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The philosophy boys are baiting Henry again. If Peter’s told him once, he’s told him a hundred times, getting worked up only encourages them. “A betrayal is a betrayal, no matter what the motivation, and a debt owed must become a debt paid before virtue can be restored to the betrayer. It’s simple arithmetic,” one of them lectures--Peter thinks this one’s name is Davies, and he’s smug enough that Peter can understand the temptation to take him down a peg, even if what he’s saying doesn’t sound particularly objectionable.
Henry’s never been any good at knocking people down tactfully, though--he only ever seems to be able to win an argument by pinching where it hurts, and now is no different. He laughs, sharp and provoking and clearly not going to earn him anything but enemies, says, “When is ‘simple’ ever valued by you lot, anyway? Wasn’t it your precious Placid who said that nothing worth knowing is simple?”
Peter’s not sure where Henry even wants this to go, but he’s standing in front of the historian’s corner with his arms out, the sleeves of his gown billowing a little, like curtains, and from behind them, Peter can just see a shock of bright hair. They’re all a little twitchy around this time of year, these days--like the beginning of Spring Term always has the chance to plunge them all into chaos again, though it only really has the once--and Tony more than the rest of them. He still goes out drinking with that crowd of northerners now and then, and he seems to have taken on a bit of their tendency towards superstition, too. Peter doesn’t pretend to understand.
Still, it looks like Henry’s playing shield, and at a time of year when Tony is already feeling a little uneasy, that’s a nice gesture, and not all that hard to believe of Henry, once you know him a little bit better than his antagonists here seem to, so Peter feels safe in guessing that the argument he’s taking part in here isn’t entirely the point.
The philosophy student, Davies, Peter is almost sure, now, he’s the one Blake almost came to blows with last winter, and anyone who can rile Blake is definitely a nasty character, says, “Placid didn’t even bother talking about things so mundane and stupid--until amends are made, the wrongdoing is always going to be a red mark on a person’s ledger, things don’t just disappear because you do some other things.”
Peter wonders what they’re actually arguing about in particular, but it’s pretty clear, that whatever it is, it’s just a screen for something more personal, and Peter’s fairly certain nothing is going to be solved that way. He tells Davies, “Actually, I’m pretty certain that they do. That’s what history is, after all, the chance to see that play out in the large scale.” It’s not entirely true, but it’s true enough that he can defend it if he needs to, which is all you really need in pub-floor debates like this.
Davies seems to see the sense in that, or maybe he just doesn’t feel up to continuing the debate when he’s outnumbered, because he gives them both a disgusted look, says, “Well, I won’t see you both in hell, anyway,” and stalks off.
Henry laughs, doesn’t even wait till Davies has disappeared back into the crowd, and he’s going to get himself killed some day, Benedict is always saying so, and Peter can see that he’s right.
He shoves Peter lightly towards a chair, though, says, “Sit, before your hands fall off,” and Peter looks down, and, yes, he’s forgotten his gloves again, has been absently twisting his cold fingers in the edges of his robe. Henry is saying, “I was about to grab a stew before heading over to Frannie’s, you want any?”
Peter shakes his head, says, “Dinner with the Ferret soon, wouldn’t want to spoil my appetite.” He’s grinning a little as he says it, though. Henry’s been trying to buy him things lately—pints, dinner, sharing his ink when Peter runs out in the library. He’s not sure if it’s because Peter helped him get the tutoring job for his cousin Francesca, or if it’s because Henry kissed him on First Night and hasn’t spoken of it since. Either way, Peter wants none of it—he doesn’t want Henry’s gratitude, and he certainly doesn’t want any strangeness to build around that kiss. Either something more will happen with that or it won’t, but Peter doesn’t need things bought for him. Still, whichever it is, it’s kind of nice, coming from Henry, who doesn’t really make gestures ever.
“Again?” Henry asks him. He has a point, it’s the third time Peter has dined with Doctor Ferrule this month. He tells Henry, “I’m almost certain he’ll stand with us, but it never hurts to be sure.”
Benedict Vandeleur is presenting his work later in the week, suing to be made a Doctor. He’s the first of their group, and they’re all a bit on edge about it. They’ve got some support throughout the university, but doctoral candidates must be approved by their own department, and Crabbe has the Horn Chair, and a fair amount of power with it, and he’s never warmed up to their crowd. Peter has been trying to pull as many familial strings as he can get his hands on to try to be sure that Vandeleur will get a fair hearing.
Henry nods, clearly seeing the sense in that, and says, “Just a pint, then. And Tony, you too? I’ll be right back.” He’s gone before Peter can protest that he can fetch his own pint, thank you.
Lindley looks up across the table at Peter, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth, and asks, “How long are you going to keep him wondering? Not that I mind getting the free drinks out of it.”
That is most emphatically not a topic Peter wants to discuss, so he ducks his head to dig through his bag, looking for his notes from the archives the other day. “He’s just trying to thank me for the tutoring set-up.” He doesn’t look up, mostly because he knows Tony will be smirking.
“You could just tell him no,” Tony tells him. “It might be nicer.”
Peter pretends not to know what he’s talking about.
…
“You’re late,” Frannie says. She doesn’t sound put out, though, barely looking up from her book. Her governess glares at Henry from across the room, looking up from her needlework, needle thin and sharp and glinting between her bony fingers. She frightens Henry, a little, and he can’t understand how Frannie can stand to be so constantly in her company. He’d ask, but the old bat is always around, so he never gets the chance.
Henry sits at his customary spot at the little table by the window and takes his books from his satchel, spreading them across the desk in the watery afternoon sunshine. He calls to Frannie from across the room, “I hope you’ve finished your Trevor, my lady, before going back to your novels.”
Frannie has appalling taste in novels, the splashier and more sensational the better, and no matter how Henry teases her about them, she never blushes and she never backs down. Henry has to respect that.
Frannie sets the book aside and sweeps across the room to her side on Henry’s table with a gusty sigh. “You said that Trevor was a bootlicking toady without an original thought in his head,” she hisses at him under her breath so the governess won’t hear. Henry has nearly been fired here twice for using language thought unsuitable for use in the presence of a young lady. Only the fact that Frannie is a wild little spitfire who has driven a train of frustrated tutors away before she got to Henry has saved him, but they’re both sure that if she starts repeating that same language, he’ll lose the job faster than he can spit.
“Trevor has a highly biased view,” he tells her, “but he’s a piece of the puzzle, and the piece most people will be relying on the most heavily, at that. You have to know why they’re saying the things they’re saying so you can tell them exactly why they’re wrong.”
Henry likes Frannie. She reminds him of his cousin Luce when they were young, before she married the butcher’s apprentice and started wishing loudly that Henry hadn’t distracted her from their arithmetic lessons so often when they were in school. Frannie looks at him sometimes the way she’s looking at him right now—like he’s saying things that make sense. He wonders sometimes if he’d go around chasing girls the way Vandeleur does if more of them looked at him like that. Usually girls just look at him like he’s offended them. He doesn’t think it’d make too much difference, though—he never much wants to chase after Frannie, either, much as he likes her.
He takes Frannie through the main points in Trevor, most of which she does seem to have actually read, and then he has her list Trevor’s main inconsistencies as she’s seen them before taking her through all of the contradictions to Trevor’s account that he and Peter and Tony and Vandeleur and Blake have dug up in the archives, making sure to remind her, “None of this is published yet, so don’t be bringing it up to people, or they’ll think you’re mad.”
Frannie laughs at him. “They think I’m mad already, insisting on still being tutored after my come-out. And who do you think I have to talk history with, anyway? It’s pretty much you, and when Peter manages to make it up the hill to family parties.”
It doesn’t sound like much of a life, Henry thinks, but then, what does he know? Her slippers look like they cost as much as Henry’s father makes in a month.
…
The first time Peter had dined with Doctor Ferrule, the Doctor had said something jocular, starting out, something about House Godwin needing to stand together, and then lapsed into an awkward silence, as if unused to conversation. By now, though, they’ve perfected a sort of routine, where Doctor Ferrule talks about his plans for his next lecture, and then wanders, allowing himself to speculate a bit, as only a man who would give his right arm to spend a day in the past would. Peter listens intently, and when he hears an opening, connects that speculation to something one of his friends has found in his research, referencing Vandeleur’s area of study whenever possible.
He’d thought he was being relatively subtle about it, but tonight, when Peter has reached the end of what he thought was a particularly entertaining summary of the love letters of King Edmund’s manservant, Ferrule stops him, looking unusually grave. “You’ve nothing to fear from me, boy. I’ll stand by your friend.”
“Sir?” The confusion in Peter’s voice is only partially feigned.
“He thinks I don’t remember him from my classes? Bright lad. Thinks before he speaks. He’ll make a fine Doctor of History.”
“He will,” Peter nods for emphasis, “We were just afraid—“
“That your rat-terrier research methods would pull him out of the running?” Doctor Ferrule is generally a quiet, reserved man. Peter is not sure he’s ever heard him speak so frankly or emphatically before. “It might have done, but Roger Crabbe doesn’t hold the clout he once did. Not to worry, little one.”
Peter is sick, he is sick to death of being the baby of his family, the youngest of his friends, but this one time, the diminutive feels reassuring. “Thank you, sir,” he says.
…
Henry stops at the Nest for a drink on his way home from tutoring Frannie. He hangs around the historians’ corner for a while, hoping someone interesting will turn up. No one does, and eventually he gives up, but it is late by the time he returns to the rooms he shares with Anthony Lindley.
Lindley is later still, though, and arrives with flushed cheeks and unkempt hair, and one glove missing, the other trailing messily from his pocket.
Henry looks up from where he’s pulled a stool close to the fire and is hunched over his much marked up copy of Hollis. He takes one look at Lindley and asks, “Hob again? That’s, what, every week this term?”
“So what’s it to you?” Lindley asks primly. He’s in a better mood than he usually is by spring term, which Henry supposes is something to be grateful for. Still, “I’ll never understand why you still hang around those Northern relics.” Henry still doesn’t like the Northerners, isn’t fond of their piercing eyes or the way none of them seem to like him much either. He can stand the long dead and buried ones, which he figures ought to be all he needs, as a historian.
“They are my friends,” Lindley tells him, voice cool, “Like I’ve said maybe a thousand times. They understand—things.”
Henry snorts at that, but doesn't argue with it. What he does still have it in him to take issue with is, “Why him, though? You don’t even like him.”
Lindley isn’t the type who wants debate out of his lovers, Henry knows from observation. He wants someone to adore, and he and Hob nearly come to blows every time they’re together.
Lindley grins at him, a foxy, sly expression, tells him, “’Like’ doesn’t come into it,” and, “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a romantic, Fremont, but I guess you’ve been showing your true colors lately anyway.”
Lindley looks far too knowing for his own good, and Henry mentally revises his earlier assessment of his mood. He glances back down at Hollis and clears his throat. “Yeah, well.” There isn’t anywhere else he wants to take that sentence, so he lets it drop.
Lindley flops onto the other chair in the front room, a straight-backed, low-standing thing with a woven wicker seat that Henry’s father had made, and Henry had hauled back from home in a public carriage after the last summer festival. Lindley unlaces his boots and looks up into the guttering fire and asks, “Is it because Godwin is a little younger that you’re mincing about the matter like this?” His voice has lost some of the sharpness, so Henry takes the time to actually think about his answer.
“No. Or, not really. Just—because it’s Peter, you know? He still gets flustered when Marianne’s friends ask him to dance, and you know they only do because they know he won’t try anything.”
“Ah. So you are afraid to become Roland of the Blood, Corrupter of the Young? That’s nice, I suppose. Who would have guessed you’ve a conscience lurking somewhere in there?”
“So you think I’m right not to push?” Henry doesn’t know what his life is coming to, that he’s asking, well, romantic advice from Lindley, whose two great passions both ended in pools of blood, and who has been, to all appearances, working to cultivate a sense of worldly detachment ever since. Still, he’s the best authority Henry has.
“Not to push, sure, no call to be a prick, but this glacial non-movement isn’t doing anyone any good, either,” Lindley tells him, stretching his stockinged feet out in front of the fire. “Well, except for me. If you want to keep buying me drinks so your favoring him won’t look so specific, I certainly don’t mind. Not that it works.”
Henry sighs. This is why he hates this whole mess. Relationships—heartbreaks send Benedict plunging into fits of despair almost every term, and love has certainly never seemed to do Lindley any good. Blake is all happy and married, but he always was the kind of freak who led something of a charmed life, he doesn’t enter into Henry’s calculations at all. Henry’s own romantic life so far has consisted mainly of brief dalliances. He was of the opinion that that was the only length of time a potential partner would be able to stand him anyway, but Peter makes him wonder.
“Is it even worth it, though?” Henry fears he is beginning to sound like a heroine in a ballad, is almost sure of it when Lindley laughs, sharp and bitter. “Land, Henry, how am I supposed to know? The nearest I got to the genuine article slit his wrists, and I didn’t even realize I was sorry for it for most of the next year. Maybe Blake is right. Maybe too much thinking and reason withers scholars’ hearts down to nothing.”
“This is the kind of conversation that should be happening over drinks.” Henry is sure of this. “Lots of drinks, even.”
Tony laughs. “Well, we’re having it over—what’s that, Hollis? We’re having it over Hollis instead, which is just as good, gods know he must have been dipping into the dreamroot for some of those chapters.”
…
Vandeleur has been a nervous wreck all week, but then, Vandeleur is defending his thesis in three days. In his position, Peter is sure he would be climbing the walls by now, and, as the others are so fond of reminding him, he’s got a lot less to lose in some ways. That is, even if all of this blows up in his face, he’ll be taken care of, at least financially. House Godwin wouldn’t have it any different.
They’re all sitting in Blake and Marianne’s front room, and Marianne is humming to herself over her stitching, and it would all be very warm and comfortable if Vandeleur didn’t look likely to start tearing his own hair out at any moment.
“You don’t need the review,” Peter says, setting down the page he’s been asking questions off of with a sigh. “You know your position and your points backwards and forward, you don’t get stage-fright, you argue well, and they’ll have to really try to intimidate you.”
Vandeleur slaps the table with his open hand and says, That is not helpful. Damn it all.”
Peter gets where he’s coming from—Benedict really is that good, and it might not do him any good at all. It is essentially out of his hands, now. Either the panel will listen and be charmed, or they’ll dismiss him out of hand for ideological reasons. There’s not third option, at this point.
Peter thinks probably he should stop talking, but he can’t seem to make himself. “And Doctor Ferrule seemed to think you were a shoe-in, he says that Crabbe doesn’t have the same power in the department that he used to.”
“Oh, as long as the Ferret said it—”
It’s not exactly uncommon, to hear that kind of tone from Henry. Peter should probably be used to it by now, he’s known Henry for years, but he thinks that lately he’s been getting used to other kinds of attitudes from Henry, to weird, hesitant smiles and an even more furious turning of his vitriol at everyone else, as if to make up for the lack of it sent Peter’s way. He should have known better, really.
“He’s been very accommodating, actually,” Peter says, letting his Hill accent slide into place a little more firmly, “And I’m not sure disrespect is really the way to—”
“That’s enough,” Blake says, in the kind of voice that means that he expects to be obeyed. “We won’t help ourselves or Benedict by sniping at each other.”
“Well,” Henry starts in, “What do you propose, some kind of love-in?” The sneer is evident in his voice, but Blake only smiles, stands, and walks across the room, to the cupboard below the desk.”
He comes back with a perfectly respectable-looking bottle of port, and says, “Compliments of Doctor Rugg. He says we’ve worked hard, and we’ve earned it.”
…
Henry isn’t used to port, it’s heady stuff compared to the ale at the Nest, and he’s maybe had a bit more than the rest of them, and maybe he drank it a bit faster, maybe he hasn’t eaten much today—in any case, the world is tilting, by the time Blake sends them off to get some sleep before Vandeleur’s Defense tomorrow.
Henry stumbles down the last step, and reaches to grab Lindley’s shoulder for support. Surely he can count on his roommate for support in his time of need, but Lindley steps smartly forward so that Henry keeps stumbling right into Peter Godwin’s back.
Peter turns and reaches out to steady Henry, and stares back at Lindley wildly. Tony just laughs, though, and says “Help me out, Godwin? I’ve got to deal with him all the time, can’t you spot him home for me? Isn’t that your duty as a noble, to help the less fortunate?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Henry is a very unfortunate roommate.”
Henry supposes that’s fair, but Lindley is no treat himself, and he says so. Tony laughs again and says, “Yes, we’re both very unfortunate, but Peter’s walking back past ours, and I’m not going home just yet.”
Peter nods, and he looks grim, but he winds a warm arm around Henry’s waist and says, “Come on, then,” and he sets off at a pace that is reasonable for Henry’s only-just-barely-unsteady feet on the slippery wet cobblestones.
…
It’s a quiet walk, which is some mercy, at least, Peter thinks. It’s not until he’s fumbling to pull the key from Henry’s purse that Henry says, “I don’t always make good decisions when I’m drinking.”
“I don’t really think anyone does,” Peter answers him, absent, as he finally fits the key into the lock.
“This won’t be one of the bad ones, though,” Henry says, and that’s enough to make Peter look up at where Henry is leaning against the wall beside the door. He looks, and nothing happens, seconds stretch, and Peter is about to ask him which decision he means, but at that moment, Henry leans down to kiss him.
It’s not like First Night, which felt hesitant and spur-of-the-moment, lips there and then gone again in an instant. Instead, it’s more like the way Henry argues—deliberate and fierce, and the moment Peter lets his lips open a bit he feels the light scrape of teeth. Henry’s hand grasps the front of Peter’s robe, and he’s pulling him inside the dark room, Henry is still unsteady on his feet and walking backwards into the dark seems like a particularly stupid plan, Peter feels like he should point this out, but his lips scrape against the rough stubble of Henry’s cheek, around the corner of his mouth, and it seems like too much trouble, who needs to point out stupidity when he can scrape his lips raw against Henry’s skin instead? Peter hadn’t thought he’d had too much to drink, but he can’t remember the last time he felt so wild and out of control.
Henry’s other hand comes up to rest against the small of his back, hand laid flat and Henry’s long fingers splayed, Peter swears he can feel the heat from Henry’s palm there, centering, so when that hand closes into a fist around the fabric, Peter stops.
He pulls back a little and says, “I’m not going to play games, Henry.”
“Games?” Henry sounds a little out of breath, which is gratifying.
Nonetheless, “You don't get to do this and then be all weird again.”
“Weird?”
“You’ve been strange since First Night.” Peter knows he’s not making this up, even Lindley has noticed it.
“I’ve been—I don’t do this often.” Henry looks frustrated, and Peter almost wishes he hadn't said anything.
“This?”
“Like—like people.”
Peter doesn't mean to laugh, but it’s such a perfectly Henry declaration he can't help it, even if the sentiment beneath it makes his breath catch.
“And you like me?”
“And I like you.”
Peter thinks of Blake and Marianne and their cozy little home. He thinks of Finn and Lindley in the fire light, years ago, flushed and grinning and otherworldly. He says, “I like you, too.”
“Good,” Henry is smiling, and his smile is moving closer and closer, slowly, till he’s kissing Peter again, briefly. He pulls back, then, though, and shoves at Peter’s arm lightly. “Go on, then, get out of here and get some sleep, we’ve got an early day tomorrow.”
Peter feels a little taken aback by that. He says, “I thought,” and then trails off, not sure what to say. Henry seems to hear it anyway, though, because he smiles, bright and ghostly in the dark.
“All in good time.”
…
The next morning, Peter is almost late to meet up with the rest of them to see Vandeleur off at the library stairs. He darts over, out of breath, just as Vandeleur is about to head in, and shakes his hand for luck. Rugg claps him on the shoulder and tells him, “Right in the nick of time,” before leading Benedict off.
The rest of them stand there, at the base of the stairs. They can’t go in, they can't watch, they can only make their way back to the Blackbird’s Nest and retreat to the historians’ corner until Vandeleur comes back.
They watch as the door swings closed, and Peter feels Henry Fremont’s fingers close lightly around his wrist.