Fic: One More Gaudy Night Part 2/?
Daniel Jackson had decided quite arbitrarily that he was going to be my friend, from the moment he knocked me down the library steps and dropped all his books on top of me trying to help me up. It was not something I particularly wanted, at first, but he had a damnable way of getting under your skin…and into your heart, unless you were particularly careful.
Even in those days, I was astoundingly bad at guarding against such an eventuality.
Within a few months, he had moved into the house I was sharing with my lover, David Travers, and was an unutterable benison to my increasingly complicated life. David, newly made Junior Fellow at St Xavier’s, escapee from the Council and his father’s wishes, all I ever wanted to be or could even dream of being.
David, who was dying, slowly and painfully, and whose only request to me ever had been that I see this through to the end.
He was afraid, not of death, but of facing it alone, and there was nothing I could refuse him, any more. But my love for him made witnessing his slow decline almost unendurable at times, and it was Daniel’s persistence in remaining my friend through the bleakest of times that was one of the few bright spots in an increasingly horrendous life. While I tried to write up as much as I could of my thesis sitting in hospital waiting-rooms, as David endured yet another round of futile tests that told us the same thing again and again, We’re very sorry, Mr Travers, but…, Daniel convinced the college library to let him into the restricted section and get out books for me, arrived during official visiting hours in the truly awful week when David was hospitalised and brought soup that he could actually eat, dragged me out for walks and the occasional pint, and listened to my ranting when I could no longer pretend that I was even vaguely coping with the inevitable end that lay before me.
I never understood where he found his patience with me - nor how a man who could lose himself so completely in his work that he forgot quite often to eat and sleep could put me first, even when I tried my damnedest to push him away.
We needed money. The rent on the house had been upped, again, and the three of us were finding it difficult to make ends meet in any case - David’s pay was low, and if my allowance was practically infinitesimal, Daniel’s was non-existent. He lived off scholarship money and the bad pay for occasional librarian work - and would never accept any help, even when we could afford to offer it.
Another housemate was needed, and I put up an advert in the college lodge, thinking that if anyone was insane enough to respond to its phrasing, they would probably fit right in.
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Wanted. Housemate to share with two PhD students and post-doc JFS.
Must be articulate, single, and keep odd hours. Thank you.
Pets allowed if they like cats (please, no goldfish, it's bad.)
Tel: David 01865 (9)777772 or email david.travers@stx.ox.ac.uk
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And that was how we met Fox Mulder.