singillatim | (closed)

'Frightening' is a good word for it, and it makes Raju laugh. "I wouldn't want to step on his toes," Raju says, looking over to watch whatever Francis is doing with the food. "But I don't mind sharing my tools with someone who knows how to use them."

Raju looks from the food to Francis' untrimmed beard, studies him and thinks about the implication that the man's former steward would want to take up those duties again, if Francis would let him. He thinks about what Francis said, what it is that he's afraid of, the reasons he'd been hiding away.

Raju isn't much good at holding back. Not when he doesn't have to be. But it's something he's been told he's terrible at, so sometimes he remembers to try it anyway. "If you'd like to have him by let me know," he says, casually with a small, warm smile. "Then I can leave them here."

“It’s a kind offer, but…”

Ah, it’s complicated. The social hierarchy they’d left behind, the stunted and rigid officer-commander relationships, the fact that Jopson had died thinking he’d abandoned him.

“I don’t want him to get in the habit of caring for me. He doesn’t need to.” He’s not Crozier’s steward, he’s a leader in his own right.

It’s another reason he’s hidden himself away in an ice house since arrival. His entire presence is emotional baggage for those men.

Raju nods, studying him. It's an odd thing to listen to. All the personal problems Raju's dealt with are something different: how to talk to the right person in the right place in the right way, requests from people like Akhtar — people who hadn't been worth one one-hundredth of Akhtar — to help them get the attention of this woman or that one. If it were himself saying these things about someone who cared for him, someone back home, he would know exactly why it had to be done, and it isn't something he'd hear from anyone else.

It isn't the first time that something Francis said has reminded him of himself. So maybe Raju should trust his judgement.

"You've certainly gotten better at it." Raju lets a little smile creep back onto his face, glancing pointedly at the top of Francis' head. "Except for that hair. But I guess no one's perfect."

He laughs under his breath, glad that seems to be the end of that line of thought. Thomas Jopson already spent far too much of his young life devoted to an old man; he doesn’t need to continue in this second go-around. “What about your hair? I suppose you keep it oiled and perfumed?”

This time it’s only half of a joke. Compared to his man-of-the-mountaintop look, Raju is downright put together most days.

"Trimmed," Raju clarifies pointedly, eyebrows raised, and turns his head this way and that to point to different parts of his head, since Francis clearly needs the lesson. "See the back here? And the front? It doesn't look the way it used to when I had more to use, but it stays out of my eyes this way. You'd be amazed what a comb, some scissors, and a spare mirror can do, hm?"

And it stays off the back of his neck too, which at home had been a relief in the heat and here keeps bare the places that the wind creeps over, ice tickling down the back of the blanket even when he tries to wrap it high— but it looks neat, is the important thing. His hair might not look as kept in place as it used to without any pomade but it looks freshly trimmed, and nevermind the breeze.

"You can get the same effect with a beard too, you know, no matter what it looks like now." Raju taps his fingers on the table, not thinking to hold back his grin, or to bother looking like he's not implying something.

Crozier may be an officer, but he was a sailor first and with a sailor’s sense of humor. He looks back to Raju and dryly raises his hand to give him the good ol’ two-fingered salute.

Then it’s on to plating! He just has the one bowl for now, so he dishes out the stew for company and keeps the remains in the pot for himself.

“The beard’s a forgiving thing. Hides the ugliness of the lower face,” he says, equally as deadpan as before, handing him a cup of melt water while he sips from a canteen. “Distracting too. Why do you think Methuselah has one, mn? Keeps people from asking complicated questions.”

The gesture makes Raju duck his head, laughing a full, delighted laugh again. "What," he asks, setting a hand absently on the bowl and taking a drink of the water. "Like where your chin stops and your neck starts? You could shave properly and they wouldn't have to ask at all."

"I have a particularly horrifying neck," he says matter-of-factly. He basks in the laughter as he takes a taste of some of the cooked arrowroot and wild carrot from a crooked fork. "And I used to live in an ice hut!"

"That's no excuse!" he grins, and it's good. All of this is good. If he's going to start eating more meat again, he's glad that it's like this, instead of whatever it would have been alone. "You can use scissors in a hut!"

He's started to gesture with the spoon and stops himself before anything can fall out, putting it in his mouth before he can think too much about it. His expression goes distant, grin fading a little, but it's back in the next moment as he gestures with the spoon again, now safely emptied. "Besides, there's no one to see your neck in an ice hut, horrifying or otherwise. That's even less of an excuse."

“You’re arguing that I need to be presentable, but who would I need to be presentable for? The army of adolescents that live in town?”

His humor may be dry, but there’s no missing the delight in his eyes. He’s having his first good meal since his arrival.

“Is it any good?” He nods towards Raju’s bowl.

“Mhm.” Raju smiles. Sharing a meal with food dug up by the man’s own hands, eating it out of what’s clearly the only bowl and spoon that Francis owns, Raju would say that no matter what it tastes like. And his palate has gotten broad enough to eat even tasteless food without minding. But he means it. He looks down at the stew thoughtfully.

“It’s my first time with meat in a while,” he decides to say, shrugging. “You hunted this yourself? You mentioned traps, I think.”

"More like gathered," he says, quietly pleased that he's able to provide for him. He seems sincere, and whether it tastes good or not - and it doesn't taste horrible - it's nutritious.

"I've set up a few traps to catch what I can. It's enough to sustain me, and the extra I try to give away. Is it suitable, the meat?"

"Mhm." It's an enthusiastic noise and Raju smiles, a little surprised at how warmly the noise comes out, how easily. Raju's eaten English food, after all, and Francis' cooking is certainly better than that. But it would sound like an insult if he said it that way out loud. The bar is low. But it isn't the taste that makes it suitable here and now, anyway. "Keeps the scurvy away, you said? Is meat the only thing that does that?"

The bar is very low, especially for a man who's been eating blood soup and frozen seal fat with the Netsilik. He's enjoying the cooked food himself, getting to do things with plants for the first time in so, so long.

"No, but the fresh meat helps. Meat and anything that grows, that's what keeps scurvy away. Are you...are you worried?"

"No," he says through his next mouthful of food and shakes his head, swallowing with a smile. "But you mentioned it, and I want to learn. When did you start cooking? It's hard to imagine a man who's got someone else to shave his face and find his drawers for him every morning in front of a fire with a pot of stew."

He chuckles quietly. “So little faith in me. Men in the Discovery Service have to learn how to survive on their own. James - my oldest friend - and I camped in a hut for a week to chart magnetic patterns in the Arctic. We had no choice but to cook for ourselves.”

“Mm.” Raju leans on an elbow toward him, his interest sharpening again. “If your first attempts at cooking were anything like mine, I can’t imagine you learned much. How much could you chart just from that one hut? Or were you exploring too while you were living there?”

“It’s magnetism! All you need is the right equipment and a place to store it.” And god, it’d been grand, just him and James Clark Ross for a week. He laughed himself sick nearly every day, and he and Ross had nearly pinpointed the magnetic South Pole with their research.

He can’t remember ever being so happy.

Raju studies his expression and the memories that must be sitting behind it, and smiles a little, fondly, at what he sees there. “That was after you’d been in the service for a while, isn’t it? I can’t imagine only two men would be sent for something like that unless they were of a rank for it. How old were you?”

“Oh, Christ, no. I was second-in-command, James was my captain. It was only…”

He whistles softly as he tries to think about how many years had passed since the expedition to Antarctica.

“Seven years ago? Seven, six? I was 48, James just a few years younger than me. We met as boys on one of his uncle’s expeditions to the Arctic and became very fast friends.”

And he wouldn’t have had a command to begin with were it not for him. How he misses him every single day.

Raju's fascinated gaze only breaks when a bit of stew drips onto his hand. He looks down at it, hurriedly puts the forgotten contents of the spoon into his mouth, and speaks around it. "And stayed that close, even after he made captain younger than you? You didn't mind?"

There's a certain frame of mind where he would have thought twice before asking something like that. Too much chance that whoever he's asking might get offended. But cheerful and nearly warm, sharing a man's house and food and things, that isn't the face that Raju's wearing now. That other face might not have been eating this way, either. Right now, he doesn't think twice about it.

“No, not at all,” he tells him sincerely. There was never animosity between him and James Clark Ross, only trust and understanding. “He was the nephew of a renowned explorer, a darling of the Admiralty. He was made to be an officer. Thankfully he’s a good soul, and every time he found promotion he advocated for me to advance as well.”

He perhaps could have earned it on his own, but chances were never high. He’d needed a friend.

“He was knighted when we came back from Antarctica. I was never prouder.”

Raju grunts in understanding as he chews. If he'd been in that position and whoever'd been outpacing him had been helping him, too, as they were doing it, that would have made it easier.

He takes the time to finish chewing this time before he asks more. It gives him time to think over the idea of knighting ever being a good thing, something to be proud of. He's only ever heard it and felt disgust. But these men were explorers doing nothing but exploring, setting aside whatever the crown might have wanted done with their work afterward. Even a stopped clock, and all that.

"For your discoveries?" he guesses. "To do with magnetism, or something else?"

“We charted the location of the magnetic South Pole, and confirmed the existence of Antarctica as a land mass unto itself.” And yes, the empire had benefited and tried to lay claim to the area, but that wasn’t the official purpose of the voyage.

“I was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, a sort of organization of scientists and physicians.” And he’d been so pleased with those accolades, but it still wasn’t enough for his betters. It was never enough.

He glances away to eat quietly before his meal cools, giving himself an excuse not to keep talking about his failings.

When Francis goes over the particulars of their discoveries Raju leans forward, focused and eager and forgetting about his food again. But a moment later Francis is quiet, not seeming quite as excited by it, and Raju's quiet too while he studies him.

"And what was the Society like?" he tries. "Full of parties for patting each other on the back about how important you all were? Or did you talk about real things? Exploration, science?"

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