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James is dying.
His bones are made of glass. Spasms wrack through his body and with each his bones cut into his flesh; even the smallest of movements brings with it a fresh hell of agony. His heart is stuttering in his chest, its rhythm erratic and faltering, and his lungs will not draw in enough air no matter how hard he tries. On his tongue sits the heavy taste of blood. His blood.
Still a hand—Francis’s hand—is clasped in his own, gently as if mindful of the pain, and another tucks a stray lock of hair behind his ear, the motion filled with such tender affection it would make a grown man cry. It would make James cry—sob until he had no tears left in his body—if he had any to begin with. Francis smiles at him, his eyes soft, and James wants to declare his undying love to him. Francis, the best man he has ever known. Kind, brave, beautiful. They said they were brothers and James will be damned to hell for this alone—one does not dream of pulling his brother in for a kiss, passionate and long and open mouthed.
A ragged “Francis” is all that makes it past his lips. It’s all he will subject Francis to—even setting his unnatural feelings aside, what use is it now to burden him with the weight of a love he will not be there to help carry?
“I’m here,” Francis murmurs, holding his gaze. “Fitzjames, open the bloody door!”
What door? James frowns. They are in a fucking tent.
But the pounding only grows louder—until with a start James sits up in bed.
Bloody hell.
He groans. An arctic dream, again. No wonder he is soaked in sweat. And as if the double horror of his slow and painful death and having Francis Crozier, QC, of all people as the love of his life was not awful enough, he can still hear knocking–
“Fitzjames!”
Ugh. James groans again, louder this time. That is definitely not a part of the dream. God hates him personally and Francis is in fact at his door, judging by the sound of it doing his best to break it down.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” James mutters, already getting out of bed. What does the prick want, now? How many times can someone’s dog eat plastic and have to be rushed to the emergency vet in the middle of the night?
He yanks the front door open and takes some small measure of satisfaction from the fact that it nearly sends Francis careening head first to the floor, so busy the idiot was with his frenetic knocking.
“What?”
Francis has to grip the door frame to right himself. He—yet again—seems to have dashed out of his flat in his home clothes; tonight he has paired grey pyjama bottoms with a tattered Queen’s University Belfast t-shirt that frankly belongs in the nearest wheelie bin. If James had his way, the man would be disbarred for his crimes against fashion alone.
“Are you alright?” Francis asks once he is no longer in danger of falling.
The question comes so out of left field, for a second, all James can do is to stare back in disbelief. Francis’s brow is knit together with worry too, a mirror of his expression from that fucking dream James appears unable to rid himself of.
He suppresses a shiver that wants to run through his spine and reaches for his most imperious courtroom face.
“Are you ? Seeing as only one of us has taken it upon himself to batter his neighbour’s front door at—what time is it?—” He makes a show of checking his phone. “–three bloody AM in the morning.”
At this, Francis’s frown loses its sympathy and begins to fester like an infected wound.
“Well, you were bloody screaming, weren’t you?”
James crosses his arms at his chest, an objection forming on his lips quite on its own.
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you were!” Francis crosses his arms as well. “Unless you are holding someone hostage in your flat and they were the one screaming, instead.”
I’m Francis Crozier and I am so bloody clever , James thinks, rolling his eyes; says, rather stiffly, “well, I’m fine.” If he was crying out in his sleep and Francis is not lying, which is not a possibility that can be discarded in its entirety, then the bloody nightmare must be the culprit.
Another shiver runs through his body, this time unabated, no doubt thanks to the draft running unchecked through their building hallway. Francis notices, before of course he does, one eyebrow travelling up his forehead in the same way it does in court whenever he hears an argument that in his esteemed opinion amounts to dogshit.
“We should complain to building management—a bloody Arctic wind is blowing through our hallway,” James grumbles. The audacity of it when they are paying up the nose for their purportedly high end luxury flats—Francis, the cheapskate that he is, naturally only because his ex-girlfriend made him move here; so he said.
What he does next, James does not foresee.
Like some vicious tropic snake, Crozier’s hand darts forward to land on James’s forehead, palm up.
“You are burning up,” he declares with prim satisfaction.
James flinches away from the touch. Who does the man think he is?
“No, I am not.”
“You realise we are not in court right now? You do not have to contradict everything I say.”
Perhaps worse still– Another shiver. James hugs himself close. No, the dreams, infuriating and even harrowing at times as they are, are just that: dreams. He has—obviously—never felt Crozier’s touch on his naked skin before and that it feels eerily, exactly, the same as what his dreaming mind conjures in the dead of the night is… a coincidence. A figment of his imagination perhaps, borne out of the fever he is alleged to be running.
“Go away, Francis.”
After another half-moment in which he studies James as if he is a particularly difficult textbook, Francis shrugs and that’s much more like it.
“Suit yourself,” he says, turning to leave.
That’s right. James—if he is in fact running a fever—can handle it on his own, and show up to court looking his best to boot, thank you very much; he always does. He has no intention to let Francis’s lot get away with their unfounded legal arguments at the trial come the morning. And if he needed someone to come to his aid, he would call on one of his actual friends. Not his opposing counsel.
James turns too, aiming to close the door and finally put a barrier between himself and the Arctic wind and Francis’s hateful face, and it is then that his vision turns on him without warning, and goes black. He stumbles, thankfully managing to catch the doorframe before he can make an utter fool of himself and fall flat on his arse.
The hand Francis puts under his arm is entirely unnecessary: James’s vision recovers quickly enough: he was not in any danger of fainting like the heroine in a far-fetched romance novel.
He shrugs it off. He is a bit nauseous, which is fine; he is just going to shut this door and go sit down.
“Go away, will you.”
Instead of doing as he is told for once in his life and fucking off, Francis bristles at him.
“For God’s sake—do you have to be an arse? Is there a contract or a law somewhere which says that you do?”
James laughs at the sheer ferocity of Francis’s voice—chalk that to the fever, too. He really needs to sit down though, and soon, and if Francis won’t leave and let him be–
“You are worse than a stray cat. Fine, come inside,” he finds himself saying. “Though you won’t find me offering you any kibble.”
“What a shame,” Crozier mutters dryly. The hand that closes around James’s bicep as he walks over to his sofa is… it is… something. It is too late for these thoughts—for any sort of thinking, in fact, descriptions, adjectives, the whole lot of it. They can wait until the morning. For now he sinks down onto the sofa, and God, that is a relief. His head is swimming a bit, the cold of the Arctic from the dream still somehow in his bones.
He can hear Crozier sniffing about, somewhere in the vicinity of James’s study. When he spirited himself there is anyone’s guess.
“If you are looking for my case files–”
“I am not looking for your case files,” comes the irate reply, followed shortly by the man himself, looking equally irate. He has in his hand a glass of water and a blister pack of paracetamol, which he offers James presently.
Imagine that: being nursed back to health by Francis Crozier.
He wonders whether he looked equally dour when he was offering meds to his girlfriend when she was struck by an unexpected fever in the middle of the night and that’s why she left. Surely, no one could blame the poor woman.
Still, he accepts the offering, and taking out two tabs, swallows it down.
A car speeds by on the street below, far too fast and loud for this time of the night. James resists the urge to rest his head against the back of the sofa and close his eyes again.
Memories come to him nonetheless, conjured by the night and his feverish brain.
Here , Francis is saying with a small smile in a posh coffeeshop, as he slides a new flat white in front of him. Although James does not know it yet, it’s decaf and will taste appalling. They are, both of them, junior barristers, and the original flat white ended up splattered on the floor with a broken porcelain cup to boot because James did not realise how badly his hand was shaking.
He looks up.
“I hope you don’t labour under the belief that this makes us even.”
He does not know why he says it. He knows it well enough. He is petty like that, and unlike Francis, with his unshakable moral backbone, he has screwed plenty of people over, schemed and played dirty, to get to where he is in his career.
He is looking at Francis and thus has first row seats to the way his face crumbles, just for a second, expression twisting with shame before he pulls himself back together again.
He had come to James in the aftermath of the Incident, looking just like he did now, tail between his legs. To his credit, he had met James’s eye and when he spoke his voice was strong and clear. I am checking myself into rehab. I wanted to let you know and apologise in person.
A punch thrown in a drunken haze in a pub that left James nursing a black eye, and deliciously, a mild concussion. The police had been keen to press charges and so had James. He had savoured the way Francis looked subdued for once on the other side of James’s desk in his office, shoulders slumped, lost, meek. He would end up with a criminal record, get suspended, and almost certainly booted out of his chambers.
James whistled to himself all day with sheer glee after that, another rival brought to his knees, eliminated, and such an insufferable one at that too—until, as he was drinking his afternoon coffee, he remembered that day at the coffeeshop, years before he took the silk, the quiver in Francis’s breath as they sat, shoulder to shoulder, in the waiting room of an emergency vet.
“No,” Francis says quietly now, “no, I wasn’t.”
My father was a drunk who was hardly at home and when he was we counted the minutes until he would leave—I still drank for three days straight when he kicked the can , he had said at the coffeeshop, his expression gentle but without pity.
They had known of each other before then, of course. There are only so many barristers’ chambers in London and fewer still worth their salt. What Francis, who by temperament was far better suited to the nearest Greggs, was doing at such an upscale establishment was—and still is—beyond James but he had nonetheless been there to witness him make a complete tit of himself in public. When he came over with a second coffee, and James found his hand shaking just as vehemently as he reached for it, he felt the need to offer an explanation and defend his honour, and as distraught as he was, blurted out, my father just died .
He watched Francis’s face closely for any sign of pity. Any sign of pity and he had half a mind to start a fight right then and there—his body was straining for the release. But none was forthcoming.
Were you close ? Francis asked simply instead.
And something about it, the fact that Francis skipped offering condolences wholesale perhaps, or perhaps the honest interest in his eyes or most likely James’s own pitiful state—what with his then-boyfriend kicking him out of the house just two days before—had him spilling out the truth. Or an approximation of it at any rate, but even that little he rarely offered people, not his friends and certainly not adversarial acquaintances.
James opens his mouth now, feeling regret crawl up his throat, but to apologise would only make the matter worse. He closes it, takes a breath that seems to get stuck in his chest (just like dying, this), and feeling the silence growing thick around the two of them, blurts out–
“I keep dreaming of the Franklin Expedition.”
Crozier’s eyebrows quirk up with interest at that.
“I mean, I am a QC practising shipping law and there is the matter of our names besides, but…”
He trails off with a vague gesture of his hand.
“I’m there too?” Francis asks, his razor sharp mind immediately picking out the most relevant detail from a sea of information.
James nods, trying not to think about the fierce affection dream-Francis has for him, as if he would keep James alive through the sheer force of will alone, his grief because he knows he cannot, and even before then, before James stumbles to the ground bleeding from years’ old wounds, the smiles granted so freely to him as they march, evenings spent in conversation in tents pitched in the perpetual Arctic light.
He smiles at the absurdity of it all. The dreams and the decidedly in-the-flesh Francis looming in his living room in the dead of the night with his bare feet listening to them.
“We seem to have declared ourselves brothers.”
Francis seems to share the sentiment and huffs out a chuckle.
“And here I always thought you would be the first person to suggest killing me and making me into dinner.”
Yeah.
They had gotten well and royally pissed that day, after they were done with coffee and after multiple hours of walking around London. At the end of the night, as they were about to part ways, Francis wrestled James’s phone out of his hand and with uncoordinated hands and great effort tapped in his number. Call me, any time , he said with a wild sort of intensity to his gaze, as if the fate of the known universe depended on just this. James stepped—even closer—into his space, and cupped Francis’s face, delighting in its rough uneven texture, its warmth, the way it made him feel steady even through the haze of alcohol tilting his world from side to side. He did not want to let it go, to let it end.
Why wait?
He still remembers the way Francis first froze under the touch and then slid away, mumbling about how he didn’t think it was a good idea. And that was that.
That is perhaps what bothers him the most about the dreams—if he is honest with himself, which he does his best not to be. That he would hold Francis in high regard is not surprising to him, for the man’s many shortcomings, but–
Crozier looks at him, an expression on his face James can’t quite read.
“Was that what you were dreaming of tonight?”
Here, in the dim light of the room– Oh, why lie?
“Yes.” James lets out a weak chuckle. “I was dying of scurvy—and lead poisoning, I think.”
Francis holds his gaze for a moment that feels longer than it is, in his expression a tinge of– James should get up and locate his thermometer—had he told Francis that he dreamt he died in a car wreck, the pain that flashes through Francis’s expression would tell him that Francis must have known someone who indeed passed away thus, but given what James actually said, this is, well, bonkers . Oh, he should lie down.
He rubs his arms.
“It’s bloody freezing in here.”
Francis looks at him, judging him—a skill he excels at. “It really is not.” Then, “you should go to bed.”
James stands up.
“That’s the first sensible thing you said all day.”
*
In James’s bedroom (because of course Francis trailed him here, too), Francis casts his gaze about. If he had any sense for the finer things in life, it would be in awe and wonder.
Instead Francis says, as if he is grappling with the fact evidence of a new case that doesn’t yet quite make sense, “...you have silk bedsheets and yet you also wear silk pyjamas to bed. Do you not… slide off ?”
James glowers at him. It is in moments like this that he truly appreciates the height advantage he has over his erstwhile rival.
“I do not.”
Then again, especially since the onset of these recurring nightmares whipped up by the stresses of his demanding job and nothing more, he has woken up to find himself on the floor quite a few times. Would friction help with that? Huh.
A fascinating question best left to the morning. He pulls a clean pyjama top from the drawer and takes the sweat soaked one off his back, noting the way Francis looks frozen to spot for one second before averting his eyes.
His loss, truly.
Then before he knows it, he has changed into clean pyjamas and is sitting on the edge of the bed. The golden light of his floor lamps throw strange shadows across Francis’s face, where he is loitering. He has obviously never stepped foot into James’s bedroom and even to his living room, he has only been to before once.
It was when he had just come back from rehab; he had sat on the edge of James’s sofa with his back ramrod straight, and said, I heard you talked to the BSB on my behalf .
I hope you don’t labour under the belief that this makes us even .
Tomorrow he will blame what he is about to do on the fever he is running. He looks at his hands.
“I scheme, Francis.”
Francis huffs out a chuckle, and damn James’s ears, it almost sounds bloody fond.
“I believe the word you are looking for is ‘advocate.’”
He is smiling when James looks up, a small, hesitant thing playing in the corners of his lips. James wishes– But the only thing James can offer Francis is the truth, which will put an end to all this very soon. There is no all this. There never has been. The fever is, once again, to blame for the hole that seems to have opened up in his chest, aching fiercely as it leaks his lifeblood into his clothes.
“That night at the pub, when you punched me—I saw you were drunk, and well, you have never been particularly hard to wind up. I knew it would take little to work you into a frenzy, neither do you hold back when you swing, and with a criminal conviction, for assaulting another barrister nonetheless–” He shrugs. Francis knows the rest.
When he raises his eyes, he finds Francis’s face to be perfectly impassive, betraying nothing—it would be easier, in many ways, if he was angry, but… well. There was nothing between them to begin with. They established this.
Except, “yes,” Francis says curtly, “I’m aware.”
James’s shock must ring across the city of London for all to hear.
“You are–? How?”
Francis rolls his eyes.
“You are not nearly as subtle as you think you are, James. In fact, I often marvel at your vanity.”
Fever or not, now James wants to dig up his laptop and go over their entire legal strategy for the trial again. Those are concerning words to hear from one’s opposing counsel, and doubly so when backed with strong fact evidence, to be read like that. But the question he finds himself asking is a different one altogether.
“Then why are you here?”
Francis looks at him sharply, a hard twist to his mouth. Will you make me say it out loud , he seems to be asking without any words spoken between them.
James does not relent.
“Well?”
Francis sighs at that and the tension and the fight seems to drain out of his body with the exhale. What’s left is only a quiet, painful truth.
“It was a wake up call, and a much needed one. You made me see my alcoholism for what it was. Neptune should have been the wake up call but I tend to sleep through my alarms.”
James should let it go. He knows this. Perhaps he should even inquire after how Francis is doing. It’s hard, giving up the drink, and it doesn’t stop just because you made it through the acute withdrawal. But when James was a pupil, his seniors used to call him a dog with a bone—he still is, to this day. And here the facts do not add up.
“You cannot think you owe me for that.” What is Francis giving him credit for? For changing his mind at the last minute after all but ensuring his ruin, or for the courtesy of shoving him to the rock bottom so that he may look around himself and feel the need to crawl his way out? “As for Neptune, we are well matched I believe with what you had done for me the day after my father died.”
Francis scoffs, that temper James loves and hates in equal measure suddenly rearing its head.
“Christ, Fitzjames—does no one do anything for you except as payment for some great debt? I despair for the state of your friendships if so.”
“Says the man who once told me he would be all alone in the world if his dog did not make it.”
The stricken look that crosses Francis’s face makes him regret his words, though he cannot walk them back; perhaps he should take a vow of silence and never speak again. Perhaps the two of them are well-matched in a sad kind of way.
Francis inhales sharply, but then lets it go, whatever retort he had on the tip of his tongue.
“Get some sleep.”
Right. On that they are in agreement. James moves further into the bed, pulling up his feet and disentangling the frightful mess of his duvet.
He actually should let Francis leave. He is freezing but chances are he will be perfectly fine.
“Um, speaking of people doing things for me.” James curses himself. Speak of a smooth opening. Still, Francis pauses by the door and turns around.
“Yes?”
James squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. If he were to die at home, the police would absolutely suspect Francis of it—mainly because James is pretty sure Francis does want to strangle him on a daily basis—and the resulting investigation, not to mention the sirens and the officials and the commotion, would be a far bigger headache for Francis than what James is about to ask him to do.
He opens his eyes and faces Francis as he would a judge, friendly, confident, in his element.
“This fever—I have an autoimmune condition. I get fevers at night sometimes—but rarely this bad. The paracetamol should bring it down, but if it doesn’t and my temperature rises any further, you will need to take me to the A&E.”
Ugh.
Then again, James did talk to the BSB on Francis’s behalf and ensured he did not get so much as a reprimand or a fine. Surely, that counts for something.
He wonders this was how Francis felt when he came knocking on James’s door in the middle of the night because his dog was sick and he was far too tipsy to figure out how to get him to veterinary care. Asking things of people is mortifying.
Francis says, “good to know.” He doesn’t sound any grumpier than his usual. Truth be told, he does not sound grumpy at all. Perhaps James’s blood is pounding in his ears for no reason. “Get some sleep; I will check in on you in an hour.”
Right. There is a plan. And if Francis is tired in court come the morning because James cost him a good night’s sleep, even better.
“I, uh.”
Francis stops again, now with one foot out the door, and James pushes forward. Low as the likelihood is, better to cover one’s bases ahead of time—for he is not sure what may come out of his mouth if his temperature spikes. “I get delirious rather easily—if my fever spikes, I may not be making a lot of sense.”
A crooked smile flashes across Francis’s face at his words.
“I wouldn’t worry about that. You rarely make sense when you are lucid.”
“Yes, well,” James replies, feeling heat rising in his cheeks that may or may not have anything to do with his fever. “Thank you for that.” And by that he means…
It does not matter, because Francis, he thinks, understands his meaning.