Work Text:
December 13th, 1907.
Aboard the RMS Adriatic.
WILL-
AM SICK. WIFE AWAY. KID CRYING. CQD.
-L
Such was writ on the telegram he found in his pocket. William sighed at the poor, crumpled up slip of paper, received yesterday or the day before, he could not remember.
Owing to a great big winter gale, Adriatic was a day late into Southampton, and William Murdoch had been awake for far longer than anyone ought to be.
The blizzard held fast to them as they crawled through the Channel, and old EJ had everyone and their mother mustered for the unforgiving overnight watch. Then, to have any chance of keeping on schedule, they docked in the deep black of the early morning, whilst the sky failed to make up its mind between rain or snow. Disembarking and offloading lasted several hours after that, in those conditions. As first officer, William was constantly oscillating between directing his exhausted crew and reassuring the mob of restless passengers, and in moments of wait, he paced. The tracks he had run into the icy sludge on deck remained evident even now. Thankless work, but alas. Such was life.
Just to worsen his mood that much more, there would be no warm food or bed awaiting him at home. His dearest Ada, his wife—wife! he could hardly believe it—of nearly three and a half months now, had gone off to the quote-on-quote “countryside” and was not due back until tomorrow, as per her last letter. Alas. He made her wait two weeks every time he sailed. He could wait for her for one more day.
William glanced again at the telegram, rubbing his stinging eyes to ensure he had read it correctly. He may as well see if his friend was still alive. It was better than spending the night alone.
When he was finally through with his duties aboard ship, William hitched a taxicab south to Netley Abbey.
It was something like noon when he arrived at the house—Nikko Lodge, as they called it—though the ever-grey sky was no indication. The large house was strangely quiet, lacking the lamplight burning as it did in the windows of its neighbors, no smoke rising from the chimney indicating the presence of life inside. Nevertheless, William walked up to the front door, set his case on the ground, and knocked.
No reply. He lifted a nearby planter pot and, with the spare key from under it, let himself in.
“Hello?”
No reply again. He must be truly out of it. William shrugged off his greatcoat, leaving a dusting of snow on the floor, and hung it on the coatrack. He left his case by the stairs and trudged up to the master bedroom.
“Hello?” William gently pushed open the door. “Lights?”
A drawn-out groan. The “L” from the telegram, one Charles Lightoller, lay in a heap on the bed, rolled up in a thick bedcover so only the scrap of reddish hair atop his head was visible.
William sighed and shook his head. Very out of it. The bedroom was dark owing to the drawn curtains, so he went towards them first.
The heap croaked when he passed, “Who…? Who’s there?”
“Och, you sound terrible.”
“Issat you, Will…?”
“Aye, old man. I got your telegram.”
Charles shifted so he could peer out of his cocoon, his thin brows knitted together and his face flushed. Just then, William pulled open the curtains, the pale light causing Charles to shrink away. “Ow… You, uh… You’ve just come from the, uhh… Your ship?”
“From Adriatic, aye. I had to come quick. You sent CQD.”
He drawled lightly, “You’re amazing. My knight’n shining armor.”
William shot him a smile, but his gaze caught on the state of the room. Dirty laundry strewn around, cold day-old tea sitting on the nightstand, stuffy air, and, strangely, no medicine in sight. He turned back to Charles, concern coloring his expression. “What ails you, sweet prince?”
“Hrnm… Imbalanced humors… Bloodletting is the only cure, I fear.” Charles coughed, and not for effect. “I jest. Nothin’s wrong with me. I had only sent that message in a, uh, in a moment of metaphysical weakness.”
“‘Metaphysical weakness’, sure.” William pulled off a glove and placed a palm on his forehead. Immediately, they both flinched back. “Losh! You’re burning up.”
“And you’re-! Bloody cold!” Charles burrowed deeper into his duvet in protest.
“Maybe so, but it doesn’t change the fact you’re running hotter than a boiler engine.” He began towards the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, saying, “Ten grains Dover’s powder and a glass of warm milk would cure ye.”
“No! No, I mustn’t. If I’ve learned anything from Christian Science, I mustn’t.”
“Right, ye think you can pray your ailments away.”
“Don’ say it like that. I can, and I will. It’s worked before, I just have to embody it,” or so Charles said, sniveling, after being ill for at least three days, with a fever well over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. William had little patience for the facets of his unorthodox religion when the facts of real science were right there. He had little patience in general, hanging on to a thread of wakefulness as he was.
William stalked back over where Charles could see him, and asked lowly, “And how long dae you plan on being sick, Mr. Lightoller?”
“Oh, y’know, only for today. I only wished to inconvenience you.”
“Consider me inconvenienced.”
“You don’t sound happy,” he observed astutely. “How was work?”
“Long.”
“Ah.” That notion Charles understood very well. “Sorry…”
William sighed. “You could at least get out of those blankets, unless you want tae worsen the fever.”
He was visibly aggrieved by the suggestion, but relented, “Not particularly, no.” Charles kicked off his downy cocoon, then lay on his back, his breathing shallow. After a moment, he rolled up into a ball and shivered.
It was a pitiful sight, but if he chose to suffer, that was his prerogative. Turning to his own needs, William asked, “May I use the guest room?”
“Mhm, go ahead…”
“Thank you.”
But, before going and hauling his case up to said guest room, William borrowed a minimal dose of laudanum for his growing headache. Charles being the way he was did not mean William had to ascribe to his practices, and the medicine was only going to go to waste there, if he refused to use it. Such were his justifications, not that he needed them, anyhow.
William managed to kick off his shoes and unbutton his reefer jacket when he felt compelled to lay down on the bed, and within seconds he was fast asleep.
He was awoken by a child crying.
William jolted up from where he lay. He attempted to place the sound, place the bedroom he found himself in. Lights’ guest room, he recalled, so that must have been Lights’ child, and this crick between his neck and shoulder must have been the result of a very poor nap. Whilst rubbing at it intermittently, William went about shedding the rest of his uniform, stripping down to his white buttoned shirt and slipping on more comfortable pants from his case.
Still, the child cried.
William stepped out of his room, light on socked feet, and on towards the nursery. The door was ajar, but knowing his friend could be jumpy at times, he knocked before entering.
Charles gave only the slightest acknowledgment of his presence, a stiffening of his grip on the crib, as he murmured to the boy within. Roger—Frederick Roger in actuality, though it was custom in their family to refer to each other by the middle names. Such was the source of a minor embarrassment when he and Charles first met, now something of an inside joke between them. For Charles, you see, went by “Herbert”, but in the ship’s manifests his name was always written out Charles H., and William, in all his excitement to get to know his new shipmate and show him the ropes and such, had failed to ask him what he preferred. Oh, Charles led him on for two or three weeks, apparently because he “liked the way it rolled off his tongue”, whatever that meant. So, “Charles” he remained. Anyhow—Roger, the boy in question, refused to cease his weeping, despite his father’s exasperated coaxing.
“He misses his mother,” Charles explained when William approached to assess the situation. “And,” he paused to cough into his elbow, “The wife ordered me not to breathe on him.”
“Where is Sylvia, anyway?”
“The ‘countryside’, she said.”
“Huh, Aid also said she was off to the ‘countryside’.”
“This may be the very same countryside.”
“I suppose that’s likely, aye.” William glanced sidelong at his friend, noting the distinct layer of sweat now coating him, the nearly fully unbuttoned shirt exposing a large V-shaped window to his chest, his slow yet labored breathing. So on. William cleared his throat and said, “You sound better.”
He muttered a “thanks” and kept on staring at the poor boy. Roger stared back with the same baby blue eyes, teary and crinkled by his puffy, chubby cheeks. A stalemate. Sighing, William reached into the crib and hefted the boy into his arms, shushing him and bouncing him up and down. A few moments of this, and Roger was very well soothed. William looked up to see Charles had adopted a soft smile. “You’re good with that. When do you plan on getting one of ‘em?”
“A… Child?”
“Yeah. A little, what would you call it, a Murdoch-ling.”
“Murdoch-ling,” he echoed, but it sounded funnier in Charles’ accent, like “duckling”. “I- I dinnae ken. We’ve only been wed three months.”
Charles shrugged. “That’s plenty of time.”
“Lights! Please,” he said, scandalized, “Three months. We’ve barely moved in. We haven’t had time to, um…”
“To…?”
“Discuss it. Yet.” Snickering. William was blushing, terribly so, and Charles was snickering. “Shut up, Lights.” When this only served to bolster his laughter, he pressed, “I’m being serious! I’ll drop him, y’ken. I’ll drop him and blame it on you.”
“Oho- I’m afraid Sylvia would absolutely believe you.”
William lifted poor Roger so they were at eye level. “Have ye been dropped before?” A moment wherein they seemed to understand each other, then the boy giggled, and his wee scrunched-up face made William laugh, too. “If he turns out one bit like you, Lights, you’re going to have lots of trouble on your hands.”
“Only if he gets caught,” Charles assured, lips quirking up with mischief. “Don’t you fret, I will impart to him every trick I know. Proprietary knowledge, so I cannot get into specifics, you understand.”
“I’ll be sure to hear all about it, regardless.”
“Of course.”
William passed the boy from one arm to another. “Losh, they feed you well, Rog.” He eyed Charles, picturing him as ages with his son, and asked politely but with a hint of mischief of his own, “You were rather stout as a wee one, were you?”
“No,” he crossed his arms defensively, “Absolutely not. Wherever did you get that idea?”
They both looked to his chubby child, and Charles pouted.
In truth, he had little to worry about, as one would not think it from his current physique. Years of toiling on ships had worked him into someone particularly tall and sturdy. A bit sturdier nowadays, if William had to admit. Steam did make for more comfortable sailing, though if he were to attribute anything, it was to withstand the North Atlantic cold for which Charles had gained some weight since they first met. ‘Twas the sort of change only William would notice, anyhow—the difference between a wild-eyed 25-year-old fresh off his last adventure and a well-trained, frightfully keen mail boat officer.
“Fear not, my friend. Rog here will stretch out into a proper Lightoller yet.”
“I very well hope so.”
“While we’re on the subject—have ye eaten today?”
“Well, I fed the kid…”
“Why, you’re not entirely hopeless. Come along.”
Child still in hand, William strutted off to the kitchen downstairs, fueled as much by his own rumbling stomach as concern over his friend’s health. Rummaging about in the half-empty cupboards led him to the conclusion that he ought to prepare a stew for the three of them. If he had his home pantry and tools he could have cooked up a better meal; he was in the company of the Line’s fine dining chefs nearly every day, and had recently begun attempting to replicate their dishes to impress Ada. To varying success—William was his own worst critic—but she always seemed pleased regardless.
Anyhow, such intricacies would be lost on Charles, especially whilst sick, so he rather stuffed him full of a warm hearty soup and ordered him straight back to bed rest.
Deep into the night, he was awoken by a scream.
Not one belonging to a child, this time.
William waited a minute to ascertain if it was real or the remnant of a dream. When neither possibility was conclusive, he went to check on his friend. Just in case.
He led with a quiet knock upon his bedroom door.
“Come in,” the equally quiet reply; awake, as he feared. Charles was sat up in bed, face pinched, breaths slow and coarse, a slight sheen of sweat visible in the cool blue light from beyond the parted curtains. He hemmed, a grinding low in his throat, and murmured, “Wh’d’you want? Couldn’t sleep?”
“I thought I heard something,” William ventured, not certain how open he would be to discussing it on this particular night.
Loath as he was to admit, Charles was prone to nightmares.
He was haunted by strange things, ghosts for whom he would no longer speak their names, and even for those events which his mind chose not to remember, his body held fast to the scars. They lingered for the sole purpose of disturbing his slumber, or so he said once, on the first occasion like this. When William, ever-vigilant, chose to investigate what he could easily have written off as the wind or some other sound that did not concern him. Being sought out in the early morning hours became a regular occurrence after that, many-a-time to talk or listen, or to merely sit together on deck and watch the stars pass them by. Whatever he needed, William would be there.
Sometimes William missed those days, on the Medic. The Australian weather was always fine, the day-to-day easier, and all that separated him and Charles was the thin wooden panel between their cabins. One day, he hoped—prayed—that the ruling lights of the Line would assign them the same ship again, if only for a voyage. They worked well together, and there were not so many obstacles between them when on the sea.
“Heard that, did you?” Charles spoke without his usual humor, “It is nothing to worry your head about. Only the usual: stranded, sick off brine, starving, having to eat my firstborn. The works.” A horrid pause, until he added, “I’m joking. That was a joke.”
Charles had told him his dreams had improved. That in the presence of his then newly-wedded wife, the fear subsided. William could see now the nightmares had only taken on a different flavor.
He knew, by the tension in his shoulders, that returning to sleep would be an impossible undertaking. He needed to alleviate that tension first, and frankly, he could not bear to watch Charles’ self-imposed suffering any longer, not without doing something tangible about it.
Thus, William proposed, “Does a stiff drink constitute a medicinal remedy in God’s eye?”
A withered smile. “Perhaps He can look the other way, this once.”
By virtue of his earlier snooping, William easily located the bottle of gin tucked in the back of a cupboard and poured them two glasses full. Charles hovered near, with a foggy look, mind elsewhere. The need to cough was what broke him out of it.
William handed him his drink. “The gin will help with that, too.”
“Great…”
They partook in the sitting room. A tall window afforded a view of outside, where the street and houses were covered in a downy layer of snow, softly crystalline under the blue moon. All quiet as they sipped, comfortable in their plush seats and each other’s presence.
“It’s terrible, isn’t it?” Charles began, “I always tell them to start with me. The kid hasn’t hardly enough meat on him, and he needs his mother.”
So he did want to discuss it, after all. William would rather not ruminate on the logic behind an illogical dream—he may come to conclusions that Charles would prefer not to hear—so he said instead, “Best nae be stranded in the first place.”
“Agreed… The sea is no place for them. They are safe here, and I much prefer having someone to come home to.”
“I’m finding I enjoy the feeling. Providing, for someone else.”
“Mhm, though Ada manages just as well by herself, from what you’ve told me.”
William smiled at this—he and Ada were both odd souls that lived many years on their own, despite their friends and peers being long married by then. “As could I, but it is easier with help, I believe. And helping one another is one of the finest things we can do.”
“I’d drink to that.” His marriage was built on something similar, if more overt—Sylvia being lame on one side and having some difficulty getting around, alleviated by Charles’ loving assistance. Between that and her loud personality, one hardly noticed she had any trouble at all.
They chatted about this and that, until their drinks ran dry and sleep’s victory over their person became inevitable.
He would not speak of it come morning, but William lingered a bit after he fell asleep, watching for any signs of dream-wrought disturbances. And considered, briefly, snuggling up beside him, but thought it too intrusive in the end, taking advantage of his sickly condition over which he had no control.
Alas. He would have been warm.
William’s internal clock still ran on ship’s schedule, unfortunately, so he was up bright and early with a load of energy. This is fine, he thought, he could put it to making food. Then he recalled the pantries were nearly barren, so he went for groceries first—Charles would pay him back, surely—and, figuring the ladies would arrive sooner rather than later, set about preparing a full on Scottish breakfast for five. Then he thought, well, Charles enjoys eating, and Sylvia is expecting, and…
It was in his throes of meticulously excessive food preparation that Charles found him, no doubt lured by aromas of the several items he had frying then: bacon, square sausage, and he was in the process of cracking open a few eggs. Charles was somehow both wide-eyed and groggy as he processed the scene before him. “Good morning, Will…?”
“Mornin’! Noticed ye were running a bit low so, I got the messages whilst you slept, stocked the icebox, etcetera.” He followed his friend’s gaze to the foodstuffs covering every inch of counter space, and added, sheepishly, “I may have gotten carried away.”
“No, no, not at all… I must thank you, for this, and for last night. For everything, truly.”
William beamed, “That’s much appreciated, though it’s no issue at all. I wouldnae have left you in distress.”
“Well, I’m glad for it, and much better off. Slept like a babe.” Charles leaned against the counter as he watched him work, legs crossed, a certain familiar smile growing on his face.
William felt his cheeks warm a bit, when he noticed. From the steam of his cooking, of course. “What?”
Charles cocked his head. “Hm? Only thinking this is a mighty fine view to wake up to in the morning.”
Definitely from the steam. He tried to hide his own smile, but it came through in his voice, “Wheesht, or I’ll crack this egg open with your head.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time, love.”
“Yer ridiculous,” William grumbled; miserably, might he add, as he was most ridiculous of all for finding him so endearing. “Make yourself useful if you’re to keep standing there. Tea or something, y’ken.”
“Yessir,” he obliged with a lazy salute.
Charles did end up making himself useful, and the rest of the breakfast preparations went without incident… Is what William would say, were he in any other company. Instead, some very impressive events occurred, if for all the wrong reasons: butter in places it ought not to be, tatties on the floor, William laughing so hard his sides hurt. Absolutely overwhelming proof that Charles was a hopeless case when it came to matters of the kitchen. Worse was his insistence that he could cook; aye, anything you could roast over an open fire maybe, but that was where his prowess ended.
He was at least self-aware of his own fallacies, clinging to the counter as he doubled over with such laughter he nearly snorted up some tea.
There was a rapid knock at the door while they attempted to recover, and William worried for a moment they had disturbed the neighbors.
“I’ll- I’ll get it,” Charles managed, taking a dishrag to wipe his buttered face with. “Oh!” Came his distant exclamation, then, grinning, he lumbered back into view. “Will, your assistance is needed.”
“Oh?” William puttered after him and was greeted with a most pleasant sight: their darling wives had arrived from their trip to the countryside, and carried between them a tall, scraggly, Christmas tree. At their feet were several boxes of decorations: shiny baubles, gilded fruits, sprigs of yew and garlands of holly, everything under the pale sun. “Och! Let me help, aye.”
With the four of them, they got the tree standing proudly in the parlor. Sylvia clasped her hands together in excitement, “See! I told you it would fit!”
“I stand corrected,” Ada replied, though her focus was elsewhere.
Her dark gaze was transfixed on William, and only him; and was samely reciprocated. They drifted together, his hand slipping to the back of her evergreen winter coat, hers to his chest. “Welcome back,” he said privately, and he hoped to never tire of this feeling he had upon seeing her again.
“You too. How was work? I heard the storm was terrible down here.”
“Don’t remind me. How was your trip?”
Her smile became fonder by the moment. “Mm, ending much better than it began.”
William thought to dip her into a kiss, and by her fingers trailing his jaw she may have thought the same, but they were interrupted by a cheeky interjection, “Say, Sylvia, shall we leave them to it? Or get on with something similar, hmm?”
Charles burrowed his nose into Sylvia’s neck, causing her to squeal in glee, but she just had to blurt out, “Why! Why do you smell like butter?”
The guffaw that came out squandered what pull he had towards romance, and William’s follow-up killed it for good: “Aye, Lights here was defeated by a scone.”
Simply devastating.
As it were, they all shared a lovely brunch, and spent a fine day decking the halls of Nikko Lodge for its first ever Christmas—one of many more to come.