Country House - The Secret History (Donna Tartt) [M/M]

[AllyKabbet]

I don't know if there is someone here who is involved in this fandom, but since I finished The Secret History, by Donna Tartt, I can't stop thinking about it, reading fics, and getting angry because there isn't a single sneezy one (not even sickfic ) about this. And since I'm in love with Francis Abernathy, I had to write one of him (probably not the only one).
For those who have not read it (you should), I just have to say that it is an exquisite book (six dark academy-looking college students from a classical arts class, five of them from the elite of the elite, kill one of the group and live complicated lives ). Its narrative and the complexity and three-dimensionality of its characters is overwhelmingly good. 

For those who don't know the book:
-Francis Abernathy (the redhead): son of former nobles, hypochondriac, cunning, a love of character.
-Richard Papen: The first person narrator. Sensible, somewhat insecure. The confidant.
They're not a couple in the book, but in my mind they're pretty plausible canon that they stole from us in the book.

For those who have read it: This scene takes place near the end of the tragedy, when Francis and Richard take Charles to the country house.

I hope you like it! 😀 (As always, excuse my English, I'm Spanish)

 

Once Charles locked himself upstairs, with the cat loitering among Francis's antique furniture, and taking with him a whole jar of peanuts and a bottle of Scotch, we both felt we could rest. It had been a really exhausting day, and the cat's bite in the gap between my big and index toes still hurt. I sat on the central sofa in front of the unlit fireplace, on a white sheet spread out so that the dust would not transfer to the sofa. Francis sat down next to me with a sigh. He looked downright exhausted, his red curls fanned by the afternoon light that streamed in through the windows along with the coolness of the countryside. It breathed well on the field, much better than in Vermont, than in college and anywhere I could imagine at the time. I knew then that he was in the best place I could be, and that put me at ease.

We stayed for long minutes enjoying a comfortable, calm silence, only disturbed by the footsteps upstairs. Until Francis jerked to the side, out of my sight, and pinched his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

“Ah-mnx!” He sneezed.

I turned to look at him.

“Bless you.”

There were a couple of seconds of silence before he sneezed again with a graceful “A-mng!”, just as stifled and unsatisfying. He exhaled after.

“Thank you.” he answered my blessing in a low voice.

Maybe he had sneezed before, but I didn't remember it, or it hadn't seemed like something to pay attention to. Now, in the silence and stillness, I could watch Francis's impeccable manner imprinted even in his sneeze, silent but slightly dramatic, not wanting to be too conspicuous but not nondescript enough to go unnoticed either.

“H-hTx-shu.”

I turned again. This time he had covered with his elbow, and it had certainly been more forceful than before. I assumed the dust was bothering him.

“Bless you.”

“Excuse me”. He sniffled controlledly. “Shall we play cards?”

“Why not?”

“Do you want to drink something?” Francis was already getting up.

I frowned.

“The truth is that I don't feel like it.”

“No. Me neither.”

That was weird, but we didn't talk about it too much. It had been so long since we had been to the country house that we wanted to enjoy it completely sober. We played several games on the sofa, Francis with that face of concentration that he made every time his long fingers ran through the cards to choose the best option. He smoked more than three cigarettes. Neither of us were very good players, like Charles or Camilla were (Henry hardly ever played, he just watched), so the game was more fun. The hours flew by. Francis would snort now and then and wrinkle his nose as if the dust in the air still bothered him, and while it was unusual to see him lose control too often, I chose not to comment on it.

“Now he is very calm.” Francis said as he shuffled, as if his mind was fervently trying to get away from the thought of Charles but he was completely unable.

“Maybe he fell asleep.”

“Yeah. Or he's passed out from drunkenness.” He answered, annoyed.

“It's not our responsibility. We've done enough, we can't keep an eye on him twenty-four hours a day.”

“I'm not a liar.” He said. I didn't know what he meant, but then I remembered Charles's accusation, in his apartment. “I know he would lie to me, but you wouldn't. You're my friend.” And my stomach clenched at the thought of how much that comment might have affected Francis.

“I know, Francis, Charles was just paranoid. He see ghosts where there are none.”

Francis didn't look directly at me.

“There are none?”

I blinked, looking through it. Suddenly his red hair faded, and I could almost hear Bunny laugh from the hallway to the kitchen, a shrill, unpretentious laugh, because Charles had dropped a crystal glass in the kitchen and filled it. The whole floor of wine, like a bloodstain. Bunny called him clumsy. Charles got angry and said something about his mother, and how he could pick up the wine with his tongue if he wanted to. In the end, Camilla ended up cleaning it up. I think I helped her, or I was just watching her angelic blonde hair sway to the rhythm of the rag.

“Richard? Something happens?” Francis called me, looking for my gaze, somewhat scared.

“No, nothing. It's just that we haven't been back here since…”

Francis stiffened. I noticed that his hand trembled around the deck.

“I know.”

“Hey.” I sat up, in the best spirits I could muster, eager to change the subject. “What if we go to the lake tomorrow? Perhaps Charles would like to join us, if not, we can go alone and take a boat ride.” At that moment, I did not think about the connotations that this could have. Francis's eyes lit up, and I even thought he was about to cry. “What do you think?”

“That seems fine to me.” He sniffled.

“Fine.” I got up from the sofa and went to the dresser. I pulled the white sheet that covered it. “We could also clean this a bit, it seems abandoned.”

Francis leaned back on the sofa, with a lazy sigh, his head resting back.

“I don't feel like it.” He was a bit congested.

“Come on, man.”

After watching me for a while, with the cards scattered on his lap, he sat up. He stared at me for a while, one leg crossed over the other, his eyes narrowed. Then he put both hands to his face and, a few seconds later, he sneezed again. It was kind of “Nng-txss” forceful, that made his head shake slightly from the effort of stifling and that left him breathless. By all standards, it was the description of a perfect sneeze. If someone had to paint the scene, it would be exactly like that, with that subtle tilt of the head and his long, bony fingers, like a pianist's, bowling over his nose and mouth. I didn't even realize why I was paying so much attention to such a mundane act, I just thought he looked too good to be losing control so often.

I wondered if he was getting sick.

“Excuse be”. He whispered breathlessly, before getting up and going to another piece of furniture to remove the sheet.

“Francis, is there a broom or duster or similar?”

Francis shrugged.

“Ask Hatch.”

“Have you never cleaned the house yourself?”

“Myself?” That question, formulated with a mixture of innocence and horror, did not bother me but made me smile. Sometimes Francis seemed to me like a being of another species.

“You have no idea where there might be something to clean?”

“You can look in the closet of the kit-h-cHtsho!” He turned slightly, but I saw him sneeze almost out in the open, as if the sneeze had surprised even him. It was the softest sneeze he had ever heard. “Sorry.”

“Are you alrigh? You've been sneezing a lot.”

“It's the dust.” I knew he was trying to convince himself.

“Let's clean up then.”

We were cleaning for twenty minutes or so. The smell of violets thawing outside filled the air with a welcoming perfume, and the sparkling orange afternoon light streamed in through the windows and bathed the entire room like a tongue of gold. Francis's hair looked like the sun in that light. He sat down with a sigh on the sofa from before, which was now much less dusty, without the white sheet.

Silently, he lit a cigarette.

“Give me one?” I asked for. At that moment there was nothing I wanted more than the smoke entering my lungs.

Francis, lazy to take a cigarette out of the box again, handed me his. He held it between his index and middle fingers, very delicately. I picked it up, rather clumsily and less gracefully, and took a puff as he sat me down next to him. I realized instantly that that cigarette had just touched his lips, and now it was brushing mine, and the implications that had. Francis was smiling when I looked at him, in an absolutely clever and cheeky way, like he was a wolf. I preferred to ignore him.

“Give it back to me.”

“Light another one.”

“Richard… What little sense of generosity. I'm letting you sleep in my house.”

“Technically, it's your aunt's.” I followed his game. I smiled inadvertently, before taking a drag that consumed half the cigarette. I felt the powdery nicotine on my tongue.

“I also buy you suits. And ties. And… I'm sure I bought you something else.” He had the sleepy voice of a drunk, although without a doubt, he was more sober than most times they had been in that room. He sounded thick too, as if the words were stuck in his throat.

“That's true. But I have taken you many times to the doctor at dawn. Something has to make up for it, right? By the way, how are you doing in therapy?”

“I don't want to talk about therapy.”

Fearing that I had disturbed him, I offered him the cigar in silence. He took it and consumed the last of it, before setting the rest on the armrest.

“I'm so tired.” He said. “I'm afraid of what might happen with Charles. Or Henry. I don't know, it all seems very complicated to me, and I'm tired. I don't think I have the right to be tired either, you know? I mean… It's not like I should feel in the eye of the storm, because I'm not. I feel like I'm just trying to reduce damage from a bomb that's going to go off whether I want it to or not, and I don't know…”

“Francis.” I stopped him when I saw that he was starting to go crazy. “Stop talking.”

Francis sniffled.

“Sorry. Don't be mad.” He again deigned to take out another cigarette, and light it with a match.

“I don't get mad.”

That conversation sounded like deja vu to me. Francis was standing quite close to me, shoulders pressed together, and I could almost feel the smooth texture of the white silk of his piped shirt, which was folded at the forearms.

“Okay” He took a drag with a shaky hand, which consumed almost half of his cigarette. Smoke floated between us, filling the air, and curls of smoke drifted from his lips.

“Everything will work out. If Charles doesn't go to trial, nothing will most likely happen, and all of this will go unnoticed. I also don't think Henry cares much about losing the car or not, you know? It's not like he's short of money.” My voice dropped in intensity when I saw that Francis wasn't listening to me.

He had turned to escape my vision and was politely covering his face with his cigarette hand. He took several quick, slightly desperate breaths before sneezing, soft, a little forceful. A “Hitts-shu-Tshu!” double, with a hint of desperation that, for some reason, made me shudder. Maybe it was the way his red curls tossed, or the way he dragged the “Ss”, in a somewhat feminine way and, at the same time, as if it hurt to sneeze. His expression remained blank for a few seconds, holding the cigarette in suspense and looking at an inaccurate point in the room.

“H-Hh… Mngg-tch! Jesuschrist…” He said as an exhalation. He was slightly blushed.

“Bless you!” I blessed him somewhat surprised.

“Excuse me, Richard. I think I'm getting sick.” 

“Do you want me to look to see if you have a fever?”

“No, no, leave it. I don't want to know.”

A smile pinched my cheeks.

“Francis, it's okay. It's probably a cold. But it will be better to know if you have a fever or not to take a pill.”

Francis fervently shook his head before sniffling. He ran a delicate, curved finger down his straight nose. The ash from his cigarette fell on his sleeve.

“I don’t care, I'm fine. Everything's fine.”

I sighed, still smiling. Sometimes Francis's hypochondria could put me in a terrible mood, but in this particular situation, I found it even a little adorable.

“Do you want me to make you some tea, at least?”

“Yes please.”

 

 

Continue? 😁

[secret19]

YES PLEASE!!

[solitaire-au]

I don’t know this fandom and at all, but I definitely want to read more!

[lillian]

Have I died and gone to heaven?? Thank you thank you Francis is everything 

[Dream Moon]

I've not read this book but now I totally want to! Please continue<3 I'm so glad you're back