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francois-abernathy · 6 months ago

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Someone New - Papenathy

The winner of my poll was Francis and Richard, so, dutifully I've written something of them for you all. But it was a rather close poll, and I've received some requests for other pairings, so I've decided to turn this into a series and dedicate a chapter to each character.

You can read the first chapter on Archive Of Our Own here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63731842/chapters/163393735 , but you can also read it below the cut here if you prefer to stay in-site. Cheers!

It had been a matter of hours, maybe, since I had retreated to my room, withdrawn from the commotion of the living room; the clattering of dishes being cleared, something by Debussy I couldn’t quite place being played on the piano, Bunny parading around an old lifestyle magazine from the sixties he had found (‘See, this here is a good old-fashioned girl. Not too much makeup, a little bit of meat on her bones, just how a lady should be’ he had said to me, thrusting the outspread pages into my face).

I had no measure of what time of night it was; the only clock in my room stuck perpetually at a time of 4:24, resigned to a role as little more than a handsome paperweight on the corner of my dresser. I’d spent perhaps a half hour pouring over the Latin translation of Paradise Lost Henry had spent his recent sleepless nights working at. I was curious what he had reproduced thus far, and, amused by my request, he allowed me to take it up to my room the night before.

In my vaguely drunken state, the words danced before my eyes, the letters blurred, and so I resigned myself to lie in bed until I felt better, glasses pushed to my forehead and the room spinning around me in a dizzying but not altogether uncomfortable way. With enough concentration, I could nearly picture myself out on the lake, sprawled out in the rowboat, bobbing gently in the clear wind, mid-day sun filtering through birch leaves to warm my face. The window in my room was open, pleasant night air blowing against my flushed skin, and this made my imagination all the more vivid.

I laid like this for an unknowable amount of time. I could not bring myself to exit my room, to find a magazine or crossword or more digestible book to pass the time with, the oppressive laziness the country house fostered too great to overcome. Left with nothing but my own thoughts, my mind began to slow, dulled into a prelude of slumber by a lullaby of hushed voices filtering through the floorboards, the drone of crickets, the sporadic ping of the great steam radiator beneath the window.

Then came a sharp knocking at my door. The sudden noise startled me out of my state of torpor, and I bolted upright, momentarily entangled in my sheets.

“Uh, yes? I mean, come in,” I called out, louder than I had anticipated. The door creaked open on squealing hinges, plunging everything into a warm, yellowed light.

In the doorway stood Francis, peering owlishly into my room. He had a mostly empty highball glass in one hand, and his shirt collar was unbuttoned, tie conspicuously loosened around his neck.

“I hoped I might find you in here. Are you awake?”

“Sure,” I said, though this was demonstrably untrue, he didn’t press further. Instead, he took my answer as an invitation and stepped inside, shutting the door behind him. He did not hesitate to drop, in a rather exaggerated fashion, into the chair by my desk, or to set his drink down. He kicked his feet up onto the radiator – socks only, shoes abandoned earlier in the night.

An intense awareness of my disheveled state came upon me suddenly – hair unkempt, in little more than a shabby old sweater, still blinking sleep from my eyes – and I felt rather insecure about this, slobbish in the face of the casual, good-natured sort of elegance that seemed to come so easily to him. I pulled the sheets to my chest, hoping, perhaps, this act would shield me from any potential whittling remarks.

“My allergies have been intolerable since the weather’s turned warmer.” Francis was saying. “I really think I ought to visit my allergist again.”

I laughed, despite myself. “Did you come in here just to tell me that?”

Francis shot me something resembling a sullen look, but could not refrain himself from laughing too.

“I’m only making conversation.”

“Alright.” I replied. “So you came in here just to make conversation?”

He looked askance, like a child caught in an unravelling lie.

“I wanted to come check on you. Everyone else has just gone to bed; I thought I should bid you a proper goodnight, too.” He cleared his throat. “Did you enjoy dinner?”

I nodded, too charmed by his desire to come see me to question his motives any further. I had enjoyed dinner, in fact – Henry had disappeared into town earlier in the day, returning with a bundle of fresh asparagus and a longwinded and humorless story about a farmer, a market, and seasonal produce; the twins had roast chicken for us all. My memories after this point begin to blur and bleed into one another, the result of one too many overfull drinks, but it was a pleasant evening, and we all retreated to the living room afterwards sleepy and content.

“Good. I hope you didn’t let Bun bully you into stealing too much off your plate. He’s got a nasty habit of doing that – he used to pick on Charles the most, but now I think you’re the easiest target.”

I chuckled at this. “It’s not that big of a deal. I got enough to eat in the end. I think he did, too.”

“I don’t think there’s any such thing when it comes to him.” Francis quipped.

The conversation stilled here, both of us looking awkwardly about the room so as to not prolong eye contact, searching for another unobtrusive topic of discussion.

Francis extracted a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from his pants pocket – to break the silence or to soothe his nerves I wasn’t sure, but he offered one to me as his lighter clicked open.

“No thanks.”

He stood, stretched, and moved towards the open window, leaning one elbow on the windowsill while he took a long, solemn drag of smoke.

“It really is a pity you don’t smoke,” he said upon his exhale, waving a hand in front of his face.

“I know. You tell me often.”

Francis turned my direction, examining me through his pince-nez, eyes glinting with curiosity in the dark of my room. “Why is it that you don’t? I know you aren’t asthmatic.”

I shrugged. I didn’t really have an answer for him, certainly not one that he would find satisfactory. He smiled wryly at me, cigarette smoke curling from the corners of his mouth, catching the weak moonlight in a way that gave him a pale, ghostlike appearance.

“You’re a curious thing, Richard.”

I felt myself go flush at this, despite my best efforts. He stared at me for a long, silent minute, and the smoke of his cigarette filled the room in an oppressive way that made me very dizzy. Despite this, I did not mind terribly when he smoked in close quarters with me, and the frequency with which he did so had begun to produce in me a near Pavlovian response.

I figured I did not have much to lose by humoring him. I roused myself from bed and padded over to him on unsteady legs. Holding out my hand, I motioned for him to give me a cigarette of my own, and he produced one for me eagerly. His lighter hissed to life again, and I touched the end of my cigarette to it. At this moment, a great draft of wind blew through the window, dampening the flame.

Francis made a noise of discontentment and cupped his hand around the lighter to shelter the hapless fire, but in all this commotion his own cigarette had gone out.

“What luck,” he said glumly.

He and I both leaned in, now, and the intimacy of this action brought our faces rather close together, his forehead brushing mine. I stole a glance upwards, realizing a moment too late that he was already staring at me. Our eyes met for a long moment, in which neither of us dared speak a word.

It would be dishonest of me not to detail just how flustered I felt in this moment. It was as if I had missed a step travelling down a flight of stairs – heart in my stomach, thumping angrily. His eyes held something intense, unspeakable, and my face began to feel hot. I swallowed thickly, my throat was very dry, though I couldn’t tell if this was from the smoke or the product of my anxious state.

He smiled warmly at me before pulling back to puff at his cigarette, staring absently out the window.

“Your cigarette’s going to burn out before you’ve had any of it,” he said after a moment, and I realized he was right, that I had found myself in such a daze I had forgotten the world around me.

After a minute, Francis finished his cigarette and flicked what was left of it out of the window. I took another long drag of my own and did the same.

“You’re not worried Mr. Hatch might come across those?” I asked absentmindedly. Francis paled.

“Oh, God. I hadn’t thought of that.”

He leaned over the window, craning his neck to scan the ground for the discarded butts. Some part of me worried he might leap out of the window to retrieve them if he spotted them. I put a hand on his shoulder, a weak attempt at a consolatory gesture, and he jumped abruptly, not expecting this.

I stifled a laugh. “Francis, come on. I’m sure it’s alright.”

“Maybe I’ll go find them tomorrow,” he said, chewing nervously at his lip.

I pulled him back from the window. “Maybe you should relax.”

He sighed and sat down on the edge of my bed. Deftly, he began to remove his tie entirely from around his neck, placing it on the bed next to him, and undid another of his shirt buttons. I came to sit next to him, not quite touching, but close enough to where I could feel the warmth of his body, the buzz of static electricity between us.

“I’m sure it’ll be alright. I’ll take the blame if he does find them.” I offered.

Francis nodded solemnly, and I wanted to laugh at the severity with which he saw this situation, as if I had offered to take the fall for a serious crime of his committing. This seemed to improve his mood somewhat, and he leaned back to sprawl out on my bed, propping his head up with a pillow.

“Would you mind if I slept in here tonight?” he asked presently.

I blushed at the forwardness of his request but was not surprised – it was not altogether an uncommon question from him. I laid down next to him, on my side, one arm bent beneath my head.

“Sure,” was my only answer, because I could not conjure up anything more charming.

I did, in fact, want him to spend the night with me with a terrible degree of longing. I enjoyed our nights spent together more than I could say, and slept best with his slender frame against mine. There was a casual sort of romance to it that only existed in moments like these, late nights and dark bedrooms, locked doors and legs entangled beneath covers, that made it feel so natural, so good-natured, that in these times I think we both forgot how abnormal it might seem to the average person, the two of us in a position of such intimacy with one another.

Certainly, it had taken me no insignificant amount of time to become accustomed to such a thing. Francis had made his interest in me quite clear from the very beginning, but I was slow to warm to the idea, uncomfortable with the notion that something so societally intolerable could concern me so directly. But self-restraint can never be entirely successful at masking desire, and, in a near-Freudian manner, my most repressed of feelings invariably began to bubble to the surface. Now, nights such as these were common between him and I.

Of course, this sort of thing did not stop, nor start, with Francis alone. I had come to learn over the course of the last few months that affections such as these were not a linear matter, but instead were a complex, winding sort of thing that travelled between everyone in all directions, and were as casual and easygoing to them as any other aspect of friendship.

This final piece of the puzzle made clear the reason for so much of their secretive, withdrawn behavior towards me – not of a dislike of my character, nor a distrust of me, but because there was something very unusual about the intimacy that flowed between them all that necessitated such clandestine behavior.

I found myself roused from these thoughts by Francis brushing a disorderly strand of hair from my forehead. His touch was light, hesitating, perhaps afraid he might scare me off if he moved too quickly or handled me too roughly.

“You ought to have your hair cut soon,” he spoke softly, though by the look in his eyes I could tell something much more tender than this observation occupied his thoughts.

“Yes, I know.”

“But you look quite handsome tonight, nonetheless.”

He shifted closer to me, resting his face against my forehead, nose pressed to my scalp. We settled comfortably against one another, my face resting in the crook of his neck, one of his arms draped lazily over my waist. He smelled of cigarette smoke, mostly, but something sharper lingered beneath, a mannish smell of faint cologne or perhaps the soap used for one of his infamously long baths, hour-long ordeals that left the bathroom damp and muggy and drained the house of all its hot water.

Francis, on occasion, would invite me to these baths with an insistence that it would be good fun, better with my company. Although he kept the water far too hot for my liking and I could only stomach it for a short while, I enjoyed these moments very much – holding each other beneath the running water, his fiery hair clinging damp to my skin as he plastered my neck and shoulders in watery kisses, the feeling of his bare chest against mine.

This last image in particular made me feel faint. I felt perverse for imagining him in such a state, but these musings of my imagination only hastened my building desire to bring him closer to me. His chest rose and fell to the rhythm of his breathing, barely visible in the darkened room. I could not contain myself.

Tentatively, I placed a hand at his waist, then, suddenly emboldened, wrapped my arms tightly around him. He sighed happily at this. I allowed my hands to roam a natural course across him – the curve of his neck, the sparse flesh of his shoulders and arms, the jut of his ribs and the slope of his waist – anywhere I could reach, really. I felt a nervous sort of exhilaration, like something trapped inside of my chest was vying for escape. Carefully, I placed a chaste kiss at the corner of his mouth.

Wordlessly, Francis turned his head, capturing me in a kiss of his own – a real one, drawn-out and intentional. He laced his fingers between mine and squeezed tightly. With his free hand, he cupped the side of my face, pulling me closer to him. Neither of us seemed to be able to get enough of one another, kissing with a messy sort of fervency, rolling around on the bed like giddy teenagers. His mouth was soft, warm and reddened from the onslaught of my messy kissing, but his tongue was sharp and quick and skilled at drawing shameful noises from the back of my throat.

After a long moment of this, he pulled away with a rather noisy smack and lay next to me panting. His face was flushed, hair disorderly, but his eyes held an excited brightness, gleaming in the darkness, framed fawnlike by ginger eyelashes in a way that stole the very breath from my throat.

I could not imagine a more beautiful thing than him in that moment. I was struck by a profound understanding of the sort of beauty that drove the gods to frenzy, necessitated the defilement of Ganymede. Sic oculos, sic ille manus, sic ora ferehat – I felt the same such delirium now.

I watched, trance-like, as he removed his pince-nez, letting them fall to the nightstand absentmindedly. Still wholly focused on me, he pulled me into a tight embrace, peppering my cheeks and nose with ticklish kisses.

“I love you, Richard. Do you know that?”

“I think I do,” I laughed, turning my face this way and that to escape him. “I love you too.”

His attention turned to the rumpled comforter beneath us. He grabbed one of its corners, shaking it up and down to fluff out the creases we had created rolling to-and-fro across it, before tucking himself in carefully. Francis was always very particular about these sorts of thing, and could never relax unless things were just so – pillows fluffed, wrinkles smoothed from shirts, hair combed precisely. These neurotic habits of his had become strangely endearing to me.

I followed him under the covers, and he settled against me, resting his head on my shoulder and laying an arm over me. I realized after a moment he was shivering. He was often quick to chill, much more than myself, I felt foolish for not having thought to close the window to keep out the early spring breeze, and so I asked him if I should shut it.

“No, it’s alright. I quite like the fresh air,” and, after a moment of thought, he added in a softer tone: “Besides, I’d hate to let go of you.”

I was very touched by this. I resolved to warm him up myself, shifting closer to him, entangling his legs within my own. Cautiously, perhaps hoping he might not notice my advances, I slipped a hand beneath the hem of his shirt, feeling at the boyish flesh of his stomach, the sharp slant of his hips, his skin chilled with goosebumps. He was a slight, lovely thing, as much as any girl, but there was something unmistakable about his form that I could not pretend he was as such, but was instead forced to confront head-on how much I adored him precisely the way he was.

I realized before I could bite my tongue that I had whispered his name aloud, soft and dreamlike. He looked at me curiously.

“Yes?”

I had not planned a statement to follow this, but the words came to me without hesitation.

“You’re so handsome.”

He cut his eyes away, flustered, he was not expecting this.

“Oh, Richard,” he sighed, voice tender. “I don’t think you have any idea how romantic you are.”

At this, he kissed me softly, and his nose pressed into mine. He retreated to nestle his face against my neck, and brought a hand up to slowly pet my hair. This position of comfort slowly renewed the great tiredness I had felt before his arrival, the leaden drowsiness of sleep that settled in my limbs and coaxed my eyes to fall closed. I could tell he felt much the same way, though he was generally not one to snore, I knew the gentle rhythm of his sleeping breath against my skin well and could feel as his petting of my hair took on a sluggish nature before stopping entirely.

Neither of us spoke for a long moment, I could not conjure the energy to do so, and felt all at once as if I might accidentally float away. Francis yawned, nestled closer against me.

“Goodnight, Richard,” he said sleepily, voice distant.

“Goodnight, Francis.”

I settled into a heavy, dreamless sleep, thinking of the rolling countryside around us, separating us so cleanly from the rest of the world, all of those miles and miles of birches and maples, soft grasses and clear lakes, how I could spend the rest of my life at this marvelous house, never knowing anything more than nights like these.

#the secret history #francis abernathy #richard papen

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