singillatim | (closed)

“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?"

It’s a good question, even if Crozier is perfectly aware that Raju’s trying to guide him back into the right side of the conversation. “Filled with some of the most brilliant minds of the age. I spoke to Darwin about his voyages once. Brilliant young man.”

The FRS and FRAS had been wonderful, but intimidating at times. He’d felt like an outsider there too, and it was worse when Ross finally married and stopped coming to the meetings with him.

Edited (Pressed ‘reply’ button too soon! ) 2024-03-20 16:27 (UTC)

“Young—” Raju starts, eyebrows rising, amusement caught in his throat and fading as he thinks what he was about to say the rest of the way through. Francis really isn’t that old, and far too many years off from there for a joke about it to work anyway, even if Francis had made a habit before now of claiming fame through impossible acts and people he could never have met. Darwin had been old when his father was young.

It isn’t as if he hasn’t wondered about Francis’ expeditions, about discovering the antarctic — confirming its existence, he’d first said. It isn’t a topic Raju’s read extensively about, not enough to remember discoveries and expeditions and dates and be very sure at all, but after that conversation, he’d—

He hadn’t known enough to think about it. He hadn’t wanted to think about it. He doesn’t want to think about it now. He sits back in his chair and looks down at the food shared with him in Francis’ bowl, then over at the man himself. He smiles so he can remember the afternoon and the conversation and not his thoughts, and kicks gently out at Francis’ foot and then leaves his own foot there, to remember that the other man is solid and real.

“And all of them had men to take care of their faces and outfits and meals for them too, didn’t they?” he asks, instead of asking to hear about anyone else Francis might have met there whose age would be impossible to ignore. Much better to tease; that feels real. Watching a friend who’s being teased feels real. “Your friend and you and the rest of them? The life of a gentleman?”

He returns the kick absently. He has to think about all the men he'd been fortunate enough to meet during his time in the society, all of them brilliant, most of them privileged in some ways. But not all. Not all were gentlemen who were born with a silver spoon in their mouths, some had scraped and toiled to get to that point in their lives.

"Most, yes," he replies, stirring his bent fork into the stew, "Ross was guilty of it. Christ -- if you saw his family home, Raju. He has his own lake. A massive estate! And me? I was one of thirteen in a home with five bedrooms and an attic."

Raju's eyes widen at the news about the lake. It's almost enough to distract him from the... offputting revelation of a moment ago. Everything that Francis has revealed to him, accidentally or not, about the nature of this place should make it just as offputting to be around him too, and might, if it wasn't for everything else about the man.

But offputting isn't the right word is it? Not exactly. Realising that even if, when, he does make it back home, this man will be—

It's more of a pressure in his chest, a tightening in his throat. But even now, a part of Raju's mind is still eagerly collecting facts about him the moment that he gives them out. Twelve siblings, five bedroom home. Raju's smile is a little tense, and then he covers it with a quiet, wry amusement. He leans on his forearm, taps his foot against Francis'. Still solid, still here.

"Five bedrooms that could have fit inside that lake with room to spare, I can imagine. So you were two, three to a bedroom?"

Crozier snorts softly. “Mn. The nursery held the littlest children, then a room for the older children, the boys were in the attic and my older sisters were in the last room. My father kept an office for his law firm.”

The ages between them all had been the Crozier saving grace. His elder sisters raised him and the other babies, and the boys went off to start families of their own when they were of age. Of course there were cousins…nieces…nephews…

“Holidays were chaos,” he smiles, aware of the tapping and endeared by the quirk. Raju could be incredibly tense at times, but he’s finding that it’s because he feels just too damn much all the time. “Any siblings?”

“Mm,” Raju says, a meaningless, acknowledging noise to make time so he can make the usual decision about how to answer. Not quite so usual as it would have been back home; with Francis he wants to share something, at least, so instead of figuring out the polite way to seem open it’s a matter of figuring out how he actually can.

“Not so many as that.” He shakes his head, heel resting comfortably next to Francis’. “I always wondered what it would have been like. Well— after spending time in the closest city anyway, seeing the way other people lived. Was it everyone else too, living nearby? Aunties and grandfathers and everyone? Or only you all and your parents?”

Purposely vague, but that doesn't surprise him. More questions to deliberately shift the focus back off of him. Crozier nods with a soft laugh.

"Mhm. Very similar. Ireland isn't particularly large, but my family didn't move far even when they did leave town. Too many Croziers at the holiday gatherings." Far, far too many Croziers in Ireland, and then he went and left, and for all intents and purposes, died in the Arctic.

"But my mother and father were both old when I was born. I was raised by my older sisters, Sarah and Rachel."

The discomfort of that realisation is still sitting inside him but Raju finds that he's smiling, and that this time the smile is coming to him, instead of him going to it; there's something about imagining a holiday that way, chaotic with family, most of the family running around in one direction or another and looking in Raju's mind something like Francis, only with some of them younger or in dresses. The image gets his foot moving, rolling on its heel from one side to the other to start tapping out a cheerful rhythm against Francis' again.

"How much older? They're the eldest daughters?"

“Jane was already out of the house when I was born and had a wean of her own on the way. Sarah…hm. Must have been 17, 18? Rachel wasn’t much younger.”

They’d cared for him, and in turn when he was grown he cared for them. He hoped the meager pension and insurance after his ‘death’ was keeping them well.

“I was the eleventh child, the fifth son. All my elder brothers were lawyers, like my father, or went into the church as ministers.”

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