Chapter Text
“‘I understand there are bears in the Arctic.’”
Horatio didn’t put his head in his hands but it was a near thing.
“I’m so glad you find my embarrassment amusing,” he said while Archie sat beside him looking like the cat who got the cream, grinning his closed-lipped grin which made his cheeks encroach upon his lower eyelids.
“Oh, you’ll be alright,” said Archie, nudging his shoulder with his own and jostling him. “Made out better than poor Buckland, anyway.”
A perfunctory bout of sympathy came and then passed. Neither of them knew Buckland much and so there was not much they could offer in that respect other than pity for his age and a sort of unfamiliar respect more towards his rank than his character.
“What do you think it’ll be like?” said Archie after they had both spared the lieutenant a thought.
“The Arctic?” said Horatio with a frowning pull of his lip. “I would assume you know my prediction already.”
Archie laughed. It was a clear sound like the ringing of a bell. “Not the Arctic, Horatio. The Sandwich Islands. I’ve certainly never been, and I know for a fact that you’ve not been, either.”
“I could’ve been.” Horatio had made a career of the Navy for a respectable number of years now; his opinion of himself was not that he was ignorant of the world, and the acute worry struck him that perhaps he had given off that impression at some point along the way.
“Have you?”
“Well, no.”
“Then that’s that. An adventure for the both of us. I think we could both use one, don’t you?”
“Is the Discovery Service not adventure enough for you?”
Archie laughed again. “Imagine it, Horatio. The hot sand, the call of gulls.”
“You can get sick from too much heat,” said Horatio, but Archie continued on as if he hadn’t spoken.
“The taste of tropical fruit– have you ever had a coconut?”
Horatio glanced sidelong towards Archie and found him watching him back, his head tilted at a puckish angle. In that moment he might have asked him anything– the first time Horatio ever saw him he felt an odd directionless urge for weeks. He felt now that if he only followed Archie they’d find themselves in the Pacific in no time.
“No, I haven’t,” he answered.
“Neither have I. We could split one between us, see how we like it.”
“I wouldn’t know how to.”
Archie smiled. “Can’t be that hard.”
Now they were no longer in Horatio’s cabin. That, at least, had afforded them some warmth, if only due to its placement in the ship. The tent where supplies were kept was much colder. Wind blew through and against it, rustling the thick canvas walls until they flapped and billowed and put conversation to a pause, and fog seeped through under the sides and through the opening.
“It could be worse, you know,” said Archie, who sat on a crate near the entry, his lapels buttoned shut and his chin hidden in his coat. He had one glove off so that he could make note of the inventory and that hand trembled violently enough that he had already dropped his pencil three times.
Horatio, currently bent over a pallet of tins to count, glanced briefly to his friend with a flat expression. “It will be, if we continue to run down our salt meats as we are,” he replied, and then returned to his counting. Stretching their supply with the greyish stew from the cans would only take them so far; Hobbs and a contingent of marines were out hunting and would return soon, if not that day then certainly the next, and hopefully with food. A sling of rabbits or foxes, or if they were very lucky a caribou. The prospect of fresh meat was all the men could think about and when the prospect of home was not enough to carry them, that was.
“Well, even then,” said Archie.
“Even then, what?”
“There could be a bear.”
Horatio groaned aloud and Archie laughed, his teeth taking a momentary break from chattering. They caught one another’s eyes, Archie gleeful and Horatio weary, quieted, and then both burst into a second round of mellower laughter. Horatio was reminded then of his and Archie’s time as midshipmen in the time after the Justinian, their boyish exuberance during the first weeks under Captain Pellew’s command. They had felt in those early days that they had just been released from a great floating coffin and were taking their first breaths of salty air.
“That would be just our luck, wouldn’t it,” said Horatio with a wry turn of his lips.
“We’ve had too little of it lately.”
“What, bears?”
“No.” Archie flashed him an ironic smile. There was an odd red speck between his teeth and gums. “Luck.”
The smile, as anemic as it was, faded from Horatio’s face. “Archie, are you bleeding?” he asked, his count forgotten as he attended to his friend.
Archie pressed his lips together and ducked his head. “Oh,” he said, head angled to hide his mouth. “It’s nothing.”
But Horatio knew what he had seen. “You should have gone to Clive if you were feeling ill.”
“I wouldn’t go to Clive for a kiss on the cheek. Besides, you said I’d get sick.”
Horatio opened his mouth to argue but was interrupted by the sudden fluttering of the tent flap. Both men startled as Erebus’ marine sergeant stuck his head inside, and there was a moment wherein they all were suspended in a rush of silence.
“Well, speak, man!” said Horatio, and finally the sergeant straightened his back to report.
“Beg pardon, sir,” he said. “The hunting party’s returned.”