Chapter Text
The Amazon, McGregor quickly learning, is definitely not the best place for multiple layers of custom-tailored wool suits. McGregor groans from where he’s lying face-down on the rough wooden boards and finishes peeling off his shirt. He feels dirty and tacky with sweat and he’s sure he smells like a pigsty. McGregor doesn’t have enough presence of mind to even be embarrassed about the pitiful picture he must make, not when it feels like his skin is boiling off his face. Lily pats his back in consolidation.
McGregor flops onto his back to squint up at Lily suspiciously. Her lips tremble with repressed laughter even as her eyebrows inch upward. “You okay?” She asks.
McGregor groans and throws a feeble thumbs up in her general direction. “I’m just peachy, couldn’t you tell?” Sweat drips into his eyes, which really isn’t pleasant at all. His cheeks grow hot, from embarrassment or the sun or both. “I take it back. I think I’m dying. Please inform our darling family that they’re not invited to my funeral.”
Lily snorts and lowers herself carefully so she’s sitting by the side of his head. “I’m sure they’ve taken to pretending we no longer exist,” she says dryly, “so I don’t think that would be an issue.” And then she places a cool cloth on his forehead.
McGregor whines and pushes into it. He doesn’t even care that it stinks of river water or that he makes a frankly obscene noise when Lily pushes a full canteen into his limp grip. “Lily, I think I love you,” McGregor gasps after a few greedy pulls. Never again will he take the dreary weather of home for granted again. He’d much rather have to take an umbrella with him everywhere he went than suffer through this unbearable heat again.
Lily strokes McGregor’s sweaty hair with a gentle hand, patiently untangling knots that he hasn’t had time to brush out. “If this is all it takes to get you to say the L-word we should definitely do it more often,” she says. McGregor smacks her leg and she laughs, loud and carefree. Then her lips quirk into a devious smile, her eyes turning sharp and knowing. “Although I’m not the one who was insistent on making sure you didn’t get heatstroke.”
“You mean you want me to succumb to a miserable and sweaty death?” McGregor retorts instinctively. Then what Lily actually said rewinds itself in his head twice, pauses on “he” and the only other person on their little boat that she could possibly mean.
“Frank made you sit and nurse me back to health like a swooning maiden?” He says indignantly.
“I thought swooning maidens were usually the ones being nursed?”
“That’s not the point!” McGregor shrieks. His voice has gone up maybe two octaves. as he pushes himself up into a sitting position so he can more comfortably interrogate his sister, he catches the sly smirk she gives him before she hides it beneath half-false concern. “Frank, the same man who nearly got us killed because he was too busy trying to get you to turn back? Frank, the one with the giant murder cat? Are we talking about the same man?”
Lily smirks and shrugs nonchalantly, ducking smoothly when McGregor tries to take another swipe at her. “Do we know any other Franks?” She says thoughtfully. “I only know the one, but you’re much more social than I.” This time, she lets him shove her.
Admittedly, McGregor does feel ten times better than he did meet minutes ago now that he has water in him. Being around Lily soothes the constant itch under his skin and the endless whispers that rise to the surface when he’s alone, too. The ones that say things like freak and sodomite and you deserve to be alone.
Lily brushes her hand against his. When he lifts his eyes from where he’d been trying to stare a hole in this godforsaken boat, her matching blue eyes are concerned. She always knows when he’s in danger of falling back into that dark bottomless pit. “You okay?” Lily asks again. McGregor smiles and ducks his head.
“I am. Really.” He replies honestly. He loves his sister so much it makes his heart hurt with it sometimes. He takes a deep breath and pushes himself up, only swaying a little. Lily rises with him. He can see Frank at the wheel, staring determinedly at the horizon instead of them, presumably to give them some semblance of privacy. In the dying light he looks gorgeous; all sun-browned skin and toned muscles that are visible even under his clothes, brown eyes that almost seem to glow. Something warm and fuzzy begins to unfurl in his chest.
Lily elbows him none-to-gently in his side. McGregor grunts. “I think you just bruised my kidney,” he whines.
Lily rolls her eyes and scoffs. “You’re fine, you big baby. Now stop undressing Frank with your brain and go thank him like a gentleman.”
McGregor’s neck and face spontaneously burst into flames. “What-that’s-I wasn’t-you-!” McGregor manages to splutter. It feels like his mind is experiencing a cataclysmic meltdown, which is most likely why he doesn’t even notice that Lily’s been gently nudging him closer to Frank until she’s mysteriously absent, leaving him to suffer next to a very bemused and very handsome man.
The sound that escapes his mouth upon realizing that he’s suddenly extremely close to Frank may sound like a mouse that has just been stepped on by an elephant, but McGregor maintains that it was simply a stifled gasp. “Frank!” He says as he scrambles to say something less humiliating than what’s a man like you doing in a place like this?
“What’s a man like you doing in a place like this?” McGregor blurts.
Frank stares at him blankly, a tiny furrow between his eyebrows, and looks at the wheel he currently has a firm grip on. “Pants paid me to take her and you to find the magic tree?” Frank says. It sounds more like a question than an actual answer, and why wouldn’t it, it’s not like they’re in a bar and McGregor is buying him a drink, they’re in the bloody Amazon with it’s stifling heat and constant dangers and annoyingly attractive men.
McGregor would rather throw himself into the river riddled with piranhas than continue this train-wreck of a conversation. “Well—yes. Lily did do that, it was just a—never mind.” He wonders if it’s socially acceptable to knock oneself out in sheer humiliation.
McGregor holds up the empty canteen instead. “I suppose I have you to thank for making sure I didn’t pass out?” Frank huffs and turns his attention back to the river in front of them, shoulders creeping up toward his ears.
“It was nothin’,” Frank replies gruffly. “You weren’t gonna pass out.”
“Right. But. It wasn’t nothing to me.” McGregor says. Frank glances at him again, confusion peeking through his stone-faced apathy, like he doesn’t understand why McGregor is still here. For the first time, he wonders if Frank has anyone back at the town that worries about him. Makes sure he isn’t neglecting his own wants and needs when he gets sucked into a project.
McGregor looks away from those shuttered eyes and redirects his attention to the scenery instead. “When you’re not fearing for your life, it really is beautiful,” he says quietly. It feels like anything louder would fracture the moment they’ve somehow fallen into; the setting sun painting the water red and pink and gold, stars only beginning to dot the sky overhead. A breeze had picked up, too, and it playfully tousles McGregor’s already disheveled hair.
In his periphery, he sees Frank turn to look at him fully. He doesn’t acknowledge it, and after a moment Frank takes back the canteen McGregor holds out. Their fingers brush. He wonders if Frank feels the electric jolt the touch elicits, or if it’s once again just him hopelessly pining away for someone who can and won’t ever love him back.
“Yeah,” Frank concedes softly, “it is.”
McGregor smiles.