to go looking, what with chasing Lily around and making sure she doesn’t get eaten by a monkey-shark or something equally horrifying.”

For one, exhilarating moment, their eyes meet, and McGregor’s breath hitches in his throat. Frank’s face is filled with undisguised want, eyes dark and half-lidded even as he gives a lopsided smile. “A monkey-shark, huh?” He teases, voice lower than normal. Somehow, he makes something so ridiculous sound remarkably filthy.

It’s suddenly fifty degrees warmer than it had been moments ago. McGregor tugs on his shirt’s collar and clears his throat a couple of times. He doesn’t miss the way Frank’s eyes follow his hand’s movements or the way his tongue flicks across his lips. McGregor might faint.

It’s not even that he doesn’t want it (he does, he wants it so much, this incredible man who’s suffered for so long but keeps giving in any way he can, who protects two people he barely knows when he could have just left them to deal with the Germans by themselves). It’s just—it doesn’t feel like the right time, to do this, when they’re on the run from at least five people who can and will kill them. If they make it out of this. When they lift Frank’s curse and he comes back to London with Lily and McGregor. When they’re safe (he refuses to entertain the possibility of if). Then he’ll make his move.

“I think I hear Lily coming back!” McGregor says, too loud, to quickly. He turns away, nearly falling off the log he’s resting on, to stand and limp toward the tree line where he can see Lily emerging. She furrows her brow when she sees how he’s beelining for her, then presumably looks at Frank behind him. McGregor looks himself and feels his heart crack a little bit. Beneath the shield Frank had thrown up, he’s clearly a little bewildered, a lot hurt. McGregor knows he’s giving mixed signals, but surviving is more important than finally having a chance at true love.

When this is all over, he promises, and hopes Frank can see it in the way he stands, the lines in his face, the way McGregor practically gravitates back into Frank’s magnetic orbit.

—————

Later, while Frank is off making sure everything is ready with his own boat, Lily plops herself down next to him and slaps his cheek very lightly. McGregor still claps a hand to his face and levels her with a betrayed glare. “What—“

“The thing between you and Frank,” she interrupts impatiently, diving headfirst into things as she always does. “What’s with that?”

“What thing? We don’t have a thing, there’s no thing here—“

“I saw the way you looked at each other, it was indecent and frankly I wish I could wipe it from my memory because you can do so much better than him but it’s really not my place to decide that for you, so what’s happening with him.”

McGregor is stuck between being extremely embarrassed that his sister saw them making eyes at each other and wildly thankful that Lily so readily accepts him for who he is. “It really isn’t anything,” he insists. Lily pins him in place with a look alone.

“But you want it to be.” McGregor sighs. When Lily got like this, there was no dissuading her. Even if it was for her own good.

“Yes,” he admits quietly. There was a loud crash from inside Frank’s boat, a pause, and a rather impressive combination of curses in several different languages. Lily’s nose scrunches as she shakes her head in disbelief. McGregor fights against the blush that tries to overtake his face again. It’s probably a losing battle, from the way his sister takes one look at him and giggles.

“You look like a sunburnt overripe tomato.” She teases.

“Your mother looks like a sunburnt overripe tomato,” he snaps back.

“McGregor, we have the same mother!”

McGregor looks blankly at her. “And?” They stare at each other, stone-faced. Then Lily goes cross-eyed and pokes his side at the same time he reaches out to tickle her armpits and somehow they’ve collapsed into a heap on the ground, laughing and shrieking like they’re children again.

It’s still different; Lily has to be mindful of his broken foot and McGregor has make sure he doesn’t accidentally elbow her chest, but it’s been so long since they’ve had down time to just…be siblings. Do anything except work, really. It’s nice.

When McGregor decides he’s rolled enough in the dirt and raises the metaphorical white flag, he estimates ten minutes have passed. They both roll onto their backs, panting, and stars up at the blue, cloudless sky. “I don’t get what you see in him,” Lily says, “but if he makes you happy, McGregor, that’s all that really matters.”

McGregor grins at her as she stands and holds out a hand. He reaches up and clasps his in hers, and together they work to help him stand without jostling his foot too badly. “I think he will, when we go back home.” Lily beams at him.

“What a coincidence,” she says as they link arms and head toward their respective boats, both waiting for them. “I was just thinking the same thing.”

Chapter Text

It has been less than a week since he and Lily set out for the Amazon, and McGregor thinks he’s definitely had enough adventure for multiple lifetimes.

He’s currently sat between two very grumpy German soldiers that both stink something awful, though he’s sure he doesn’t fare better himself, and he’s leading them right to Lily and Frank. McGregor really hopes she won’t be angry with him. He really, truly hopes Frank won’t be angry with him, mostly, because he’s dealt with his sister’s frustration before. He’s been informed on multiple occasions by her that he’s the most annoying person she’s ever met.

Well, McGregor figures, it would do him some good to put his aggravating touch on things. “My foot hurts,” he says loudly. “Would one of you fellows be so kind to get me some ice?” The soldiers ignore him, of course, but the one to his left twitches irritably. Bingo.

Is it the wisest course of action to purposefully irritate his captors? Most likely not, no. But it is really, really fun, and McGregor needs something fun to distract himself from the fact that he may inadvertently cause his sister’s and partner-to-be’s death.

“And maybe run me a bath while you’re at it, yes?” He continues. “It’s been a while since I’ve had one. I’m sure there’s a guest suite somewhere on this metal monstrosity. Could I have that, too?”

“If you do not shut your mouth, Lily Houghton’s brother, you will die a slow and painful death as I bleed you like a stuck pig.” Joachim (he hadn’t shut up about his title or name for the first five minutes of their acquaintance) orders harshly. He’s pinching the bridge of his nose like he has a headache. McGregor is so familiar with near-death experiences at this point that the threat very nearly doesn’t even phase him, but he obediently quiets anyway.

It would be rather tragic to be sent back in a box like many of the soldiers he’s seen in those reels, after all. McGregor really, really hates it when things are quiet, because that gives his doubts and what-ifs to bubble up to the surface and overtake his logical thought process. He tries one last time to break the silence, because he’s always lived on the edge. In for a penny, in for a pound, as Americans say.

“Why do you want with the petals anyway?” He asks. The soldier to his left pulls out his gun and cocks it. MGregor flinches and has a few seconds to regret all his life choices before the Joachim sharply raises a hand and stands. He even walks like he’s entitled to the floor his feet are on. McGregor wonders how long he would last against the villagers he’d threatened to kill if he didn’t have anything but a dagger and that gaudy uniform he’s wearing.

The man stops in front of McGregor and grabs his chin roughly. McGregor’s mouth goes dry at the dead look in those eyes. There’s nothing there. Just…greed and bloodlust and maybe morbid fascination with McGregor himself. “You would like to know why I seek to harness the tree’s power?” He murmurs. His gloved fingers stroke his jaw and his neck. McGregor has to fight the violent urge to bite down on them. No matter what Lily says, he isn’t always stupid. Just sometimes.

“I will use it to win the war,” the man whispers like it’s a secret. “What use are weapons who die? With the petals, I can bring them back. Our enemies won’t stand a chance against us, no matter how advanced their weaponry is. Germany will be invincible.” McGregor doesn’t even want to breathe with how close the big-bad has gotten to his face during his very villainous very evil monologue. He doesn’t say anything in response, only holds Joachim’s unblinking gaze for what feels like an eternity before he’s released.

It feels like freedom after years of imprisonment. Which is ironic because he’s still here. In a submarine. Heading toward a tree that may or may not truly exist. “And what happens if the petals don’t bloom?” McGregor dares to ask.

The man’s eyes flash. “Then we kill you and your friends. It is quite a predicament, is it not?”

Frank would be fine. He’s been stabbed in the chest by a weird wavy sword, a bullet wouldn’t—couldn’t—hurt him. But Lily? McGregor’s very mortal big sister? She bleeds and she dies. He can’t let anything happen to her. He’d never forgive himself. He needs to make a plan.

Unfortunately, a fully fledged “escape the submarine” path does not make itself known to him in the next few moments. What does happen, however, is that a soldier runs into the room, gasping and panting, and says breathlessly, “the water level’s lowering, sir. They’ve found it.”

The man grins, shark-like, and gestures at the guards beside him. They wrench him forward, careless of his injured foot, and McGregor bites back very vulgar curses as his poor broken bones catch on the ladder they haul him up. Then they’re opening the hatch, the sunlight burning his eyes, and shoving him through. He uses the small reprieve to gratefully take big breaths of fresh air that doesn’t reek of unwashed bodies living in close quarters for days.

Lily and Frank stare at him from their boat in horror. They’re both soaking wet. Quite an inopportune time for swimming lessons, he thinks. Joachim presses a gun against McGregor’s temple. His stomach turns unpleasantly; he’s really, truly trapped. “Fancy meeting you here,” he says, “decided to take a break from the Amazonian heat?”

“Let my brother go,” Lily shouts, ignoring McGregor’s scintillating quips in favor of bartering for his life. Quite rude, really.

Joachim drags him roughly to the front of the submarine instead. “Now, that wouldn’t be very fair, would it?” He replies. “We found him fair and square, after all. It would be a shame to let him go after all the trouble we went through to make sure he felt…accommodated.” Joachim grips his hair tightly for one painful moment. Interestingly, Lily and Frank take a defensive step forward, faces twisted into angry scowls.

Lily glares. “What do you want from us?” She says.

“To lead us to the tree.”

“If I do, will you give me McGregor back?”

McGregor huffs. He isn’t an object that can be passed back and forth as leverage. Still, he stays quiet, because he’s many things but he (usually) isn’t foolish, and even he knows that it’s not a good idea to annoy the person holding a weapon to your head.

Joachim hums thoughtfully. “You have yourself a deal, froylene. But you betray us, and little brother dies.”

McGregor winces when one of the soldiers grab his arm and begin to drag him back toward the submarine hatch. He desperately twists to catch one more glimpse of his sister and his…Frank, who both watch with helpless dismay. McGregor tries to say I know you’ll think of something, please don’t die, and if I die I’ll curse you to drink horrible tea forever all in one look. He’s not sure how well it works.

They wait, presumably for Frank and Lily to get ahead of them and lead them to the tree, until finally the submarine lurches into motion again. There are five other soldiers that are hanging around the original, which McGregor thinks is a little bit overkill for someone who can’t even walk properly without near-collapsing in pain.

It doesn’t even occur to him until they’re leading him to the ladder again and mercilessly manhandling him onto the deck that maybe it isn’t McGregor they’re worried about fighting. Especially when he’s immediately shoved into the unforgiving arms of another nameless soldier who silently places an honest-to-god machete to his throat. Lily and Frank discuss something on the river’s bank with Joachim and his own entourage of soldiers. The conversation can barely be labeled that, even from where he’s standing—more thinly veiled antagonism and threats and frequent gestures in McGregor’s direction.

Lily keeps looking over as if to reassure herself that he hasn’t yet kicked the bucket. Frank is not looking so hard that it’s obvious that he very much wants to. All three of them must come to a decision because a fight doesn’t immediately break out when they stop talking. Lily and Frank disappear into one of the dead, hollow roots of the large tree before them.

McGregor really has to wonder how Joachim is fit for the Prince of anything when, less than five minutes later, he begins to grow impatient and starts to shoot at the branches above them. It’s almost reminiscent of that time Frank shot a tree-rat (squirrel? McGregor honestly has no idea what it even was) point blank. Without the unspoken threat that they would also be shot, of course. And shooting a gun doesn’t look nearly as attractive on someone who has no qualms about killing them.

And then the tree—glows. Bright, scarlet lines that look eerily like blood veins begin to crawl up the trunk. Roots practically rebuilds themselves from where they’d collapsed against the muddy ground. McGregor watches, half-incredulously, as light pink flowers start to bloom along the branches quicker than he can say bloody buggering hell. Lily and Frank duck out of the hollow that’s now covered in moss (how?) with matching dumbstruck expressions.

McGregor remembers faintly how, even though Lily had refused to give up her search and never stopped looking, she had confessed to him not so long ago that she, too, had started to believe the petals were nothing more than a legend. Pride swells just below his breast. Clever headstrong little Lily Houghton who never knew how to quit, making historical rediscoveries left and right.

Joachim says something probably-smarmy and definitely unnecessary. If McGregor wasn’t already looking at Frank, he doubts he would have seen it either. But he is, so he catches the smallest dip of Frank’s head and Meaningful Eye Contact with his sister and watches as she twirls, swipes a gun from one of the soldiers closest to her, and shoots Frank straight in the chest. And again when he doesn’t topple over into the water below immediately after.

There’s a ringing silence that follows. McGregor’s soldiers turn to him, as if checking he didn’t somehow escape in the ten seconds it took to shoot Frank at point-blank. He tries to conjure up a suitably devastated and betrayed face to mask his growing anticipation, which he (shockingly) pulls off. McGregor thanks the theater classes Lily dragged him to when they were ten.

And then, like a particularly vengeful angel, Frank bursts out of the water and hauls himself up onto the deck without any apparent effort. McGregor refuses to admit that that’s the reason why it suddenly feels like he can’t breathe. Despite how cold it was before it is suddenly very, very warm.

He’s so distracted watching Frank absolutely pummel the submarine personnel he forgets about the two guards who had been standing behind him and just barely dodges when they lash out. McGregor gets a few good punches in (and accidentally socks him in the face), too. It feels much better than it probably should. With adrenaline still flooding his system, McGregor turns to Frank and laughs.

“While that was fun, I’d rather not do it again anytime soon,” he says, giddy.

Frank stares at him, his dark eyes still unreadable. With no answer forthcoming, McGregor takes a moment to study Frank’s exposed forearms and how his muscles shift beneath the skin, the way water practically paints the thin fabric of his clothes to his skin. How his chest heaves with each panting breath he takes. To prevent his eyes from wandering even lower, McGregor snaps his gaze away and instead decides to stare at Frank’s forehead instead. Combustion may or may not be imminent.

He tries not to jump out of his skin when Frank reaches forward to firmly grasp both his hands with his own big ones. “You almost died,” he growls.

McGregor falters. “So did Lily. Multiple times,” he points out.

“Yes, but. She’s not…you. You’re—different.”

“Frank, my friend, that’s not nearly as flattering as you might think it is.” McGregor extracts one hand, pats Frank’s chest, and immediately wants to die. He has no idea what compelled him to do that and it’s not like Frank even acknowledges it, but still. He frees his other hand and steps back, cheeks burning.

“Speaking of my darling sister,” he says because there’s nothing more unsexy than thinking about your sibling during a maybe-romantic moment with your skipper-turned-friend-turned-potential-lover. “Where’s she run off to? I was a little distracted with not being punched into unconsciousness to watch her daring escape from Joachim and his stooges.”

Frank exhales long and slow, the exact kind of sigh that McGregor recognizes in people who spend more than two hours with his sister (and, by extension, himself), then points up into the canopy. Which is around the time he realizes that at some point the evil Conquistadors have found them and Lily is leading them on a merry goose chase across branches which are very high up.

He doesn’t even have the energy to be surprised. “Oh,” McGregor says, exhausted. “History does seem to repeat itself when Lily’s involved.”

Chapter Text

Frank is dead.

“He’s gone?” McGregor’s own voice sounds very small and very quiet. Lily’s own face is pale with shock and lined in grief. She says nothing, but the way her hands ball into shaking fists at her sides really tells McGregor all he needs to know.

Still, he gently pushes her aside and limps-slash-stumbles to the lifeless stone body that used to be a man who had an awful sense of humor and befriended a giant murder cat because his heart sometimes won over his brain, and-

“He said he was tired,” Lily tells him. McGregor says nothing in return, can’t even look at her. If he does he knows he’ll shatter into a million pieces.

I shouldn’t have waited, he thinks. He says it out loud, too. It’s only Lily and him against the world again. “I should have…”

“What? Kissed him? Professed your hopeless crush? When, while we were running from his brother or Joachim or—“

“I should have found the time to!” McGregor shouts. His voice cracks in the middle and echoes in the large empty cave. McGregor wipes a smudge of dirt off of stone-Frank’s cheek and tries really, really hard not to start crying anyway. It doesn’t really work.

It feels like someone else is watching the first tear drip from his chin and onto his leather shoe, but the moment it hits his foot it’s like a dam held together by flimsy string and rotten logs bursts open all at once.

McGregor had never been a pretty crier. His parents had always made sure to remind him of it; wipe your face, boy, it’s unbecoming of a man to cry.His sobs are loud and body-wracking, and if he were pushed on it he mig even classify them as screams.

His chest hurts. His head hurts. When Lily comes to wrap her arms around him and pull him to her chest like she used to when they were children, he curls into her. They sink to the floor. McGregor tries his best to ignore the blank stare of Frank above them. “He was ready,” Lily shushes over his agonized wails. She begins to rock them both.

Distantly, McGregor registers that Lily’s crying too. Quieter and much more refined, but he can feel the way she inhaled shakily and the hitches in her breath when she murmurs other incoherent reassurances to them both. McGregor is so tired of believing he finally, finally has something he can maybe hold onto only for it to slip through his fingers with the fine sand grains of time.

Lily strokes his hair. “He said he wanted to be freed of his curse, and the petal would do that for him,” she whispers. “I think you should be the one to give it to him.” McGregor nods miserably into her shoulder. Still, he clings. He will do it; it’s what Frank deserves, to rest at the base of the tree he spent hundreds of years looking for.

“Yes. Can I sit for a while longer?”

“Anything, McGregor. It’s been a long few days.”

In his peripheral, McGregor sees Proxima padding her way toward them, tail and ears held high in concern. She can tell that something’s not right, that Frank, for whatever reason she may come up with, isn’t with them. She’s a smart cat.

Frank is dead.

He reaches out to grab handfuls of murder cat’s fur which she allows graciously. She sniffs curiously at Frank’s lifeless body and noses gently at the twining vines keeping him in place. She makes an odd chuffing noise, paws at Frank a few more times, then whimpers and looks to Lily and McGregor.

McGregor doesn’t know whether to laugh or start crying again. “Yeah, I get it,” he murmurs, patting her head. Proxima doesn’t even push into his palm or purr like she would have regularly.

Time loses meaning for a while. During the tree fight, the battle itself progressed far too quickly for him to even concretely remember what happened. Now, it’s as if night passes by as a slow, damning crawl, sluggishly making its way through the thick air of sadness saturating the cavern around them.

Eventually, when McGregor’s joints start to ache from laying still and Lily begins to shift uncomfortably beneath him, he heaves a sigh and pushes himself up. “I’m ready,” is all he can really say. He has a pounding headache and his nose is congested and he’s sure he looks ridiculous, expensive clothes dirtied and rumpled. Lily doesn’t say anything, though, just gives him the petal she’s been clutching in her fist like a lifeline.

McGregor stands up on legs as shaky as a newborn foal’s. He doesn’t comment when Lily helps him walk closer to Frank so he can gently slip the petal between his slightly parted lips, says nothing when they wait with baited breath, can’t move away when nothing happens immediately.

A gust of wind that sounds eerily like a great sigh one would exhale as their final breath leaves Frank’s mouth in return. Part of his left cheek earns a worn fissure. Like he’s no longer Frank-in-stone, just a rock that bears the face of someone McGregor and Lily had been learning to care for.

Frank is dead.

A wounded noise escapes him and he sags back into her comforting arms. It’s done, then. “He decided not to stay after all,” Lily says quietly. McGregor isn’t certain if it’s meant for his ears, but he’s still struck with indignant anger that Frank would leave him—them—behind, after all they’d done for him, everything they’d gone through together—

It disappears as fast at it had come. Once again, McGregor is left feeling strangely hollow and tired.

Because he never had the chance to do it when Frank was around to appreciate it (too late too late too late), he leans forward and presses a lingering kiss to Frank’s forehead. The rock is cool against his lips, a sobering contrast to the warm skin he’d had the privilege to touch previously.

Lily tugs McGregor away when it becomes clear that he isn’t going to move himself anytime soon. “We should go before anything else unfriendly finds this place,” she tells him. McGregor nods absently.

It would just be their luck, wouldn’t it, if it turned out that Joachim had sent for reinforcements before entering the tree’s hollow. Eventually, people would come looking for a missing prince. It would be wiser if they didn’t leave any trace of their presence behind, which included finding a way to remove Frank’s poor boat.

It’s dashed horribly against the rocks and practically unsalvageable. McGregor has no earthly idea how they’re supposed to find their way out. Neither he nor Lily ever learned how to pilot a submarine between being taught how to walk, talk, eat, look, and act proper.

They’re halfway down the stone steps slicked with river water before McGregor realizes that Proxima hasn’t followed them. His eyes start burn again. “Proxima, let’s go, kitty,” he calls. Lily pauses and glances at him.

“It would be better to leave her here. They’re not just going to let us drag a Jaguar around London—“

“She’s going with us.” Maybe his voice is a tidbit too harsh for the topic at hand. He can’t help it. Something inside McGregor turns frigid at the thought of just leaving her by herself when she’d practically grown up pampered. “She wouldn’t be able to survive.” As he says it, he knows it’s true.

Lily groans. It’s her “you’ve won but I’m not going to admit it because I’m too stubborn” groan. McGregor smirks back, and it’s almost like things are back to how they were before they even traveled to the blasted Amazon, for a moment.

“Come on, Proxima, you’re coming with us!” Lily shouts over her shoulder. The only response she gets is a series of roars that sound like Proxima is trying her very best to purr. A bright, near-blinding flash of light and the distinct sound of stone breaking apart, and before he knows it McGregor is sprint-hopping back toward Frank’s grave.

He barely even registers Lily’s frantic calls for him to wait and nearly cracks his head open on the floor as he skids around the corner, barely even registering the agonizing pain his foot is in, and crashes right into a very warm and very alive wall.

McGregor looks up, hoping hoping hoping, and there he is, cocky grin already on his lips even as he reaches out to steady them both. “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Frank soothes before McGregor can even open his mouth. He can hear Lily taking the stairs two at a time behind him; she must have heard his voice. “Don’t need to get so sedimental over little old me.” And then he gives a shit-eating grin.

McGregor’s thoughts sputters to a stop. He continues to stare silently up at the smile that’s slowly shrinking the longer he doesn’t laugh. “Don’t you ever do that again you fucking nutter,” McGregor says and then bursts into tears.

He only has enough presence of mind to cling relentlessly to Frank’s shirt and press his face into his chest when the man in question lets out an alarmed “uh?” And tries to pry him off.

Lily gives a strangled cry of her own and throws herself bodily at the both of them. Frank curses as he wobbles, off balance, and finally falls when Proxima decides she’s been ignored for long enough and launches herself at his legs. Miraculously, McGregor’s foot isn’t jostled too much as they collapse into a heap, but he’s sure he’ll be feeling it later when he’s not so overwhelmed with….emotions.

He pulls back enough to see Lily slap Frank on the cheek and kiss the reddening skin. “You’re not allowed to die until you’re old and grey and married to my brother,” she informs him seriously.

McGregor feels himself turn red. Frank, surprisingly, blushes brightly too. “Lily!” McGregor whines.

“I’ll try not to, Pants,” Frank says. They talk with their eyes again (and when did that even happen, McGregor feels like only he and Lily should be able to do that) and turns to look at him. Frank brings his hands up to gently brush away the tears that haven’t dried on McGregor’s face. “Don’t cry,” His eyes are so incredibly tender, soft and maybe a little misty too.

“I wouldn’t have to cry if you didn’t make us think you’ve died every ten minutes,” McGregor scolds weakly. Lily laughs and pats his head in apparent agreement. Frank looks suitably chastised about that, at least. McGregor’s reasonably sure he won’t try to be self-sacrificing in London, but. Well, who knew?

Lily blows a breath out slowly and stands again. “I’m going to go see if there’s any other way out of this godforsaken place that’s not the river.” Frank begins to stand too; McGregor tries to ignore how he easily rocks to his feet like McGregor weighs no more than a feathered pillow, because pressed close to the man as he is it wouldn’t be a good idea for all his blood to travel south. He stifles a shocked squeak when Frank slips his tree-trunk arms under his arse to keep him there and begins to follow Lily like this is completely normal.

Lily glances back at them, rolls her eyes, and covers her laugh with a poorly-faked cough.

They pick their way through fallen debris and dead bodies (McGregor avoids looking at the latter by hiding his face in Frank’s neck). As they round the corner to where the submarine is still resting, a very familiar voice calls from the entrance of the cavern, “Frank! We figured you might need help, so we came as soon as we could!” McGregor beams at Trader Sam.

She’s flanked by ten other tribespeople, all who have their own canoes with a free seat available. Frank laughs and waves as they draw closer. “You missed the action, Sam, but I’m officially free of the curse. You—“

“Oh!” Lily says suddenly. She digs into her pocket and pulls out the Arrowhead, and places it gently in Trader Sam’s open palm when she’s close enough. “I promised to return it when I was done with it.”

Trader Sam beams at her. “You are a kind woman, Lily. We will remember your generosity for many generations to come.” McGregor can’t even work up the indignation that she doesn’t spare him a glance. Lily DID do most of the work, after all, and while she didn’t do it for glory, he thinks being a local hero will give her the recognition she deserves.

Frank stays silent too. It isn’t an unhappy silence, McGregor evaluates when he looks up to check, just a contemplative one. “Choose a canoe and we will take you back to our village, where we have bigger boats for you to use,” Trader Sam tells them. This means McGregor regretfully has to detach himself from Frank but he can’t help but take one last look up-close. He really is here with them. He really chose to give life another chance when he could have rested for good.

McGregor thinks he loves him.

He’s waited enough. Once they’re back in London and they’ve settled down, he’ll tell him.

Chapter Text

Despite all McGregor’s talk about how he would very much like to never set foot outside his, Lily’s, and now Frank’s high-end flat, he finds himself…missing the Amazon.

Filled with terrifying creatures and people and monsters it may be, but dreary London mornings could never compare to the breathless awe McGregor felt when the sun set below the trees, painting the sky pink, orange, yellow.

Even fleeing for his life is strangely preferable (and, dare he say it, FUN) to heading off for another monotonous day at the publishing office. Briefly, McGregor entertains the idea of bringing Proxima to his workplace for a day just to spare himself the endless badgering questions of his colleagues.

That would definitely get him fired if his unexplained absence for a week didn’t, so he scraps that idea incredibly quick.

Still, it’s hard not to just say “bugger it” and take Proxima on a fine walk to work when he comes home, exhausted from yet another day of arguing with significantly older white men, and sees Frank lounging on their couch. Reading whatever conspiracy theories today’s paper is spouting about Lily and her [i]mysterious foreign beau[/i].

Shirtless and dripping wet.

After McGregor’s brain stops melting out of his ears, he gathers his wits and chucks his poor hat at Frank’s face. Frank snatches it out of the air without even looking, glances up, and grins. McGregor finds absolutely none of that at all attractive. “Difficult day at the office?” Frank asks sympathetically.

And that’s another thing Lily and McGregor had come to learn over the few weeks they’d brought Frank home—he’s strangely sincere about everything. When he asks how their day went, it isn’t just a polite icebreaker; he genuinely wants to know every detail of their time away and each conversation they had.

Lily says it’s mostly likely a symptom of being alone so long. That Frank isn’t used to having people he can keep, so he makes up for it by learning as much as he can about what McGregor and she are like as frequently as possible.

McGregor just thinks it’s a strange 1500s cultural thing.

McGregor groans as he slips out of his leather shoes, stretching his recently healed foot. He limps over to the couch Frank still lounges on and collapses on his legs. Instead of squawking indignantly like he had the first few times McGregor (and Lily) had done this, Frank merely shifts his legs around so that they’re both more comfortable.

“It was AWFUL, Frank,” McGregor whines. “Did you know that your superiors don’t tend to believe you when you say you couldn’t come into work for a week because you were chasing your sister and a four hundred year old man around the Amazon forest?”

“No!” Frank gasps. McGregor slaps his knee because his bare chest is way too dangerous and tempting.

“Oh be quiet,” McGregor snorts, “it’s not like you have to worry about paying your part of the rent right now anyway!”

Frank looks far too smug for someone mercilessly leeching off two rich siblings, McGregor thinks mulishly. “You can’t complain when you still let me stay here.”

McGregor scoffs loudly and rolls his eyes. For him and Lily, it hadn’t even taken them a second to decide that they’d house Frank for as long as he needed to get back on his feet. If it turned out that he wanted to stay with them, they weren’t exactly going to kick him out. They’ve had many, many conversations about Frank that the man in question has not been privy to. Since many of them concern McGregor’s Feelings, it’s not a bad thing.

“—Lily?” McGregor blinks a couple of times. At some point, he’d practically curled himself in Frank’s lap, head resting just above Frank’s navel. He flushes in mortification but can’t quite bring himself to move. The large hand gently carding through his tousled hair tells him that Frank doesn’t mind at all. McGregor wonders how many people he’s been able to touch casually like this.

Oh, right. Frank had asked a question. “Pardon?”

“I said, when d’you think you’ll see Lily?” McGregor brutally beats back the irrational jealousy that forms a twisted knot in his chest. Lily isn’t interested in Frank, but whether or not FRANK likes Lily is still up for debate.

“The same time you’ll see her, I presume? I’m not leaving this godforsaken flat until my sister drags me out kicking and screaming tomorrow.” McGregor says. Most days, especially as their adventure becomes more and more a somewhat unpleasant memory and less a visceral nightmare, he’s found that his tolerance for polite company has been diminished greatly. Even if his confidence has increased.

Frank hums and half-heartedly tries to kick McGregor in the shin. “Smart ass,” he teases fondly.

“Only for you, dear heart,” McGregor thoughtlessly responds. Then his brain catches up with his words and, predictably, he flushes. Frank’s hand has stilled in his hair and doesn’t snap back with something hilariously stupid or incredibly witty, which is right around the time McGregor truly begins to believe he’s fucked everything up.

He laughs, nervous and high-pitched, and scrambles off Frank’s legs. He doesn’t try to stop him. McGregor turns away, smoothing down the creases in his suit, and can feel Frank’s stare burning into the back of his head.

“If you’d allow me to, I do believe I could try my hand at baking. I think Lily has everything we need for cookies. Do you want cookies? What are you favorite kind? Have you even ever—“ his words shrivel on his tongue when Frank’s hand, larger than his own and still calloused from long days of hard labor, wraps around his wrist.

McGregor utters a slew of curses under his breath. He’d forgotten to account for the fact that Frank is very tall and has very long arms. And fingers. And legs. Everything about him is large and warm and comforting. Like hot chocolate on a rainy day.

Or something like that.

McGregor looks over his shoulder to see Frank’s wide-watery puppy eyes being employed at full-force. He considers writing the Crown to register them as a lethal weapon. “Stay,” Frank begs.

And McGregor, who has never once done anything because someone else asked him to unless they were Lily, who had always made a point to distance himself with his wealth and fancy clothing and immeasurable knowledge of topics very few cared about, sits down again.

“The reason that I wanted to talk to Pants,” Frank starts to explain. Somehow his hand has slid down to clutch at McGregor’s hand tightly. The last time they’d been this close was at the tree, when they’d practically been glued at the hip. “Was because. Well. She wanted to talk to me about you.”

McGregor jolts. “Me?” He asks with no small amount of suspicion. He narrows his eyes. Frank’s face is blank, as it usually is when he’s uncomfortable and has to deal with a situation using his Words and Feelings, but his eyes hold nothing but fondness. McGregor isn’t being teased.

He hadn’t even realized he’d been tense as a bowstring, but as he relaxes, so does Frank. “No, the other McGregor that I’m close friends with,” Frank rolls his eyes. “Yes, you. Idiot.”

“[i]Hey[/i]!”

Frank laughs and nimbly dodges McGregor’s hand when he tries to slap him again. Which just...isn’t fair. “What about me?”

Frank sobers again, quickly going back to glaring a hole in the nice wooden floor. McGregor’s heart pounds in his chest, not unlike the many times it had back in the Amazon. He’s finding that it happens to do that more and more around the ex-Conquistador, nowadays. Now more than ever, McGregor wishes for Lily’s calming presence; she would know exactly what to say to help Frank relax his tightened shoulders, soothe his clenched jaw. Frank is an immovable boulder of tense muscle next to him, still damp. McGregor really, really tries not to focus on the heat he’s radiating or how each time he inhales, his side brushes against McGregor’s arm. He’s only half-successful.

“Frank?” He tries. Frank jerks a little, like he’d forgotten where he was and that there was someone else with him. McGregor can sympathize.

“Yeah. Yeah, sorry, I’m just...I need to know what I have to say.”

McGregor nods. He’s never really had enough of a filter to think about what he said at all, but he gets it. Kind of. Right now, though, he mostly wants to retreat to his bedroom and refuse to emerge until tomorrow morning. When he has an excuse to avoid Frank. And maybe Lily, if she catches wind of his slip of the tongue.

Frank sucks in a quick breath from beside him, then turns to McGregor and looks him right in the eye. His brown, brown eyes are wide and vulnerable, but his lips are pressed thin and his brows are furrowed. “You know I like you, right?”

“Well, I should hope so, you do live with me and own a murder cat. I’ve tried not to get on your bad side.” McGregor replies. Frank growls, but he’s clearly frustrated with himself more so than McGregor.

“No, like. I [i]like[/i] you.”

McGregor has no idea what this poor man is going on about. The longer he stares in confusion, though, the more restless Frank becomes, until he’s nearly vibrating where he sits. The death glare that Frank levels at him when McGregor tries to stand up and resettle is so terrifying that McGregor finds himself sitting down again without his conscious input.

McGregor rubs at his mouth. It’s a nervous tic that he picked up, ironically, from his father, years ago. Lily always teases him that he’s going to rub his lips off one day, and then no one will ever want to kiss him. McGregor usually retaliates by dumping salt in her tea.

Frank looks like he needs to use the loo. “Do you need to use the loo?”

“What? No! Why would you–”

“You just looked like your bowels were bothering you, I wanted to make sure you didn’t have an accident all over this expensive couch, I know the elderly tend to have a problem with that–”

“I don’t need to take a shit, McGregor, I’m trying to–”

“Set me on fire with your eyes? Look, I know that living with a...with someone like me might be uncomfortable for you, but I’d appreciate it if you forgot all about what I called you and we can–”

That’s around the point that Frank throws his hands into the air with a frustrated groan, reaches out to gently cradle McGregor’s face, and leans forward to kiss him.

It isn’t anything like the novels or movies at the cinema talked about; it’s not an instant shock to his system and there are no fireworks. That doesn’t make it a bad kiss. It’s warm and slow and simple, a lingering press of Frank’s lips against his, his nose nudging McGregor’s cheek. Frank heaves a great sigh like the weight of the world has finally left his wide shoulders and begins to draw back.

McGregor makes a frankly (hah) embarrassing noise that borders on a whimpering moan, his hands clutching Frank’s bare arms, and chases after Frank’s lips. He doesn’t even bother opening his eyes that had fluttered shut at some point. He’s sure if he did, the world would be pleasantly out-of-focus.

He manages to catch the corner of Frank’s mouth before he’s gently pushed away again. “McGregor, wait,” Frank says. His voice is deeper and rougher than it had been before. A delighted shiver snakes down his spine, because McGregor made him sound like that. “If we do this you have to know that I–”

McGregor shushes him and finally, finally opens his eyes. The world isn’t blurred beyond recognition but it’s a close thing. There are high spots of red on Frank’s cheeks and the bridge of his nose. McGregor notes, to his delight, that there’s also an echo of a flush on Frank’s chest. He presses his index finger to Frank’s mouth. It’s a startlingly effective way to silence him, and McGregor makes a note of it.

“I know,” he says softly. “I do, too.” They haven’t actually said it, but there will come a time for that. When one of them isn’t half-naked in the living room and the other is far too overdressed for a confession like that.

Frank’s face practically lights up in a wondering smile. His huge hands come up again to caress McGregor’s face like he’s the most precious jewel Frank had ever seen. “You’re so beautiful,” Frank breathes. McGregor’s face flares with heat, and Frank leans in to gently brush his lips across his forehead. It’s unexpectedly tender and caring, so at odds with the way Frank presents himself daily. McGregor giggles, a little love-drunk, and sways forward to catch Frank in another kiss.

They stay like that for a while. McGregor can’t exactly say how long because time seems to lose meaning when Frank’s tongue is in his mouth and the man himself is mapping his teeth like he’s taken a sudden and intense interest in cartography.

“Well, at least I don’t have to lock you both in the spare room and wait for you to work it out,” Lily says dryly. McGregor squeaks and jerks back. He just manages not to fall off the couch and give himself a concussion. Frank’s face is red as his is but he’s clearly unrepentant, lips slick and puffy as he grins. Lily is leaning casually against the front door’s threshold, a matching smirk on her own face. McGregor hadn’t even heard her come in.

“Go away, Lily,” he whines. Lily just laughs at him and shuffles over to them, ruffling his hair and giving Frank a minor stink eye.

Frank’s flushed face goes pale when Lily offers him a new smile, shark-like in its demeanor. “I’m sure I don’t have to worry about you breaking my little brother’s heart, do I?” Lily asks sweetly. McGregor is sure he’s going to pass away from mortification.

Frank shakes his head quickly. “No, ma’am,” he replies.

Lily hums. “Carry on then,” she says cheerfully. McGregor’s sister is terrifying when she wants to be. Sometimes he forgets that. “But don’t do anything in the living room, boys. I live here too, you know.”

McGregor takes back every nice thing he ever said about Lily ever. “Shut up!” he shrieks at her retreating back. She just laughs at him and disappears around the corner. Probably to go up to her flat and look through newspaper clippings again. Despite McGregor’s insistence that he definitely doesn’t want to go on another adventure to find some obscure mythological object, she still scours the news and ancient books relentlessly. “My sister is insane,” McGregor laments.

Frank laughs and kisses him again. “What do you say we make use of your bedroom?”

McGregor freezes, images of Frank naked and willing in his bed playing vividly through his head, and leaps up from the couch with enthusiasm he hasn’t felt in quite a while. “Come along, darling, we mustn’t keep the silk sheets waiting.” McGregor extends a hand. Frank, eyes dark and wanting, reaches out to take it.

“Lead the way.”