Work Text:
Just when Richard had decided that Alec wasn’t coming back, the young man returned. He had been away for three days, ostensibly to take his exams, which he said he hadn’t studied for in months. He hadn’t stayed away from Richard’s rooms that long since they’d become lovers, and he’d begun to think that the mercurial Alec had just forgotten about him.
Then, on the night of the first real snowfall, Alec’s familiar tread came down the hall to Richard’s door, accompanied by uproarious coughing. Alec let himself in. Richard hadn’t actually invited him to do that, but he didn’t mind. He was glad to see him back.
“What a horrible night,” Alec said, his beautiful, light voice sounding ravaged by coughing. He stamped his boots and got snow all over Richard’s floor.
“Come over here by the fire,” Richard said, moving a chair close to the fireplace for him. Alec ignored it and went to sit on the floor, holding his hands inches from the flames. He was wearing half-fingered writing mitts, and he had ink stains on his fingers. That, and his great black batwing coat, plus the loose strands of hair the wind had whipped around his face, conspired to make him look degenerate and absolutely beautiful.
“You should have come back sooner,” Richard said, taking the chair himself. Alec’s garret room just off the University campus was unheated, except for the crumbling brick chimney that rose up through one side of it. Alec had pushed his bed against it and huddled against the chimney for warmth at night.
“I couldn’t. I had exams to fail,” Alec said.
“That took three days?” Richard asked.
“They don’t give them all on the same day,” Alec said testily. “Not that you’d know.”
“No,” Richard agreed. “Not that I’d know. Are you sure you failed?”
Alec gave a thin half-smile as he stared into the fire. “Oh, yes. I haven’t even been to class since before the leaves started to fall. They’d have kicked me out by now, only they--” He seemed to catch himself before he revealed more than he wanted Richard to know. Then he shivered delicately and said, “I hate winter.”
“You should stay, then,” Richard said.
“Of course I’m going to stay. I’m not going back out in that,” Alec said.
“No, I mean you should stay. If you’ve failed all your exams they’ll drop you from the University, won’t they? I don’t think you should go back to that room.”
Alec turned and looked up at him, wonderment dawning on his face. “You mean stay here with you?”
“Of course with me. I live here,” Richard said, amused.
Alec turned his back to the fire and reached out to catch one of Richard’s hands. The scholar’s fingers were like ice. He turned Richard’s hand palm up and began kissing his fingertips. He experimentally licked one. “Your hand tastes like sweat,” he said.
Richard shrugged. “I was practicing,” he said. Alec kissed his palm, and then the inside of his wrist. He tugged the tie of Richard’s cuff loose and turned the linen back, so he could kiss his forearm. Richard was just about to suggest that they move into the bedroom when Alec was gripped with a spasm of coughing.
The young man made a strangled sound, and said, “I hate this. My throat hurts. My head aches.”
“We need to get you a doctor,” Richard said, concerned.
“No,” Alec said, in a voice that brooked no contradiction. “Doctors are expensive and they only make everything worse.”
Richard gently pulled his hand from Alec’s fingers and pressed it to his forehead, which was still icy from his long walk outside, then to the back of his neck. At his nape, under the protection of his hair, Richard could feel an unhealthy heat. “A doctor could get that fever down,” he said.
“How? By bleeding me? They kill people like that, you know,” Alec said.
“Did you learn that at the University?” Richard asked. Alec learned a lot of counterintuitive things at the University.
Alec waved him away. “You don’t get sick because you have too much blood. There’s no such thing as having too much blood. Disease comes from particles that you breathe or drink or eat. Bleeding does nothing more than weaken you.”
Richard had never heard that before, but it sounded like it could be true. “There’s always Big Mary. She sells herbs,” he suggested.
“Herbs are worthless too,” Alec said.
“What works then?” Richard asked.
“Nothing.” Alec started coughing fiercely again.
“You should rest,” Richard said. “Even if that doesn’t help, it can’t hurt you. Why don’t you go to bed?”
“Your bedroom is always freezing,” Alec said. “Why don’t you have your bed in the same room as your fireplace?”
“Because I don’t want to live crowded into one room. Besides, what would I use the other room for?”
“You could keep golden slave boys in there. Make this a house of ill repute.”
“It’s already a house of ill repute,” Richard pointed out. As a matter of fact, they could hear Marie entertaining a particularly enthusiastic client downstairs.
“Good point,” Alec said. “Make it a salon for intellectuals of leisure then. The most exclusive salon in the city.”
“So exclusive that nobody ever gets invited,” Richard said.
“Even better.” Alec dug a grubby handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his nose.
“Come on—bed. I’ll keep you warm,” Richard said. He stood up and held his hand out in a wordless offer to help Alec up. Alec looked up at him, as if deciding whether he wanted to be argumentative, and then accepted his hand.
The bedroom was cold and dark, lit only by the numinous light of the snow falling outside the window. Swearing, Alec hauled off his clothes. Richard undressed quickly too. Usually they liked to take their time at the ritual of revealing one another’s bodies, but the air was simply too bitter for that.
Alec dove under the covers, and then gave out a piteous yelp. “I swear, your sheets have icicles!” he exclaimed.
“They’ll warm up,” Richard said. He climbed into bed beside Alec and coaxed the young scholar into his arms. Alec clung to him like a drowning man clinging to a spar. Richard brushed the loose strands of his hair back away from his face and said, “There. That’s not so bad.”
“Yes it is,” Alec said, his voice muffled by Richard’s shoulder. “At least in my room, I have a chimney for warmth.”
“Can a chimney do this?” Richard asked. He turned his head and kissed Alec on the temple.
“Yes,” Alec said. “I have a very accomplished chimney.”
“Really. How about this?” Richard shifted around until he could kiss Alec’s neck from the jawline beneath the ear to the pit of his throat, all the while running long caresses up and down the back of his body.
The frozen tension in Alec’s muscles seemed to melt under Richard’s touch. “Yes,” he said, “but you’re better at it.”
“What about this?” Richard moved just enough that he could slip a hand between their bodies, and begin to pleasure Alec directly.
The scholar rolled over onto his back to give Richard better access, and made a very soft sound: “Oh.”
He continued to stroke Alec, long and slow, while Alec moved against the mattress in ways that told him his attentions were being very much appreciated. Then suddenly, something moved the young man from his lassitude and he wrapped his arms around Richard’s back. He ran his fingernails from Richard’s shoulders down to his hips, scratching him all the way down.
Richard didn’t like it when he did that. But he knew enough about Alec to realize that the young man did like how Richard responded whenever the scratching started. He gave Alec what he wanted. He half sat up, grabbed the scholar’s thin wrists, and then straddled his hips, pinning his forearms to the pillow above his head.
“There. Let’s see you get out of that,” Richard said.
Alec tried, struggling for all the world as if he wanted Richard to let him up, which he clearly didn’t. When something happened that Alec didn’t like, he didn’t struggle—he went deathly still and made detached, cutting remarks. The struggling was the opposite of asking Richard to stop.
Richard wasn’t quite sure why Alec liked this—it wasn’t the sort of question the young man answered. Even still, he was sure it had nothing to do with fantasies of being dominated. Alec got frightened and angry whenever he felt like he wasn’t in charge in bed—or just about anywhere else. Richard suspected that there was just something pleasing to Alec about going strength to strength against his lover, perhaps as a means of burning off excess passion in a way that left nobody hurt. Or at least not hurt much. The scratches on his back stung.
Alec wore himself out quickly this time, and then he lay, breathing hard, occasionally blowing at some strands of loose hair that had fallen across his face. Richard smiled at him. His Alec was so beautiful that it left him helpless.
“You weren’t even trying that time,” Alec complained.
“I don’t have to try,” Richard said. Alec had the fighting ability of a kitten. “I could teach you how to throw me off if you wanted.”
“But I don’t want you off,” Alec said.
“I know.”
Alec twisted one of his wrists, and made an unhappy noise. “You’re holding me too hard,” he said.
Richard loosened his grip a bit without letting the other man up. Alec’s breathing had slowed, and he was gazing up at Richard in a kind of rapt fascination, like a child staring into the fire that both warms and can burn. “You could do anything to me right now,” he half-whispered.
“I won’t do anything you don’t like,” Richard assured him.
“But you could,” Alec pressed.
“Yes, I suppose I could.”
Alec’s eyes widened after a moment, and he asked, “Are you going to bugger me?”
“I thought you didn’t like that.”
“I don’t.”
“Then no.”
“You could kill me if you wanted to. One blow through the heart—the St. Vier signature,” Alec said.
It occurred to Richard that Alec was enjoying scaring himself, like a child safely in his parents’ company who likes to imagine the horrors that might lie under his bed. “I could,” Richard conceded. “But I wouldn’t. And I wish you wouldn’t talk that way.”
Alec made a soft complaining noise, and stirred, not struggling, but trying to stretch. Richard let him up. Alec rolled onto his side, pressing his body close to Richard’s. He could feel the fever burning in the scholar’s skin. He stroked the soft, loose hair away from Alec’s forehead and leaned in to kiss him. “Poor, sweet Alec,” he whispered between kisses. “So sick.”
“Sweet?” Alec asked, pulling back to give him a feral smile. “Richard, it’s like you don’t know me at all.”
“Dear Alec, then,” Richard amended. Alec looked about to demur, but Richard kissed his mouth closed. “You are dear to me,” he said.
This time, sex was slow and gentle, with no more rough play from Alec. Afterward, they lay tangled in each other’s arms, Richard’s cheek pressed to Alec’s forehead.
“Richard?” Alec asked, suddenly stirring from a light doze.
“Mm-him?”
“Did you mean what you said, about me coming to stay with you?”
“Of course,” Richard answered, turning his face to kiss Alec’s hair. He could smell the sweet herb scent of the soap he’d washed it with. “I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it.”
“I like that about you,” Alec said, shifting slightly to mold his body more closely against Richard’s. “Not saying things you don’t mean. You’re more honest than most people. Are all people who kill for a living honest, or is it just you?”
“I think swordsmen are pretty much like anybody else,” Richard said.
“Just you, then,” Alec said. He yawned and added, “My head doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“I’m glad.”
“You could have a secondary career—fucking people until their headaches go away.”
“I don’t want to fuck just anybody who has a headache,” Richard said.
“Only me,” Alec said, with satisfaction.
“Only you.”
They dropped off to sleep after that.
Richard left Alec sleeping the next morning to go and get breakfast and more wood. With Alec so sensitive to the cold, they’d be going through more of it. But when he hauled his purchases up to his rooms, he found the young scholar gone. Alec was free to come and go as he chose, of course, but Richard found he didn’t like the idea of him tramping through the snow with that cough of his.
The young man returned in the afternoon, carrying a bundle of what turned out to be several books and a small clutch of clothes. It looked heavy, so Richard took it from him and set it down on the table. Alec drew breath as if to say something, but then he started to cough convulsively. Richard thought he sounded worse than he had the night before.
“Come and get warm,” Richard said. He’d built the fire up higher than usual, thinking Alec would like to sit by it. Then, to Richard’s surprise, Alec began taking off his clothes where he stood.
“I’m hot,” he said, hauling off his muffler, coat, and gloves, and dumping them on the table. Then he started taking off the layer of clothing beneath.
“You’re hot? I thought you were always cold,” Richard said.
“I’m not now,” Alec said. As he bared himself, Richard was able to see how pale he looked, except for the rosy flush in his face. His green eyes glittered far too brightly. He walked up to the young man and put his hand to the side of his face, to his forehead, to his chest. The heat radiating off him was frighteningly intense.
“You shouldn’t have gone out. Do you know how feverish you are?” Richard asked.
Alec made a dismissive noise. “Snow is good for fevers,” he said. Richard wasn’t sure if that was one of the outlandish things he’d heard at the University, or whether he was just making things up now. Alec looked down at him with his over-bright eyes and said, “Did you know that snow has six sides? I’d show you, if I had a lens.” Richard had no idea what that was supposed to mean. Alec’s breath was coming swiftly, and when Richard pressed his fingertips to the underside of his wrist, he could feel Alec’s pulse racing.
“You really need black velvet to make it show up well. I once tore a piece from Grandmama’s curtains so I could see the snow. Janine said she’d have me thrashed, but she never did. They were just my grandfather’s curtains, so of course they weren’t fashionable.”
“Alec, what are you talking about?”
“Haven’t you been paying attention?” Alec said, sounding exasperated. “I want to show you the snow.”
“I’ve seen the snow. I think you ought to get into bed.”
“Bed is so boring.” He swept his muffler up off the table again and said, “Let’s go out.”
“Not now. You’re naked. Go to bed, Alec. I’ll come with you. We can have sex.”
“I want to watch you kill someone. I bet the blood looks so artistic in the snow.”
“Later. Come on. Come with me.” He took Alec’s hand and led him gently but firmly into the bedroom. Alec allowed himself to be bundled up beneath the covers, but when Richard got in and started caressing him, he didn’t respond much, which wasn’t like him at all.
“My head’s hurting again. It’s hard to concentrate when my head’s hurting,” Alec complained.
“It’s all right. Just rest, then, and I’ll hold you.”
Alec made an unhappy sound, but suffered himself to be embraced. Before long, he fell still, and his breathing became deep and even.
Richard didn’t like the fact that Alec refused to see a doctor, or even Big Mary. It made him feel very helpless. He briefly considered trying to find out where Alec’s family was, to see if they’d help, but then he dismissed the idea. Alec’s rambling about his grandparents’ curtains was the first time he had ever mentioned any relatives, and whenever Richard asked him about his past he became jumpy and hostile.
Once Alec seemed truly asleep, Richard got up, careful not to wake him. He decided he’d go and see Big Mary himself. Maybe she knew what students at the University took when they got sick.
Mary ended up selling him a packet of willow bark and slippery elm tea, for Alec’s fever and cough, and a tiny bottle of tincture of poppy, to ease his pain and to keep him sleeping. She said that University students favored poppy, and Richard hoped Alec would agree to take it.
When he opened the door to his rooms, an icy wind blasted out. Alarmed, he called out, “Alec?” There was no answer.
He hurried into the bedroom, where he found Alec standing, naked, in front of the open window casement. He had stretched his arms out to either side, and was allowing the winter wind to strike him full in the chest. His long hair whipped around behind him, as if he were some primeval storm god.
“What are you doing?” Richard demanded. He took Alec’s arm and pulled him away from the window.
“It’s hot in here, Richard. I wanted to go outside, but I couldn’t find my boots,” Alec said. His skin was burning under Richard’s hands.
“You’re not going outside. You’ll freeze to death,” Richard said.
“Freeze to death . . .” Alec echoed, as if he vaguely liked the sound of the words. “I’ve heard that’s a nice way to die.” His expression was distant and dreamy, although his eyes still held their hard, feverish glitter.
“I’ve brought you medicine. Tea to make you feel better, and poppy to help you sleep,” Richard said.
That seemed to catch Alec’s interest, and for a moment he grew more lucid. “Real tea, or the secondhand crap they sell in the rag and bone shops down here?” he asked.
“Willow bark and slippery elm,” Richard said.
Alec made a face. “Willow bark tastes like dog sick,” he said.
“I’m brewing it for you anyway. It’s up to you whether you drink it,” Richard said.
“Where’s the poppy?” Alec asked.
Richard pulled the little blue glass vial out of his pocket and handed it to him. “Just a few drops,” he said, repeating Mary’s instructions to him.
Alec pulled the little wooden stopper out, and then to Richard’s horror, upended the vial over his mouth. Alec grimaced. “Bitter,” he said.
Richard just looked at him for a moment, and then exclaimed, “What did you just do?”
“Took the medicine you gave me. I’m looking forward to sleeping. I keep having dreams. Dr. Pig-Nose was there, and his eyes were swollen bags of blood . . .”
Too late, Richard took the vial back from him, and turned it upside down. A single drop fell to the floor. He suddenly felt cold inside. “Are you trying to kill yourself?” he asked.
“Of course not. If I wanted to kill myself, I’d just wander outside and lie down in the snow. Or else I’d annoy you enough to make you skewer me.”
Richard felt as if he’d been slapped. He’d never told Alec about Jessamyn, but that didn’t mean somebody else hadn’t. Alec didn’t seem to be aware of what he’d said, however. “I’m going to lie down,” he said. “I want to sleep without any more nightmares.”
Richard let him go, reflecting fearfully that Alec was likely never to have nightmares, or anything else, ever again. He shut and barred the window, while Alec went to lie spread-eagled on the bed, on top of the covers.
Richard debated what to do for a few moments, and then he went clattering down the stairs to find Marie. Fortunately, she didn’t have company. He asked her to go and sit with Alec while he ran out to talk to Big Mary, and she agreed.
The herb-seller’s eyes went wide when Richard told her what Alec had done, and her expression became very grave. She sold him an emetic and a little packet of coffee, telling him to brew it very strong and try to get Alec to drink it.
When he returned to his rooms, he found Alec deeply unconscious. He was breathing steadily, but when Richard shook him, he did not wake. He briefly considered trying to force the emetic into him, but then dismissed the idea. With Alec unable to assist by swallowing, the drug might just as well end up in his lungs.
Marie soon had to leave to tend to a client, leaving Richard alone with his unresponsive lover. Richard tried putting cold compresses on Alec’s head, tried forcing him to sit up, tried shouting at him. Nothing made any difference. In the end, he got Alec’s limp body under the covers, and then climbed into bed next to him.
He held Alec close, telling him things that he would never have dared say if the sarcastic young scholar had been conscious. He could only hope that somehow, Alec would be able to hear how much he meant to him, and refuse to die. When that produced no change either, Richard wept, resting his head in the hollow of Alec’s shoulder and aching for Alec to hold him.
The short winter afternoon passed, and dark came on. Richard didn’t dare leave Alec’s side, for all that he knew he wasn’t really doing him any good. At length, he slept, although he woke up with a jolt several times in the night, terrified by the thought that the body next to him might have grown cold.
As the next day wore on and Alec kept on breathing, Richard began to have hopes that eventually he would wake. He stayed close, practicing attacks against the wall as a means of staving off boredom and bouts of nerves. By nighttime, Alec was groggily responding to his name.
Richard almost cried again, this time with relief, when Alec finally opened his eyes and peered at him sleepily. His eyelids drooped, but he didn’t have the pinpoint pupils of opium intoxication, and he seemed lucid. Richard had thought he would be furious with Alec, would shake him or cuff him when he came to, but instead he was so happy to see him awake that he curled up next to him and crushed him in an embrace.
Alec must have felt the emotional tension in his body, because he asked, “What is it, Richard? What’s the matter?”
When Richard could finally answer him, he said, “You idiot. You drank a bottle of laudanum.”
“It wasn’t a very big bottle,” Alec said, as if that caused his behavior to make any sense.
Richard was filled with a renewed urge to shake him. Instead, he pulled away and cupped Alec’s face in his hands, holding him so that he could not look away. “Don’t ever do something like that again.”
Alec looked genuinely puzzled. “Are you angry at me, Richard?” he asked.
“Yes! You could have killed yourself.”
Alec’s expression shifted to one of surprised delight. “You thought I had killed myself, and that made you angry?” he asked.
Richard thought about telling him he wanted to throttle him, but thought better of it. Alec sometimes seemed to want Richard to hurt him, and he didn’t want them to start down that road again. All he said was: “Yes. I don’t want you to die.”
“Oh, Richard,” Alec said, sounding as if Richard had unexpectedly given him something precious, “and here I thought that nothing made you angry.”
“Some things do. This did,” Richard said.
Alec gazed into Richard’s eyes, looking as in love as Richard had ever seen him. “I drank too much poppy, and it made you angry at me.” He sounded as if he would like to repeat those words again and again.
“You’re not supposed to be happy when I’m mad at you,” Richard said.
“But I am happy,” Alec said. “This is the first time you’ve ever been angry at me, and it’s because you thought I was going to die.”
“Don’t do it again,” Richard said. “You scared me, too. You made me cry.”
A pinscratch of pain appeared between Alec’s brows, and he reached out and caressed the side of Richard’s face. “I’m sorry, Richard. I’m sorry I made you cry. I didn’t mean to,” he said. Richard had never heard the words “I’m sorry” spoken in the Hill accent before, and he wondered how many times Alec had ever said them.
It wasn’t quite all right yet, and Richard didn’t say that it was. “Be more careful with yourself,” was all he said.
“For you?” Alec asked, running his finger along Richard’s jawline, and then finally over his lips.
After a moment’s hesitation, Richard kissed the finger. “Yes. For me.”
“All right, then. For you, I’ll be more careful.” He leaned close and kissed Richard’s lips. Just as Richard was starting to feel that he’d found his equilibrium again, Alec said, “That really wasn’t a lot of poppy, you know. I’ve drunk more than that.”
“How often? When?” Richard asked. He hoped to God that this wasn’t going to be a pattern.
“Whenever I’ve wanted to sleep for a couple of days. Not that often,” he said.
Richard supposed that if Alec had built up a tolerance to the stuff that helped explain why he wasn’t dead, but that didn’t make him feel much easier. “Never again. Promise,” he said.
“All right, Richard. I promise,” Alec said. The two of them lay curled around each other for a while, until Alec said, “I’m thirsty.”
Richard got up. “I’ll get you some water.”
“Brandy,” Alec said.
“You can have brandy when I’m sure you’re going to stay conscious.”
“You’re so boring,” Alec said, but he smiled fondly as he followed Richard with his eyes.
After Alec had sat up and drank a great deal of water, he stretched experimentally. “I feel better,” he said. “Nothing hurts.”
“I’m glad,” Richard said.
“You really should try drinking a bottle of laudanum sometime. It works wonders when you’re sick.”
“No,” Richard said, more sharply than he meant to.
“Sweet, boring Richard,” Alec said, stretching out a hand. “Come here.”
Richard went and sat down on the edge of the bed. “You take such good care of me,” Alec said, as he began idly unbuttoning Richard’s clothes. “Getting me medicine when I’m sick. Killing people who want to hurt me. You probably think I’m a lot of trouble.”
Alec was a lot of trouble, but only in the way that growing hothouse strawberries in winter was a lot of trouble. “You’re worth it,” Richard said.
“And you’re worth this,” Alec said, opening the front of his waistcoat and grabbing handfuls of his shirt. Richard leaned in to him, and their lips met.