Fic: The Captain's Quarters

[foolish_m0rtal]

Title: The Captain's Quarters
Fandom: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Rating: G
Characters, Pairings: Professor Aronnax/Captain Nemo
Summary:  If the crew had noticed that I retired to the captain's quarters every evening instead of my own, they did not comment on it.
Notes: For Asexuality Awareness Week. A sequel to A Dead Man in Paris.

"Good morning, Professor Aronnax," Georg said as I emerged from Armitage's room that morning. If the crew had noticed that I retired to the captain's quarters every evening instead of my own, they did not comment on it, and once again I admired their steadfast loyalty to him.

"Good morning, Georg," I replied. Georg was one of the mechanics I had befriended early in my stay aboard the Nautilus. He and I were in the habit of speaking to each other in German despite my own linguistic shortcomings; I had only a rudimentary grasp of the language fostered by a few academic conferences in Berlin, but Georg was a patient teacher, and I suppose he felt the absence of his mother tongue with no fellow countrymen on the crew.

 "The captain is at the helm." Georg lowered his voice. "He's in a foul mood today, sir."

"Thank you, Georg," I said and left wondering what could have happened to upset Armitage so early in the morning. His black moods were few and far between nowadays, which the crew attributed to my good influence.  In their eyes, I was both a saint and a sacrificial lamb, because I was the one that sought the captain out when no one else dared and soothed his temper. They did not know that I slept within the possessive curl of his arms at night and was therefore in a somewhat unique place in his attentions. Armitage complained that I exploited his affections quite ruthlessly at times, but he knew that I would never ask anything unreasonable or against his nature, just as I knew that there was nothing I could do to dissuade him if he truly set his mind to something.

I found Armitage sitting in the high-backed captain's chair in the control room. He was drinking a cup of strong coffee and correcting the navigation, and I suspected we had drifted as we had crossed the Straits of Magellan in the early hours of the morning. I wondered if he would consent to detouring at Polynesia, which was rumoured to contain hundreds of species of fish that I was keen to study.

"Good morning, Armitage," I said and bent to press a kiss to his temples, where his hair was beginning to turn white. I often told him that he would look quite distinguished in his old age, and he always gave me scathing reply that did not quite hide the pleased little smile that flickered across his lips. That always fascinated me because Armitage was not, by most accounts, a vain man.

"Pierre," he said but did not look up from his work, which I had initially found unnerving but now treated with fond indulgence. Just as I had taught him to be a gentler man, he had taught me to tolerate his many eccentricities. I was sorry to say that he'd had much better luck in his endeavors than I'd had in mine. "You arrived in time. We recovered a crate of cigars floating in the straits this morning." He must have seen me brighten, because he added, "The seawater has ruined all of them, of course, and did you expect I would let you smoke those putrid land cigars on my ship?"

I tried not to show my disappointment. "You don't look pleased."

He held up a stack of dried wrinkled paper. "This was the packaging around the cigars."

This seemed unremarkable till I realised they were pages from a newspaper. A French newspaper.

"Oh my," I breathed, because it had been some time since I had clapped eyes on news or a magazine from the continents.

"Look at the obituaries," Armitage said, and his expression was so grave that I turned to them immediately with the idea that someone dear to me had passed.

And there was my name and picture at the top with a respectable piece about my work in the field of marine biology as well as my many contributions to the academic realm. The obituary said I had drowned in the freak accident on the S.S. Barkely and was not survived by any immediate relatives or family. My assistant Conseil de Boeck (my heart leapt here at the mention of a familiar name) would be taking over my work in the Botanical Gardens as well as inheriting my little house in Montparnasse.

I imagined Conseil would be reluctant to accept such an inheritance, influenced in no small part by his modesty and relentless devotion to me. No, I was sure living in my house would be intolerable for him, but I hoped he would sell it and use the funds wisely, perhaps to go back to his family in Belgium, where I knew the residual money would keep them all in relative comfort for some time.

I looked up from the paper and met Armitage's eye. I was now officially erased as a citizen of the continents. "So," I said. "I've finally thrown in my lot with you for good."

He scowled. "You look far too cheerful to say that with any kind of conviction."

"Do you think that this will frighten me off?" I felt a rush of affection for him. "Now that the Nautilus is the only home I have left?"

"I do not pretend to know anything you think," he grumbled. "But I do not like to think of you as dead."

"But my dear man, I am alive here with you."

"Even so, I do not like it."

I wanted to laugh, but Armitage was a solemn man who would not take kindly to that. Instead I dropped a kiss against his cheek. He still had difficulty with such simple gestures, but that did not make me love him any less. Heaven help me, I even found him charming when he fell into one of his brooding moods.

 I wanted to tell him that nothing less than forcible eviction could ever make me leave his ship, but I knew he would be confounded by such a proclamation and disparage it as grandiose. I realised that he did not like to think of my death, fabricated or otherwise. I suppose it was some superstition from his native India, though I had never taken him as a superstitious man.

"I've just moved all my belongings into our quarters," I said instead and tried to adopt a cool tone despite the heat I could feel in my ears. "And it would be too much bother to move them out again."

His expression arrested anything further I could have said. Our quarters, I had told him, and the taste of those words lingered on my tongue.

His gaze was almost too intense to bear. "Pierre."

"Yes, my dear?" I knew he disliked endearments, and I meant to give him some other annoyance to distract him so that he might put my obituary out of his head.

He took a cigar from his breast pocket and held it out to me. "It seems there was one cigar that survived the journey."

I could not see my own expression, but it must have been quite luminous indeed from the way he scowled at me. "Thank you," I replied and took the cigar with all the care and reverence I usually reserved for delicate sea creatures and rare antique books. I felt the warm solidness of his arm around my waist, and I bent to give him a proper kiss, the sort he only tolerated in the privacy of our quarters.

He pulled away just as I knew he would, but I was not insulted. "We are surfacing in an hour to collect coconuts from an uninhabited island," he said and turned away to dismiss me. "I expect you will contain yourself and your terrible smoking habit till then."

The island was deserted and very beautiful. Immediately after disembarking, I rolled up the cuffs of my trousers and went off by myself to explore as Armitage called out to the crew to set up temporary camp.

I have always thought that the Polynesian islands are one of the most remarkable in the world. Several types of birds are unique to these islands, to say nothing of the hundreds of plant species and insects. I brought my sketchbook with me and spent some time absorbed in capturing a few rough sketches of fruit doves I found nesting in a low-lying tree. The sun was high in the sky when I finally finished exploring my little patch of island, and I remembered that Armitage was waiting for me back on the beach. It was our custom nowadays to have lunch on whatever island we found ourselves, and he must have made preparations while I was away. I liked the look of him under the sun rather than the electric lights of the submarine, and he was starting to regain the beautiful nutty complexion that he must have had before he disappeared under the waves.

I gathered a few fruits that I thought he might like and reached up to touch the cigar in the front pocket of my jacket. There would be time to smoke it later after drinks and dessert and a walk around the island with Armitage's arm tucked companionably under my own.

"Pierre?" I heard him call just beyond the sand dunes.

"Yes," I replied and began walking back towards the Nautilus. "Yes, I am here."

Comments

[foolish-m0rtal.livejournal.com]

Thank you! 20,000 Leagues was one of my favourite Verne stories when I was young, and I love Aronnax's voice in the story.