sunburned | (no subject)

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laurence,
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And this is bloody intolerable. By his count, it's been fourteen nights, which means fourteen days. Fourteen weddings and fourteen chances for Anahuarque to turn to him with that particular look in her eye. Some of the nights have been easier than others - sometimes, he's risen to the occasion and others, he hasn't. For her part, Anahuarque seems genuinely kind. There's something particularly hard in the way she leans in to him, her hair loose around her shoulders, and touches his face.

His arm bothers him and he drinks a lot.

He's not sure when exactly it happens. It's as though something entirely snaps inside his head. Tonight is one of the nights when it does not go well, when he takes time to please her in other ways and then lies beside her, open-eyed, until her breathing levels and slows.

Drunk as he is, there's only one place that he can go.

He walks in without knocking.

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Laurence, having sadly become used to the experience of reliving one period of time for what he feared would be an eternity, was sleeping. It was a rather uneasy rest though and when Granby entered he sat up abruptly, pushing a hand back through his hair while trying his best to disguise a yawn. "Granby? What is it?"

"What is it?" Granby sighs and, eschewing the numerous chairs in the room, sprawls across the foot of Laurence's bed instead, bottle in hand, one arm draped across his eyes.

"What isn't it, Laurence. Wouldn't that be the far better question?"

"Would it?" Laurence yawned once more and rose from the bed entirely. Granby's appearance had caught him off guard and he had been dressed only in his shirt, as any respectable gentleman would while sleeping, a fact that he now did his best to amend as he went to pull on a pair of breeches. Modesty once more satisfied, he turned to the captain sprawled across his bed. "What is it, Granby?"

Edited 2012-07-30 00:06 (UTC)

Granby lifts his head, watching Laurence pull on breeches. Breeches are something that hadn't even occurred to Granby - which strikes him as hilarious. He groans and collapses back on the bed.

"I've just had my fourteenth wedding night, Laurence. Fourteenth. Dear God - I'm starting to feel like some kind of puppet, strung up for someone's amusement."

That it was the wedding night and not the wedding itself that disturbed Granby so did not escape Laurence's notice and an involuntary flush crept across his cheeks, thankfully hidden in the low light of the chamber. The man was in quite a state, yet once again Laurence found himself unable to effectively help. The feeling of powerlessness, of uselessness did not sit well with him. "I am sorry, John."

"I am sure you are, Will," says Granby, pushing himself up into a sitting position, but only so that he could take a swig from the bottle in his hand. "I am sure you are very, very sorry. You are, after all, as trapped as me, in a fashion. Only you might spend your nights sleeping."

He hangs his head.

"My apologises, Laurence," he says. "I'm being the most appalling scrub. I hear myself and yet I'm powerless to do anything to stop it. I amn't myself, and I know it."

"It is nor your fault," Laurence said firmly as he pulled up a low stool so that he might sit across from Granby who looked, he had to admit, rather too comfortable on his bed. He supposed that he could not be blamed though as the other man had likely had little opportunity to sleep during the ordeal. Perhaps a rest would do him good. "Few men in your position would have borne it any better."

They're close now, and, when he looks up, Granby takes some comfort from that. His jaw tightens and he looks away for a moment.

"Few men in my position, indeed, Laurence." He sighs. "I am...doing my best."

"I suppose that is all that can be done." yet even as he spoke the words, his face betrayed how he felt about the situation. "If there was anything within my power that I could do to end it, I would."

"Nothing to end it, but you could ease it." It's out of his mouth before he realises that he's saying it, and then there's nothing to do but chase it with another swallow of liquor.

"What if I must live like this forever? One day over and over until I die."

Laurence watched the continuing drinking with an uncomfortable feeling. He knew well enough that his friend had a tendency to indulge too much when his spirits were low and he feared this was such a time. "If this is some form of punishment, it is undeserved." He said it with every ounce of conviction he possessed, determined to at least try to lift Granby's spirit. "What may I do to help though?"

"Which doesn't make it any less true, does it?" he said. He let the bottle drop, guiding it down to rest on the boards between his feet so that he could push his hair back from his forehead with his good hand.

He looks up, giving Laurence a crooked smile.

"I wouldn't ask it of you, Will. You wouldn't do it if I did."

"Did I not say that some would risk anything for you, that they would do anything?" Laurence looked Granby straight in the eye, the picture of sincerity and good intent. "How can I help?"

Edited 2012-07-30 01:34 (UTC)

"I wouldn't ask, Will. I would never ask. Only...you know what so few people know and it might...it might be so comforting to...remember who I am for a brief while."

He's drunk and he's so, so weary, which plays no small part when he sways in and presses a kiss against the corner of Laurence's mouth.

Laurence merely sat still. When he had been a young boy, just barely arrived at sea, another boy had attempted something very similar during a rare moment of quiet in the midshipman's berth. Then he had merely stood and stared until the other boy stammered an apology and left, mistaking his stupefied confusion for silent scorn. Odd how another kiss, years and worlds apart, could elicit a reaction so like the first. Though he was very much no longer a startled boy of thirteen, he was still thrown profoundly off balance and could find no real, proper way of responding.

Edited 2012-07-30 01:57 (UTC)

Without pausing to think about it, Granby turns his head and presses at truer kiss to Laurence's mouth - brief and chaste, but very definitely there, nonetheless. He lets out a shaky breath, remembering, for a second, the island and how different everything had been there.

It didn't do to dwell.

He sits back, looking at Laurence, studying his features.

"There is no-one on this earth that I may trust as I trust you," he says, voice so low that it cracks, in the end, but holds.

After a long moment's silence, Laurence placed his hand atop Granby's, squeezing firmly. Though the situation made him uncomfortable he would do his best to continue being worthy of the trust the other man placed in him. "I will do what I can."

"I don't know that there's anything you can do, Will," says Granby, shaking his head, not trying to pull his hand away because there's small comfort in the touch.

"Nothing that I'd ask of you, anyway."

That statement left little to no doubt in Laurence's mind as to what exactly Granby was referring. For all that he had never partaken in the practice himself life on board a ship left little room for ignorance of it entirely. Despite how very much he wanted to assist the other man, a host of impediments came clamoring forward to prevent it. "I am sorry, John. I do not think I could--"

"You do not think you could?" says Granby, head tilted slightly as he leans in again. His hand shifts under Laurence's fingers grazing the delicate bones of his wrist.

"Then don't think, Will. It's a simple enough thing."

Laurence shifted his position slightly, but he did not move his hand away from Granby. It seemed to him that to do so would be a sign of weakness, almost an insult, and the other man did not deserve that from him. Yet he could not help feeling out of his depth. "Perhaps not so simple as you seem to believe."

"It's like anything," he says, studying Laurence's face for a moment before he very carefully leans in again, pressing another kiss against his mouth. It feels utterly different from kissing Anahuarque. He feels more utterly than he has in a handful of weeks.

"It's easier if you try not to overthink."

The kiss was utterly unlike any of the -admittedly few-times he had kissed or been kissed by women. It was, however, not at all unpleasant, a fact that worried Laurence a great deal. "Granby. This is-- You are not yourself," he said finally, pulling back far enough to speak and glance at the drink he had abandoned not so very long ago.

"I'm entirely myself, though I don't necessarily feel like it," he says, following the line of Laurence's gaze down to the bottle. Carefully, Granby leans down and moves the bottle out of the way before he slides down onto his knees, so he's leaning up into it when he presses another kiss to Laurence's mouth, this one more insistent than the one that came before.

Just as the kiss had been rather confusingly pleasant, Granby's current behavior unleashed a torrent of conflicting emotions from Laurence. On the one hand it was his friend, a fellow officer, a man whose life he had saved and who had saved his own in return on more than one occasion, who was now down on his knees before him. Yet, it could not be denied that what he was doing continued to be quite nice from a purely physical standpoint.

Edited 2012-07-30 16:56 (UTC)