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It started with a drink.
“You really must reign this in, Francis.” Fitzjames repeated, only considerably warmer this time. How long had it been - an hour? Two?
Crozier held his glass in one hand and assessed the liquid content of the bottle in the other. They’d already finished one and the whiskey, both present and past, had burned a fiery pit into his empty stomach. He raised, then dropped, his shoulders. “I’ll find plenty more in your stores, I'm certain. Curse that.. teetotaling man, for all he was worth.”
“I’ll not have you soil his good name this shortly after-” Fitzjames stalled, pulling the corners of his mouth taut, “-the procession,” He resolved, and rotated his glass on the table. Their breaths mingled in translucent white clouds. Despite the ship’s heating and the whale oil lamp between them, the temperature couldn't have strayed much above freezing in Crozier’s cabin. Still, it was warmer than when Fitzjames initially stepped into the little room. The two men had actually taken their overcoats off to accommodate their shared heat.
“No curse of mine could impugn such a lofty soul,” Crozier stuck his point firm with a finger jabbed into the tabletop. His tone was teasing, but the underlying sentiments remained pure. “Don’t you know? We Papists scrounge about in the muck of Anglican men like him.” Insecurity bubbled through the gaps of his lilting words. Fitzjames looked away.
The two men sat adjacent to each other at the table with Crozier at the head. Fitzjames’ knee pressed against the table leg, body facing the wall behind Crozier, his legs spread by way of an acute triangle. He sat, spine slightly curved, with his upper back against the wooden chair, while Crozier leaned forward with one elbow propped up on the table, his other hand level to the wooden surface and wrapped firm around the bottle. Fitzjames reached forward for it and Crozier actually seemed to flinch before letting go. “Just want to refill my glass.” Said like calming a wounded animal. His senior scowled, clearly sensing the connotations.
“Take it.” Crozier gestured loosely, then paused for a moment. “Do you have anyone at home, James?”
“If this is going to be yet another Sophia segue,” The air filtered into something thinner, colder, as Fitzjames turned his head to the side, “I do not think I’ll fare well to hear it.” He topped off his glass and brought it to his lips, still holding the neck of the bottle. Fingerprints marked the translucent surface in clear dimples, little spots of warmth on the chilled surface. The only prevention against ice buildup in the bottle itself was the persistent pouring, passing, and holding. “I’d go so far as to say I’m tired of it. The constant recounting of your image of her.”
“Constant?” Crozier echoed, an impassable expression on his face. “And your tales of valor are no less ever-present?”
“At least they’re valorous, Francis. And… varied.”
“If not vain.” It was muttered behind the lip of his glass.
Fitzjames’s mouth quirked into something like a smile, something like a grimace. He leaned back into his chair and pushed the bottle to the center of the table. Downing the remains of his glass - a non-negligible amount - and releasing a heavy sigh through his nostrils, he flexed his fingers. “What else, then? What other stories do you have?”
Crozier stared at the empty glass for a moment, brow furrowed. “How much do you know about Franklin’s carnivale?”
“Only passing remarks. That men dressed as all sorts of traders, kings and brides, and that you came as a- what was it, again?” Fitzjames knew the answer already. For some reason he couldn’t quite explain - not even to the growing, warm feeling of contempt in his stomach - he wanted to hear Crozier say it.
His superior matched his gaze. Like always, Fitzjames could feel the man picking apart his posture, his expression, the weight behind his words. Crozier gathered himself into a more upright position, spine straight, one hand on his thigh. “A servant boy.”
“Sir John’s servant boy, correct?”
“Correct.” The harsh velar stop clicked like a whip. Crozier reached for the bottle and poured more whiskey into his quarter-full glass.
“Surely, Francis, that’s more than enough for you.” Fitzjames received an incredulous look in response. He was pushing it too far. It was time to pivot. “I've never told you - never told anyone, I don’t think. I attended a carnivale of my own, oh… years ago. Before you and I became acquainted. I was quite a young man at the time, and one of the few who could-” Fitzjames glanced to the door, checking for noise. He tried to make the gesture subtle, but Crozier was nothing if not hawklike. “Could fit into one of those terrible wastes of fabric we called dresses. Without, ah, doing some mending of my own.” Crozier inhaled deeply.
“How gaunt were you, James? I didn’t think you were all too ungainly now.” The remark made Fitzjames smile at its genuineness. He cast his eyes back over to Crozier, to the loose skin below his neck, the pudge which swelled his waistline. “Just too long and gangly. Much still like a boy.” Convenient cover.
Crozier shifted again in his seat. Fitzjames locked eyes with him and watched as he ran a hand through his thinning hair, trying to pass off the motion as natural. Despite himself, the corner of Fitzjames’s lips pulled upward as if on strings. “Thank you, Francis.” He stood and felt the world swell in a fuzzy, inebriated whirlpool. Sitting back against the table, he untucked his hair from where it was trapped beneath his undercoat. “I wasn’t too gaunt at all. Far more fit than I am now, though that goes without saying. Still, everything was in its right place. This was before my war wounds - here,” Fitzjames pressed two fingers to his bicep, which now faced Crozier, “and here.” The same two fingers traveled down to, and hovered over, his side.
Crozier followed the movements and lifted his glass to his lips again. The small object acted like a mask for his lower face. Fitzjames continued.
“No, this was before all that.” He gesticulated loosely with an open hand, head cocked to the side. It was shameful how drunk he was, how confidently he tried to pass it off. Heady pressure squeezed his skull, pleasant, like a warm blanket. It took the edge off his instincts, the ones which told him to get out of the room and back to Erebus. “It was a white dress. Bridal. I couldn’t get that silly gauze tiara over my head and we had no better shoes, so I wore my boots without socks. At the time, there was a lieutenant who was supposed to be my groom.” His eyes slid off to the side and caught Crozier's. The man still had his glass raised to cover his face, and Fitzjames looked back to the wall. Crozier’s attention made him ever more pleased. “But by the time I got there, and finished my procession, the groom was nowhere to be found. Stood up - at my own ceremony!” He laughed. “What a fool I must’ve looked. The dress had these two little slips for sleeves, and I’m sure there was supposed to be some… lace undergarment beneath. The dress itself was far too revealing.” Again, Crozier sucked in a breath. Fitzjames tucked his chin over his shoulder and looked down on him. “So you see why I can’t bear to hear of your bride-who-never-was, Francis? It’s a perfect little irony. You, used up and left behind by your perfect bride, and me by my groom.”
Crozier coughed and sputtered. “What- what do you mean by that, James?”
A little piece of his mind was screaming at him to stop. He didn’t feel mortified by the slip-up, though. He wasn’t even sure if it was a slip-up at all. “What does it matter?” Crozier’s mouth hung ajar. “I almost wish we could have another carnivale. I don’t know where that dress is now, but I’m sure I can find another costume.”
“Another dress?”
“Maybe. Would I still be able to fit into one, though?”
Crozier’s eyes dropped to the table, then slowly traveled back up to Fitzjames’s face. “Not in this weather. Nor at your age. I’ll just have to imagine it.”
Fitzjames’s mouth twitched.
“We,” Crozier corrected, lazily. “We’ll imagine it.”
His palm came down to lay flat on the table, fingers splayed inches away from where Crozier had planted his glass and held it there. The man stared at the display. He swallowed and scratched beneath his chin. It made Fitzjames oddly hungry, watching the expressions shift and crack under his hardened face, like a frozen river. Fitzjames brought his other hand across his lap and wrapped it round the lip of the table, using it to pull himself down to the head where Crozier sat. He felt Crozier push his whiskey glass away, heard it slide down the wooden surface. Fitzjames moved both hands to the lip of the table and leaned forward, looking down upon Crozier. What he was doing was beyond brazen, beyond stupid. He felt totally beyond logic or reason. He knew past his sober conviction, past any tether to reality, that this was how it had to be.
Crozier stared, open-mouthed, between his spread knees. Up to the buttons on his coat. To the butt of his chin. His expression mingled between fury, incredulity, and disbelief. Whether those emotions were aimed at Fitzjames or himself, it was anybody's guess.
“So, servant boy?” Fitzjames whispered. Crozier sighed aloud, a shaky and surprised thing. A hot flush creeped up the man’s neck and Fitzjames almost smiled at its wanton expansion.
Francis cupped Fitzjames’s calf in his hand, bringing his foot to rest on the lip of his chair. His hand began to move higher, up past the cusp of his boot, but Fitzjames made a tsk-tsk sound and Francis paused. Fitzjames dragged his gravel-encrusted heel over the taut white fabric of Francis’s trousers and planted the sole of his shoe just below his belt. He pressed down, trying to find a comfortable spot for his foot. Francis moaned and immediately clapped a hand over his mouth. Breaths came ragged and heavy through his nose.
“Comical. Truly.” Fitzjames pressed harder into the all-too-soft space and frowned. “What is it? Are you not pleased?”
Francis twitched his hips up and tried to back away, sliding further down the chair, but Fitzjames dug his heel in. “Or is it that you’re just an indulgent old man? Sick on excess, is that it?” Fitzjames spread his own legs further apart and sighed through his nose. His thoughts hummed in utter disbelief at what he was doing, what he was saying. To his first - to Francis Crozier.
He was, by all means, disgustingly aroused. Every shift made that painfully obvious. Gravel came loose and skittered on the wooden seat between Francis’s legs. Fitzjames dragged his foot back and off the chair, framing Francis between his open legs. The man let his hand drop from his mouth.
“I could have you lashed, James,” He said between closed teeth, “I could have you punished, as a boy, in my own quarters. I could have you stripped of rank and standing and left in the snow to die.” His once booming voice was a guttural murmur, cracked and weak. “I could hit you now and you would have nary a protest to give.”
Fitzjames watched the fire in his eyes spark and die. He sucked his bottom lip in between his teeth and bit down on it, letting the silence stretch between them. Francis stared first at his mouth when eye contact became too much, then dropped his gaze back down to the apex of Fitzjames’s inner thighs. He made a motion to stand but Fitzjames made another disapproving noise. Arousal flooded through him like laudanum when Francis immediately paused. “Say please before you stand up. I need to know you want it, my captain.”
Francis balled his hand into a fist. The man could’ve popped a blood vessel from the force of his glare. Still, he relented.
“Please.” Francis whispered, a sad, frustrated desperation pushing up against the dam of his teeth.
Fitzjames hooked his boot underneath the chair’s armrest. “Please… to leave? Or to come to me?”
The man’s eyes looked down and shut themselves. “Please, James. I want to.” Francis knew Fitzjames wouldn’t relent. The humiliation was clearly spurring him on. “Pleasure you. Just let me. We’re already so far gone.”
“Come, then.”
Francis stood too quickly and in one fluid movement took Fitzjames’s hips in his hands, digging his cold fingers into the hint of warm flesh beneath his clothes. They traveled further down, one holding his legs apart while the other palmed him through his trousers, and sought out the button clasp in the same, opposing, position as Francis’s own. Fitzjames slid his hips forward until the front of his - now opened - trousers hit Francis’s, and both men sighed.
Francis palmed himself desperately, trying to bring any kind of stimulation to an area he clearly, defeatedly, knew wouldn’t bend to his will. The frustration rippled off him in angry waves and made Fitzjames smile. Alcohol pulsed through his head and warmed him through to his core. “I don’t know why you try, my dear Francis. Is this why Sophia only bedded you once?”
Francis dropped his forehead to Fitzjames’s shoulder and groaned. The hand between Fitzjames’s legs pressed harder, seeking out the definite shape of him and running his thumb along the length. “Please, God, James.” Something in the man’s posture slackened. He dipped lower, leaning forward.
“You want to be on your knees, Francis?” Fitzjames pressed his knee to his captain's side. His hand went to the man’s shoulder and began to press. “You want me to make you?” He didn’t realize how angry he himself was until his hand met resistance. Francis tried to cling to his hips again, to his waist. The man was trying to feel his human form beneath the thick layers of woven authority. Even under the cotton and wool, Fitzjames sensed how cold his hands were. “Stop that. Get on the floor.” Francis sucked in a whimper of a breath. Hands moved higher, to more intimate positions. “Now.”
The older man’s knees crackled and popped as they bent. He hit the floor with a painful, ungainly thud, and shifted as he tried to make the position more comfortable. It must’ve been freezing on those wooden planks. Fitzjames watched him squirm and wince. He slipped his hand down into his drawers and palmed himself, fingers becoming slick with what he could only assume was pinkish pre. Either sweat or blood was pricking at his scalp. In this lighting, it would be hard to detect as either.
Francis wrapped his arm round Fitzjames’s thigh. He trailed his lips up along the inner seam of his white trousers, pressing chapped kisses to the crease between where his leg terminated and his pelvis began. The sight utterly intoxicated Fitzjames. The finer details of Francis’s face were totally obscured in shadow, and his mouth, hot where cold air had once been, made Fitzjames shiver. His tongue lapped filthy, open-mouthed kisses against the straining fabric of Fitzjames’s crotch. Fitzjames’s mouth dropped open in a haggard sigh. He was disgustingly close. He was barely more than half-hard himself and already felt so close. His hand ripped itself from the front of his trousers and he moaned aloud when Francis eagerly took up the remaining space.
“You should see yourself, Francis,” Their breaths mixed together in translucent white clouds. “Oh, God,” Fitzjames sucked in a breath, all the blood in his body having rushed down to where Francis was now dedicating the last, exhausted scraps of his energy. “Filthy. Filthy.”
Francis took both legs in his arms and pulled Fitzjames forward, nearly until he was off the table. He had to grab the lip of the table to prevent himself from falling flat on his back. The man’s mouth found its way to his undergarments. Fitzjames dropped his chin to his chest, tilted it back, then repeated the process, trying to keep his eye on Francis. “Jesus, oh, my Lord,” He was going to come without the man ever touching him, skin to skin. He couldn’t tell which position was more humiliating. It made him ever more angry. It made some molten gear in the back of his mind break and spin loose, accelerating a part of himself he’d tried his best to ignore.
“You-,” Fitzjames dragged his bottom lip between his teeth, letting it loose with an obscene wet noise, “What, in God’s name, is wrong with you?” Francis moaned between his legs and the noise sent Fitzjames’s head reeling. “You animal, you-” He bucked his hips into Francis’s mouth, one hand now clutching the back of the man’s head. “You godless- ah- animal. Oh, fuck,” His breath hitched into a whine. A sick, deafening slurry of sensation flooded through his head. Each word made it worse. “Francis, I-” It was hardly about the physical sensation anymore. He was teetering off the edge of something menacing, and it terrified him. The tension in his gut kept building at a relentless rate and wouldn’t let him go. “Fuck, I’m sorry,” James moaned, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” He pushed Francis’s head down and ground hard against his mouth, once, twice, until the tension inside him cracked like a broken spring and drove the air from his lungs. His hand slipped and fell to the side, chest heaving, chin tilted down and across his clavicle. James kept the heel of his foot pressed fast to Francis’s back. He needed the warmth of his body. He couldn’t ride this out in the cold. His hips moved of their own accord, rolling and pushing gently, seeking as much friction as possible before the sensation became all too much.
After a few moments, James let his legs fall slack. Francis still kneeled there, temple pressed against his thigh, James’s hand in his hair.
“I should head back,” James eventually whispered, his hand finding the clasps of his trousers again.
“You could stay,” Francis intoned.
“I should head back.”