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November 1833
The Portuguese coast is a gray-green smudge on the horizon, as it has been for months. Francis casts it a weary glance as he hauls himself up on deck, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Lieutenant Hastings, who fancies himself a wit, sees him looking and says, “No, it hasn’t moved.”
A puff of wind stirs Stag’s sails. Francis turns up the collar of his coat. Winter out here is nothing compared to what he was once accustomed to, but he can still feel a chill from time to time.
“Oh, by the way, Crozier,” Hastings says, pausing at the top of the ladder, “Mail for you. Echo brought a bag over last night.”
Francis takes the letter with mild surprise. He hadn’t been expecting anything; he’s been a poor correspondent, especially these last few months. One of Charlotte and Rachel’s long joint letters, it must be; or maybe a note from Edward Bird, wherever he is these days. But no, it’s postmarked from Stromness, of all places, in a hand that looks familiar but that he can’t quite place. He frowns and opens it.
“…Everything all right, Crozier?” Hastings asks, after a moment.
“Yes,” Francis says, gruff, as he stares down at the letter in his hands. It’s from James.
It can’t be, but it is.
“Jolly good,” Hastings says, and moves off, whistling as he goes. Francis rubs his eyes without thinking, then folds the letter carefully and slips it into his sleeve. Just a few lines in a dreadful scribble, enough to tell him that James and Tom Blanky and old Abernethy were all alive and well and bound for Hull with the rest of John Ross’s crew.
As Francis looks out at the unchanging horizon, he feels something in his chest give with a dull ache. A feeling he buried years ago, unfurling like the first shoot rising through snow.
There hadn’t been a particular day when he’d woken up and realized, James is dead, he’s never coming back. Just a quiet, dreadful knowledge that settled over him like ice as the years passed and no word came. Now the ice has gone in an eyeblink, and in its place is something he'd almost managed to forget.
A gull calls overhead as it soars towards the coast on a fresh breath of wind. The rigging’s pitch changes as Stag gathers way. There’s work to be done; Francis sets his face and strides to the quarterdeck.
Surely it’s the salt from the sea breeze that’s stinging his eyes.
“Good to see a smile on your face again, Mr. Crozier,” Captain Lockyer says over dinner that evening.
Francis looks down at his plate, trying to school his expression. “Thank you, sir.”
The summer months are interminable, and not just because Stag is stuffed to the brim with cast-off Portuguese courtiers and their one-time king. James’s letters chase him around the Atlantic and then the Mediterranean, usually arriving in the wrong order, and his own stupid scrawls in response can hardly match James’s for news. James is working on his uncle’s book, he’s down in Portsmouth on HMS Victory, he’s quarreling with his uncle, he’s giving evidence to Parliament, he’s sitting for portraits… As though he’s trying to pack four years into one.
In the scraps of free time Francis can snatch to write back, his growling about court protocols and cramped conditions sounds dull even to his own ears. But there’s precious little else going on aboard, and when he tries to write something that will express the ache that lingers in his chest, the words won’t come. He’s tried that before, after all, on their last voyage together, and James never said a word.
The weather is blisteringly hot.
By late July, when Lockyer sets their course for Plymouth, the crew needs a refit as badly as the ship does. The prospect of a month or two on shore, away from the crowded gunroom and the tedious view of the coast, sounds like a welcome respite. Francis scribbles a note to James from Lisbon, on the chance they could meet in Portsmouth or Plymouth while Stag is fitting out.
Just a chance. But he can’t help but hope.
All thought of that letter has left his head by the time they reach Plymouth; besides, it’ll surely be a week or more before he gets a reply. Bringing the ship in is an endless bustle of work: interminable amounts of lists to be checked and stores to be offloaded and men to be organized. And Lieutenant Bevan is ill again, so Francis offers to take over his duties as well; that’s enough to nearly run him off his feet.
The sun is setting by the time he goes ashore, thinking only of finding a drink and a quiet corner to rest his aching back. But as he makes his way along the quay someone calls “Frank!” and he hardly has time to turn before James has pulled him into a hug.
Because of course it’s James, who else would be slapping him on the back while also hugging him fit to break his ribs? How many hands does the man have? Francis returns his hug with equal force; not trusting his expression, he hides his face in James’s shoulder.
When James lets him go, Francis catches him by the elbows so he can get a proper look at him. He drinks in the sight of him: a James five years older, dark eyes sparkling in a face that has lost its roundness. He’s gaunt enough that Francis feels a pang of worry, but there’s color high in his cheeks.
“You’re looking bonny,” Francis says, “for a dead man.” Then bites his lip, wondering if that was a mistake. It’s been too long, he’s not sure how to talk to James anymore.
But James just laughs and claps him on the arm again. “Good old Francis. Come and have a drink? I’m at the Red Lion.”
“Have you been here long?” Francis asks as they walk, still more than a little bemused at James’s presence.
“Two days,” James says. “You made a slow passage from Lisbon—that ship must be a right old tub.”
“The winds were poor,” Francis replies, nettled on Stag’s behalf.
“Fine, fine,” James says, and adds carelessly, “They’ll hardly miss me on Victory, anyway: she’s full up with commanders and supernumeraries. All I do is stand around looking decorative and taking observations.”
“Tasks for which you’re uniquely suited,” Francis says, which earns him a grin that nearly makes him go weak at the knees. Lord, how he’s missed this.
“Kind of you to say so, old man.” James laughs and pushes his hair out of his eyes—longer than it had been, so that it falls nearly to his shoulders, Francis notes distractedly. “Anyway, Williams had no objections to giving me a week’s leave, so here I am.”
Here he is, indeed; Francis still can’t quite believe it. Just being within reach of him is enough to set Francis’s heart jumping in his chest, a feeling that’s not quite pain. “It’s good to see you, James,” he says.
James’s hand tightens on his shoulder again. “And you, Frank.”
At the Red Lion they sit down to supper as well as a drink; to Francis’s relief the meal is a hearty one, and they both tuck into the sea-pie with a good will. The food is no impediment to conversation: James talks a mile a minute, as though trying to make up for years of lost time. Francis feels warmth settle into his chest, though whether from the drink or James’s presence, he’s not sure.
Over the long years of James's absence, loneliness and then dull grief had served to blunt his feelings down to almost nothing, or so he'd thought. Now, at the sight of James alive and well, sitting across the table from him attacking another slab of pie, they’ve flooded back with irresistible force. Like a tide coming in. He wants to reach across the table and rest his hand on James’s wrist, or rise and pull him into another hug, tousle his overgrown hair.
His eyes trace James’s mouth as he smiles, and other wants whisper for his attention, ones much less suited to the main room of a public house.
Francis takes another swallow of ale. Best to put those thoughts aside, for more reasons than one. They’re not midshipmen sneaking around belowdecks anymore, and who knows whether James still… No, he should let it go. It’s enough to sit in the warm glow of James’s company, reminiscing about old shipmates and swapping stories of the last few years.
James is uncharacteristically reticent on the subject of his uncle’s expedition; the last two years, especially, he delivers as a clipped, spare account of events. Francis doesn’t press him, but he feels a twinge of worry, wondering what hardships that brief chronicle conceals.
“Did you always know you would make it out?” he asks in a lull in the conversation.
“Know? No. Hope, yes.” Something flickers in James’s eyes, a darkness he’s never seen there before. “It was enough to keep me going while we were walking out,” he says slowly, “And then we got to the channel and there were no boats and I thought, this is it, all that effort and I’m going to die on Fury Beach with my goddamn uncle.” His jaw clenches; Francis can see the tension in him, a wire stretched tight. And can see, too, the moment when he deliberately relaxes and puts on another smile. “But I didn’t.”
He should leave it there. But old regret wells up in him and he says without thinking, “I should have gone with you.”
James blanches. “Good Christ, man. I wouldn’t have wished that on anyone.”
“I know,” Francis says, miserably, “But James… You know I would have come to find you, if I'd not been on Stag, if I'd…” If he'd not been stuck in his own year of misery, scanning every paper that the mail brought for a mention of the expedition’s return. Slowly realizing that there'd never be one.
“Of course,” James says, as though it’s the most natural thing in the world. “I’d have done the same for you.”
Francis nods mechanically, and isn’t sure to be relieved or disappointed when James turns the conversation to lighter things.
By the time James finishes a long yarn about dog sledging across Boothia, the room has cleared out somewhat, and the sky outside the grimy windows is fully dark. “Well,” Francis says reluctantly, aware of how much of James’s time he has taken up, “I should be off.”
James catches his arm. “Come upstairs,” he says, with a smile and a tilt of his head that Francis isn’t sure how to read. “Sit up with me for a while. I’ve spent so much time talking about my exploits that you’ve hardly had a chance to tell me of yours.”
“There’s not much to tell,” Francis protests. Blockade duty in the North Sea is even more tedious than a winter in the ice, and with less opportunity for scientific study.
His friend scoffs. “That’s hard to believe. Didn’t I hear you were ferrying a king around the Mediterranean?”
“Yes, and a bloody nuisance he was, too.”
“Sounds like my uncle,” James says, with a laugh that’s a little sharper than usual. “Oh, come on, Frank. Indulge me.”
“Oh, very well,” Francis says.
James has, by his own account, been at the Red Lion less than three days, but his room looks like he’s lived in it for a month—books propped open on the floor, bits of paper crowded with calculations scattered everywhere, a dip circle sitting on the washstand in the place of a basin. Francis, remembering the midshipmen’s berth on Fury, is more amused than surprised at the sight. The lone chair is draped with a discarded overcoat, so he stays on his feet.
Behind him, James closes the door softly. Francis turns towards him: an instinctive movement, like a plant turning towards the light. He’s closer than he’d expected: they’re almost nose to nose. James looks at him steadily, the ghost of a smile lingering on his face. His dark eyes glitter, magnetic.
And Francis can’t bear it any longer. He reaches out, like he’s wanted to since he first set eyes on James, slips an arm around his shoulders, and kisses him.
There’s a single frozen second when he thinks no, this was a mistake, he shouldn’t have—and then James melts into his arms, and Francis’s worries vanish in a heartbeat. It’s just like old times, he thinks dazedly, as he pushes James’s collar aside so he can press a line of kisses down his cheek. But no, it’s not quite the same—James’s hair is longer, his jaw too sharp beneath Francis’s lips, and he clings to Francis like he’s expecting him to disappear at any second. And Francis feels ice creep through him at the thought: all the possible worlds where James is bones beneath the Arctic snow, rather than here in his arms.
He turns his head aside, trying to catch his breath. James makes a quiet noise of disappointment and reaches for him again, but Francis blunders past him. With nowhere else to sit, he slumps down on the bed and rests his head in his hands.
After a moment, James settles beside him at a careful distance. A hand comes to rest on his back, rubbing surprisingly gentle circles. “Frank?”
Francis can’t look at him. “I thought you were dead,” he tells the floor.
“Surely that was enough to convince you otherwise,” James says, and Francis can just hear his smirk, “Though if further experimentation is required…”
“James.”
“Sorry.”
“No…” Francis shakes his head. It’s hard to put words to the feeling that is choking him. An unlooked-for happiness painful in its intensity. The dregs of old grief and regret scoured away by pure relief.
“Amiable weakness, you must say,” he says eventually. A confession, of sorts. Raising his head, he meets James’s eyes, and reads understanding there.
“Hmm,” James murmurs. Then, soft, “Not weakness, no.”
“I should have told you,” Francis says. “Before you left. I meant to, but…” But. They weren’t in the Arctic anymore, and he hadn’t wanted to upset the careful equilibrium of their friendship.
“Francis,” James says, and there’s an odd note in his voice, one that Francis can’t quite interpret. “You can’t imagine I didn’t know.”
Heat climbs Francis’s neck. “I—”
“Frank.” When he dares a glance at James, he sees a mixture of amusement and chagrin on his face. “I’ve read your letters, if you’ll recall. Give me a little credit.”
“Ah.” Francis rubs at his eyes. “You never said…”
“I thought you knew how I felt.” They stare at each other. After a moment, James’s face floods with color. “Christ, Francis. I adore you. And I owe you a thousand apologies for not having made that sufficiently clear.”
“I’m every kind of fool,” Francis groans. James makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob and leans forward to embrace him.
When they separate, there’s a light in James’s eye that Francis remembers well, and it’s enough to make his heart flutter like a bird in his chest. He reaches up to stroke James’s hair, then leans in for a kiss. James grabs the collar of his coat to pull him closer, and they fit together like they always have.
Francis wakes with James curled against him, snoring peacefully into his shoulder. Grey dawn light filters through the window; gulls are loud in the air outside. Off in the distance, barely distinguishable from James’s soft breathing, he can hear waves breaking.
It’s careful work to disentangle himself from James without waking him. Francis brushes James’s hair out of his face and presses a kiss to his temple, then turns to gather up his trousers and coat. His boots prove harder to find; one’s under the bed, the other he eventually retrieves from beneath James’s uniform jacket. He catches a glimpse of himself in the glass by the washstand and tries to smooth down the tangle James has made of his hair.
The morning air washes over him as he walks down to the docks: not quite cool, but enough to dull the August heat and fill the air with clean salt. The cobbles shine with the remnants of late-night rain; the sky is pearly grey, shading towards blue.
Francis pauses in the harbor, looking out over the forest of masts to the dull curve of the distant horizon. The restlessness that had driven him ebbs away: he stands still, letting the air soak into him, letting his thoughts slowly settle. Feeling happiness like a knife under his ribs.
Eventually he hears hurried footsteps behind him, and a familiar hand lands on his shoulder. “You’re up early, old man,” James says. Francis glances back at him, sees his hair sticking up in all directions and his eyes still blurry with sleep. “Glad I found you. I woke up and thought you’d run off.”
“I just needed some air,” Francis says, and reaches up to squeeze his hand by way of apology.
“Well, don’t do it again,” James says, with a smile that takes any sting out of the words.
They stand side by side for a time, while the gulls wheel overhead and the breeze kicks up to ruffle their hair and collars. Out beyond the harbor, mist gathers in curtains over the sea.
Then James says, a little too casual, “You know, I’ll be posted soon.”
“Give you joy,” Francis says. The epaulettes on James’s hastily thrown-on coat catch the morning light.
James continues, “When the Admiralty give me a ship—”
“Just like that?”
“They will,” James says, as though nothing could be simpler. “And you’ll be my first, even if I have to spirit you away from under your captain’s nose.”
“Good,” Francis says. “Because if you think you’re running off north again without me—”
“It could be south, you know,” James says idly. “Sabine’s talking about an expedition… But either way, I wouldn’t dream of it, old man.” He holds out a hand. “Promise.”
They shake on it, and walk back to the inn arm in arm.