Unwritten Bandslash #2: more Chimerical Romantics
At the time I posted Chimerical Romantics I noted that in addition to being mostly summarized and told rather than shown, it was not Frank and Gerard's whole saga. I already knew the rest of the arc, at that point, but writing it out in even as much detail as I did the first part would have made it ... really, really long.
So here's the rest of the story, now even more abbreviated. Warning for a couple of characters being moderately villainous in ways that cohere with bandom's stereotypes of them, plus a cameo by Jamia as a hooker. THAT ONE WASN'T MY IDEA.
Frank/Gerard, 6500 words.
So the next day as requested, Gerard draws Frank's tattoo for him, and along the way Gerard discovers something that holds true for a while: he can't draw Frank. He does studies--Frank's hands, Frank's feet, Frank's tattoos, and sometimes he'll doodle the corner of a smile, the curl of his hair, one brown eye--but he never feels that he can draw Frank himself, whole and entire.
Not that this slows them down much, because they are busy enjoying each other at a sort of breakneck pace. Frank is Gerard's new obsession, and not just exploring the whole sex thing, although that's a big part of it. Safter the second or third time, I think Gerard sensibly finds a way to put Frank in charge as a game or a roleplay or a dare or something, because when he's not too scared to act on it, Frank actually knows much, much more about what they're doing here than Gerard does, and Gerard trusts him not to independently initiate anything he really, really doesn't want to do.
Gerard also works on teaching Frank to read and, when that exhausts Frank's attention span, reads to him. Gerard's choices of stories and poetries slant heavily toward the classics, so Frank gets healthy doses of Alexander and Hephaesteon, Achilles and Patroclus, and hears all about the Sacred Band of Thebes--so he's learning to share Gerard's context for their relationship, to understand it as something possibly heroic and good in itself, even if pagan. As far as Frank is concerned, Anglican Gerard is vaguely pagan himself.
All of these literary examples tend to give Frank and Gerard ideas, so one night when Frank has gotten sick again, or Gerard is drunk and morbid, or both, Frank tells Gerard what he wants done with his body if he should die. He couldn't stand to be buried--all covered up and weighed down like that--and the same goes for what he always thought would be his fate, sewn into a hammock with a round of shot at his feet, and sent down into the deep alone. But Gerard says he'll do anything, anything Frank wants, and Frank says he would like a boat--just a small one, a little ketch or a dory, but at the end his own boat to be master of--and he'd like to be set afloat, out on the sea again, and burned up just like the warriors in the stories Gerard tells. Then he'd always be warm.
"That is the only way I will ever sail away from you," Frank confides. "Unless you send me away."
Gerard gathers Frank close and says that if he dies, he wishes to be buried here on the island, in the old churchyard near his parents--with a stone to cover his whole grave, so that the light won't trouble him and people can't stare and chatter over him, and so that he will be part of the island forever, and belong here as he never quite has in life.
"And then you must go and be free again," Gerard says. "And that is the only way I will ever send you away."
So Frank and Gerard are kind of wrapped up in each other to the exclusion of everything else. Bryan and Michael get on with running the household without interference, and both note that it's much nicer handling everything for Gerard when he's too busy being happy to be bothered, instead of too busy crawling into a wine bottle. Toro, who has gotten Ideas from the whole Chimerical Romantics fling, writes letters and frowns a lot and talks about going home to Spain to look into some things. Madame ensures that Frank and Gerard occasionally bathe, dress, and eat properly by inviting them for meals or tea, and listening tolerantly while they attempt to pretend they have been up to anything in the preceding two days that does not involve hands in places one does not discuss with one's grandmere.
Pelissier gets very quiet.
One night Gerard comes to bed and Frank's already there, waiting for him, asleep naked on top of the covers. It hits Gerard then, all at once, and in the light of the fire he sketches Frank--all of him, head to toe, and for the first time feels like he has actually drawn Frank himself. He sets the sketch on the dressing table, where Frank will be sure to see it in the morning. And then, though it's obvious Frank was waiting for him and meant to be woken if he fell asleep, Gerard just gets into bed next to him and cuddles up and goes to sleep happy.
When he wakes, Frank is gone. At first it doesn't seem so strange--Frank often wakes up before Gerard does--but the next thing Gerard looks for is the sketch, and that's gone too. Gerard gets terribly afraid that Frank was somehow offended by it, goes to throw on clothes, and discovers that Frank's boots are still in the room, and then he looks through Frank's clothes and discovers that the only ones missing are the ones he was wearing when Gerard found him--neatly washed and mended by the maids, but still little better than rags, compared to his new things.
Frank is gone.
For a brief time Gerard takes heart that the sketch is gone as well--even if it somehow made Frank feel he had to go, at least he took it with him--but he finds a corner of the page on the hearth, and realizes that it was burned, destroyed. There is nothing left but his sketched glimpses of Frank, scattered and broken.
Toro and Michael both loyally insist that Frank could not possibly have left of his own volition, but Gerard knows that makes no sense--Gerard was right there in bed with him, and Frankie is a fierce fighter. No one could have taken him away without Gerard knowing about it. Pelissier sits and drinks with Gerard in silent commiseration, and accompanies him to McCracken's parties, and insists he is looking after his friend when Michael and Toro object to the extent of the debaucheries. Gerard assiduously avoids Madame.
Michael and Toro aren't willing to believe the worst, though, and they play Chimerical Romantics to the hilt, and eventually they learn that they are not the first people to scour Mt. Helier asking after a young man meeting Frankie's description. In the days before Frank disappeared, a group of rough sailors had been asking after him, and had received the direction of the Way house, for Frank was known through the local gossip to be residing there.
The night that Gerard drew him, Frank woke up to the entirely unexpected sight of his father's face, and a knife held to Gerard's throat. Frank managed to convince his father and the others that it was an unnecessary risk to kill the English sodomite where he lay, and permitted himself to be rescued from his vile clutches without a peep--even when his father, furious on his behalf, burned the drawing Gerard had left on the dressing table, before Frank saw more than a glimpse of it.
He's hustled aboard a ship, departing that night, and suddenly plunged back into his old life, constant work and struggle and watching his own back--though with his father's ferocious guardianship, Frank was safer from interference than ever before. His little hammock is lonely, though, and it kills him to think of what Gerard must be imagining.
At the next port he's hauled to a priest to make confession, and his father as much as everyone else looks at him as though he's diseased, as though he'd have been better off dead of malaria than found alive in Gerard's bed.
Frank supposes it is terrible--those old heathen stories were just that--and it's a sin and wrong and awful--only he supposes Gerard's house seemed a magical place, like Thebes or Ilium, where they could be something different, could have other choices in a world wider than the decks of a ship. Still, when put to it, Frank makes a halting confession as best he can, and is set a heavy penance of prayers. He dutifully prays where he can be seen, and tries to be right, to be absolved and reconciled, and to return to his life, the one where he belongs, where he knows his place.
But he dreams of Gerard's bed, and every day he wakes up more afraid of what might be happening back on Jersey. It gnaws at him, and what he regrets the most is that he has broken his vow to Gerard, and he cannot confess that and it cannot be absolved.
Another night, another port, he visits another church. He goes late, lights a candle and sits staring at it, not even knowing what to pray for, what to beg to God on his knees for, what to say that is not just one more empty penance burned into his skin. A priest comes and kneels a little way away in the darkness, as private as a confessional, and asks him what's troubling him, why he's come at this hour. What he wants to confess.
Frank says what he never quite had the words, or the daring, to say to Gerard. "I love a man."
That is the sin, not anything he ever did or Gerard ever did, in bed or out of it, not the things he dreams and wakes up wanting. It is the love he cannot root out of his heart that troubles him.
The priest asks him whether it is love or loved, because he cannot repent a sin he still commits, even now, even in a place of God.
Frank realizes, and says, "It is love. I cannot repent of it. I wouldn't if I could."
He braces himself and waits, but the priest doesn't break the stillness of the church, doesn't thunder back about damnation. Instead he stands, and offers Frank a hand up, and says, "Then this isn't where you should be spending your night, is it?"
Frank breaks into the first smile he's had in ages, and turns and runs. He goes back to the ship first, to get his few things, because he has to go back. If he has to walk every mile of the way, he has to go back to Gerard and tell him it wasn't for lack of love that he went away--even if Gerard doesn't want him back, even if jumping ship this way means he must work docks or whaling ships the rest of his life--he must go and tell Gerard that he did not hurt him on purpose, and that he loves him.
He meets his father, when he already has the little bundle of his possessions in his hand, and his father knows, at a glance. Maybe his father always knew, because he doesn't seem surprised, nor very much more disgusted. There is maybe a mercy in the fact that he steps aside, and does not try to keep Frank from going, but he spits at Frank's back. "Whore's son."
Frank turns his head, looking back over his shoulder, realizing it's not an insult but an exact statement, realizing he maybe always knew.
"No better than your mother, either," his father says. "I tried, but you never were. Should have known you wouldn't be."
Frank remembers what his father destroyed, remembers the page and the image and the way he was beautiful in Gerard's eyes, the way his father threw that into the fire, and says softly, "Still better than you."
And then he runs again.
Back on the island, Gerard has descended into a deep wine-and-opium stupor by the time Michael and Toro unravel precisely what happened and try to explain it to him. It's not an entirely opportune time--his comprehension is more than a little impaired--but they get the gist to him. They got a maid, finally, to admit to seeing men taking Master Frank from the upper floor.
Gerard is is helpless and sick and bewildered, and why would--how would-- But Michael tells him not to worry about that now, just to lie quietly and sober up, because they know which direction Frank's gone in, and Gerard will want to start at first light after him.
Meanwhile, Toro and Bryan grimly and ruthlessly evict Pelissier from the house and inform him that he will never be welcome there again--no one broke in, and it's obvious there was someone inside the house who colluded with the men who took Frank.
Pelissier doesn't even bother to deny it, after the first rush of anger, though he's righteously offended when they ask if he took money for it. He was saving Gerard from himself, from this totally inappropriate object of his affections--not merely a boy, but a low-born illiterate bastard. He would have come to understand that it was better, in time. Frank is better off with his own kind, anyway. It's a mercy for everyone.
(I actually, if I had written this all the way out, would have done everything I could to make it clear that Pelissier's not being a moustache-twirling villain here; he's a product of his time and his environment and he sincerely believed that there was nothing good or acceptable about Gerard and Frank's relationship, and so when Frank's family came looking for him, Pelissier helped them get him back. He wouldn't ever have harmed Frank, or even acted directly to separate them; that would have been beneath his dignity and dishonorable.)
Meanwhile, Gerard gets to the point of being a more or less functional mess, and he and Toro start planning their search for Frank. Gerard isn't at all confident that this will work--or that Frank will want to come back, or will forgive him for wasting all that time in stupid despair--but he has to go. He has to find Frank.
The morning they are to leave on the tide, Gerard calls on his grandmother to tell her he's going away on a matter of urgent business. She has a smile for him just like always, but tells him to take a moment--she still knows perfectly well when the tide goes out, young man, he won't rush it by hurrying down to the docks now. So he sits down beside her and eats what she tells him to eat and drinks the tea she pours him.
She asks him if he knows where she comes from, before she married his mother's father. It's a foreign concept; she's his grandmother and she's always been his grandmother and he never really thought about it. She pats his hand and says she knows it's rather a strain of the imagination, but she won't scold him for failing to make it before--she didn't encourage him to, after all.
She was an islander, same as his grandfather, but she ran away to England. To London. To the stage.
"And I knew men like you," she says softly, and Gerard jerks like she slapped him--it's not that he thought, exactly, that she wouldn't know the way he was carrying on under her roof, but he didn't expect her to say it to him, or to know what it really meant, any more than he expected her to have had a life before him, before his grandfather and his mother.
"Some were perfectly fine men. Some were terrible and cruel and beasts. I always thought that it was the fear that made the difference--if they could only manage not to be eaten away inside by the fear of what they were, they could be what they liked."
She had been what she liked herself, until she didn't like to be it anymore, and suffered herself to be rescued by a boy she'd known as a child, who saw her dance and still wanted her hand in honorable marriage, and brought her home to the island. She'd raised a daughter who was perfectly respectable and steady. But ah, then her daughter had raised a son.
"If you'd been a girl," she said, "you'd have run off years ago with an unsuitable man. But you were a boy and an heir besides, and then the master of the house, so you had to wait for your unsuitable man to come to you."
She tells him to go and find Frank, and to try not to be too much afraid, and she kisses his cheek and he kisses her hand, and then Toro comes and tells him it's time to leave, and off they go, leaving Michael and Bryan to mind the home and hearth.
And it's about here that you get the commentfic I wrote for MissPamela a couple of years ago:
Toro went into the churches in every town and village they passed through, but he never reported word of Frank when he came back out. They found reports of him elsewhere, from the voluble fury in Valencia--so expressive that even Gerard could not fail to understand that he had jumped ship there, heaping scandal upon himself, blacking his name in the eye of every honest docksman of that port--to sparser reports as they tracked him northward.
North. He was not stopping in churches along the way, and he was headed steadily north, overland of necessity, for he could not find a place on any ship now. They had followed him from Valencia to Barcelona to Toulouse to this town on the road to Bordeaux, and Toro insisted that they were getting close. Gerard scarcely knew what close meant; they had not found Frank nor certain word of his whereabouts, and all else was Toro's rumor-mongering.
Though without Toro's rumor-mongering--and his grasp of languages, and his aristocratic self-assurance that he had a right to be where he liked to be and know what he wished to know, and sometimes, Gerard was shamefully certain, his money--Gerard would be utterly lost. Would still be sitting in his house, never setting foot off the island, drinking himself blind with Pelissier and never knowing better. He could not help but be grateful for Toro's many talents, and Toro's willingness to jeopardize his own immortal soul by helping--leading--Gerard on this surely damnable quest.
If only they really did find Frank, Gerard wouldn't mind any of it, not his endless debt to Toro nor Toro's cruel way of collecting payment on it by dragging Gerard out of bed at dawn and up to the very gates of the churches he visited. He never told Gerard not to come in with him, and Gerard had done it often enough before--he could hardly retain any superstitious fear of papists after Frank, even had he not known Toro himself for years by now--but he would only have had one prayer, and he had no desire to see holy water boil up at his touch nor to see an ancient church laid waste by a bolt of lightning.
He sat in the graveyard instead, drinking a little wine--well-watered, for he had to keep his wits if he were ever going to find Frank--and waited for Toro to come out again and pretend that he had only gone in for morning prayers, that he had not been looking for word of Frank and was not disappointed at finding none. Frank, with the Virgin tattooed on one arm and rosary beads on the other, Frank was coming north, back to Jersey, back to where he'd left Gerard two months ago, and he was not praying at the churches on his way.
The bells began for matins, and Gerard knelt up to listen, propping his arms across the illegible stone he'd been leaning against, his chin on his wrist, listening as the bell tolled on and on and on. Calling the faithful home.
*
Frank knew it was a waste of precious time--God and Toro alone knew what state Gerard must be in by now--but he couldn't resist churches. Their sanctuary was no longer for him, for he'd chosen Gerard over all else now, over Mother Church and the promise of absolve te; Frank loved Gerard too well to truly repent of him, and if he would be damned he would at least do it honestly.
Still, he came--not into the church, where he no longer belonged, but to the edge of the yard, where he might hear the bells, and sometimes the chant of the psalms, if the priest had a good strong voice.
Today he came early, before matins, to hear the bells before he started on his way for another day's long march. He'd lost the day before for traveling, doing farm labor in exchange for two hot meals and a dry place to sleep, the first time he'd had either since Toulouse. He'd hated the delay, but if he starved on the road Gerard would never know what had become of him, never know that Frank had not left him of his own will, and Frank could not leave him in that state forever--even if it were only his confession that Gerard desired of him by the time Frank reached him.
Frank approached the church in the slanting light, hungry for the sound of the bells to drive his worries back a little, to remind him what he had chosen in exchange for what he had surrendered, to set his feet on the road again. He came quietly, winding a careful path through the graveyard, keeping an eye out for the devout townsfolk whose church it was, and then he saw it.
Perched in the shadow of a large gray stone, pale and ghostly and still, dark hair covering its face, long thin pale fingers loosely clasping a flagon of wine. Gerard. Frank would know him anywhere, even as a silent shade haunting a Bordeaux churchyard.
He had never let himself imagine that Gerard might die in his absence--surely Michael and Toro would guard him well enough, surely Madame would know how to keep him, and even Pelissier, for all he wasted no love on Frank, would do his best for Gerard's sake--and now Frank could only stand and stare, dumbstruck, unable to feel even grief in the instant of perfect shock, like a man whose legs are blasted away and yet tries to haul at his line.
But perhaps all was not lost--for if Gerard had appeared here, in this churchyard--could this be why Frank felt such need to visit at churches? Had Gerard been trying to reach him? Could they, perhaps, speak one last time?
Frank began to move, quietly, watching the pale and motionless figure all the while; and then the bells began to peal and the figure--Gerard--moved, scrambling about onto his knees to look toward the sound. The angle made him look into the sunlight, and he squinted and wrinkled up his nose, and now Frank could see there were sunburned patches on his cheeks.
Surely no ghost could withstand the tolling of the holy bells. Surely no ghost would suffer sunburns or squint and shake his hair out of his eyes so ineffectually. It was Gerard, living and breathing and sitting in a Bordeaux churchyard for no reason Frank could imagine; but here he was. Gerard, at last.
Frank opened his mouth, and found he could not call out. He listened to the bells, and stared at Gerard's half-smile in the early morning light, and thought he had no need of heaven when he had lived to see this moment.
*
The tolling of the bells ended, and Gerard turned to sit again, but froze halfway through the motion. Not a stone's throw away Frank was standing among the graves, staring at Gerard with his mouth open and eyes wide, his whole body poised to spring like a stag flushed by the huntsman's hounds.
So this is what close means, Gerard thought wildly, and he dropped his bottle to the grass and scrambled up to his feet, throwing out one open hand toward Frank, palm up as a man might reach for a strange dog or a wild creature, uncertain of his welcome. Frank did spring, then, but toward Gerard rather than away, hurdling gravestones like pebbles in his path. He caught Gerard's arm--Frank, touching him, and he was strong and well and real, so unlike the first time they'd met, so unlike all of Gerard's fearful fancies of the past weeks of searching--and hauled him along until they fetched up at the most imposing tomb in the churchyard, a marble edifice that shielded them from view through the narrow church windows and from the road below.
Gerard's arms closed tight around Frank as soon as his back fetched up against the stone, and Frank kept moving forward, pressing into Gerard as if they might both push their way inside the tomb and have their privacy assured. Frank's hands moved frantically over Gerard, his side, his shoulders, his face and hair, while Gerard simply closed his fists in the rough fabric of Frank's shirt and held on, lowering his face after a moment to press his face into Frank's hair, inhaling the familiar smell of him, so long absent. It had faded nearly entirely from his bed and Frank's clothes by the time Gerard set out after him.
"You were coming home," Gerard whispered, in a voice that came perilously close to breaking.
Frank's hands stilled, closing tight where they lay, one on Gerard's shoulder and the other in his hair.
"You came to meet me," Frank whispered back, nearly a question--but there was no room for doubt in the strength of his grip, the force of his body.
"I am awfully sorry I kept you waiting," Gerard whispered, as though an appointment had kept him from meeting Frank for tea.
Frank shook his head, tugging almost gently at Gerard's shirt, and said, "Let's not wait anymore." His hips ground into Gerard's, leaving him in no doubt of what it was Frank was no longer interested in waiting for, and his own body responded in kind. He did not think he could move from this spot without satisfaction, could not separate his body from Frank's or take a single step without Frank this close to him always.
And yet. "Perhaps," Gerard gasped, as Frank continued to move against him. "Perhaps not in the churchyard."
*
You can totally stop reading right there if you want. I won't judge you! It's a nice ending!
Because what happens next is that they arrive home, after repeated delays because Gerard and Frank have difficulty getting out of bed in a timely manner, just in time for Madame's funeral. Gerard never noticed--even that last day--how much weaker she'd gotten, while he was wrapped up in having Frank and then wrapped up in losing him, and then chasing him across the continent. Gerard collapses into guilt and grief and kind of loses his mind, and Frank can't fix this. None of them can.
Frank feels he's somehow to blame; if Gerard hadn't been distracted by him, maybe, somehow... he'd have been there, at least. Gerard blames himself, of course, and crawls right back into the same set of bottles he briefly crawled out of to go find Frank. Frank and the others are all grieving her themselves, and at first they don't realize how much worse than that it is for Gerard. Only Michael is really aware of how far down Gerard can fall into melancholy, and Michael is busy organizing the funeral and then holding up the basic social duties of the family in Madame's absence.
It's left to Frank to be closest to Gerard, and watch him spin utterly out of control. Gerard is drinking more and more, becoming almost a stranger--when he manages to pay attention to Frank at all he's unpredictable, angry or maudlin or desperate or sweet in a scarily overdramatic way. He creeps out of bed at night and sits in the churchyard, lays in the plot that will someday be his. Frank follows him, but after the second time he doesn't try to persuade him to come back inside, or tell him things will get better. He just follows, doggedly, because he doesn't know what else to do.
Gerard takes Frank along to McCracken's parties, too, which is where the following chatfic segment takes place:
Stele3: I totally had a dream last night in the "Chimerical Romantics" universe.
Stele3: In it, Frank had been living with Gerard for a while, but Gerard was still pretty drunk and one night took Frank to a party at McCracken's house.
Stele3: Bert immediately started pursuing Frank, who of course doesn't think that he has the right to say no, Bert being a gentleman and all.
DiraSudis: oh noes!
DiraSudis: and yet, sadly plausible.
Stele3: Right. And Gerard's drunk enough to not have the good sense that he found at the end of your story, so he's all upset that Frank is just letting Bert paw at him.
Stele3: Eventually Bert drags Frank into becoming the bottom of a threesome, and Gerard walks in on them.
Stele3: Drama! Angst!
Stele3: Then the dream ended.
Stele3: What would happen, though?! You have to sort them out for me, oh author.
DiraSudis: er. hm.
DiraSudis: threesome with whom, exactly?
DiraSudis: for starters.
Stele3: ........ Actually it was Bert/Jamia/Frank. Jamia was sort of a not-wholly-willing participant, too. Like, I think she was a hooker.
Bert laughs at Gerard's intrusion and invites him to join in, and compliments him on his taste in catamites as he might another man's taste in horses. Gerard, drunk and angry and, yes, turned on, accepts, but only touches Jamia while glaring impartially at both Bert and Frank--which amuses Bert and rather terrifies Frank, who expected at least a little protection from Gerard's patronage. But it's over soon enough--Bert's not going to stay in bed with a whore or anybody's catamite, so bounces off to resume hosting his rout, and Gerard mercifully passes out.
Jamia stays put, because she's still entertaining a guest as long as Gerard is there, and Frank isn't opening himself up to anyone else's attentions by going back out. Jamia and Frank talk a little--Frank thinks of his mother, and the girl when he was fourteen, and is nice to her, and she's kind to him. He's a good boy, and Mister Way's not such a bad sort when he's not drunk enough to do whatever stupid thing McCracken leads him into. She explains a little of what just happened to Frank--what Gerard was thinking, why he was angry and acted the way he did--which is reassuring to Frank, and in the morning she encourages him to sneak out and come back with a carriage to take Gerard home in privately, so he won't have to deal with the sunlight. Frank goes.
While he's gone, Gerard wakes up, and Jamia makes free to explain a few of the finer points of the previous night to him, as well--she took a real liking to Frank while they were talking, and she can't stand to see men being fools. Gerard does--a trifle tediously, though it's obviously well-meant--attempt to rescue her, and she accepts so far as to be given a ride in the carriage back into Mt. Helier. She does assure Gerard that she's thinking of heading to England with her last night's pay, as it's the easiest way to decline future party invitations from McCracken, and Gerard manages to be satisfied with that.
On the way to Mt. Helier, Jamia manages to distract Gerard from his hangover by demonstrating what she observed the night before about exactly how arousing Gerard finds it to watch someone else with Frank, and once she's been dropped off at home, Gerard and Frank have already been moved past the awkward "so you didn't really mean it?" phase and straight into frantic makeup sex.
Gerard keeps drinking, though.
Meanwhile, Frank is getting a little scared on another level altogether, because he's received a letter--well, a succession of letters--from one Mateo Cortez, an attorney in Mt. Helier. Frank can read enough to make out that the letters are something to do with The Law and he's too altogether frightened of what they might contain to read them, let alone show them to anyone in the household. Even if he didn't want to trouble Gerard, Bryan could probably make them out for him--but what if it's something terrible? What if he's done something wrong, or someone knows about him, or him and Gerard...
He burns the letters and tells no one about them.
Gerard keeps getting worse, meanwhile. One night, sitting up late while Frank sleeps alone, he oes what his father once told him to do, if ever he was in such a muddle that he didn't know how to mend things. He rings for his steward, though it's just a few hours til dawn, and asks Bryan some questions.
They relate mainly to whether his estate would be attaindered if he died by suicide, and how suicides are investigated, and what consequences might fall upon Michael because of his death. Michael deserves to inherit, after all, and that is Gerard's main concern now. Bryan manages to convince Gerard that it is a complicated and dangerous area of the law to pursue--if it were known that Gerard had been researching the question, it would cast doubts, prejudice any inquiry--so he persuades Gerard that he must wait on any action. Gerard agrees, but they have similar conversations night after night, while Bryan and the others struggle frantically to find a way out for Gerard, to devise any solution.
Frank thinks the main trouble is that he won't sober up and face what's happening--Frank is as delighted to get drunk as anyone, but drinking makes Gerard more melancholy than he naturally is, and it's just what he doesn't need--but he can't seem to stop, even for a day or two. He keeps accepting McCracken's invitations, because it's easier to accept than not, and Frank keeps accompanying Gerard to the parties, because he'll be damned if he'll let Gerard go alone.
It's at one of the parties that Frank gets to talking to McCracken's man, Bryar, who makes the drinks. Frank's met him before, likes him well enough, and then Bryar casts a wary eye at his master and Gerard and says, "It's a waste of well-made drink, is what it is."
Bryar's a craftsman, practically an artist. He's educated, too--he took a second in Chemistry at Worcester College, Oxford. He was there the same time as Gerard, in fact, a couple of years younger--he remembers Gerard, because Gerard stalked him for most of his first Hilary term, though he suspects Gerard thought he was subtle about it. Bryar was there on scholarship, earning a few extra pence working as an apothecary's apprentice, and Gerard was far above his touch. Now Bryar is too poor to live as a gentleman-scientist, as he'd like to, though McCracken permits him the use of a scullery for such experiments as he can perform there.
Frank talks to Bryar about how drinks work: how they make you drunk, why some make you sicker than others. He's not subtle enough about bringing the question around to a drink that would make a man sick on purpose, but Bryar isn't offended.
"It would be easy enough," he says. "Even to make a man so sick he wouldn't touch strong drink again--not for a long while, at least. Mind you, it might kill him."
"Drinking's going to kill him," Frank says grimly.
Bryar gives him a sideways look, glances across the room at pale, miserable Gerard, and doesn't argue.
The trouble, as it turns out, is not technical difficulty; it's delivery. Gerard has grown very close to McCracken again at these parties, and in order to be sure of dosing one Bryar would risk dosing the other. Poisoning his employer is sure to lose him his job, at the very least, and then where would he be?
Frank only a little recklessly offers him the protection of the Way house if he'll try it--a better kitchen-laboratory, less work, whatever he wants. Bryar is tired of his current position anyway, so he agrees, and Frank adds that if he succeeds in saving Gerard's life this way, there will be a Society that wants him as a member. Bryar makes a joke about the Royal Society and laughs and shakes Frank's hand on it.
A week later it's done; Gerard gets vilely sick and is rushed home from a party. For a time it seems as though the gamble might have lost, and Gerard might actually die--if not of the poisoning, then of the delirium tremens afterward. Bryar shows up a little after dawn with a black eye and a smug look, and helps the others with the nursing--having extensive experience of all stages of vile drunk, as well as an excellent grasp of the poison's course. It takes rather more than a day, but Gerard eventually comes up sober and swearing never to drink again, clutches Frank and cries for his grandmother, and after that, slowly but surely, things begin to get better.
It is more than a week later when a visitor arrives at the house--the attorney, Cortez, having given up on letters, has come to deliver his news to Frank in person.
It turns out that Madame left a will, and though it specified some small personal legacies for Gerard, Michael, and Toro, her entire modest personal fortune was left free and clear to Frank, rendering him suddenly a gentleman of independent means, no longer reliant on Gerard for a place in the world.
Much later on (after Michael emerges from that scandal involving young Miss Alice Simmons and the mad Prussian Lord Peter Wentz with a devoted wife and a lifelong friend, and Toro has returned to Spain, married the Lady Cristina and begun to gain real recognition for his paintings and philanthropy, and Bryar has taken a young apprentice named Smith and blown up the kitchen a time or two in pursuit of Science) Frank and Gerard take to traveling and see the world together. Michael and Alice take full possession of the house, and when Gerard and Frank happen to turn up, they make use of a gardener's cottage tucked into a thicket of woods too overgrown to be properly ornamental. Everyone on the island begins to forget that Michael is not the master of the house, and Gerard dotes on his nieces and nephews, and they all live happily ever after.
So here's the rest of the story, now even more abbreviated. Warning for a couple of characters being moderately villainous in ways that cohere with bandom's stereotypes of them, plus a cameo by Jamia as a hooker. THAT ONE WASN'T MY IDEA.
Frank/Gerard, 6500 words.
So the next day as requested, Gerard draws Frank's tattoo for him, and along the way Gerard discovers something that holds true for a while: he can't draw Frank. He does studies--Frank's hands, Frank's feet, Frank's tattoos, and sometimes he'll doodle the corner of a smile, the curl of his hair, one brown eye--but he never feels that he can draw Frank himself, whole and entire.
Not that this slows them down much, because they are busy enjoying each other at a sort of breakneck pace. Frank is Gerard's new obsession, and not just exploring the whole sex thing, although that's a big part of it. Safter the second or third time, I think Gerard sensibly finds a way to put Frank in charge as a game or a roleplay or a dare or something, because when he's not too scared to act on it, Frank actually knows much, much more about what they're doing here than Gerard does, and Gerard trusts him not to independently initiate anything he really, really doesn't want to do.
Gerard also works on teaching Frank to read and, when that exhausts Frank's attention span, reads to him. Gerard's choices of stories and poetries slant heavily toward the classics, so Frank gets healthy doses of Alexander and Hephaesteon, Achilles and Patroclus, and hears all about the Sacred Band of Thebes--so he's learning to share Gerard's context for their relationship, to understand it as something possibly heroic and good in itself, even if pagan. As far as Frank is concerned, Anglican Gerard is vaguely pagan himself.
All of these literary examples tend to give Frank and Gerard ideas, so one night when Frank has gotten sick again, or Gerard is drunk and morbid, or both, Frank tells Gerard what he wants done with his body if he should die. He couldn't stand to be buried--all covered up and weighed down like that--and the same goes for what he always thought would be his fate, sewn into a hammock with a round of shot at his feet, and sent down into the deep alone. But Gerard says he'll do anything, anything Frank wants, and Frank says he would like a boat--just a small one, a little ketch or a dory, but at the end his own boat to be master of--and he'd like to be set afloat, out on the sea again, and burned up just like the warriors in the stories Gerard tells. Then he'd always be warm.
"That is the only way I will ever sail away from you," Frank confides. "Unless you send me away."
Gerard gathers Frank close and says that if he dies, he wishes to be buried here on the island, in the old churchyard near his parents--with a stone to cover his whole grave, so that the light won't trouble him and people can't stare and chatter over him, and so that he will be part of the island forever, and belong here as he never quite has in life.
"And then you must go and be free again," Gerard says. "And that is the only way I will ever send you away."
So Frank and Gerard are kind of wrapped up in each other to the exclusion of everything else. Bryan and Michael get on with running the household without interference, and both note that it's much nicer handling everything for Gerard when he's too busy being happy to be bothered, instead of too busy crawling into a wine bottle. Toro, who has gotten Ideas from the whole Chimerical Romantics fling, writes letters and frowns a lot and talks about going home to Spain to look into some things. Madame ensures that Frank and Gerard occasionally bathe, dress, and eat properly by inviting them for meals or tea, and listening tolerantly while they attempt to pretend they have been up to anything in the preceding two days that does not involve hands in places one does not discuss with one's grandmere.
Pelissier gets very quiet.
One night Gerard comes to bed and Frank's already there, waiting for him, asleep naked on top of the covers. It hits Gerard then, all at once, and in the light of the fire he sketches Frank--all of him, head to toe, and for the first time feels like he has actually drawn Frank himself. He sets the sketch on the dressing table, where Frank will be sure to see it in the morning. And then, though it's obvious Frank was waiting for him and meant to be woken if he fell asleep, Gerard just gets into bed next to him and cuddles up and goes to sleep happy.
When he wakes, Frank is gone. At first it doesn't seem so strange--Frank often wakes up before Gerard does--but the next thing Gerard looks for is the sketch, and that's gone too. Gerard gets terribly afraid that Frank was somehow offended by it, goes to throw on clothes, and discovers that Frank's boots are still in the room, and then he looks through Frank's clothes and discovers that the only ones missing are the ones he was wearing when Gerard found him--neatly washed and mended by the maids, but still little better than rags, compared to his new things.
Frank is gone.
For a brief time Gerard takes heart that the sketch is gone as well--even if it somehow made Frank feel he had to go, at least he took it with him--but he finds a corner of the page on the hearth, and realizes that it was burned, destroyed. There is nothing left but his sketched glimpses of Frank, scattered and broken.
Toro and Michael both loyally insist that Frank could not possibly have left of his own volition, but Gerard knows that makes no sense--Gerard was right there in bed with him, and Frankie is a fierce fighter. No one could have taken him away without Gerard knowing about it. Pelissier sits and drinks with Gerard in silent commiseration, and accompanies him to McCracken's parties, and insists he is looking after his friend when Michael and Toro object to the extent of the debaucheries. Gerard assiduously avoids Madame.
Michael and Toro aren't willing to believe the worst, though, and they play Chimerical Romantics to the hilt, and eventually they learn that they are not the first people to scour Mt. Helier asking after a young man meeting Frankie's description. In the days before Frank disappeared, a group of rough sailors had been asking after him, and had received the direction of the Way house, for Frank was known through the local gossip to be residing there.
The night that Gerard drew him, Frank woke up to the entirely unexpected sight of his father's face, and a knife held to Gerard's throat. Frank managed to convince his father and the others that it was an unnecessary risk to kill the English sodomite where he lay, and permitted himself to be rescued from his vile clutches without a peep--even when his father, furious on his behalf, burned the drawing Gerard had left on the dressing table, before Frank saw more than a glimpse of it.
He's hustled aboard a ship, departing that night, and suddenly plunged back into his old life, constant work and struggle and watching his own back--though with his father's ferocious guardianship, Frank was safer from interference than ever before. His little hammock is lonely, though, and it kills him to think of what Gerard must be imagining.
At the next port he's hauled to a priest to make confession, and his father as much as everyone else looks at him as though he's diseased, as though he'd have been better off dead of malaria than found alive in Gerard's bed.
Frank supposes it is terrible--those old heathen stories were just that--and it's a sin and wrong and awful--only he supposes Gerard's house seemed a magical place, like Thebes or Ilium, where they could be something different, could have other choices in a world wider than the decks of a ship. Still, when put to it, Frank makes a halting confession as best he can, and is set a heavy penance of prayers. He dutifully prays where he can be seen, and tries to be right, to be absolved and reconciled, and to return to his life, the one where he belongs, where he knows his place.
But he dreams of Gerard's bed, and every day he wakes up more afraid of what might be happening back on Jersey. It gnaws at him, and what he regrets the most is that he has broken his vow to Gerard, and he cannot confess that and it cannot be absolved.
Another night, another port, he visits another church. He goes late, lights a candle and sits staring at it, not even knowing what to pray for, what to beg to God on his knees for, what to say that is not just one more empty penance burned into his skin. A priest comes and kneels a little way away in the darkness, as private as a confessional, and asks him what's troubling him, why he's come at this hour. What he wants to confess.
Frank says what he never quite had the words, or the daring, to say to Gerard. "I love a man."
That is the sin, not anything he ever did or Gerard ever did, in bed or out of it, not the things he dreams and wakes up wanting. It is the love he cannot root out of his heart that troubles him.
The priest asks him whether it is love or loved, because he cannot repent a sin he still commits, even now, even in a place of God.
Frank realizes, and says, "It is love. I cannot repent of it. I wouldn't if I could."
He braces himself and waits, but the priest doesn't break the stillness of the church, doesn't thunder back about damnation. Instead he stands, and offers Frank a hand up, and says, "Then this isn't where you should be spending your night, is it?"
Frank breaks into the first smile he's had in ages, and turns and runs. He goes back to the ship first, to get his few things, because he has to go back. If he has to walk every mile of the way, he has to go back to Gerard and tell him it wasn't for lack of love that he went away--even if Gerard doesn't want him back, even if jumping ship this way means he must work docks or whaling ships the rest of his life--he must go and tell Gerard that he did not hurt him on purpose, and that he loves him.
He meets his father, when he already has the little bundle of his possessions in his hand, and his father knows, at a glance. Maybe his father always knew, because he doesn't seem surprised, nor very much more disgusted. There is maybe a mercy in the fact that he steps aside, and does not try to keep Frank from going, but he spits at Frank's back. "Whore's son."
Frank turns his head, looking back over his shoulder, realizing it's not an insult but an exact statement, realizing he maybe always knew.
"No better than your mother, either," his father says. "I tried, but you never were. Should have known you wouldn't be."
Frank remembers what his father destroyed, remembers the page and the image and the way he was beautiful in Gerard's eyes, the way his father threw that into the fire, and says softly, "Still better than you."
And then he runs again.
Back on the island, Gerard has descended into a deep wine-and-opium stupor by the time Michael and Toro unravel precisely what happened and try to explain it to him. It's not an entirely opportune time--his comprehension is more than a little impaired--but they get the gist to him. They got a maid, finally, to admit to seeing men taking Master Frank from the upper floor.
Gerard is is helpless and sick and bewildered, and why would--how would-- But Michael tells him not to worry about that now, just to lie quietly and sober up, because they know which direction Frank's gone in, and Gerard will want to start at first light after him.
Meanwhile, Toro and Bryan grimly and ruthlessly evict Pelissier from the house and inform him that he will never be welcome there again--no one broke in, and it's obvious there was someone inside the house who colluded with the men who took Frank.
Pelissier doesn't even bother to deny it, after the first rush of anger, though he's righteously offended when they ask if he took money for it. He was saving Gerard from himself, from this totally inappropriate object of his affections--not merely a boy, but a low-born illiterate bastard. He would have come to understand that it was better, in time. Frank is better off with his own kind, anyway. It's a mercy for everyone.
(I actually, if I had written this all the way out, would have done everything I could to make it clear that Pelissier's not being a moustache-twirling villain here; he's a product of his time and his environment and he sincerely believed that there was nothing good or acceptable about Gerard and Frank's relationship, and so when Frank's family came looking for him, Pelissier helped them get him back. He wouldn't ever have harmed Frank, or even acted directly to separate them; that would have been beneath his dignity and dishonorable.)
Meanwhile, Gerard gets to the point of being a more or less functional mess, and he and Toro start planning their search for Frank. Gerard isn't at all confident that this will work--or that Frank will want to come back, or will forgive him for wasting all that time in stupid despair--but he has to go. He has to find Frank.
The morning they are to leave on the tide, Gerard calls on his grandmother to tell her he's going away on a matter of urgent business. She has a smile for him just like always, but tells him to take a moment--she still knows perfectly well when the tide goes out, young man, he won't rush it by hurrying down to the docks now. So he sits down beside her and eats what she tells him to eat and drinks the tea she pours him.
She asks him if he knows where she comes from, before she married his mother's father. It's a foreign concept; she's his grandmother and she's always been his grandmother and he never really thought about it. She pats his hand and says she knows it's rather a strain of the imagination, but she won't scold him for failing to make it before--she didn't encourage him to, after all.
She was an islander, same as his grandfather, but she ran away to England. To London. To the stage.
"And I knew men like you," she says softly, and Gerard jerks like she slapped him--it's not that he thought, exactly, that she wouldn't know the way he was carrying on under her roof, but he didn't expect her to say it to him, or to know what it really meant, any more than he expected her to have had a life before him, before his grandfather and his mother.
"Some were perfectly fine men. Some were terrible and cruel and beasts. I always thought that it was the fear that made the difference--if they could only manage not to be eaten away inside by the fear of what they were, they could be what they liked."
She had been what she liked herself, until she didn't like to be it anymore, and suffered herself to be rescued by a boy she'd known as a child, who saw her dance and still wanted her hand in honorable marriage, and brought her home to the island. She'd raised a daughter who was perfectly respectable and steady. But ah, then her daughter had raised a son.
"If you'd been a girl," she said, "you'd have run off years ago with an unsuitable man. But you were a boy and an heir besides, and then the master of the house, so you had to wait for your unsuitable man to come to you."
She tells him to go and find Frank, and to try not to be too much afraid, and she kisses his cheek and he kisses her hand, and then Toro comes and tells him it's time to leave, and off they go, leaving Michael and Bryan to mind the home and hearth.
And it's about here that you get the commentfic I wrote for MissPamela a couple of years ago:
Toro went into the churches in every town and village they passed through, but he never reported word of Frank when he came back out. They found reports of him elsewhere, from the voluble fury in Valencia--so expressive that even Gerard could not fail to understand that he had jumped ship there, heaping scandal upon himself, blacking his name in the eye of every honest docksman of that port--to sparser reports as they tracked him northward.
North. He was not stopping in churches along the way, and he was headed steadily north, overland of necessity, for he could not find a place on any ship now. They had followed him from Valencia to Barcelona to Toulouse to this town on the road to Bordeaux, and Toro insisted that they were getting close. Gerard scarcely knew what close meant; they had not found Frank nor certain word of his whereabouts, and all else was Toro's rumor-mongering.
Though without Toro's rumor-mongering--and his grasp of languages, and his aristocratic self-assurance that he had a right to be where he liked to be and know what he wished to know, and sometimes, Gerard was shamefully certain, his money--Gerard would be utterly lost. Would still be sitting in his house, never setting foot off the island, drinking himself blind with Pelissier and never knowing better. He could not help but be grateful for Toro's many talents, and Toro's willingness to jeopardize his own immortal soul by helping--leading--Gerard on this surely damnable quest.
If only they really did find Frank, Gerard wouldn't mind any of it, not his endless debt to Toro nor Toro's cruel way of collecting payment on it by dragging Gerard out of bed at dawn and up to the very gates of the churches he visited. He never told Gerard not to come in with him, and Gerard had done it often enough before--he could hardly retain any superstitious fear of papists after Frank, even had he not known Toro himself for years by now--but he would only have had one prayer, and he had no desire to see holy water boil up at his touch nor to see an ancient church laid waste by a bolt of lightning.
He sat in the graveyard instead, drinking a little wine--well-watered, for he had to keep his wits if he were ever going to find Frank--and waited for Toro to come out again and pretend that he had only gone in for morning prayers, that he had not been looking for word of Frank and was not disappointed at finding none. Frank, with the Virgin tattooed on one arm and rosary beads on the other, Frank was coming north, back to Jersey, back to where he'd left Gerard two months ago, and he was not praying at the churches on his way.
The bells began for matins, and Gerard knelt up to listen, propping his arms across the illegible stone he'd been leaning against, his chin on his wrist, listening as the bell tolled on and on and on. Calling the faithful home.
*
Frank knew it was a waste of precious time--God and Toro alone knew what state Gerard must be in by now--but he couldn't resist churches. Their sanctuary was no longer for him, for he'd chosen Gerard over all else now, over Mother Church and the promise of absolve te; Frank loved Gerard too well to truly repent of him, and if he would be damned he would at least do it honestly.
Still, he came--not into the church, where he no longer belonged, but to the edge of the yard, where he might hear the bells, and sometimes the chant of the psalms, if the priest had a good strong voice.
Today he came early, before matins, to hear the bells before he started on his way for another day's long march. He'd lost the day before for traveling, doing farm labor in exchange for two hot meals and a dry place to sleep, the first time he'd had either since Toulouse. He'd hated the delay, but if he starved on the road Gerard would never know what had become of him, never know that Frank had not left him of his own will, and Frank could not leave him in that state forever--even if it were only his confession that Gerard desired of him by the time Frank reached him.
Frank approached the church in the slanting light, hungry for the sound of the bells to drive his worries back a little, to remind him what he had chosen in exchange for what he had surrendered, to set his feet on the road again. He came quietly, winding a careful path through the graveyard, keeping an eye out for the devout townsfolk whose church it was, and then he saw it.
Perched in the shadow of a large gray stone, pale and ghostly and still, dark hair covering its face, long thin pale fingers loosely clasping a flagon of wine. Gerard. Frank would know him anywhere, even as a silent shade haunting a Bordeaux churchyard.
He had never let himself imagine that Gerard might die in his absence--surely Michael and Toro would guard him well enough, surely Madame would know how to keep him, and even Pelissier, for all he wasted no love on Frank, would do his best for Gerard's sake--and now Frank could only stand and stare, dumbstruck, unable to feel even grief in the instant of perfect shock, like a man whose legs are blasted away and yet tries to haul at his line.
But perhaps all was not lost--for if Gerard had appeared here, in this churchyard--could this be why Frank felt such need to visit at churches? Had Gerard been trying to reach him? Could they, perhaps, speak one last time?
Frank began to move, quietly, watching the pale and motionless figure all the while; and then the bells began to peal and the figure--Gerard--moved, scrambling about onto his knees to look toward the sound. The angle made him look into the sunlight, and he squinted and wrinkled up his nose, and now Frank could see there were sunburned patches on his cheeks.
Surely no ghost could withstand the tolling of the holy bells. Surely no ghost would suffer sunburns or squint and shake his hair out of his eyes so ineffectually. It was Gerard, living and breathing and sitting in a Bordeaux churchyard for no reason Frank could imagine; but here he was. Gerard, at last.
Frank opened his mouth, and found he could not call out. He listened to the bells, and stared at Gerard's half-smile in the early morning light, and thought he had no need of heaven when he had lived to see this moment.
*
The tolling of the bells ended, and Gerard turned to sit again, but froze halfway through the motion. Not a stone's throw away Frank was standing among the graves, staring at Gerard with his mouth open and eyes wide, his whole body poised to spring like a stag flushed by the huntsman's hounds.
So this is what close means, Gerard thought wildly, and he dropped his bottle to the grass and scrambled up to his feet, throwing out one open hand toward Frank, palm up as a man might reach for a strange dog or a wild creature, uncertain of his welcome. Frank did spring, then, but toward Gerard rather than away, hurdling gravestones like pebbles in his path. He caught Gerard's arm--Frank, touching him, and he was strong and well and real, so unlike the first time they'd met, so unlike all of Gerard's fearful fancies of the past weeks of searching--and hauled him along until they fetched up at the most imposing tomb in the churchyard, a marble edifice that shielded them from view through the narrow church windows and from the road below.
Gerard's arms closed tight around Frank as soon as his back fetched up against the stone, and Frank kept moving forward, pressing into Gerard as if they might both push their way inside the tomb and have their privacy assured. Frank's hands moved frantically over Gerard, his side, his shoulders, his face and hair, while Gerard simply closed his fists in the rough fabric of Frank's shirt and held on, lowering his face after a moment to press his face into Frank's hair, inhaling the familiar smell of him, so long absent. It had faded nearly entirely from his bed and Frank's clothes by the time Gerard set out after him.
"You were coming home," Gerard whispered, in a voice that came perilously close to breaking.
Frank's hands stilled, closing tight where they lay, one on Gerard's shoulder and the other in his hair.
"You came to meet me," Frank whispered back, nearly a question--but there was no room for doubt in the strength of his grip, the force of his body.
"I am awfully sorry I kept you waiting," Gerard whispered, as though an appointment had kept him from meeting Frank for tea.
Frank shook his head, tugging almost gently at Gerard's shirt, and said, "Let's not wait anymore." His hips ground into Gerard's, leaving him in no doubt of what it was Frank was no longer interested in waiting for, and his own body responded in kind. He did not think he could move from this spot without satisfaction, could not separate his body from Frank's or take a single step without Frank this close to him always.
And yet. "Perhaps," Gerard gasped, as Frank continued to move against him. "Perhaps not in the churchyard."
*
You can totally stop reading right there if you want. I won't judge you! It's a nice ending!
Because what happens next is that they arrive home, after repeated delays because Gerard and Frank have difficulty getting out of bed in a timely manner, just in time for Madame's funeral. Gerard never noticed--even that last day--how much weaker she'd gotten, while he was wrapped up in having Frank and then wrapped up in losing him, and then chasing him across the continent. Gerard collapses into guilt and grief and kind of loses his mind, and Frank can't fix this. None of them can.
Frank feels he's somehow to blame; if Gerard hadn't been distracted by him, maybe, somehow... he'd have been there, at least. Gerard blames himself, of course, and crawls right back into the same set of bottles he briefly crawled out of to go find Frank. Frank and the others are all grieving her themselves, and at first they don't realize how much worse than that it is for Gerard. Only Michael is really aware of how far down Gerard can fall into melancholy, and Michael is busy organizing the funeral and then holding up the basic social duties of the family in Madame's absence.
It's left to Frank to be closest to Gerard, and watch him spin utterly out of control. Gerard is drinking more and more, becoming almost a stranger--when he manages to pay attention to Frank at all he's unpredictable, angry or maudlin or desperate or sweet in a scarily overdramatic way. He creeps out of bed at night and sits in the churchyard, lays in the plot that will someday be his. Frank follows him, but after the second time he doesn't try to persuade him to come back inside, or tell him things will get better. He just follows, doggedly, because he doesn't know what else to do.
Gerard takes Frank along to McCracken's parties, too, which is where the following chatfic segment takes place:
Stele3: I totally had a dream last night in the "Chimerical Romantics" universe.
Stele3: In it, Frank had been living with Gerard for a while, but Gerard was still pretty drunk and one night took Frank to a party at McCracken's house.
Stele3: Bert immediately started pursuing Frank, who of course doesn't think that he has the right to say no, Bert being a gentleman and all.
DiraSudis: oh noes!
DiraSudis: and yet, sadly plausible.
Stele3: Right. And Gerard's drunk enough to not have the good sense that he found at the end of your story, so he's all upset that Frank is just letting Bert paw at him.
Stele3: Eventually Bert drags Frank into becoming the bottom of a threesome, and Gerard walks in on them.
Stele3: Drama! Angst!
Stele3: Then the dream ended.
Stele3: What would happen, though?! You have to sort them out for me, oh author.
DiraSudis: er. hm.
DiraSudis: threesome with whom, exactly?
DiraSudis: for starters.
Stele3: ........ Actually it was Bert/Jamia/Frank. Jamia was sort of a not-wholly-willing participant, too. Like, I think she was a hooker.
Bert laughs at Gerard's intrusion and invites him to join in, and compliments him on his taste in catamites as he might another man's taste in horses. Gerard, drunk and angry and, yes, turned on, accepts, but only touches Jamia while glaring impartially at both Bert and Frank--which amuses Bert and rather terrifies Frank, who expected at least a little protection from Gerard's patronage. But it's over soon enough--Bert's not going to stay in bed with a whore or anybody's catamite, so bounces off to resume hosting his rout, and Gerard mercifully passes out.
Jamia stays put, because she's still entertaining a guest as long as Gerard is there, and Frank isn't opening himself up to anyone else's attentions by going back out. Jamia and Frank talk a little--Frank thinks of his mother, and the girl when he was fourteen, and is nice to her, and she's kind to him. He's a good boy, and Mister Way's not such a bad sort when he's not drunk enough to do whatever stupid thing McCracken leads him into. She explains a little of what just happened to Frank--what Gerard was thinking, why he was angry and acted the way he did--which is reassuring to Frank, and in the morning she encourages him to sneak out and come back with a carriage to take Gerard home in privately, so he won't have to deal with the sunlight. Frank goes.
While he's gone, Gerard wakes up, and Jamia makes free to explain a few of the finer points of the previous night to him, as well--she took a real liking to Frank while they were talking, and she can't stand to see men being fools. Gerard does--a trifle tediously, though it's obviously well-meant--attempt to rescue her, and she accepts so far as to be given a ride in the carriage back into Mt. Helier. She does assure Gerard that she's thinking of heading to England with her last night's pay, as it's the easiest way to decline future party invitations from McCracken, and Gerard manages to be satisfied with that.
On the way to Mt. Helier, Jamia manages to distract Gerard from his hangover by demonstrating what she observed the night before about exactly how arousing Gerard finds it to watch someone else with Frank, and once she's been dropped off at home, Gerard and Frank have already been moved past the awkward "so you didn't really mean it?" phase and straight into frantic makeup sex.
Gerard keeps drinking, though.
Meanwhile, Frank is getting a little scared on another level altogether, because he's received a letter--well, a succession of letters--from one Mateo Cortez, an attorney in Mt. Helier. Frank can read enough to make out that the letters are something to do with The Law and he's too altogether frightened of what they might contain to read them, let alone show them to anyone in the household. Even if he didn't want to trouble Gerard, Bryan could probably make them out for him--but what if it's something terrible? What if he's done something wrong, or someone knows about him, or him and Gerard...
He burns the letters and tells no one about them.
Gerard keeps getting worse, meanwhile. One night, sitting up late while Frank sleeps alone, he oes what his father once told him to do, if ever he was in such a muddle that he didn't know how to mend things. He rings for his steward, though it's just a few hours til dawn, and asks Bryan some questions.
They relate mainly to whether his estate would be attaindered if he died by suicide, and how suicides are investigated, and what consequences might fall upon Michael because of his death. Michael deserves to inherit, after all, and that is Gerard's main concern now. Bryan manages to convince Gerard that it is a complicated and dangerous area of the law to pursue--if it were known that Gerard had been researching the question, it would cast doubts, prejudice any inquiry--so he persuades Gerard that he must wait on any action. Gerard agrees, but they have similar conversations night after night, while Bryan and the others struggle frantically to find a way out for Gerard, to devise any solution.
Frank thinks the main trouble is that he won't sober up and face what's happening--Frank is as delighted to get drunk as anyone, but drinking makes Gerard more melancholy than he naturally is, and it's just what he doesn't need--but he can't seem to stop, even for a day or two. He keeps accepting McCracken's invitations, because it's easier to accept than not, and Frank keeps accompanying Gerard to the parties, because he'll be damned if he'll let Gerard go alone.
It's at one of the parties that Frank gets to talking to McCracken's man, Bryar, who makes the drinks. Frank's met him before, likes him well enough, and then Bryar casts a wary eye at his master and Gerard and says, "It's a waste of well-made drink, is what it is."
Bryar's a craftsman, practically an artist. He's educated, too--he took a second in Chemistry at Worcester College, Oxford. He was there the same time as Gerard, in fact, a couple of years younger--he remembers Gerard, because Gerard stalked him for most of his first Hilary term, though he suspects Gerard thought he was subtle about it. Bryar was there on scholarship, earning a few extra pence working as an apothecary's apprentice, and Gerard was far above his touch. Now Bryar is too poor to live as a gentleman-scientist, as he'd like to, though McCracken permits him the use of a scullery for such experiments as he can perform there.
Frank talks to Bryar about how drinks work: how they make you drunk, why some make you sicker than others. He's not subtle enough about bringing the question around to a drink that would make a man sick on purpose, but Bryar isn't offended.
"It would be easy enough," he says. "Even to make a man so sick he wouldn't touch strong drink again--not for a long while, at least. Mind you, it might kill him."
"Drinking's going to kill him," Frank says grimly.
Bryar gives him a sideways look, glances across the room at pale, miserable Gerard, and doesn't argue.
The trouble, as it turns out, is not technical difficulty; it's delivery. Gerard has grown very close to McCracken again at these parties, and in order to be sure of dosing one Bryar would risk dosing the other. Poisoning his employer is sure to lose him his job, at the very least, and then where would he be?
Frank only a little recklessly offers him the protection of the Way house if he'll try it--a better kitchen-laboratory, less work, whatever he wants. Bryar is tired of his current position anyway, so he agrees, and Frank adds that if he succeeds in saving Gerard's life this way, there will be a Society that wants him as a member. Bryar makes a joke about the Royal Society and laughs and shakes Frank's hand on it.
A week later it's done; Gerard gets vilely sick and is rushed home from a party. For a time it seems as though the gamble might have lost, and Gerard might actually die--if not of the poisoning, then of the delirium tremens afterward. Bryar shows up a little after dawn with a black eye and a smug look, and helps the others with the nursing--having extensive experience of all stages of vile drunk, as well as an excellent grasp of the poison's course. It takes rather more than a day, but Gerard eventually comes up sober and swearing never to drink again, clutches Frank and cries for his grandmother, and after that, slowly but surely, things begin to get better.
It is more than a week later when a visitor arrives at the house--the attorney, Cortez, having given up on letters, has come to deliver his news to Frank in person.
It turns out that Madame left a will, and though it specified some small personal legacies for Gerard, Michael, and Toro, her entire modest personal fortune was left free and clear to Frank, rendering him suddenly a gentleman of independent means, no longer reliant on Gerard for a place in the world.
Much later on (after Michael emerges from that scandal involving young Miss Alice Simmons and the mad Prussian Lord Peter Wentz with a devoted wife and a lifelong friend, and Toro has returned to Spain, married the Lady Cristina and begun to gain real recognition for his paintings and philanthropy, and Bryar has taken a young apprentice named Smith and blown up the kitchen a time or two in pursuit of Science) Frank and Gerard take to traveling and see the world together. Michael and Alice take full possession of the house, and when Gerard and Frank happen to turn up, they make use of a gardener's cottage tucked into a thicket of woods too overgrown to be properly ornamental. Everyone on the island begins to forget that Michael is not the master of the house, and Gerard dotes on his nieces and nephews, and they all live happily ever after.