Archive of Our Own ^beta

Ever since the affair at the Rock, Michael hasn’t considered his own choices with nearly the same old deliberation. Maybe it’s adulthood, he thinks at first – maybe he’s finally transcended the last stage of boyhood, and everything should be more natural (but no, no; that still can’t be the cause of it. His eyes are too round, his features too soft). He despises it: this notion that before now he's never lain awake on the train without even the will to take a glance at the paper; he's never before been reduced to this point of thinking so exclusively of only one person aside from himself.

Never as a teenager, moreover, could he have pictured himself hemmed in at the back of an Australian pub, peering out the leadlight windows as though in expectation - all while knowing full well he won't be summoning a dogcart for another hour. Now as soon as he can stop hiding behind his self-deprecatory smile he tells himself he’s being stupid, petty. Foolish. All he’s achieving is a bad memory, the solidified knowledge that he, with his entire lineage, is sitting somewhere in Melbourne’s depths and feeling sorry for himself.

Anything else is hard to admit. Albert wouldn’t do this to himself. Albert would be drinking it away, although that’s hardly a stroke better, and—oh. Albert.

Leaning forwards across the table, trying to stop himself from mindlessly dragging his fingers along the decorative edge, they instead eventually reach up and tentatively skim his hairline. He wonders if he can somehow shut out the world further without making it appear he’s actually this prone to misery, but he might already be something of a lost cause.

(Right. Of course, that’s what he did, and that’s why he was on the train the minute it pulled in, seeking out the quietest compartment. To think – Albert was the sort to want his correspondence read aloud! Albert the homemaker, Albert the coachman who’d only be seen dead in a waiter’s uniform.)

That’s why he can’t bear to look at Lake View again, yet altogether the same reason behind his last, self-indulgent question: why not take a holiday and come up north with me? Presently, it seems only troublesome that he ever asked, especially now that Albert’s a thousand pounds richer and likely to sooner find himself by Irma’s side than his (Irma’s little else than a phantom in Michael’s mind now: he sees her dark eyes, directed out across the lake, and the lace on her cheek and the curls, her blood—).

Albert’s rather a different story, as all of Michael’s memories of him are condensed into fleeting images he realises he now has to revoke. Imagining the future, whenever he has the time, is mysteriously affronting. He imagines Albert, greyed and withered and bent at the waist, tending to a foal which somehow looks the spitting image of Lancer. Albert, still in the same dusty attic room a quarter of a century on, so wholly incapable of self-effacement that he continues to strip himself bare when the roof’s turned scalding hot. Albert, still carousing into Woodend each Sunday, to have himself beaten bloody by a man half his age. Albert, with children: children and a faceless woman, still penniless, but whistling as he limps through Lake View gardens.

And Michael doesn’t have a damn clue which is worse – the actual realisation that Albert’s got the ability to settle down, outside of Michael’s usual hesitance to accept fact (imminent or otherwise), or the knowledge that every single part of his considered outcomes is fantasy. Now all he sees is Albert attending to an unending sprawl of rich man’s greenery, looking out of place in France or India or England, showing up like he’s crawled from a foreigner’s imagination.

And Albert doesn’t belong elsewhere, with a pretty cottage or whatever other liberal blessings the Leopolds happened to promise (he scarcely remembers a word of that letter now, and perhaps that’s – for once – a solid effort on his part). No, Albert belongs with him.

Michael’s halfway to the pub’s door a moment after the realisation strikes him. He’s up and going and preparing to brace the distraction of the Melbourne cold before he can look again at just what he’s allowed himself to think. Because he knows he’d reject it, then. He’d reject it if he gave himself the chance. That’s exactly why he can’t.

His beer’s only three-quarters done and his coat’s stained, but he can’t take the stuffiness a moment longer. There’s not even the moment needed to stop where he is and be genuinely sensible about the entire matter, or recall what he promised himself earlier about the bloody dogcart. Simply, vaguely, he concludes on more pressing matters, decides the night’s good enough to walk, and then he is. Aimless, like he always seems to be on his thoughtful days: looking at his boots cloud over from the state of the roads, as rainwater drips onto the sleek heads of tethered animals. Hardly does he glance back to the yellow windows of the pub that are simultaneously like and completely unlike the sight of Lake View, or the chocolate road, or even the Cutlers’.

Michael needs the fresh air, needs to breathe. In the very least he made one good decision, and didn’t drink at the hotel where he’s staying (despite how initially it seemed merely an inconvenience he’d again failed to properly consider), and can retreat into himself. Every one of his thoughts bleed into one another as he walks and is chased by distant dogs’ barks and whoops of laughter, going forth with his usual brisk stride. All he can hope for is that it isn’t too late, that it’s never been too late.

By the time he gets to his own room, having fumbled with the lock for a good three minutes and lit an oil lamp which renders every object in the room either silhouetted or gleaming, it’s almost like he’s exhausted. When did he last feel so much like a child? Already has it been imprinted into him that only the antisocial yearn for seclusion, but now, he casts it aside. All those old teachings: worthless, designed to undermine. Only the most recent acquisitions of knowledge are relevant to him, and all of them delivered by the same lips and the same mind.

His heart seems to be rattling inside of him when he reaches for his pen and notebook and begins to scrawl, letters falling from the nib and drooping down the pages. Letter or reflection or note, he doesn’t know, but he writes until he’s very nearly forgotten why he tumbled into the room hot and bothered in the first place. All he knows is that it’s for someone. For him? Maybe. For his aunt and uncle? Perhaps; Heaven knows they’d appreciate it, as he’s uncommunicative and withdrawn at even the best of times, whether he enjoys it, notices it, or neither. Is it for Albert? His smile answers his own question, repressed by a cold hand, but he’s not even filled in the blanks with a legible name, nor his own.

He’s nearly done with the folding of the letter when he sees it: filthy, splotched, glaring from the edge of the writing desk. Somehow looking scruffier now than it probably was in the hands it first left. If he didn’t know better he’d mistake it for the solicitor’s letter, and he’s in such a haze (half drunkenness, half absolute trepidation) that he almost does, but no self-respecting solicitor writes in the scratching form this envelope takes, expecting the receiver to understand. So tucking away his own correspondence inside a jammed drawer, licking and rubbing at the ink on his skin, he snatches for it. He’s prepared, at that moment, for practically anything: a fatherly reprimand, a party invitation from his aunt that the messenger (thankfully) let slip into the mud, even a good-natured inquiry as to his health from Lord-knows-who that he’ll bashfully disregard and leave to yellow for a few years.

What he isn’t prepared for is the grin that crosses his face – the one he should conceal, but doesn’t, for already there’s the wet pressure behind his eyes, and all he can smell is cheap cigarettes and rusted metal and pansies, and his hands tremble so badly he’d want to chop them off were he not already consumed. He kisses the seal and his haze is gone, alongside any longer lasting reservations or questions of how anything has come to be. Barely anything is of consequence to him aside from the fact he’s in love as his hands tear against the paper, desperately swiping at it as he combs it.

The words upon it are few, but they’re enough. They’re enough for Michael, and as a hand flies up to cover his face (then to slip down, for he cannot tear his eyes away) and his heart quickens and he collapses back against the ugly hotel mattress, he realises he can’t remember when he last felt like this: improperly, and inexorably, elated.

--

They meet on a rainy Wednesday; Albert’s train was delayed and at some point on his travels he had to pause to help the driver haul his cab from the mud, but he still somehow arrives in one piece. Splattered, yes, and in some parts soaked to the bone, but still there. His grin’s enough, besides, to make everything else practically inconsequential.

“What’re you smiling so much about?” is the first thing he asks, wringing out his coat. “It’s just me. It’s just Melbourne. Didn’t I say I’d come? What’s this all about?”

Nothing, Michael replies, but he knows he’s lying and so does Albert, probably. He’s been doing an awful lot of it lately.

They walk abreast on the path to the designated pub, settling back into their usual companionable silence; Albert only interjects every now and then to remark on his journey and fill in the finer details, about Tom and the College and his frantic letter-writing the moment he had the chance (now that’s all too familiar, but Michael’s content to nod and listen; he always has been). Of course, he doesn’t mention the Rock, or Irma. He doesn’t even mention how he came to be in Melbourne in the first place. All of it is fair enough, although: there’s no need for him to truly understand.

“How quickly can you meet me in Queensland?” Michael begins. “You could easily go your own way, you know.”

“No need for that! We’ll go together, won’t we? I thought that was the plan.”

He’s almost dazed, but his head lifts and steadies. “Do you want it to be?”

A grin from Albert, quick and easy as he takes a draught of the bottle. “I don’t see why not.”

“So it’s settled, then? Really?” He tries not to smile too hard, looking up to the fixtures over his head, but then he glances back down and every little thing about Albert’s disposition is remarkably grounding.

“What do you reckon?” His eyebrows lift; their eyes meet. “Of course it is. I’m at your call.”

And Michael’s heart soars.