Chapter Text
“Just a little rich boy trying to buy passage,” the man’s single eye stared down at the coin in the young man’s hand as he shouted behind him to the captain, mockingly.
“No, actually.”
“So you’re not trying to buy passage?” The hoary and worn voice of the older man cut him off with a crooked and toothless grin. “I can see you’re rich from your shoes.”
“My name is Nicholas Roter,” the coins jingled as he slipped them back into his coat. “I arrived from Geneva this morning, please. I was sent here because a position opened as acting physician on this ship.” Nicholas looked past the man and to the docks. There were more ships than he’d ever seen. “Well one of them, anyway.”
The man sniffed back a line of cold liquid that began to drip from his nostril. “That ship is docked, unloading, and loading until next month. Come back then, little rich boy.”
Nicholas turned on the heel of his boot and stepped over the openly spaced planks of the dock back to his horse. He twisted his delicate, uncallused fingers around her reins, stroking her mane with this other hand, and walked towards the tree line.
Once the ships were out of sight and lost behind the forest leaves, Nicholas climbed up on the saddle. “Lilah, can you believe that man?” he mumbled into her upright ear. “Disgusting. Purely disgusting. I’m surprised he didn’t rob us.” The latter he mumbled mostly to himself.
As they moved further on the dusty path, the sound of moving water piqued Nicholas. “What do you say; are you thirsty, girl?” Lilah raised her snout around excitedly and trotted off the path into the water’s direction.
There was a small clearing around a swell of a creek where the shore ballooned out a bit further. On the other side was a man and his own horse, on which he was struggling mount.
Nicholas dismounted and motioned for Lilah to stay on this side of the water.
“Are you alright, sir?”
The man was large and he kept his face down. He struggled again to climb to his saddle, but this time fell with a flinch.
Nicholas rushed across a shallow and rocky portion of the creek and extended his arms to lift the man up.
The man pushed Nicholas away and looked up at him with a sincere smile. “I’m fine.” His smile widened. “Really.”
“What’s that on your leg then?” Nicholas stammered, trying to keep his focus on the large wound on the man’s inner thigh and not on his inappropriate grin. “Do you mind if I look at it?”
“You are looking at it.” The man’s smile never dropped, even when wincing as he stood. His canine tooth showed, but only on one side. He was handsome. Quite handsome. And standing, he was a great deal taller than Nicholas.
“If you sit down,” Nicholas motioned towards the sack on Lilah’s saddle frantically, “I have things to patch that up.”
The man’s lips began to part in protest.
“Don’t say you’ll be fine. Please don’t.” Nicholas interrupted and sat the man down as he turned back to retrieve his case.
The dark sage fabric of the man’s trousers was already torn open around the laceration. It was a solid cut. Nicholas threaded a hooked needle by the light of the reflective surface of water.
“It’s not like sewing.” Nicholas looked up at him in a sharp turn of his head. “You’d think it would be like sewing.”
The man laughed nervously. His voice was low. “You don’t have vodka in there, by any chance?”
Nicholas let out a dismissive sigh and stretched the fabric away from the wound, running water over the skin and washing the blood away in transparent pink. The needle buried itself deep into the meat of his thigh.
“Casper, by the way,” he made a discomforted sound that paraded as an unsettled laugh. He waited for an introduction as Nicholas leaned in closer, kneeled between his legs, and concentrated. “You are,” Casper waited again, as Nicholas tied off the third stitch, “who, exactly?”
“I’m sorry. Nicholas Roter.” He heard the impatience in Casper’s voice. “Dr. Nicholas Roter, actually. I just arrived from the University of Geneva. I studied – “
Casper interrupted him and smiled in an insincere, almost teeth-baring way. “You seem awfully fascinating, Nicholas, but perhaps your life story could wait? Another time?”
“Certainly,” Nicholas nodded, his red hair falling loose from the pomade.
Nicholas tied the remaining eight sutures in, according to him, unbearable silence. He wrapped gauze around Casper’s muscular leg in more silence. As he leaned Casper against his horse, Nicholas was all but afraid to speak.
Casper cleared his throat. “Since you’ve helped thus far, would you mind helping me walk him back to my stables?” He landed the large flat of his palm on his horse’s back
Casper had a kind face with a surprisingly feminine jawline and a stern mouth. That is, until he smiled. His eyes were narrow and colored like wheat fields. They were very close in hue to his hair. Wheat hair and wheat eyes.
“Absolutely.” Nicholas gathered the reins of both horses, making sure not to move too quickly so Casper kept his balance.
Nicholas looked back at Casper, who was trying to hide a limp by leaning against the rump of his horse as they walked. Failing to stay as formal as he initially expected, Nicholas blurted out, “I can pay you to keep Lilah. She has nowhere to go and you have a stable. And I have nowhere to go. And I could keep an eye on your leg.”
Nicholas waved his hands around as he rambled; it amused Casper. “If you promise that you’ll calm down,” Casper agreed. “And I will not accept payment. You’ve helped me; I can help you.”
The pace slowed to a small pause as Nicholas turned and smiled a ‘thank you’. His blue eyes and the corners of his lips came to an apex on his cheeks and his ears pinned back.
The stable was small and connected to a square hut with two rooms. It was quaint, but no one needed more space. Casper shooed the horses to their stalls and asked Nicholas to put out their hay as he walked inside.
When Nicholas followed into the house, Casper was pulling quilts onto a table in the larger, main room. Casper stopped and looked up at Nicholas. “Here,” he said as he flipped him a coin, “for helping me.” Casper moved back to pulling blankets on the table, “even though I would have gotten home on my own.” His grin said that even he knew otherwise.
Nicholas fingered the coin. It was so different from the money in Switzerland. He went to put it with the coins in his pocket, then switched the coin to the other hand and placed it in the opposite pocket alone.