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Hercule Poirot, dearly although Arthur Hastings cared for the man, could not be claimed as other than a bad traveller when in anything less than the very best arrangements. Certainly when his travels were upon the sea.
Poirot was miserable for all but the calmest days of the long sea crossing. He remained huddled in his close cabin. This despite patiently repeated urgings from Hastings that he should take even a little time on the deck. Not for Poirot the "bracing" sea air or the kiss of ocean breezes on spread wings.
In the usual way of things, Hercule Poirot's moustaches and his wings were kept equally magnificent: dark, smooth, and gleaming with just a touch of grooming-oil. Hastings had often admired both, first circumspectly, then once their relationship shifted without any dissembling.
Poirot's state was very much otherwise on this voyage. He kept his wings folded around himself. He was moulting, made shy by being disheveled. Admittedly, his wings were getting visibly ragged as more and more of his feathers dropped.
The shed feathers offended Poirot's sense of order, of course. Hastings took them by the doubled handful to the open air, releasing Poirot's feathers, watching the dance of them above the ship's wake. The calm sea was pretty, but Hastings would not use up time admiring it at the expense of that with the person he most cared for. Perhaps when Poirot was asleep, if that was before dark, he would take in the sunset.
When he returned to the cabin, Hastings said quietly, "Two more days, my dear." Poirot, still tucked up in bed while the ship barely pitched at all in the calm, offered the most wan of smiles. He had, Hastings noted, at least drunk his tea, although he continued to be of meager appetite.
"I thank you," Poirot said. He added that he feared there were already several more of his feathers working their way free.
A look sufficed to encourage Poirot to sit up, used to the ways Hastings had come up with to provide slight comforts. As he had taken to doing, Hastings slipped the pillow out, before shaking it to better softness. Filled with fabric, not feathers, for Poirot as most winged people disliked having bird feathers about him, it was inclined to compress flat.
The cabin's bunk was, sadly, too narrow to share, even had Hastings thought Poirot in a mood to do more than remain in it alone with his misery. At the moment Poirot seemed rather (Hastings considered but did not say) like a fledgling sullen in a nest grown too small, unready yet to fly away. He would no doubt be more himself after completing this moult, after the sea voyage that he so disliked.
Hastings stroked the drooping curve of one of Poirot's wings. Despite the ongoing moult, the feathers nonetheless had a pleasing pattern to them, smoother than the dropped ones felt on his palms.
Leaning down, he brushed his mouth to the moustaches, the hair likewise uncharacteristically limp, then against Poirot's lips. The light kiss tasted of chamomile tea.