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Francis finds him at the top of the stairs, eyeing down a portrait of Ross and his wife hanging neatly above the balustrade.
James hadn't been trying to hide, not really. It's just— the party was so full, and everyone had wanted to speak to him. Once upon a time he might have enjoyed that, but his limbs still feel heavy and his chest still aches when he tries to breathe too deeply, and he's tired. The wounds have knitted themselves back together on the surface of his skin, but he can still feel the shift and pull of the flesh beneath when he moves too quickly. Dancing had been out of the question, and he's rather relieved that his doctor had given him strict instruction to stay off the ballroom floor, as it had given him the perfect excuse to wave off the young women so clearly angling for his name on their dance cards.
It had been kind of Ross to throw them a party, he knows. So few of them had survived the expedition, and even fewer still had survived the journey home, and James supposes it’s a bit unfair of him to shirk the celebrations meant specifically to laud his good fortune. But after the seventh awkward handwaving at the well-meaning question of so what was it really like out there that James couldn’t answer without feeling the hot clutch of terror in his throat, he decided he would be better off avoiding the festivities altogether.
"You're skulking about," Francis says, coming up beside James with his hands clasped neatly behind his back. "I thought that was my job."
He looks a sight like this, all dressed in uniform, crisp and clean and freshly shaved. The ice had taken a lot from him— from all of them, really, the few that had survived to see Ross' ship break the horizon— but he seems to wear it well, somehow. He'd gotten lean, of course, and the weathering of his face is sharper and more pronounced than it had ever been before the hunger, but his cheeks are flushed and full and his shoulders are still broader than James' by a mile.
James, who came back from the ice a withered and battered husk of himself.
He's gotten better in the weeks since, well enough even to convalesce at home instead of in hospital, but the ice hasn't quite loosened its deathly grip on him yet.
"It's a lovely ball," he tries. It comes out thin, unconvincing. "You must give Sir James my apologies, if he mentions it."
Francis chuckles softly, waving him off with one hand.
"Ah, I won't tell. Spent far too long dodging the crowds myself, he'll think I've just whisked you away to keep me company."
He says it easily, a cheeky smile tugging at his lips. It makes James' pulse skip a little in his chest, the teasing of it all, like he's a young lady courting scandal by being caught alone with Francis here. Never mind that they're not all that far from the party itself, never mind that James is neither young, nor a lady.
"Are you sure my reputation can handle it, Captain Crozier?" he teases lightly in return, just to see that wry, tight-lipped smile grow into a wide grin across Francis' strong jaw.
In another world, he thinks, it could have been like this— easy, simple, running into each other in hallways at parties and on the streets of London. In another world, they wouldn't have needed to taste the bitter fear of death in order to reconcile with their want, to realize that nothing so pitiful as shame could hold up in the face of all that vast and terrible cold.
In another world, though, perhaps they'd have continued on hating each other blindly until the end, no great metaphorical eddy-stone to force them round in circles until they'd learned to come at each other with soft hands instead of teeth.
Francis shifts a little closer to his side, until their elbows bump up against one another and James can feel the heat coming off him even through the thick broadcloth of their uniforms.
They haven't touched like this since their return.
It's not been possible, not really, what with Francis holed up in a spare room at Aston Abbotts and James letting his body stitch itself back together in a bed at the Naval Hospital. They'd hardly seen each other at all since stepping foot off Ross' ship when it made land, save for a couple short letters sent over by Francis, which James had left unanswered.
Before that, though—
If we make it home, Francis had said, clutching James' gloved hand to his chest like a lifeline. Would you consider staying by my side?
It hadn't been the first time he'd expressed the thought, the desire to spend the rest of his life with James, for however long they were permitted to live it. He'd made it a near weekly request by the end, long after they had put their pride and their well-bred reservations aside and admitted their feelings. If James hadn't known better, if they both hadn't been half out of their minds with hunger and sickness and delirium, he might have thought it all sounded rather like a marriage proposal.
Something about the Arctic had made the thought more bearable, James supposes, a flighty fever dream that kept them both going in those terrible days, some sort of hope to look forward to in the face of near-certain death.
Let's worry about making it home, first, James had said, every time.
And then they had made it home, and Francis hadn't spoken another word of it either out loud or in his letters. James supposes he had the right idea, in the end— such talk was best kept to deathbeds on the ice. Not here. Not now.
It doesn't stop the prickling tendrils of disappointment curling in his chest, though.
"They're asking me back to sea," says Francis, arm pressed against James' and face turned up to the portrait above them.
James stills. Something cold and icy grows between his ribs, the sensation familiar after so long spent in the North.
"Ah," he says, a beat too late. He tries to keep his voice charming, pleasant, but even he can tell that it sounds strained on his tongue. "Where to this time? Not the poles, I would assume."
Francis huffs a laugh— James can't quite tell if the weight behind it is disappointment or relief.
"Not the poles," he replies. "Jamaica and back, I think— I wouldn’t be gone terribly long. Ross seems to think I've gone stir-crazy on land, I believe he's a week or so away from locking me in his attic for some peace and quiet."
You could have come to see me, James thinks, a little unkindly. The words threaten to form in the back of his throat; he swallows them down before they can break free.
"I hear it's nice this time of year," says James.
“Nicer than London, at least.” Francis huffs a laugh, turning his head to peer out of the far window at the end of the long hallway beside them. They sky outside is grey and miserable, fat trails of rainwater tracing their sad way down the glass. James rather likes the gloom, not that he ever had before. He’d nearly forgotten the sound of rain, up in the Passage. “But I don’t have to go.”
James breathes a soft exhale. The relief in his chest rises like a tide, unbidden and unwanted, leaving stinging little pinpricks at the corners of his eyes. Francis is so near, so warm— but he doesn’t let himself turn away from the painting. As long as he can pretend they’re merely up here to look at Ross’ art, he reasons, anything is forgivable.
“Won’t the Admiralty—”
“Hang the Admiralty,” Francis cuts in. “Besides, it’s only an offer, it’s not a command. Ross floated the idea after I spent a day too many looking miserable in his parlor, none of them expect me to be ready to take to sea after only a month back in England.”
“And are you? Miserable?” James draws his hands together in front of him, twisting his fingers through each other— Francis had held him like that, not a day before Ross arrived, when James was still sickly and clinging to life by chipped fingernails.
He’s not entirely sure he wants to hear Francis’ answer, but he waits for it nonetheless. After what feels like an eternity, he feels Francis shift beside him, turning to look up at the side of his face. James keeps his eyes fixed, unmoving, on the painting.
“I have been miserable,” Francis says, “for a very long time. Since before we returned, and certainly before we set off on the expedition at all. You know this, James, you— you have seen the worst of me.”
Seen it, thinks James, and wanted it. And loved it.
“That is not what I asked,” he says instead, before the aching throb in his chest can make itself heard.
Francis purses his thin lips, leans a little heavier into James’ side. He doesn’t smell of whiskey, nor of the fine champagne Ross had set out at the drinks table. James isn’t sure why he’d thought Francis might fall back into drink after their return home, but he finds himself incandescently glad, all at once, that Francis has not.
“I am not.” The words are soft, more whispered than spoken. “But I have missed you.”
That, finally, gets James to turn. He blinks, tearing his gaze away from the figure of Ross on the wall and settling it on Francis instead— Francis, who has turned to look up at him with eyes wide and beseeching. In this light, he looks the very picture of the man who had sat beside James’ deathbed and asked James to run away with him to spend their lives together, who had crawled into tents and under furs and snuck through James’ cabin door to beg him the very same.
It had been so easy to believe him, without England weighing around their necks like a noose.
“I have been here,” says James. His throat is dry, his eyes are wet. He swallows thickly; it does not help. “I have been here, Francis.”
It’s not what he wants to say, not truly, but he supposes why did you leave me, why have you not come back to me, did your promises in the Passage mean nothing are not words fit for polite company.
Francis knows, though. James can see the understanding unfold on his face like petals of a rose. “I hadn’t—” he starts, then breaks off to press a pale hand to his lips. “I had thought you no longer desired my company.”
James nearly scoffs with the absurdity of it— that he might not want the pleasure of Francis’ presence, when it is near the only thing he’s longed for in the weeks since their return.
“Francis,” he admonishes. Francis’ face does a funny little thing, a flash of guilt flickering across it. “We are friends, are we not?”
“We were never friends before, I hadn’t— I wasn’t sure we would continue to be friends after.” It’s not a lie, exactly, they both know where they’d stood before the expedition. Still, shame curls hot in James’ gut at the reminder of just how deeply he’d misread Francis’ character.
One of them, he realizes with a start, needs to be the brave one here. Francis had spent plenty courage in the Arctic, enough to keep them both alive— but he’d always been a creature built for the sea, while James thrived in society. Perhaps it was time for James to take a step forward, after all.
With a careful look down the stairs, James ensures they’re alone, before dropping his hand to his side and letting his knuckles brush gently up against Francis’ own. At his touch, Francis draws a shuddering inhale— James can feel it, the twitch of Francis’ fingers against his as though Francis is fighting down the urge to reach for his hand.
“I remember telling you to wait,” he breathes, softly enough that only Francis can hear, that his words would be lost to the air even if there had been another soul with them at the top of the stairs. “To return home with me, and then worry about everything that might come after.”
“You were also halfway to the grave,” counters Francis. “And more, near the end.”
“I’d lost my body, not my mind.” James nudges up against the skin of Francis’ hand again, running the back of his index finger up against the knobby curve of Francis’ wrist, just to hear him pull in another shaky breath. “Thirty times you asked me, Francis.”
“Thirty-four,” Francis says. He turns his hand, palm-forward now, and captures two of James’ fingers between his own. It feels like an unspooling of his very self, as though James might shake apart under the weight of it, if not for the steady tether of Francis’ hold on him.
And then, with a touch far gentler than most James has ever known, Francis runs the pad of his thumb along the base of James’ ring finger.
James wonders, not for the first time, how Miss Sophia Cracroft could have ever held a man like this in her delicate grip and still found him wanting.
“How many more?”
Francis pauses at the question, thumb still pressed against James’ finger, the warm and heavy weight not exactly like a ring, but close enough to pretend.
“Pardon?”
“How many more times would you have asked me?” James clarifies. “If I had not died, and Ross had not come, and we had never returned to England.”
Francis presses closer, warm and solid and sure against James’ side. “As many as I could,” he replies. “As many as you would permit me.”
Below them, beyond the stairwell and the curtain, Ross’ party continues on, absent of the two men it had been thrown for in the first place. Here, though, the world is silent— the music does not reach them, nor the chatter. The only sound left is the soft echo of their breaths in the long hallway, the shuffle of fabric as Francis tugs James’ hand gently up to his lips and kisses it, once across the knuckles, the brush of his stubble soft against the skin.
James fumbles for his voice— he cannot remember how to move his lips, how to form sound in his throat or force it over his tongue.
“Once—” he starts, wavering. “Just once more, Francis.”
Please, he thinks, and hopes that Francis understands.
“James,” says Francis. James, a soft and pleading thing, the sound of it captivating in Francis’ rich accent. “I would stay here, if you permit me. In Aston Abbotts, or in London if you so wished, and if Ross might see fit to release me from his captivity. The Admiralty will ask me to Jamaica, as a formality, and I can tell them all number of things— that I am not as recovered as Ross believes me to be, that I wish to take a leave of absence, that ships have begun to make me ill and I would prefer a position in office, instead—”
“Francis, no,” James starts. He will not be the reason Francis gives up the sea, not for a hundred days spent by his side, not for a thousand— but Francis shushes him gently, squeezing his grip around James’ hand.
“I would stay here, ” he repeats. “Because, James Fitzjames, you are the only thing on this earth I have ever wanted more than the water, more than drink, more than a deck under my feet and salt air in my lungs. And had you decided you did not want me in return, that all you would ever give of yourself to me is your company and not your heart, I would still stay here, and that would be enough.”
“Francis—”
“If you desire it,” continues Francis, as though James isn’t struggling for breath underneath the onslaught of his words, as though tears have not begun to wet the tops of his cheeks. “I would find us apartments in Hanover, or Belgrave, or wherever you'd prefer to take up residence, and we could live as— as companions. Surely after all that we have suffered, society would not deny us that much.”
James stifles a nervous laugh, feeling rather as though his heartbeat is set to break free of his ribcage at any moment. “Companions, then— is that what we are to be to one another, Francis?”
Francis smiles up at him, a small and wanting thing on his lips, and the Arctic must have taken more of James’ reservations than he had thought, for he finds himself fighting down the urge to lean forward and kiss them senseless.
“Of course not,” says Francis. “If you might— if you still desired otherwise, now that we are here.”
James does. God help him, but he does.
“I’ve never had luck in asking for a wife.” Francis traces his thumb over James’ ring finger again, one soft loop around the base of it. “You know this— you have admonished me for it before. But I am earnest about it this time, James, and I know you cannot be one to me, not in the eyes of London or the world beyond, but if you would have me—”
“Yes,” James breathes, the word forcing itself from him before he can scarcely register that he’s opened his mouth. “Yes, Francis— Christ, yes, of course.”
Francis’ smile, broken only by the soft press of his lips once more to James’ knuckles and then gently, softly against the very tip of his ring finger, is clear and bright and brilliant as dawn cresting over white Arctic ice.