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James does not take his shirt off, no matter how many times Francis touches him.
For a long while, he hadn’t thought much about it. It’s the arctic. It’s cold out here. Even when they steal a moment alone in Francis’s cabin, the bite of the winter air is always present, an ominous third party that shadows their every moment. Not even the humidity of a hundred men crammed below deck is enough to chase it out entirely.
So Francis does not ask. He runs a hand beneath the clinging fabric, chasing the length of James’s spine, and James will let him so long as the shirt stays. It’s enough for Francis. Honestly speaking, he’d take however little James offered him.
Besides, this thing beneath them? It’s too new, too awkward, and it feels like one word could end it all. Francis doesn’t even really remember how it started; it seemed like one day he and James could barely stand to see one another, and the next they were falling into his bunk with hands that bruised sore skin and chapped mouths that bit more than kissed.
Francis hasn’t had anything like this in a long time. For whatever worth this could be considered to have, anyway. He’s in loathe to let it go so easily.
He has his suspicions. They’ve been at this… for long enough now, although he cannot quite remember how long that is. Long enough that he’s charted nearly every other inch of James’s skin that he sees fit to lay bare, and Francis has offered him the same. He knows the freckles on the back of James’s neck, the scar tucked behind the curve of his knee, the deceptively fine bones in his ankle.
He has seen every permissible inch of James Fitzjames and not once has his wandering fingers found anything that might be construed for a Soulmark. Francis, who wears his open and unrepentant just above the curve of his hip bone, cannot fathom the need for secrecy in such a thing.
Out here, does it really matter? On these blasted ships are over a hundred men the universe has promised to people waiting on distant shores, and the passing days makes it more and more unlikely that they’ll ever return to them.
Francis has never believed in Soulmates. Not when Sophia Cracroft wore her Soulmark delicately at the nape of her neck, unmatching and unconcerned, and Francis had seen fit to covet her anyway. Not when she’d rejected him not once but twice, and made it quite clear that she cared little for partners chosen either by fate or favor, and Francis had, in a desperate, foolish attempt, climbed upon this boat to try and appease her anyway.
She had not been looking at him when the boats launched. Francis has lived with the memory of that for years now, and he’s grown resigned to his reality.
As far as Francis Crozier is concerned - a Soulmark is worth no more and no less than any other inch of his skin. He has nothing to prove, nothing to disprove, and most days he does not even think of it.
But James Fitzjames is nothing like him.
So, for the first time in Francis’s life, he tries to be careful. Considerate with James’s limits in bed in a way he isn’t anywhere else. He will not ask. He will not pry. He will not snoop. So long as James wishes to keep such a part of him private, Francis will respect it.
The world does not agree.
One evening in the perpetual blackness that is now their life, as Francis is pushing James down to the bunk, the shirt catches on a splinter in the wall. The sound of tearing is loud enough that it feels like it ought to deafen him, and James goes whiter than the ice that’s locked them into this hellscape.
Francis doesn’t get a chance to so much as respond. James knees him in the gut, leaving him winded, and he’s shoved brutally so that he has to scramble not to fall to the floor. “James,” he hisses. “Would you -”
Francis’s words die on his tongue. James’s shirt is hanging off his shoulder, and there’s a split down the side that even Jopson would be hard pressed to sew tight again. Francis can see the smooth stretch of James’s skin, several shades paler now than it was when they first set sail, and he can see a tight knot of scar tissue, and next to a faint glimmer of unnatural color -
James’s hand cups his jaw, turning his face away with such force Francis’s neck cricks. “Don’t look,” he snaps. “Where are my clothes?”
By now Francis knows that it’s little use arguing with James when his tone is biting like this. It’s never stopped him before. “You’re not being serious,” he says, incredulously. “You plan to walk the way back to Erebus hard, then?”
The hand leaves his chin and James shoulders past him, crawling off the narrow stretch of the bunk. Francis gets a glimpse of his naked ass, long familiar by now, and the enticing stretch of his taut thighs. He’s not looking at Francis though, and he’s holding the rip in his shirt closed like a lifeline as he snatches his clothes from where they’d fallen by the bedside.
He’s still hard, of course. They’d both been halfway to coming in their pants by the time Francis finally managed to strip James’s trousers off. The same trousers he’s now stepping back into, buttoning up awkwardly with a single hand.
Francis sits on the edge of his bed, still clad in mostly nothing at all, and watches him with bafflement. “For Christ’s sake, James. If it’s so much of an issue, just borrow one of my shirts for the time being.”
“It’s not an issue,” James says stiffly, in the voice of a man who very much thinks it’s an issue.
By this point, he already has his vest on and is shrugging into his coat. The faint hint of anything laying beyond his split shirt is lost, hidden away by the thick navy-issue fabric. Francis stays where he is, feeling lost and irritated even though none of this had been his fault.
“You’re being dramatic,” he says.
James turns around with a flourish, seething. “I don’t want to hear about drama from you of all people, Francis,” he says. “Maybe tonight I’m just not in the mood to suffer through the clumsy attentions of a drunkard, have you considered that?”
James has always been an excellent shot. The casual cruelty of his words hit their mark with razor sharp precision and Francis has to curl his hands into fists to avoid taking a swing.
Not here, he reminds himself with effort. Not now.
When this started he’d promised himself whatever tensions existed between them would never peak to violence behind his cabin door. On the decks they could argue and fight and let their frustrations drive them to bitter arguments barely held at bay from the crew - but down here, it would go no further than scratches on his back from James’s nails and the bruises he left on James’s waist as he pushes him against the bed to fuck between his thighs.
“Do you really think you have anything beneath that fucking shirt I haven’t already seen, James?” he snarls instead, nasty in its own right.
James’s eyes are storm dark. “Mind your own business, Francis,” he warns.
“I plan to,” Francis says. “I couldn’t care less about your damned Soulmark. You’re not that interesting, James.”
It is the wrong thing to say. Francis had known. That’s why he’d said it. Nobody excelled in the fine art of fanning a flame like an Irishman with his temper set loose.
There is a moment where he thinks James might hit him. He can imagine the split of knuckles against his chin with vivid clarity. Francis almost wishes he would. His blood is still hot from a half hour of James’s hands on him, and with no outlet for it now, it’s set to boil over.
Francis will not be the one to prod at their volatile mess of a relationship. Not here. Not now. But if James were to do so, Francis can only be expected to respond in kind.
Instead, James takes in a breath, ironing out his spine. Francis can see him stowing the hurt and anger, packaging it away neatly before it can spill irrevocably over the floor of Francis’s cabin. “I’ll be returning to Erebus now,” he says. “Goodbye, Francis.”
Just like that, he leaves. Francis sits mostly naked on his bunk, watching, stupefied, as James fearlessly rattles the door open and slips out.
--
For a time, things are tense between them. Tenser than normal, which is really saying something.
When James dares deign to come to the Terror, he’s distant and professional. He makes no move to venture south to Francis’s quarters, makes no moves that are at all inappropriate between men of their station. With the situation on the ice worsening by the day, Francis is left to wonder if this is it for them, if the peace treaty they’d negotiated with their hands and bodies has been yet another casualty of this blasted endeavor.
Then the monster returns, one of Francis’s dearest friends is injured as a result of his own hubris, and Francis makes the choice to go sober.
It is perhaps one of the worst periods of a life that has seen more than its fair share of them. For days - weeks - Francis lays in bed, incapable of anything more than feverish dreams and sweating through his sheets. God bless Jopson, for Francis would have choked on his own vomit long ago without him.
During one of the later evening nights - after his fever had broken but before he’d regained the use of most of his limbs - Francis awakens to find a dark shadow beside him. He thinks it’s Jopson, as it has been most times he’s opened his eyes, but when he blinks the sweat back he recognizes the impeccable posture and squared jaw of another man entirely.
“James,” he rasps. “What are you doing down here?”
“Hello to you too, Francis,” James answers wryly, wringing dry a cloth to drape over Francis’s sweaty forehead. “I see your foray into sobriety has had little impact on your manners.”
It’s not precisely the way one should talk to their captain, but down here, in the privacy afforded by Terror’s walls, Francis does not demand it from him. Has never demanded it from him. James’s fingers brush his temple, delightfully cool, and it takes all of Francis’s willpower not to lean into them.
“I told Jopson I would take no visitors,” he says. “You are to be running our ships.”
“And I am,” James assures him. “I see no reason why I cannot spare a moment to speak with the rightful captain during such a trying time.”
“I’m not in the state for company.”
“You rarely are,” James says, but the bite to it that Francis had expected is gone. James’s hand is still resting on his forehead, gently dabbing away sweat as if he were a lowly steward and not an accomplished captain in his own right. “Come, sit up. Jopson had other duties and you’re disgusting. The sheets shan’t survive the night at this rate.”
Befuddled and weak, Francis allows himself to be manhandled upright. James’s hands are so familiar to him that he barely even thinks to question it as they strip away his soaked undershirt, patient when Francis’s body must be manipulated like a doll.
The shirt hits the floor. James ducks away for a moment and comes back with a fresh cloth. Studiously, and with a level of carefulness that tells Francis he has not done this before, James sponges at Francis’s bare skin. It lacks the professionalism of Jopson’s touch, and has the intimacy of a man who has borne witness to Francis’s body in situations much more revealing than this one.
“Sit still,” James says, and his fingertips ghost along the marked skin just below Francis’s ribs. There, his blotched skin says, Good evening, sir.
James is staring at it. Francis doesn’t even have to look in order to tell. “You’ve seen it often enough,” he says, although he knows referencing their previous arrangement might be a gamble. “Why the curiosity?”
James’s fingers pull away. He resumes his methodical scrubbing. “There is none.” A pause, heavy in the sour air between them, then, “Just what an unfortunate set of words.”
Francis grunts, uncaring. “Helpful as tits on a nun,” he says. “But that’s what you get as a ranking officer. The higher you climb, the less people greet you like an individual. You must be about the same, right?”
James is silent for a moment. “Right,” he says, and says no more.
Francis closes his eyes and leans into his touch, allows himself a quiet moment of taking comfort in a situation where comfort does not often come. James does not call him on it. After a long, long time, James’s hands part from his skin and they do not return. “Let me fetch you a clean shirt,” he says.
Reluctantly, Francis peels his eyes open. “Don’t bother,” he says. “Jopson can do it. You have more important things than running errands beneath your station.”
It could be his imagination, but he thinks he sees James’s mouth pinch. “Of course,” he says. The chair he’d been sitting on screeches as it’s pushed backwards. With such a low roof, James has to stoop in order not to brain himself on a wayward beam. He looks unaccountably awkward like that, hovering over Francis’s sickbed like a gangly messenger of death. In that moment, Francis’s fondness for him far surpasses that of a First and his Second - surpasses that of two men who take nothing but physical comfort in one another in a world barren of any comfort at all.
It is not a new feeling. Not in Francis’s life, and not in regards to James Fitzjames, who drives Francis only half as crazy with anger as he does with other things entirely.
“The Carnivale will be tomorrow night,” James says. “The men are looking forward to it.”
Francis has only the faintest recollection of being told about it. He supposes he’ll probably forget again once this moment of lucidity passes, as it always does. “Good.”
James nods, as if unsure of himself. His eyes flicker down to Francis’s Soulmark and then away again. “Hopefully, you will be recovered soon at any rate.”
God, does Francis hope the same. “With luck.”
The tight corners of James’s mouth soften and he turns to leave, pausing at the threshold. His long fingers tap at the doorway once, twice. “Be well, Francis,” he says, quiet enough that Francis almost misses it entirely, and then he swoops out of sight.
Francis goes to sleep, and when Jopson wakes him with a frown to ask where he’s shirt’s gone, Francis has all but forgotten the visit happened at all.
--
Francis survives sobriety, but most of his men do not survive Carnivale.
The choice to leave the ships behind is not lightly made, but in light of everything it is the only choice left. He watches as his men lash unnecessary crates onto overflowing boats and harnesses are fashioned from unforgiving leather. James stands beside him, back erect and hands folded neatly behind himself as the two of them survey what has become of their command.
This is never how Francis pictured his tenure as captain. Somehow, he is still not surprised it came to this. Francis has never had the fabled luck of the Irish; his whole life has been a cursed succession of events, beginning with the words Good evening, sir hewn into his skin, an invisible tie to a soulmate that has thinned to breaking after hundreds of greetings just like it.
“You needn’t look so grim, Francis,” James says beside him. “The men are looking to their captain for all things right now, including their temperament.”
Francis glances at him. James’s face is thinner now, the square of his jaw narrower. His lips are permanently chapped, and his eyes are red with bloodshot. Looking at him, Francis cannot help but remember the first time they were introduced in the months leading up to the voyage, Sir John’s companionable hand on Francis’s arm as he gestured to James and said, “And of course, you’ll have heard of our great pride, James Fitzjames.”
He’d looked worlds away from this weary ghost of a man then; impeccable formal dress bracketed by the great coat that split around his shoulders, hair artfully pushed back to show the polished highs of his cheekbones. He’d had the smile of a savant and the eyes of a charmer, and he’d held his hand out to Francis, greeted him like the perfect subservient officer, and Francis had said -
He doesn’t remember now. He’d been drinking half the night by that point and was still feeling the malignant burn of Sophia’s first rejection. An unkind, grumpy old man set loose among the young blood and told to play nice. Whatever Francis had said had set the course of their relationship for years to come.
It’s a wonder, he thinks, that James ever let their relationship veer so far off course the way it has. He supposes there’s something to be said for this mysterious specter of hate sex he has heard such gossip about.
Looking at James’s wind-chapped face now, Francis can’t find a single thread of hate in him. He wonders if he ever could. James resembles the man that Francis had met that night only in the way a rippling puddle of dirty rainwater might offer a man his reflection, and whatever feeling had made Francis spit spiteful words in his face, he finds none of that now.
The past few years have taken everything from Francis. The only familiarity he has left is James Fitzjames.
He looks back out over the ice, at his scrambling men, the loom of the Terror casting her shadow over them all. “If we’re relying on me to be our expedition mood maker, then I’m afraid we’re a lost cause already, James.”
James laughs. It’s wet and yet also dry. Francis closes his eyes and pretends like he doesn’t hear the haunting echo of a set of lungs pushed to breaking behind every breath James takes.
“We shall see,” James says. “You’ve surprised us with miracles yet, after all.”
Francis is not so sure. His luck feels feeble, his mistakes a constant shroud that haunts him. Beneath the sodden layers of threadbare clothes, the words on his hip ache like a brand.
“Maybe so,” he says, and hopes that James’s faith is stronger than his misfortune.
--
The first night at their new camp, James comes to his tent like it’s a given.
It’s a little surreal seeing him backlit against the black night by the golden glow of the lantern on Francis’s makeshift desk. The canvas of the tent sits too high compared to the shallow ceiling of Francis’s cabin, and when James takes off his hat, running fingers through his unkempt hair, Francis can’t help but stare.
“It’s getting late, Francis. You’ll do yourself ill if you sit there all night puzzling out problems that can’t be solved,” he says. “Go to bed.”
Francis huffs, turning back to the loose array of papers he’d been scribbling on; an inventory of what little they have left in way of supplies. They have more sets of cutlery than men to use them, and more men than food to be eaten. The ships had been stripped of blankets, but over half of them had been forsaken along the trek to ease the burden of the boats. Just looking at the smudged ink is enough to hurt his head.
“You may have a point,” he concedes, shoving away his notes, and groaning as his back cracks. “Christ, never thought I’d miss the drafty hunk of wood they dared to call a Captain’s bunk back on Terror.”
“It wasn’t so bad,” James says, the corner of his mouth tilting up just a smidge. The firelight paints golden groves into his sallow skin. “At the very least, I seem less likely to get your elbow in my rib here.”
It’s the first time that James has even eluded to their intimacy since the argument that, in hindsight, seems irrevocably childish. Francis is taken aback. He’d presumed it had been just another casualty of their situation; brushed out of sight now that it’s done with, an invisible third person in the room that neither of them would acknowledge again.
Looking at James now, that does not seem to be the case.
Francis clears his throat. “Well,” he says, “I suppose we’ll find out.”
James is right. The narrow cot is hardly a luxury, but Francis is careful to keep his hands only to where they are welcome, sharp elbows tucked away from the tender bruises that seem to bloom across James’s skin every day. They don’t undress - don’t dare with only thin canvas between them and their men, the bite of the cold harsh and unrelenting - but Francis relearns this new body that James calls his own, stripped bare of excess fat and skin stretched taut like elastic over his bones.
How long has it been since they touched like this?
The answer, Francis realizes as James’s breath warms the crook of his throat, is never.
On the ship, it’d been too rough, too bitter; an angry veneer over their every move, selfish in their pursuit for pleasure. At times, it’d been almost soft, in the moments when they wanted comfort more than gratification, but even those had been about taking what they themselves wanted. James wielded his knowledge of Francis’s body like a weapon, and Francis was just as likely to wound.
Before James had come into his tent tonight, Francis had been all but certain the ice had wrung his body dry of anything but pain. Now, he grits his teeth, bucks into James’s hand, and comes between them with James’s mouth pressed against his jaw, just where he likes it.
He takes a moment to come down, staring up past the mess of James’s hair to the sagging ceiling of the tent. When he finally feels like he has his breath back, he reaches for James too, only to have his wrist snagged.
“It’s fine,” James says. “Do not concern yourself.”
Francis frowns at him. “What do you mean by that?”
James offers him a thin smile, shifting over to sit on the edge of Francis’s bed. His pants are still buttoned, and the looseness of his coat makes it impossible to tell whether he’s hard or not, but, looking at his exhausted face, Francis realizes that James’s body has probably robbed the ability for such a thing from him days ago now.
Scowling, Francis hauls himself upright. “Do not treat me like a charity case,” he warns. “If you don’t want -”
“It’s not a matter of wanting,” James says, looking uncharacteristically unbothered. “It’s enough like this.”
It doesn’t feel like enough. James’s cryptic speech chills down Francis’s spine. “James -”
James reaches out, threading his fingers in Francis’s hair and leaning in for a closed mouth kiss. The action is so out of character that it brings Francis up short, irritation turning into a cloud of confusion.
James pulls back, expressionless. “I’ve instructed Jopson to fetch me if he sees light coming from your tent any time before morning,” he says. “So if you won’t sleep for your own health, at least sleep for mine.”
He gets to his feet, brushing out the wrinkles in his clothes. Francis stares at him, still taken off guard and scrounging to think of a single thing to say. James seems to have no such issue. He graces Francis with a smile that seems as genuine as it is exhausted. There’s something behind his eyes that Francis can’t understand.
“Sleep well, Francis,” he says, and leaves.
Francis stays where he is, sprawled on his own bunk with his trousers undone and the memory of James’s lips pressed against his, tasting hot and alarmingly like iron.
Tentatively, he presses his fingers against his mouth. They come away red.
It takes him a long moment to realize the blood isn’t his.
--
James is dying.
Francis has known many truths throughout his life; he is an unkind man who will die alone, Sophia Cracroft will never marry him, Sir John will lead them all to ruin. They are sour, unpleasant things, but once the seed of thought has sprouted in him, Francis allows it to grow, keeping a reluctant eye to it until all his doubts finally come to fruition like he knows they will.
Now, he is a miserable man stranded in a miserable land, Sophia Cracroft never looked to him when the boats launched, and Sir John has taken dozens of men with him to his grave. Francis is a harbinger of misfortune, and all his prophecies come true.
Days ago now, he heard the rattle in James’s lungs and felt that kernel of horror budding in his ribs. Now, he stays by his bed and helps him sit upright because James can no longer manage on his own. His hair that had once been such a source of pride is thin and lanky, and his skin pockmarked with sores.
James Fitzjames is dying, and when he goes he will take with him this inexplicable bond that has blossomed between them, and Francis will be truly and utterly alone.
He’s not quite there yet, has enough life left in him to still be the James that Francis knows and -
But soon. Soon.
“Don’t strain yourself, you fool,” Francis says, as he props a pillow behind James’s back to keep him upright. “You’ll send yourself to the grave like that.”
“I think I’m heading there anyway, Francis,” James says, smiling wanly.
Francis ignores him. He has to, or the miserable shell he calls a heart might break. “I’m going to get you a fresh shirt and a cloth,” he says. “Sit still.”
There are no longer clean clothes out here, but he finds something for James to wear that won’t stick to his bleeding wounds and wets a stained cloth in freshly melted ice. When he resettles on the side of the bed, James is looking past him into some unseen middle distance and it takes a moment before Francis is able to snare his attention again. His dark eyes drift back towards him, slightly unfocused, and Francis experiences a moment of fear that James is further along than he’d thought.
“None of that,” he snaps, giving James’s arm an exceedingly gentle shake. “Come, let’s get you washed.”
James’s eyes clear. Life flickers back into them. He pulls his arm from Francis’s grip and says, “I can manage.”
Only a man like James Fitzjames could be on his deathbed and maintain his pride like this. “You could but you won’t,” Francis says. “Captain’s orders. Lift your arms.”
James doesn’t. His shoulders curl, arms locking together tight. “Francis,” he says. “I can do it.”
It’s Francis’s nature to bite back, but he holds it now. James looks like one wrong word will bowl him over, shatter him to pieces, and Francis is not prepared to live in a world without him. Not yet. Not so soon.
(Not ever.)
“Alright,” he says. “Please yourself, you stubborn idiot.”
James shoots him a glare, and Francis makes a show of turning away. From the corner of his eye, he can see James raising his hands to the sagging collar of his shirt. He tries to pull it loose, one, twice - exhausted, his hands fall to his side. He’s shaking. Francis doesn’t even need to be looking at him to tell.
Silence lingers. Outside, he can hear the rise and fall of voices, the few of his men who can still talk above a whisper.
James says, “Okay.”
Francis takes in a breath and turns around. James is looking into the distance again. He seems defeated. Resigned. It turns Francis’s heart almost as much as it turns his stomach. “I won’t look,” he says. “If you don’t want me to, I’ll -”
“It doesn’t matter,” James says. “I thought I could…” He shakes his head, rueful. There’s a whisper of his old charm in it. “Well, it doesn’t matter anymore.”
Francis doesn’t understand, but he reaches out to ease the shirt over his head and a moment later he does.
For the first time, Francis sees the legendary bullet scar James is so proud of; an oozing wound on the side of his ribcage, inflamed and angry. It is not what draws Francis’s attention; instead, he’s distracted by the distorted words beneath it.
In the faint lantern light, James’s Soulmark reads Christ, haven’t half the Navy heard of him by now?
Francis’s world grinds to a halt. He barely feels the bite of the cold, the feverish warmth of James’s skin beneath his hands. Instead, he’s standing in a grand ballroom, Sir John at his side, pleasantly introducing him to his new crewmate, the handsomest man in the Royal Navy, as Francis has heard whispered time and time again, and Francis is tired and drunk and mean.
“And of course, you’ll have heard of our great pride, James Fitzjames,” Sir John says, and Francis who is so sick of hearing about this brilliant young man says -
“Francis,” James says, voice as exhausted as his pallid expression, jerking Francis back to him. He reaches up and presses a shaking hand to where Francis is cupping his Soulmark - their Soulmark. “Don’t let it trouble you.”
Rarely in his many years has Francis heard such a ridiculous statement. “Don’t let it trouble me?” he repeats, and he sounds as rough as he feels. “Did you know? This whole time?”
James’s white teeth are dotted red when he smiles. “Some of us get generic greetings,” he says, “and some of us get cussed out in the middle of a military function. It was a bit hard to mistake.”
Between Francis’s spread fingers, the bullet wound that is slowly killing James’s years after it pierced him bleeds, making Francis’s words run like spilt ink. “And it never occurred to you to share?”
James shakes his head. “Why? For what? It would have changed nothing, Francis. You know that.”
All the nights he’d pressed James into his bed, shirt clinging to his chest, Francis’s fingers inching under the hem but no further. The desperate flash of James’s eyes after their worst arguments, the almost possessive dig of his fingers into Francis’s shoulders. At the time, Francis had thought it was resentment, well deserved and perhaps mutual.
He knows better now.
Francis wants to be sick so terribly his chest cramps, but he’s a starved man, and there’s nothing in him for it. Instead, he reaches out, clumsy in his haste, wrapping his free hand around the nape of James’s neck and tugging him close until their foreheads knock. “Christ, James,” he says, hoarse. His heart is tripping in his chest. Words feel beyond him. “Christ.”
Once, he’d wished with everything in him that Sophia Cracroft wore his words. Even the memory of that feels distant now; something that belonged to a foolish man with foolish thoughts and foolish ideas.
Maybe, there’s a world out there where Francis Crozier makes it back to London. A world where he sweeps the mourning niece of Sir John from her feet and they build a home together with a half dozen children and as many libraries as a vivacious young woman could ever want. A world where even without a set of matching Soulmarks, they wear matching rings, and Francis is content with that.
That is not this world. In this world, he has the handsomest man in the Royal Navy dying in his arms, and Francis knows with a certainty that reaches his very bones that this is a wound he will never recover from.
With a shivering hand, James reaches up, snagging the front of Francis’s shirt. “If I had a choice, I’d do it all over again,” James says. “What we had is more than most men get, Francis, and I am content with that.”
More honest than he can ever remember being, Francis rasps, “I’m not.”
James’s hand slips up until he’s clutching the back of Francis’s neck too, just two fools, heads knocked together, sweaty and dying. “I’d like you to be,” he says. “I don’t want you to be miserable when I’m gone.”
“I don’t take orders from you, James. I’ll be as damn right miserable as I please.”
James sighs, but he doesn’t say anything else. They stay like that for a long while, until James begins to shake and shiver with the effort of sitting upright, and then Francis reluctantly peels himself away, helping James ease back onto the thin pillows liberated from Francis’s own bunk for a better cause. “Let me help you get dressed,” he says, even though the thought of covering up James’s Soulmark is killing him. “You’ll freeze.”
“I don’t think it matters at this point, Francis.”
Francis squeezes his eyes shut, lips pressed thin. “Humor me, James.”
James does, letting Francis gently manhandle him into his fresh shirt, wiping sweat from the hollow of his throat, the shallow grooves of his collarbone where it’s poking at his papery skin. It does not escape him that it was not all that long ago that James did this for him. It does not escape him that it won’t be much longer and he’ll never have the chance to do it again.
After, James falls asleep, exhausted by a body fighting a fight it cannot possibly win and the fraught intensity of the moment that had sapped them both. Like this, he looks closer to death than Francis is comfortable seeing. The idea of not seeing at all is worse though, so Francis stays, holding a hand that cannot hold his in return.
Outside his duties await; a camp that’s falling to pieces, men that are in need of leadership. He wonders how many more bodies will be awaiting burial come morning. He wonders how long until James joins them.
James sleeps, unaware that Francis remains. When Francis makes the trek back to his own tent, his men will bend their heads to him and say “Good evening, sir.”
Francis is not sure he could survive that. They are words that belong to a single person now, and even when he’s gone, Francis will feel the touch of them on every inch of his skin.
Slowly, Francis reaches out, resting his hand on James’s side, right where the stain of blood bleeds through his shirt, marking the bullet that nearly killed him, and the words of a man who made it so it would.
Even if Francis ever makes it off this ice, he knows he’ll be leaving a part of himself right here, in this moment, irretrievable and unforgettable. A ghost more monstrous than even the thing that chases them through the dark.
Francis sits vigil until daybreak.
Possibly, Francis sits vigil for the rest of his life.