Chapter Nine #2
He took hold of James’s hand and pulled him into the swimming bath.
Clinging onto James, Cassian pushed off one of the stairs with his foot, bringing them both farther into the pool.
The second that Cassian let go, James’s head immediately went below the waterline.
James resurfaced for a moment but then went back under.
Cassian watched with intrigue and mild amusement as this happened a few more times, and then James began to perform some bastardized hybrid between a Trudgen stroke and a breaststroke back over to the staircase.
Cassian soon met him there. James’s breathing was fast and ragged as he clung to one of the stairs from the side, though Cassian took it as a minor victory that the man didn’t simply scramble up them and exit the pool altogether.
“See?” James said as he heaved another breath. “Flopping.”
“Yes, your flopping technique is flawless,” Cassian teased.
“Dammit, I wish I could swim.”
“You really are close, I think. But your movements are so . . .”
“Frantic?”
Cassian chuckled. “Unpracticed.”
“Trust me, I’ve practiced.”
“Not properly.”
“Maybe I’m not meant to swim,” James countered.
“Everyone is meant to swim.” Cassian pushed himself backward. “Come. Try again.”
“I can’t.”
Cassian forced a serious expression. “It’s not a request.”
Groaning wearily, James said, “Fine.”
Effortlessly staying afloat and upright, Cassian watched James take a couple of purposeful, focused breaths before he pushed off the stairs, only to start flopping around in that erratic, barely competent manner for a second time.
Just as James reached Cassian, Cassian caught sight of the man’s face, and he registered a sudden look of panic in the man’s eyes.
Before Cassian could react to it, James’s hands found Cassian’s shoulders, and he pushed Cassian beneath the water.
Fortunately for Cassian, he had taken a breath before his companion began trying to use him as a floatation device.
After only a second or two, James released him, and Cassian came back to the surface.
“Dammit, James,” he spluttered as soon as his head popped up above the waterline.
James had begun flop-swimming back over to the stairs. Cassian caught up with him, and they reached the steps at the same time. James proceeded to crawl up a bit so that he wasn’t fully in the water. Cassian stayed lower, resting his hands on one of the stairs, but still floating otherwise.
“What happened?” Cassian asked.
James heaved a couple of breaths before answering.
“I inhaled some water and panicked,” he replied.
“You nearly killed me,” Cassian said with a scoff-laugh and a shake of his head.
“I know,” James said through another exhale. “I’m sorry, Cassian.”
“Why are you having such trouble?” Cassian asked. “It seems as though you know the basics.”
“I’m not sure,” James said. “I learned by watching other people. And I think I’m moving my limbs the same way that they do, for the most part.”
“I think so, too.” Cassian knitted his brows together as he thought back on his own experiences with learning to swim. “You know, I had similar problems as a boy. Show me how you hold your hands.”
“What do you mean?” James asked. He began moving his arms in a semicircular crawling motion. “I move like this.”
Cassian watched for a few seconds. He ordered James to stop once he realized what might have been James’s biggest error. Then, Cassian climbed up the steps to where James was sitting and moved next to him.
“Next time, keep your fingers together, but keep them slightly separated, as well,” he said.
“Together, but not. Yes, that makes perfect sense, Cassian, thank you,” James retorted.
Cassian rolled his eyes. “Your hands are too tense. Actually, everything is probably too tense, but we’ll keep the focus on your hands for now.”
“Well, I’m meant to make little cups with them, aren’t I?”
“Yes and no. Logically, that makes sense, but I’ve found that keeping my hands more relaxed, letting my fingers separate a little, helps propel me forward.”
James lifted one of his hands, positioning his fingers like Cassian had suggested.
“Like this?”
Cassian inspected them. “Precisely.”
James lowered his hand and let out a long breath.
“I’ll have to experiment with that sometime. In the future.”
“Not now?”
“I . . .” James’s brows pinched, the look in his eyes becoming more than a little pleading. “Cassian, I think I need a break.”
Cassian’s face fell. “Oh.”
“I’m sorry.” James lowered his head. “I really wanted us to have fun. I wanted you to have fun. When I remembered what you said about wanting the two of us to swim together, I thought that maybe . . .” He trailed off and slumped lower.
“But it seems as though I had forgotten how exhausting swimming—or, flopping—is for me.”
Sympathy clutched at Cassian’s heart. Scooting closer, he lifted his hand to James’s face before he could think better of it.
“I promise, I’m still having fun,” he said, caressing James’s pinchable cheek.
After a moment, James lifted his eyes. He smiled a little.
Reluctantly and regretfully, Cassian pulled back his hand. Oh, God, how fervently he wished that he could keep touching James’s cheeks. Instead, he started back into the water.
“I’ll swim for a little while,” he said before pushing himself forward. “You can enjoy the sight.”
James chuckled from behind him.
For the next fifteen or twenty minutes, Cassian practiced various swim strokes, all the while hoping that James really was enjoying the show. At least a little. Because Cassian was certainly enjoying himself. He liked showing off, especially now, especially for James.
Swimming laps in the pool, Cassian let his mind wander, thinking back on everything that had happened that day.
Despite the unpleasantness of the events that had unfolded starting at breakfast, it seemed as though things had finally calmed since the potato room.
His and James’s mutual honesty in the food storage area had softened some of Cassian’s lingering unease when it came to James.
Everything seemed so much simpler now that they had spoken of this fierce and fiery something between them, especially because Cassian had been able to remind James of his obligations to Ethel.
So, now, even though their friendship continued to be a peculiar one, Cassian could take heart that it was, in fact, only friendship.
Friendship with more . . . physical longing, maybe—Cassian still found James intensely exciting in that regard; he’d have brought the man to his stateroom had it not been for his engagement to Ethel—but still friendship nonetheless.
Cassian’s mind was still adrift in these thoughts when he floated over to the stairs one last time. James was watching him intently, looking as impressed and content as ever.
“Can you float?” Cassian asked.
“I can,” James said slowly. “I think.”
“Alright, then, come over here.”
James looked hesitant as he waded into the water. He walked in up to his neck. Cassian came next to him on the stairs and then moved behind him.
“Lie back,” he instructed.
Letting out a petulant-sounding sigh, James leaned back and then kicked his feet up so that he could float.
Immediately, he began to sink—his rear end was much too low and not yet level with the rest of his body—but Cassian coaxed James’s head onto his shoulder and pushed James’s butt up with his knee.
James laughed a little but complied. Soon enough, he was floating properly in a starfish sort of position, his head still perched on Cassian’s shoulder.
“How’s my form?” James asked.
“Perfectly middling,” Cassian replied with a playful hum.
James only chuckled in response. Cassian stretched out his arms, and he found James’s hands so that he could better anchor the two of them together.
As soon as their hands connected, little ripples of contentment and fondness overtook him, moving over his body like waves. He pressed his cheek to James’s temple.
“Thank you for this,” James said sweetly.
Cassian’s stomach swooped as James’s lovely words and even lovelier voice reached his ears.
What a strange thing that feeling was. It was a sensation that he’d scarcely ever felt before.
In fact, he’d only ever felt it when he was with James.
And it wasn’t like the flashes of heat and want that he’d felt when thinking about other men in the past, either.
Or even like the sensations he’d felt when interacting with a beautiful woman.
Or, hell, like the sensations he’d felt when bedding one.
No, this was wholly unlike those. It was . . . heavier. Or lighter. Heavier and lighter, both. Cassian shut his eyes so that he could savor the sensation, in all its rarity and strangeness.
After a while, Cassian felt ready and eager for more conversation with his friend.
“When was the last time you tried to swim?” he asked. “I enjoyed hearing those stories you had about the river in London. I remember you said that you were with friends?”
There was a small pause.
“Actually, I, uhm, I lied a little last time,” James finally replied. “I swam with . . . George.”
Cassian lifted an eyebrow. “Who’s George?”
“He’s . . . the one I was in love with,” James said.
Cassian’s breath caught as his heart slammed into his rib cage. Struck with a strong sense of possessiveness, he interlaced their fingers together and squeezed.
“You loved a man,” Cassian said.
“Yes,” James replied, his voice noticeably smaller.
“I should have said something, maybe. Not when we were here in the swimming bath, but when we were in the lounge. I was worried, though, that you might report me to the White Star Line or the police or . . .” He shut his eyes.
“Anyway, I probably should have been more forthcoming with you before.”
Cassian’s breathing became uneven, those earlier ripples of fondness transforming into other, more sinister things.
Jealousy and resentment and bitterness. He tried to speak, but his words caught in his throat, and he forced a couple of breaths in hopes that he could somehow calm the storm now brewing inside him.
“Cassian?” James said, turning his head slightly to catch Cassian’s eye.
Cassian’s face caught fire as shame settled over him.
How incredibly unnerving it was to have reacted like that to James’s confession.
Why had he? Cassian himself found men intriguing sexually, so the idea that James had once had a presumably physical relationship with one shouldn’t have bothered him.
Moreover, Cassian still found the idea of romantic love to be too fantastical to exist as it was often portrayed in fiction.
So then, why had he felt such a strong sense of .
. . God, he’d felt a sense of revulsion over hearing that other man’s name.
He’d been shocked, too, to learn that James had experienced some .
. . fairy-tale, storybook romance with a man.
“Do you think less of me now?” James asked.
Although his voice was still light and somewhat happy, it was colored with the faintest hint of concern as well, and that whisper of worry helped Cassian push past his lingering, confusing upset.
“Not even a little,” Cassian said, pressing his cheek to James’s head.
Some time passed, and with each rolling wave of the pool’s saltwater, more and more of Cassian’s befuddling hurt washed away, enabling him to return to a blissful state of contentment like before, though there was still one thing he needed to know.
“Do you still love him?” he asked.
“Yes,” James said without even the slightest bit of hesitation.
Cassian clenched his teeth and winced. James spoke again.
“But he . . . passed.”
Cassian let out a breath of relief, and his stomach soured not one second later, guilt settling there. It took him a moment to find some comforting words and then even longer to muster the will to say them.
“May he rest in God’s peace,” he finally said.
James’s lips curled into the smallest hint of a smile. “Thank you.”
But sorrow lingered in the man’s beautiful blue eyes.
“Are you still . . . hurting?” Cassian asked, squeezing James’s hands a little tighter.
“Only sometimes.”
Cassian let a wave of relief crash into him. He hated to imagine James caught in the throes of grief. Even only imagining it for a mere couple of seconds . . .
Cassian’s chest tightened, and he shut his eyes.
“Not often, I hope,” he said.
“No, not often,” James confirmed. Cassian opened his eyes, and James’s blues flickered up to meet them. “I’m all right, Cassian.”
James’s reassurance echoed in Cassian’s ears, but Cassian still found himself confronted with the profound need to further comfort his exceptional friend. Heart hammering, Cassian pressed a featherlight kiss to James’s head, into his hair.
Immediately thereafter, Cassian began to tremble, his subsequent thoughts and emotions too violent, too strong, too perplexing to make sense of.
Soon, even Cassian’s teeth began to chatter, and he had the fleeting idea that they ought to exit the water, but, oh, he couldn’t stand the thought of leaving.
“Should we go?” James asked. “You’re shaking.”
“Not yet,” Cassian said, a pleading edge to his voice that was so strangely foreign to his ears. “One more minute.”
James smiled up at him and then closed his eyes.
“One more.”
Cassian shut his eyes too.
One more.