Archive of Our Own

Henry doesn’t like to put his head beneath the water when he bathes, nowadays. He leans back against the edge of the bathtub, knees bent, hammered tin cold beneath his cheek, and fantasises about the day he may be able to wash his hair properly on his own.

The ship’s doctor on the Enterprise had shaved it all when he was carried aboard and now it sticks out in awkward curls just above his ears as it hasn’t since he was still in short trousers.

At least the water is warm. He runs one hand through it as the gaslamp flickers on the wall. He hopes it’s real, this time.

A gentle knock on the door rouses him from melancholy, and the water splashes against the rim as he pushes himself to a more sociable angle.

“Come in,” he said. “I’m as decent as can be.”

Goodsir pushes the door open with an elbow and backs in carrying a tray. Henry blinks twice, just to check.

“I’m afraid you missed the dinner bell,” says Goodsir with the little smile he wears for jokes. “But I persuaded the cook to leave this for you.”

Their rooms are in fact blessed by the total absence of a cook. None of the ones Henry met with would agree not to bring meat into the house. While Henry’s mother is horrified by the very idea, he is getting quite fond of cooking and Goodsir seems of a similar mind.

Technically speaking Henry Collins, ex-Navy, is employed as manservant to Mr Henry D.S. Goodsir, newly minted professor of Natural Science at Oxford. He has no set college and is always haring off to new corners of the city to find his tutorials; Henry sometimes follows him to lectures and dozes off listening to him discuss the fauna of the Icelandic coast. The work of maintaining their rooms occupies the rest of his time, but Goodsir seems determined not to let him do everything. He heated the water for this bath himself, in fact, after Henry came home from the grocer with a look in his eyes Goodsir disliked.

Practically speaking they live together and share the chores while Henry tries not to feel like the invalid he often is.

He accepts the tray with its bowl of stew and slice of bread, feeling very strange to eat in the bath but knowing, deep down, that he wouldn’t have eaten at all this evening if he didn’t. Far too many nights had seen him abed before he could bring himself to eat, at least until Goodsir had scooped him up and spirited him off to Oxford.

The first spoonful burns his tongue but he swallows regardless, too pleased at the sensation to worry about the consequences. He tears a chunk of bread from the plate and leaves it to soak before tilting his head up, to observe Goodsir in the act of smiling at him.

Goodsir’s smiles are a point of fascination for Henry; Goodsir must have noticed by now and hasn’t said anything about it, although they do occasionally dim when he doesn’t know Henry is watching. There’s an element of performance in both their lives, Henry supposes. He’s pleased with the way Goodsir’s eyes crinkle at the corners, nonetheless. It makes the dark circles beneath his eyes matter less.

“Do try not to mix the stew with the bathwater, Mr Collins,” says Goodsir, as Henry looks up at him cow-eyed and tries to pretend otherwise. “It’s a new recipe, I’d like your thoughts on it before it spoils your soak.”

He eats another spoonful and then tries the bread, which is delicious and has a convenient slice of onion atop it for Henry to crunch. He likes the texture.

“It’s very good, sir, thank you,” he says. Then he yawns, surprising himself, and tries to rub the soreness from his jaw as it stretches. Something flickers in Goodsir’s eyes at the sight of Henry’s open mouth. He remembers his missing teeth and feels his stomach drop. Suddenly the stew isn’t quite as appetising anymore.

He soldiers on and eats the rest, but he can’t finish the bread. The bathwater is cooler now as Goodsir takes the tray out to the scullery and returns with the jug and cloth they keep by the fireplace.

“Tilt your head back,” he says. He puts one hand, feather-light, on Henry’s shoulder. The weight of it soothes something in his chest and he follows when Goodsir presses him down.

Henry wishes he liked this ritual less than he does. He wishes he could wash his own hair, and live on his own, and sleep through the night without bad dreams. He wishes he’d never gone to the fucking Arctic. He wishes he’d never learned to dive. But without all that he wouldn’t have Goodsir’s hand on his shoulder as he pours warm water on his scalp, and he doesn’t know if he’d trade that away for anything.

A gentleness he doesn’t know how to handle, that’s what it is. Henry has never been good at seeking comfort; Goodsir taught him the skill in Nunavut and he exercised it only once though not for lack of trying. He wonders sometimes if he would have gone so deep if Goodsir had been in office instead of Stanley, the morning of Carnivale.

Clearly Stanley had not been the right man to ask on the subject of stability. He blinks at the memory of fire flickering against closed eyelids and focuses again on Goodsir’s hand on his shoulder, the gentle puff of his breath in the air.

“What’s tomorrow?” He asks, as Goodsir lathers soap into Henry’s scalp. “Besides Friday, before you try that joke on for size.”

Goodsir laughs quietly. “You’re wise to my tricks, then, Collins,” he says. “I’ve a lecture at eleven, at Balliol, then a tutorial after lunch.”

Balliol isn’t too far from their rooms, thankfully. Harry insists that everything in Oxford is walking distance, for all that Henry argues they both have a very fucked up perception of the concept.

“What’s the lecture on?” Henry asks, letting himself relax as the smell of soap reaches him. “Liked that one you did about lichens. Very soothing.”

“Soporific, even,” Goodsir replies, with a hint of amusement. “You’re fortunate not to snore, or even more of my students would lobby for your removal than already do.”

“You’d never make me leave,” says Henry. He knows that, if nothing else.

“No, I wouldn’t,” Goodsir murmurs, almost to himself. “The lecture is on cell theory. The Honour School asked it of me in particular.”

Henry hums. He doesn’t understand everything Goodsir studies, but he likes listening to him talk anyway.

They fall back into comfortable silence as Goodsir rinses the soap out and combs through Henry’s curls, only catching on a few knots. His hand cradles Henry’s face gently as he does so. Five points of warmth Henry holds tight to his heart.

“There we are,” says Goodsir, just a hint of Edinburgh in his voice. It slips more often at home, Henry has noticed, and to be honest he’s never been brave enough to ask why Goodsir covered it to begin with. “I’ll leave you be, now. Don’t fall asleep again.”

Henry smiles up at him, head tilted even further back over the edge of the bath. Goodsir swallows visibly, his throat moving. His collar is undone, shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows. Henry thinks idly of putting his mouth to Goodsir’s pulse, just to feel it.

“I’ll be back to check, just in case,” he adds. This time he smiles in the way that fills Henry’s chest with sunlight, eyes melting warm and creasing deep at the corners. Henry would do anything for that smile.

Goodsir – Harry, Henry thinks in the privacy of his mind – runs his hand through Henry’s hair, damp and tangled as it is, and leaves. Henry’s scalp tingles. He takes a deep breath and holds it in his chest. Releasing it feels like breathing out smoke. His lungs aren’t happy with him for all this exercise, it seems.

When they were first back, all those months ago, Henry used to spend hours lying abed trying to bring himself to bathe at all.

He levers himself up and out of the bath a few minutes later, fingers and toes shrivelled in whorled lines and water finally cold enough that it makes his heart begin to beat faster. He is very glad that there is no candle to blow out, in this modern house with modern conveniences. His hands and feet are cold and he thinks if there was smoke in the air he might start to cry.

Towelled off and drier than he had been, dressing gown tied at the waist, Henry pads down the corridor to his bedroom. Goodsir’s door is slightly ajar, far enough that Henry can see the bedside lamp is lit and Goodsir is sat up in bed, a book in his lap and his glasses sliding down his nose.

He wants so badly to go in and lie down beside Goodsir and never have to leave him for even a moment. He wants to climb inside his body and walk around like that forever and not have to be himself anymore. He wants to be nothing and nobody except the parts of him that might help someone else.

He recognises, from a distance, that these are not very good thoughts to be having in the middle of the night. His hands turn on the lamp in his room and his body sits on the bed. He thinks he would like to never get out of bed, and perhaps not do anything ever again. To lie down and stop existing. He hangs up his dressing gown and puts on his nightshirt.

His body lies down. His hands pull the covers over his head. His eyes close. He stops existing.

A few blessed hours of darkness before:

The ice stretches out around them. He puts his hands on his face and wonders if they might freeze that way. Camp is behind him but a hundred miles away. The Captain’s voice carries on the wind.

He can smell meat roasting. When his hands leave his face the tents are all on fire around him, and then the ice breaks beneath his feet because the diving suit is so fucking heavy, and he’s falling and falling and he can’t grasp the guideline. He knows if he could just grasp it he could get out but no one can help and his fingers are clumsy in the gloves and maybe he never had a guideline at all. Maybe he was always destined to drown.

The water is cold and black and never-ending. He feels the weight of it against the back of his neck and grasps again for the guideline that doesn’t exist. Three tugs and they’ll pull him out. Just three tugs and he won’t have to do this anymore.

Orren waves at him in the darkness. He can’t see him but he knows that Orren is watching. The water rushes into his suit and all he can smell is grease and roasting meat and salt. As the jaws of the water open and the Tuunbaq roars he feels a hand on each shoulder pressing him down into something soft.

He opens his eyes. He can’t breathe and he can’t see and there is someone in the room who can’t be there, because he was underwater with the monster and if the monster gets Harry he’ll kill himself. His back aches and his shoulders hurt and the space behind his eyes is throbbing like he’s been punched in the face.

“Henry,” says a gentle voice. “Henry, you’re safe.”

No he’s not. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be safe again. The smell of meat comes back in his throat on his next heaving attempt at a breath and his stomach revolts, roiling like the sea he can’t escape.

The chamber pot is in his lap before he can think to reach for it. He heaves over it and feels his cheeks growing wet as every drop of stew comes back up his throat. A pathetic string of bile comes up after, as his muscles spasm and he can’t seem to stop crying. Through it all a hand is on Henry’s back between his shoulder blades. It makes the crying worse but he wants it there forever anyway.

“There we go,” says the gentle voice. “Deep breaths, Henry. Out, then in.”

He tries to do what he’s told just this once. He gasps out his next breath, then breathes in and smells grease and sobs, because he’s never getting out. The chamber pot wobbles dangerously in his lap before being lifted away. He hears the window open and close, the cold night air rushing over him in one short flash before it can be shut out again.

“Oh, darling,” he hears. “Oh, Henry.” And then there are arms around him and one hand guiding his head against someone’s chest. He can hear their heartbeat, rabbit-fast.

Breathing is a little easier like this. He hiccups twice and breathes in the smell of almost-clean flannel and Pear’s soap. He feels huge and unwieldy and like he might shatter if he moves wrong.

“That’s it,” says Goodsir – says Harry. Of course it’s Harry. Harry who is in his nightshirt and sat holding Henry like a child because he’s had a bad dream. Harry who barely sleeps himself and should be safe in his own bed, not looking after the lodger he’s saddled himself with out of pity. Harry who Henry can’t keep a safe distance from, not like this.

“Sorry,” he whispers. His throat feels like sandpaper. He clears it and tries again. “Sorry.”

“None of that, now,” Harry replies sternly. He taps a finger against Henry’s lower lip and shakes his head. “I won’t leave any man to suffer alone.”

The unspoken not anymore hangs in the air between them. Henry wonders sometimes what Harry saw when Hickey took him captive at the traitor’s camp. There were so few of them to begin with, and when the Tuunbaq came only Hickey and Harry were left.

They’d had to carry him out of the tent they found him in, once Hickey was dead and the Tuunbaq subdued. His left arm was tightly bandaged, the other bleeding sluggishly. Henry remembers the way the Lady Silence had touched his face, just once, before she left with the beast at her heel. He doesn’t know if Goodsir was awake enough to feel it.

He feels calmer now, tethered to his body and almost overwhelmingly physical. He tries to pull away and Harry won’t let him, arms strong as steel around his shoulders.

A mess of blankets keeps his legs bound up together. He keeps far too many on his bed now, sweat his way through August with the crease in Harry’s forehead a regular companion.

“Should be past this now,” he mutters, before he can think better of it. He knows most of the other men have the same troubles as he; at least they had some reason for it. Had suffered some injury or misfortune that others might understand. All he ever did was watch.

Harry stifles a sigh. Henry can feel it beneath his cheek. It feels so strange to be aware of his own body; to have another so close beside him. The last time he felt like this was when Harry hugged him out in Camp Terror. He would have given up anything for another then, another moment of warmth, but Harry pulled away afterwards and never stopped. Seeing the inside of Morfin’s head had set him badly wrong.

Henry hadn’t seen it. He’d been hiding away somewhere like the coward he was, breath caught in his chest, unable to move to help or hinder anybody. Then he’d drunk the dregs of Bridgens’ laudanum and nearly died just as Hickey staged his ill-fated, poorly-manned mutiny.

He has to be glad of it now, he supposes. He doesn’t want to know what it looked like; his mind comes up with enough horrors as it is.

“There’s no rush, Henry,” says Harry, soft as anything. Henry looks up at him, shadowed against the wall in the dim light of the gaslamp. His curls are even more flyaway than usual at this time of night. The darkness beneath his eyes cuts deep. Henry wants him from somewhere deep inside, a cave system of desire. “Everything in its own time.”

“I’d like that time to be now,” he replies, mulish. His chest still aches but he doesn’t feel quite so much like dying anymore.

Harry huffs a laugh. “Wouldn’t we all?”

It occurs to Henry, at last, that it is very early in the morning. That their bedrooms are far apart. That Harry doesn’t wake up for dreams that Henry doesn’t scream his way out of.

He didn’t scream tonight. He doesn’t, when he’s drowning.

He pulls away from Harry’s chest, breaking his hold and sitting up straight. Harry turns his head away, suddenly shy, and Henry wants to take his chin between his fingers and pull him back. His thumb itches with the thought of it.

“You dreamt too,” Henry says, an accusation and an apology all at once.

Harry nods, still turned away. Henry crumbles a little and puts a hand on Harry’s shoulder. If he can’t see his face he needs proof he’s really here.

“What a pair we make, eh?” He feels steadier with something to do, he realises. Like he might be useful for once instead of a man-shaped void wasting food and resources. Something which only consumes.

Beneath his hand, Harry’s shoulder trembles. Henry squeezes gently. He feels the sob before he hears it, quiet and hitched.

“I’ll head back to bed, I think,” says Harry, almost choking. He scrubs one hand over his face. “You needn’t worry.”

He moves to stand up. Without quite meaning to, Henry pulls him back down, off-balance. Harry lands with audible surprise and, finally, looks back at Henry. The lamplight flickers; they’re wasting gas, really. Harry’s eyes shine with it, reflecting tears.

“Too late for that,” Henry says. “All I do these days is worry.” He pulls his hand from Harry’s shoulder and takes his hand instead, running his thumb over Harry’s scarred knuckles.

Harry looks down at their joined hands. “Better to sleep,” he replies. “Sleep, perchance to dream.”

It rolls nicely from his tongue. Henry is so very tired.

“Best get on with that then,” he says. He keeps hold of Harry’s hand as he tries to stand again.

Harry frowns. “Henry, I – I rather think that will be difficult if you don’t let go.”

“Don’t see why that should be,” Henry shrugs. His sense of purpose is razor sharp, suddenly. “Bed’s wide enough for two in a pinch.”

The sight of Harry in his nightshirt is odd, really. Both of them have been back home for months, and yet neither has gained back the weight or muscle they once had. Henry’s broad shoulders hide the fact of starvation most days but Harry is still pale and too thin. Their diet doesn’t help, even though Harry has some apparently innovative ideas about nuts and beans.

And yet Henry still looks at Harry in his nightshirt, bony wrists peeking out from buttoned cuffs, and wants him.

Harry blinks at him. “I’m not sure that would be – proper.”

Henry can’t help the laugh that startles out of him. His lungs still hurt and his mouth tastes of stomach acid and bile - Christ he needs to drink some water. He takes the cup from the side table and drains it, trying not to make a face at the taste. They’re both on one bed in the rooms they live in, alone, with not even a maid to fret about.

And Harry doesn’t know about Henry’s truly improper thoughts, of course. This could be something done between friends.

Could be. Isn’t.

He reaches for Harry’s shoulder with his other hand and tugs, insistent, until Harry relents and sits once more.

“Proper don’t come into it, I reckon,” he says. He keeps his hand on Harry’s shoulder. His thumb rests on the knob of his collarbone, through the flannel of his nightshirt. “And if you don’t mind my saying, I think we could both do with something a bit improper.”

Harry flushes bright red, scarlet blotches revealed by his gaping collar. He stands, flustered, and lowers the gaslamp until it goes out, leaving them both with only the streetlamp outside to see by.

“Collins,” says Harry, still standing by the wall. “I don’t want you to feel like this is something I – expect, of you.” His face is almost invisible from this distance, only a few paces that feel like miles.

Henry clings to his confidence. “Come off it, Harry,” he says. It’s dark now. He can say what he means. “I owe you my life.”

“But you don’t have to,” says Harry. His breath hitches. “I need you to know you don’t have to do anything.”

He sounds frantic. In the shadows Henry sees him shaking out his hands by his sides.

“I’d do anything you asked,” says Henry. “Not because I have to. Just because you even asked in the first place.”

Harry doesn’t tend to ask for things for himself. When he asks Henry to do something for his benefit it’s only after visible agonies on his part, his brows furrowed and mouth set firm. Henry still doesn’t know exactly what happened that made him so unwilling to ask even the most basic of favours, but he hopes it will fade with time.

He thinks he would do nearly anything to make Harry happy.

The streetlamp dims. Perhaps a fog is rolling in. Henry glances out of the window and closes his eyes at the vertigo the cloud of mist inspires.

“Henry?” Harry is beside him suddenly, the back of his hand against Henry’s forehead. The sort of solicitous gesture Henry treasures.

He realises his breath is caught again, tangled somewhere in his chest with the guideline, the blankets and the empty bottle of laudanum.

“Sorry,” he says, when he can breathe again. His head feels odd. “Don’t know what came over me.”

“The weather does strange things to us all,” says Harry, absently. His own eyes are somewhat distant.

Henry’s hands are still his hands, at least. He catches Harry’s wrist as he pulls away and tries on a pleading expression. It rarely worked on his mother, but Harry is a much softer touch than she ever was.

“Look, Harry,” he says. His mouth is his mouth too. Perhaps Harry’s intervention has tethered him again. “I would very much like it if you would sleep here tonight. We could both do with the company.”

And Henry would quite like to wrap his arms around Harry Goodsir, retired surgeon with unsteady hands, to remind himself that warmth can come from good places.

Harry has another visible agony. Henry wants very badly to cradle his face in his hands, to sweep a thumb across the tears beading at his eyelids. Then Harry nods.

“You won’t go back to sleep if I leave, will you?” He asks, weary. There is something in his smile which Henry can’t quite decipher. This is the smile he sometimes sees when Harry thinks he isn’t looking.

Henry is usually looking at Harry, though. It’s a preoccupation.

“Afraid not, doctor,” he says, sorrowful in the extreme. "I'm a difficult patient." He releases Harry’s wrist and kicks the blankets free from his feet until they lie reasonably flat. There are three of them this evening, heavy and comforting.

He draws back the corner as Harry finally perches himself on the corner and swings his legs into bed.

“Always imagine your knees being bonier than this,” Henry mumbles, as Harry slides himself beneath the covers. The bed just about fits them both. He wonders, idly, if he ought to save up for a new one.

He rolls his side as he usually does, facing the window. The mattress isn’t quite large enough to have sides, but he likes to put his toes against the wall and remind himself he’s in a building, not a godforsaken tent. Harry seems tentative, somehow. He knows the mattress sags in the middle; it’s difficult to avoid falling into it if you don’t have practice.

Henry lets his eyes slip closed. Even if Harry isn’t as close as he wants, he can hear his breathing in the quiet night air. It helps to know someone else is here. He was alone in that fog for quite some time before Tozer found him wandering.

He shudders as he thinks of Tozer. He didn’t deserve to go that way, as much as anyone deserves the death they get.

The mattress shifts. Henry feels a warm weight settle at his back just as he slides into sleep.

There is something pressing against his chest. Henry wakes up with a short gasp, sure he’s drowning again.

Then he looks down and discovers that he’s rolled over and almost crushed his employer. His prick is moderately interested in proceedings, as much as it gets interested in anything nowadays.

Harry is fast asleep despite the weight, face slack. He looks almost his age now, Henry thinks, for all that his hair is coming in grey at the temples.

Everyone left from the expedition shares that same problem. Peglar is almost as grey as Bridgens now, making the cradle-robbing joke Tozer once told a little harder to comprehend. Little told him last Henry saw him that Jopson has a highly distinguished grey streak at the hardy age of almost-thirty.

Henry is past thirty himself. He doesn’t know whether he feels it. Sometimes he doesn’t feel much of anything at all.

There is a lock of Harry’s hair lying just so across his brow, almost brushing his eyelids. His mouth is half open, showing the gap where his missing incisor ought to be.

It must have been a few minutes since Henry woke up. He can’t make himself move, to clamber over Harry and inevitably tear him from the welcoming arms of sleep. In about twenty minutes he’ll need a piss badly enough to break that promise, but until then – this. He tucks the lock of hair back in place with gentle fingers and resists the impossible urge to kiss Harry right between the eyes, in that place where his brow furrows deepest.

He shifts back, eventually. His shoulder is beginning to prickle uncomfortably after so long pressed into the mattress. He wonders if Harry could explain why that is, and makes a note to ask at breakfast.

Then he remembers that it is in fact his turn to make breakfast.

He idles for a few minutes more. The early morning light reaches everything, from the sconces on the wall to Harry’s hands, curled gently beside his face where it rests on the other pillow.

Henry removes his arm from where it may well be crushing Harry’s lungs. He feels less solid without the feeling, but breakfast might be more important than solidity.

Slipping out of bed without disturbing Harry is more difficult. He eventually settles for climbing over the foot of the frame, a delicate structure of wrought iron on which Henry has stubbed multiple toes. He creeps from the room, avoiding the board that creaks when you step on the wrong end, and almost stubs his toe on the doorframe.

The wash basin is in the scullery, along with the water jug and soap. Henry washes quickly and goes hunting for Harry’s guzunder because the piss is becoming quite urgent and it’s far too early for the outhouse.

That dealt with he returns to the scullery through the kitchen, trading a narrow room for an even narrower one.

The tray from last night’s dinner sits by the sink. He frowns, realising that Harry’s own bowl is nowhere to be seen.

He must have eaten before Henry and washed up. Must have.

Harry Goodsir, almost-doctor, refuses to let Henry miss any meal. He doesn’t have the same diligence for his own diet, Henry knows, but he is getting better at persuading him to eat, even at odd times and in odd portions.

“Letting things slip, are we, Harry?” He asks the empty air of the scullery. Then he sighs, and fetches the butter dish and the last of their cheddar. He’s still a little afraid of the gas stove but he can put that aside for the sake of cheese on toast.

He puts the stew-bowl and side plate in the sink before he goes to the kitchen, then slides the tray away beneath the crockery. He supposes this is what he’s paid for, although Harry seems to wish that Henry would simply take the money he offers and live idly.

Harry’s brothers funded his initial sojourn in Oxford, he knows. Harry told him as much when he descended upon him at the home of John Bridgens, who had kindly offered Henry a spare corner of his and Peglar's home until such a time as he found someone willing to hire a diver who couldn’t put his head below water. A Navy man who was afraid of the sea.

He didn’t tell Henry much of the circumstances of his relocation beyond that. He has a vague idea that Harry had attempted to return to his work at the Surgeon’s Hall Museum and found it no longer to his tastes.

Henry doesn’t know very much about the museum, besides a hazy recollection of a grisly tale in the penny dreadfuls his brother had read to him as a child. The resurrection men were not a topic he’d enjoyed dwelling on.

As it is, Harry seems content to teach on the subject of Natural Sciences, and avoid mention of the Franklin Expedition among all but those who actually survived it.

He slices the cheddar thickly and lays it on buttered bread before lighting the stove. He still hates the smell, but he prefers it to wood-burning by several leagues. The cheese is bubbling merrily away by the time he hears movement from the corridor.

“Henry?” Harry sounds wrong, like something’s caught in his throat.

The door to the kitchen opens. It’s a small room, only installed in the past few years after the death of the old housekeeper and the splitting of the boarding house into separate rooms. There’s not really room for both of them.

Henry shifts backwards against the table, one eye on the toast, just in time for Harry to stumble in, hands wringing. He’s in his nightshirt still, looking more substantial in the morning light but not by much. His eyes are somewhat wild when they fix on Henry.

“Oh, there you are,” he says, at a higher pitch than Henry’s heard from him before. “I didn’t know where you’d got to.”

He puts one hand on Henry’s arm as if to reassure himself Henry is in fact there in the kitchen and not some figment of his imagination. Henry can understand the impulse. He covers Harry’s hand with his own and winces slightly. His fingers are much too cold.

“That draught will be the death of us,” Henry says, light as air. He pulls Harry’s hand away and cups it in both of his own.

Harry takes a deep breath. Henry blows gently on Harry’s fingers, caught in his like a rabbit in a snare. Harry pulls away after a few moments. Henry lets him go and wonders what came over him.

His hands itch to touch Harry again. He doesn’t know why he’s finding it so hard to ignore the urge to do so now. He’s been dealing with the thought of it for months. Perhaps it’s like lead poisoning. Once the want has built up enough you can’t stop it in its tracks. He definitely prefers this feeling to the stomachaches. He wonders if, cut open, you would see a black line on his heart.

Harry wouldn’t like Henry having these sorts of thoughts. He is determined to break Henry of his perpetual morbidity, for all the good it might do him. You survived, he says, when Henry talks about dying young. We both did.

The toast is starting to burn. He turns to attend to it, and when he turns back with two plates of only slightly charred rarebit he finds that Harry has vanished into the main room.

He takes a moment to switch off the gas and follows him out. Harry has taken residence on one end of the settee, and has also taken the time to put on his dressing gown and slippers. He looks like he ought to be comfortable and is somewhat pissed off that it hasn’t worked out the way it should, shoulders hunched and arms crossed.

Henry passes him a plate and sits beside him, closer than usual. Harry has his feet planted firmly on the floor, as if to confirm that they are still on dry land. Henry catches himself doing the same thing several times a day.

“Everything alright, doctor?” He asks, as he takes a bite of toast. The cheese is quite good, although personally Henry prefers something a bit sharper.

“You know I’m not a doctor, really, Henry,” says Harry. There’s an unhappy tilt to his mouth. He runs a hand through his hair and winces when his fingers catch at a tangled curl. “You mustn’t keep calling me that.”

“Maybe so,” Henry replies. His toast is already almost finished, he realises. He must have been hungrier than he thought. “But you more’n earned it, in my opinion.”

Henry still doesn’t understand the distinction. Apparently there are rules and regulations which Henry thinks, privately, can fuck right off to hell. Why not call him what he was for the Expedition all those long months?

“So you all say,” says Harry. He smiles ruefully, then rubs his palms against his thighs. There are crumbs at the corners of his mouth. “I think that any doctorate in my future will be far away from any patients. The college would like me to write a thesis on Arctic fauna.”

Henry frowns. “Didn’t you already write about that?”

“Unfortunately, a scientist can rarely restrict himself to only one paper on a species,” says Harry. His feet are still on the floor; he kicks off his slippers and curls his bare toes against the rug. He’s missing two on the left foot. None of them escaped frostbite in the end. “I’m considering it but I think I’d rather have longer to settle in here.”

Harry has been in Oxford for more than six months now. Henry narrows his eyes. “How much more settling in d’you need?” Surely there are only so many professor-types he needs to meet, even in a city made up of them.

That fetches him a heavy sigh. “I think you have a mistaken impression of my life here before you joined me.”

“And whose fault is that?” snaps Henry, before he can think better of it. Harry scooped him off of Bridgens’ spare cot and brought him here with barely a by-your-leave. He’s been so pathetically grateful for it that the fact Harry never thought to tell him why has barely occurred in the intervening few months. The idea that he has somehow erred by offering someone too much privacy rankles badly.

Harry has pressed himself into the corner of the settee while Henry tries hard not to fume. He doesn’t like the way anger fills up his chest and presses on his ribs.

“I admit,” says Harry quietly. “That I have not been very forthcoming. I was – not doing very well. At first.”

Henry casts his mind back to the moment he’d walked into the sitting room to find Harry Goodsir on the sofa, teacup and saucer in trembling hands. His heart had leapt so high he doesn’t think it’s come all the way back down yet. Perhaps it never will. And the moment he’d found out Harry was there for him…

But it was true that when he walked in Bridgens had looked more worried than usual. Bridgens had a face which worried in its natural state, but there was a certain twitch of the eyebrows which Henry had come to understand meant something more was occurring. It was true that Harry had only said I’ve need of someone in Oxford, and not offered anything more. It was true that when he followed Harry home with his kitbag over his shoulder he had been surprised by the lack of personal touches in his rooms. They have decorations now, gifts from the remaining crew who have filtered through in dribs and drabs.

He realises that he’s been ignoring a problem for quite some time. He does this a lot, so it’s not precisely a novel feeling, but he doesn’t like that this time it’s something that hurts Harry more than himself.

He doesn’t say anything yet; he puts a hand on Harry’s knee and feels him shift closer.

“My brothers expected me to fit back in at the museum in Edinburgh. I was doubtful enough but willing to try, until – well.” He swallows heavily. “When I failed to do so I came here, to Oxford, and threw myself on the mercy of the Natural Sciences. I worked hard enough to impress the Dean, hard enough to ignore the cold weather and the bad dreams and the gnawing in my stomach.” Harry pauses. Henry squeezes his knee gently. He wonders when his own chest will begin to heave the way Harry’s does. “And then one day it was. More. And I didn’t get out of bed. Took three before someone came to check on me.”

He looks up at Henry, eyes hooded. “I thought of you, of course. Once I’d stopped feeling so sorry for myself.”

“That’s not it though, is it,” says Henry. Fuck, he wishes Harry didn’t know that feeling. “It’s not sorry. It’s nothing. So much nothing it fills you up like seawater in your lungs.”

Harry smiles weakly. Henry files it away in the same place he puts his memory of all of Harry’s smiles; locked away for safekeeping.

“I wish this wasn’t something we shared,” says Harry, an unwitting echo. “But yes. I felt it, and I thought of you.”

Henry imagines Harry lying abed the way he does. Staring at the whitewashed ceiling and wondering when it might become even the slightest bit easier to force himself upright and into some semblance of being alive. It’s not fair. It makes him want to scream.

“I hoped you were doing better, as we were back, but when I wrote to Bridgens to ask after you he was… concerned. You know we both – worried. On the journey home.” Harry taps his fingers against one another, thumb to index, middle, then ring to littlest and back again.

Henry does know. He remembers waking in sickbay on the Enterprise to Bridgens sitting beside him in the hard wooden chair, reading a book borrowed from the captain and looking like he hadn’t slept in days. Peglar had been well recovered by then. Henry hadn’t understood the worry was directed at him until Bridgens spelled it out.

You nearly killed yourself that day, lad, Bridgens had said. His heavy hand rested on Henry’s shoulder, keeping his soul inside him. Goodsir and I, we’re keeping a special eye.

When Henry was well enough to walk, he looked in the cupboards and found that all the laudanum was gone. He blinks away the memory and looks up.

“I know,” he says, belatedly. Harry is breathing short, sharp breaths, eyes somewhere distant. Henry feels his bones creak as he closes the last few inches of space between them, arms around Harry’s shoulders. He pulls him back and pushes his face into the crook of his neck, back against the cushions, feet up on the arm.

Harry makes a surprised noise that he will likely deny was a squeak. Henry tightens his arms and wonders if this was why God gave him so much strength to begin with. He rests his chin on Harry’s head, feels the softness of his curls, and resists the urge to kiss him.

It takes a long moment for Harry’s breathing to ease. Henry thinks it might have gone even faster if he had gone the opposite way and laid his whole weight on him, pressing him down into the cushions of the settee. Much riskier, of course.

“Sorry,” he says, into the top of Harry’s head. “I – I don’t think I was very well, was I?”

“No,” Harry says, muffled by Henry’s shirt. “You were badly off. And realising that I was so bad myself was – not what I expected, from being home.” He pulls away. Henry stops him from going too far; he rearranges him so that Harry’s head is resting on his shoulder, almost where he’d lain against Harry the night before. All’s fair. “I was naive about that, I suppose.” He snorts. It’s not a happy sound. “I thought I’d left all that with the ice.”

“I don’t think hoping for something is bad, though,” says Henry. He passes a hand down Harry’s back, feeling the knobs of his spine through his dressing gown. This is the gentleness Harry taught him, he thinks. “We needed something, after Fairholme.”

Henry stops there. They don’t really talk about the expedition in this way, with reference to specific events and people and things. It sends Harry panicking and doesn’t leave Henry much better. It feels easier to do it now, when they’re already talking. He’s not sure why.

Harry’s head is heavy against his shoulder. The weight is soothing somehow. He can feel it every time Harry’s lungs expand and contract.

“There is that,” he agrees quietly. “I don’t know. I suppose I thought that if you were alright, it would mean that – that I would be alright on my own. And then you weren’t, and I thought – I have to help someone.”

“Well,” says Henry. His eyes are burning, all of a sudden. “I’m very pleased you chose me.”

“I don’t think it was much of a choice,” says Harry. His voice rumbles through Henry’s chest. “I think no matter what I would have come to find you eventually.”

“Oh.”

Harry shifts slightly. Their legs are at a horrible angle until he slots his own ankles between Henry’s and they are suddenly pressed together, close enough that if Henry closes his eyes he can imagine they really are one person, the way he’d envisioned the night before.

The Greeks had a story about that, Henry is pretty sure. Bridgens told him about it, when he was up late one night and only good for listening.

“This is nice,” he murmurs, quietly enough he thinks Harry might not have heard. Then he nods against Henry’s chest, unshaven cheek rough against Henry’s nightshirt.

“Very nice,” he agrees. “Henry – There’s something else I ought to tell you.”

“There usually is,” says Henry. He doesn’t think they’ve had a single conversation as co-lodgers that didn’t involve Harry going on some tangent or other. “I’m sorry you had to feel this way. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

“I’m afraid it wasn’t a totally new sensation,” Harry replies, after a moment. “Although that’s not a topic for today. I feel a little like a towel that’s been wrung out too hard.”

Henry can understand that. “Well, what is it you did want to say, then? If we’re done with reminiscing about worse times, of course.”

Harry pulls back and puts both hands, palm down, on Henry’s chest. Henry feels flash frozen. His own hands start to itch. Harry’s face comes very close to his own.

“I thought of you before I got that bad,” says Harry. His eyes are so warm. Henry thinks they should have been alright in the Arctic with eyes like that around. “I – think of you all the time.”

Never mind flash frozen. Henry thinks he might have been ice forever. He can’t breathe, suddenly. His heart thuds stubbornly in his chest.

“I would wait forever,” Harry continues. He taps his index finger a few times; Henry feels like a drum, stretched taut. “If this isn’t what you want. But I think I need to tell you now, before I lose my nerve.”

Harry Goodsir survived things Henry can’t imagine, and what Henry saw was bad enough. He can’t believe something to do with Henry could rattle him so badly.

His hands are still on Henry’s chest, one right over his heart. Henry briefly wonders if he’s dreaming, then discounts it. His dreams could never be so kind.

“And what is it you’ll be telling me, Harry?” Is that his voice? He’s never heard it so breathy as that.

A visible agony again, this one centred on the eyes. Henry can’t look away. Harry’s face is so close, his eyes so bright they seem like stars.

They get closer. Harry exhales heavily and Henry feels it in his own mouth.

“I’d be better off showing you,” says Harry, and Henry can’t even draw breath to respond before he’s being kissed.

The last time Henry kissed anyone was six months into the expedition. He doesn’t remember his name anymore, the lad that pushed him into a secluded corner and brought them both off in between shifts on the deck. He’d died sometime after abandoning the ships, and whether it was scurvy or lead or the Tuunbaq that got him – Henry can’t recall.

This is very different to that kiss, a perfunctory gesture to muffle the noises Henry always makes when he’s close. Harry kisses as if he has a point to make to himself, or a study he’s conducting on the nature of the human mouth. It shouldn’t make Henry feel as hot as it does, knowing that Harry is being Doctor Goodsir in some part of himself as he scrapes his teeth over Henry’s lower lip and catalogues the noise he makes. Their teeth bump together when he pushes closer. Harry laughs and adjusts his angle of approach, the tip of his nose nudging against Henry’s cheek.

Henry slides one hand up Harry’s back to cradle his head; threads careful fingers through his curls. For once he feels as if his body is entirely his own as he pulls away just far enough to reseat himself and kiss Harry again, lips warm and just as he had let himself imagine only in the dead of night. He never let himself think that Harry might want him back. It was the sort of thinking that only ever led to disaster, the way all his thoughts do.

Harry makes a small, pleased noise and shifts, one knee pushing at the inside of Henry’s thigh. Henry isn’t going to complain about that; his prick is half-hard. He moves up the settee until they slide together properly. Harry is clearly interested from the somewhat louder noise he makes when Henry cants his hips.

He can still feel every breath Harry takes, twice over, and the hammering of his own heart is beginning to drown out the ever-present ringing in his ears. He flexes the fingers of his free hand and realises he’s wasting precious time he could be using to touch Harry even more.

They keep on kissing. Happiness rises up inside Henry, stinging at his eyes.

“Christ,” he says, when Harry pulls back slightly to catch his breath. “Got anything else to show me, Mister Goodsir?”

“Perhaps later,” says Harry. “It might be a good idea to parcel these things out.” He smiles, the one Henry likes best. Henry realises he’s smiling back, helpless, hard enough his face hurts with it. He can’t help but kiss him again, gently, his other hand against Harry’s lower back.

This isn’t a dream. It isn’t. His spine hurts from the twist he’s put it in, and his dodgy ankle aches in the morning chill. There’s the start of a headache lying in wait behind his eyes. It has to be real, this time.

Harry is looking at him. Henry shakes his head, trying to clear the creeping sense of unease. He concentrates on the weight of Harry on his chest; it should be terrible, should remind him of the things he can’t forget. It doesn’t. Henry doesn’t know why.

He shivers slightly when Harry puts a hand to his face, thumb pressed into the dark circle under his eye.

“Henry?”

Henry nods, absently. Harry’s thumb slips slightly and prods him in the eye.

“Oh, lord, sorry,” he says, hands drawn away and fluttering awkwardly at Henry’s shoulders. “Are you alright?”

Henry starts to laugh. He can’t help it, really. Harry doesn’t know the sort of pains Henry put himself through for the same effect, before he followed Harry to Oxford. He rubs at his eye, already recovered.

Harry still looks wary. Henry takes a deep breath, trying to calm down, and then spoils it by looking back up at Harry’s face. He looks so much like a dog that’s been left out in the rain, with the wide eyes and sad tilt to his mouth. It’s uncanny.

“I’m fine,” he says, once the laughter has subsided a bit. “Just what the doctor ordered.”

“Not sure about that,” says Harry, although he does seem mollified now Henry is no longer cackling like a witch. “I am sorry, though.”

“S’alright,” Henry replies. “Was just. A bit much, having something so nice. Not used to it.”

Harry takes his hand. They’re sitting up for good now, most likely, and Henry misses the feeling of Harry lying on top of him like he imagines Blanky misses his leg. He runs his free hand over the threadbare edge of the cushion beside him.

“Well, I suppose that means we’ll have to build up your tolerance somehow,” says Harry. His fingers are thinner than Henry’s, his skin rough and knuckles littered with tiny scars. Henry wants quite badly to put them in his mouth. Harry doesn’t seem to pick up on Henry’s thoughts, though, because he’s busy pressing his lips to Henry’s own knuckles.

He doesn’t think about his hands over-much. They’re just his hands, wide set like the rest of him. Unremarkable. He looks at them now and tries to imagine what Harry’s thinking.

Perhaps he’ll understand better one day. For once, something in the future doesn’t fill him with dread.

He glances at the window, then the wall clock.

“Fuck,” he says, and stands. His feet slide against the floorboards and he has to scramble slightly to stay upright. Harry looks up at him through his eyelashes. The effect is extremely distracting.

“Is something wrong?”

Henry nods. “We’re not dressed,” he states. “And you have a lecture at eleven o’clock.”

“Oh, damn,” says Harry, with a glance at the clock. “I’d blame you for the distraction, but I fear all the fault lies at my own door on this occasion.”

They part to dress in their own rooms. Henry helps Harry from time to time, if his hands are aching or trembling too badly, but today there is a silent agreement that it would be detrimental to their goal of actually leaving their rooms before lunchtime.

With his nightshirt and bed socks folded beneath his pillow, Henry takes a moment to inspect himself in the looking glass above his sea chest. He pokes at his stomach; it looks a little fuller than it had last time he checked, nearly a month ago now. The hair on his chest is coming in grey in places, an unsurprising development. A long scar cuts across his navel.

He turns away and busies himself with his layers upon layers of clothes. Sometimes it still feels like he’s armouring himself for the freezing climate of the Arctic rather than a mild spring morning. Either way the cold has a way of staying in his bones.

The routine of it calms him down enough to realise he was beginning to drift off again. He buttons his waistcoat over his jumper, a habit he’s found very hard to break, and runs his hands down his front to tug at the hem. Then he moves on to attacking his hair, which dried oddly after he went to bed with it still wet and looks uncannily like he’s been struck by lightning.

A few minutes pass, comb inevitably abandoned beside the hair oil and loose ribbons, before Henry hears a knock on his door, five swift taps in the same rhythm Harry always employs.

When he opens the door, Harry gives him a look which sweeps from head to toe. Henry feels himself flush and rubs at the sleeve of his woollen jumper, a very much appreciated gift from his mother.

Harry is already in his coat, shrugged on over waistcoat, jumper and shirt in matching shades of grey and navy blue. Henry can tell he has tried very hard to comb his hair and given up halfway through, curls escaping from behind his ears. He looks as handsome as ever.

Henry leans in and kisses him. Harry makes that same small, pleased noise as he did on the settee and puts one hand on Henry’s arm over a well-darned patch of jumper, running his thumb over the join.

“Your coat, sir,” says Harry, once they’re parted and breathing steadily again. He offers Henry his coat, draped over one arm the way Henry sometimes does for him when he’s feeling humorous.

Henry grins as he shrugs into the greatcoat, blue with copper-plated buttons. “Much obliged,” he replies. “Time for your adorin’ public, then?”

“If you insist,” says Harry. Then he takes Henry’s arm, just above the elbow, and pulls them both out of the front door.