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lacnunga · 7 months ago

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No pressure to read it at all but here's a wee drabble about my ocs, specifically Perfidious ruining his own fucking life by telling Eustace what an asshole he's been their entire friendship

"Come in, come in, im glad to see you, Fideous," Byng said excitedly, practically grabbing my arm to pull me into his little room. It was a plain but cosy affair, unlike the stuffy little rooms aboard the Advantage which stank and putrified even with every gun hatch thrown open for air - here, the landlady at at least put pretty enough curtains on the windows and there was only a little built up dust along the edges of the floor. A pair of singlesticks had been thrown carelessly onto the narrow daybed, which was already mountainous with laundry, Roman tomes and octaves of poems and plays. Half the counterpane trailed on the floor and several half-drunk cups of tea gathered on sideboard and sea chest like girls at a party. Byng had thoroughly installed himself here.

My captain turned to me and beamed, his brown eyes glittering as the setting sun washed over him.

"What excellent timing you have; Mrs Battersea will have tea ready any moment now, and you must dine with me and we shall discuss my letter to Napier. Oh, do not look so perturbed," he laughed, having evidently seen some of my agitated state in my eyes, "all things good, I assure you."

Yes, I needed no assurance of it. I knew Byng would write only too enthusiastically of my time in his service, and it was here wherein lay the entirety of my problem. Had I never met this man I would not know myself to be one to dislike inner turmoil, for I don't make a habit of engaging in it. It was Byng who never knew when to leave well enough alone and when to leave an enemy an enemy without towing him into friendship. It had always been my curse to resent him near as much as love him.

"Please, take a seat."

I cast an eye about the room and found no available surface.

"...where, sir?" I jabbed.

"Oh! Well, you may throw down Cicero," Byng said, pronouncing the name with his usual hard 'c', "Lord knows he deserves it! Ha!"

I made a smile at his words, although not understanding the reference and not letting it bother me. He might have pressed Voltaire onto me, and Swift and Gay, but i draw the line at Romans. I took Cicero in my hands and set his papery corpse on a half-unrolled housewife; I had to restrain myself as always from following behind him and tidying up, lest I prove the jabs of my own wifeliness true and lose what has remained of my Machiavellian reputation. Although I suppose Byng had an excuse this time - at the thought, my eyes flickered guiltily to his half-wooden hand. It was clear that despite his period in the naval hospital, my captain was still struggling to change from his sinistral upbringing.

Still, it was not to critique his slovenliness that I had come to his room.

"Sir," I started, seating myself on the little space I had cleared of the footstool, "there was something....something I wanted to discuss."

"Please, you know I will always bend my ear to you, Fid," he said, before peering closer at me, "Why, your face-! Is it awful news?"

"No, I- that is-. Ah!" I did not want to look at his concerned expression. All the words had dried up in my mouth as soon as attempting to speak them; how ridiculous, to waste away the night with harrowed rehearsal only to find myself fish-jawed when it came to the opening performance. Me! He whom trouble followed in consequence of caustic wit, struck suddenly dumb!

And the longer I remained silent, the deeper the furrow between Byng's brows got.

"Is it...money?" He near whispered the last, afraid of offending some invisible etiquette teacher by mentioning finances so crudely.

I shook my head, my auburn hair flying about.

"Then I am at a loss," Byng declared, placing one hand on his hip, the other dangling unnaturally - his new asymmetry made that noxious cauldron of guilt and shame roil in my stomach, "but it cannot be as dreadful as you are putting on. Tell me all about it and we shall have the matter sorted by coffee, my friend."

"I have not been your friend," I blurted, clumsily.

There was a long pause, in which the clatter and shouting outside the boardhouse seemed to swell like a choir to fill it. For a moment I could not fathom how the entirety of my disclose was not obvious to him within those six words, forgetting that they had only consumed my reality by the throes of my own inner repetition. No, that my confession was still a secret was obvious, for instead of outraged, Byng looked only confused, and scratched at his moustache. The fine golden hairs that had escaped his pomade caught the low sun and blazed like beaten gold - my fancy saw him in that moment like the Archangel Michael with myself as always, cast as the devil himself.

"If you are still dwelling on my words about being abandoned on the hospital, I beg you to forget them. They were a bad joke and I ought to have known you would take them to heart. I understand how busy you have been," he said kindly.

I did not want his kindness. I had not wanted it at the beginning of our aquaintance and I did not want it now, when I must expose myself to him entirely. It would have suited me better if he was dismissive or pompous or selfish, but then, had he been any of those things, I would never have found myself in the position I was in.

Maybe it made it easier in the end, as his kindess irritated me and there is nothing better for loosening the tongue than irrational stress.

"We hoped you would die," I snapped, and with those savage words it was as though a damn, long rotten and straining over the years, broke within me and out came spilling a torrent of filthy, diseased water, "You often said our friendship began on the Courland expedition. It is true, I did recommend you for the negotiations to Gainsford, but not because I thought you would do well at it."

When Byng said nothing, I continued, "I don't know if you were even aware of my dislike of you. I hated all things you represented - priviledge, education, connexions. You had the impertience to be friendly and humble and forgiving and there was little I could not find a way to despise about you. Yes, I sent you off to the Governor and greatly you thanked me for that boon afterwards, but with sincerity I had done it with the presumtion that you would not come back."

It hurt to say these things to the man I now loved, but it was necessary. It was necessary - I had repeated as much to my pillow in the dark of the night - for him to know the depths of my depravity before he risked his reputation by recommending me to the Admiral on false understandings.

I was glad that it hurt.

When I risked a glance at him, Byng had gone very still and very pale. His good arm had dropped to his side.

"I see," he said woodenly. To hear his normally bonny voice so expressionless was near as debilitating as the sight of him clutching his mangled hand had been. "I...I suppose there have been queerer starts to friendships. It will be a funny thing to tell people at dinner parties, certainly." His chuckle sounded forced, "but it has been years-"

"That was not the end of it," I interrupted him. I had to dispell him of his good opinion of me, for my own honour as much as his.

"Oh?" Came the faint, reluctant question.

"Yes," I said. There was a heat building in me, like a fever reaching its climax and I believe in the moment it sent me to the very edge of madness, "I resented you your success - we all did, but I the most, for your fortune was my own doing and the praise of one so far my junior in rank but superior in society galled me to the extreme. For my own benefit, I pretended at friendship. I took your affection and betrayed it for years. Had it not been for my own sense of duty towards my superiors - I couldnt imagine where we would be now."

"You cannot be serious," Byng protested, and now he too sounded hot, "you are confused, Fidious. You've saved my life, twice over, three times if you would allow me to count Chatham!"

"My duty, as I said, sir."

"Then-, then you took me into your care when I was attacked," he pointed out triumphantly.

The memory of that winter night and Byng's staggering form bearing me dazedly to the pavement, blood running down his face, shot through my mind. A reminiscent shiver ran down my spine.

"You might have died," I pointed out, determined not to allow him to paint me as any kind of samaritan, "I may have betrayed your good opinion but I would not have allowed any man of woman to just pass in the street."

"You are making this very difficult, you know," Byng said crossly and I felt a familiar pang of satisfaction in making myself disagreeable, "there was no danger of me dying from the attention of the Duchess of Whitby, though. There was no need for your intervention but your rescue of me from matrimony when I asked it of you."

He seemed very assured of his victory there, but the shame threated to swallow me again at the reminder.

"I was glad to 'rescue' you; it was gratifying to me to deprive you of a greater fortune and a title in one fell swoop."

Byng's fine face fell.

"Tell me this is a joke," he said eventually. My words had begun to penetrate his rosy view of the world. I could feel my heart crack in tandem with his.

"I cannot," I replied, my voice wavering like a snotty's.

"I have asked you for counsel, and you have given it. I have told you my fears, and you have reassured me. I asked you to share in my joys, and you did."

"For my own benefit, sir." I swallowed the lump in my throat, "for my own advancement."

"...I introduced you to my sister."

"Yes," i whispered.

The dam had run dry. There were no more words. I had done what i had set out to; to destroy the bridge Byng had built between us over the years. As I watched, I saw the flesh fingers of his hands curl into fists, and his whole body strike up rigid. It was only those wooden fingers that sat slack and I did not miss the irony that in that moment, the only part of my captain's body not set against me was that which he had sacrificed to save my life. It was in that gory, mutilating moment that my love for him had flowered, belatedly, selfishly, only then had my eyes opened. How could I have visited him in recovery knowing, feeling now thoroughly, all those years I had plotted against him or accepted his friendship with ill feeling?

"I had been warned about you," Byng said quietly, face like procelain. "Lieutenants, midshipmen, seamen - even those Buffs you played the tables with; all seemed to have black words to say about you. But I dismissed them. Every one; I even got a little irate at some of them. My own honour felt besmirched that these people would cast aspersions on my closest friend in the world."

Each blow struck me like a sabre. Good. It was good that he make me bleed.

"Sir-" I began, only to be interrupted by a knock on the door and the impertinent entry of a white-capped maid.

She bobbed a curtesy.

"Mrs Battersea says to tell you tea's ready for you, sir - and to say there's enough for two if your friend is staying."

Byng did not take his eyes off of me.

"No. This man was just leaving."

Surely there was an ocean of blood lapping at my knees by now. It was good, and it was right, but like a drowning man taking one last breath before going under, it was instinct that moved my lips without knowing what my next words would be.

"Please-"

"I think, Mr Jones, that you have thoroughly obliterated your right to say 'please' to me, don't you?"

My last breath of air went out. Here were the consequences of my actions - Byng's blithe counternance one of stony betrayal, my commendation to the Admiral no doubt would find itself fuelling the fireplace, the hesitant understanding between myself and Lady Babington crumpling with the news of what I had done to her brother. Obliterated indeed.

"Then I will take my leave," I said. My words seemed to come from very far away to my own ears.

"Good day, sir," Byng dismissed me curtly, turning his back on me, halo fading with the approaching dusk.

"Good day."

And, with the maid looking between us askance, I left.

When later I received a summons from Napier concerning a glowing letter of commendation from his protege, I could never have felt worse.

#essentially eustace caught a sword that was meant to kill fid and lost some fingers from it #and now fid is like 'oh shit i DO love you i had better confess what a horrible person ive been #so you dont even try to say anything nice about me' but also he wants to keel being eustaces friend so so badly #lady babington here is heloise but shes a widow at this point hence the name #also the 'understanding' is a beard marriage for both their benefit #ANYWAY. oc dump who cares. guys from my brain #oc hours #eustace byng #perfidious jones

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