sunburned | (no subject)

Maddie's off exploring, but I've stayed home this morning, too deeply involved in a book to bother with the real world. I don't even hear the knock on the door at first, but John's voice calling my name gets my attention.

Book still in hand, my finger marking the page, I get up to let him in.

"Good morning!" I say, cheerful until I see his face and concern takes over. "What's wrong?"

"What isn't?" he says, rubbing his hand over his face, still leaning against the doorframe. "Everything's gone wrong and I've had enough of this bloody island. Goddamned, thrice cursed bloody place."

He sighs, miserably.

"I don't suppose you'd put me up for a night or two?"

I owe my life to this bloody island, a fact he knows perfectly well, and I don't think he'd be saying such a thing to me about it without a very good reason.

"Of course you can stay here for as long as you'd like," I answer without a second of hesitation and put my hand on his arm. "Come inside and tell me what's happened. You look rather terrible."

"You probably wouldn't believe me if I told you," says John, letting her usher him into the hut, taking no small measure of comfort just from her touch on her arm. In the midst of all the repeating, he'd let himself worry that he'd never see her again.

"I've been home, briefly. Well, no. I've been in the Americas. Me and Laurence."

"You what?" I don't doubt him, not for a second, because he doesn't look like a man making something up. He looks upset, and I do the only thing I can think of.

I lead him to the kitchen, force him into a chair, and put the kettle on for tea. I take out two cups and a flask of whisky, and pour a generous measure into the one I set in front of him. That'll do until there's tea.

"You went to the Americas without me? Since yesterday?" The second is probably the more valid point.

"Since breakfast," he says, briefly, reaching for the cup. He knows that he has a tendency to resort to alcohol when his mood dips, but, right then, he doesn't have anything in him to care.

"Since breakfast, only, it's been...fifteen nights? Fifteen nights and then I blink and I'm back, sitting at the same table with Laurence looking back and barely a breath passed between us?"

"How...?" I start to ask, but realize that the only possible answer is "mad island" and don't bother. It's early, but I think the situation calls for it, so I pour some whisky into my own cup. I pause to put my arms around his shoulders briefly before I sit down.

"What actually happened, John?"

"Fourteen weddings," says Granby, bleakly, sipping the contents of the cup before he looks back up at her. "And fourteen wedding nights, some of them more successful than others. Plus a fifteenth, cut short."

I don't have to ask whose wedding nights when the look on his face tells the story clearly enough. Anyone else, and it might have been an amusing tale, but I know him better than that.

"The Inca Empress?"

"Anahuarque," he says, taking another sip from the cup. "A kind woman, actually, and very beautiful." His jaw tightens. "And, believe it or not, that's not actually the worst of it."

"I'm glad she didn't turn out to be the sort who would take off your head, at least. I quite like your head where it is." I squeeze his arm and a take a sip of my own drink to fortify myself against whatever he found worse than marriage.

"I almost don't want to make you tell me."

"Me and Laurence," he says, eyebrows drawn together. It feels foreign to say this to a woman but he also can't imagine not telling her. "Me and Will. We..."

His cheeks flush with dark, shamed colour. "It was a way of regaining a small measure of control."

I don't move my hand except to hold his arm just a bit more tightly. He's obviously very upset, and I wish I knew how to help him with something better than whisky and words.

"Did it help at all, in the moment? Because he's your best friend, isn't he? It can't be the worst thing he'd do for you."

I realize I've never told him what Maddie did for me. Exactly how I died.

"It isn't even a bad thing at all. Awkward, at best, but... there are worse things friends can do for each other than offering a bit of comfort in an extreme situation."

"It helped, to feel like my destiny was in my own hands and I could chose what I desired." He cheeks stay red. "I...I've always. For him. But I wouldn't ever have told him. It didn't ever have to become obvious or...known at all."

He clears his throat.

"And now he cannot even look me in the eye."

"Oh, John," is all I can say. I would fix this for him if I could, promise not to meddle in his affairs be damned, if I had any idea how.

The kettle sings and I jump, startled. Instead of words even I can't think of, I fall back on the warmth of a friendly kiss on the cheek as I get up to make the tea and give him the courtesy of a moment to collect himself.

"It's my own bloody fault," he says, quietly, as she moves away from him to make tea. "I was the one who asked. And...he had plenty of chances to change his mind - to stop - and he didn't, but...how much of that was wanting to help me no matter what the cost to himself?"

"Nobody can answer that but Will, for himself." I know that isn't what he really hopes to hear, but it's the only answer I have, useless as it is. "I know what I would do for you, if you needed me. What you're telling me here hardly even registers, and I haven't known you nearly so long or so well as he has." I don't look at him, instead giving the tea far more attention than it needs. "If you knew the awful thing that Maddie did for me because I asked her to... There are worse things than the memory of a tumble in bed to ask a friend to live with the rest of their lives."

"I am merely concerned. What he will think about himself," he admits. "Though I fear that damage already done and nothing further to be done about it."

He frowns.

"You and Maddie are so close...I can't imagine..."

"It might take some time to adjust, of course." I won't lie and tell him that everything will be perfectly fine, or exactly how it was between them before. "If he's truly your friend you'll find your way. I won't believe otherwise." Some people believe in true love, but I believe in true friendship.

"It was Maddie who killed me," I tell him as I pour tea into his cup. "We don't have any milk, sorry. Though it doesn't go so well with the whisky anyway."

"I...have wanted," he says, jaw tight, "but i would never have told him, Julie. Not until the day I died."

He watches her for a long moment, letting her words sink in as she makes the tea.

"She must Iove you very much," he says finally.

"She's my best friend." I know exactly how lucky I am to have Maddie.

I sit down to my own tea, the cup warm and comforting in my hands.

"You can stay here as long as you'd like, John. Any time, not even just because you're upset. We'll add a room for you." I give him a quick smile, because I think we might need to do that anyway, not just for him but for the rate at which I seem to collect houseguests. "I don't know how to make you feel better about any of this, but whatever I can do to help, I will."

"That's very sweet of you, Julie, but I am going to have to go home eventually," he says, lifting his tea and breathing across the surface. "I know it's not so serious in the grand scheme of things - worse things have happened at sea, haven't they? But I can't let it lie...not forever."

"I only mean that you're welcome here and that you needn't feel in a rush to leave before you're ready. I do plan on keeping you for always, but not necessarily in my house." Maddie is my very best friend, of course, but John's earned a firm place in my heart since finding me lost and broken on the beach and the least I would share with him is a place in my home as well. "Worse things have happened everywhere. I understand that this isn't an easy thing for you, but give it some time."

I rest a hand on his arm, just to remind him he isn't without a friend who loves him dearly, and sip my tea.

"Did you get to visit with your Crocodile, at least?"

"You make it sound like all I'm lacking is a collar or a harness," he teases, managing to raise a wan smile.

Her hand on his arm is very welcome and he sips his tea, nodding. "A little. It was...an immense comfort. To fall asleep with her close again. Even if I wanted to bloody strangle her for putting me in the position."

"I didn't even ask if you're housebroken," I tease back, trying to encourage his smile. "I promise, no matter how much I might remind you of her, that I will never try to marry you off to anyone, empress, king, or commoner. And I'll assume the same from you."

"Most of the time," he promises, still smiling, though he ducks his head.

"It was the strangest thing," he says. "It was me...snapping and storming off to talk to her that brought us out of it."

"That's all anyone can ask for, isn't it?" I don't know how much I'm actually helping him, but the smile is heartening.

I, however, frown. "Like it was meant to get you to react in a specific way? To teach you a lesson of some sort?"

"Exactly like that," he says. "I did it all ways, things went either one way or the other - but even...what occurred with Laurence didn't change anything." He shrugs. "It was deciding not to be a part of it at all that changed it."

"This is an odd place, to be able to do such a thing to you. What do you suppose the point of it was?" I hate the idea that he's been put through this at all, but if there's truly no reason for it it's somehow even worse. "I'm glad you worked out how to come back, at least. I'd have missed you."

"I suppose to make me assert myself instead of going along with it? That was what changed it, at least.". He rolled his shoulder in a shrug. "I've never been very good at standing up to her. At first, I was so worried that that made me a terrible Captain. She's so bloody wilful."

"I can't imagine that it would be an easy thing to even try to go against the wishes of a dragon at all." Especially for one as kind as he is; I'm sure what he most wanted was just to make her happy, because it's obvious that he loves her very much. "I'd like to have a bit of a chat with her, having had a bit of experience in tempering my own willfulness."

"I'm supposed to though," he says, grimly. "Because I'm her Captain, you see? It's my role in life to at least try to get her to behave as she should. Unfortunately, she's not by good at doing anything if she can't see the immediate benefit to her own bloody self."

"I don't believe for a minute that you didn't try. Stop being so hard on yourself." I get up to refill my cup of tea, and his without asking, and stop to rest my hand on his shoulder before I sit down again. "If she has a will of her own, she has responsibility for it, too. It isn't all on you, Captain or not."

He has, traditionally, been hard on himself where Iskierka is concerned. Her willfulness did always make him feel like a poor excuse for a Captain, though Laurence did always seem to have mixed luck with Temeraire.

"She's always been willful," he says. "I think our low point was when she first heard of bounty and capital."

"You never told me she was a pirate." I think I do an acceptable job of hiding my delight, because this is certainly not a thing that pleases John. I also refrain from calling him Hook, because he doesn't need any added confusion, either. "That she has tendencies toward it, at least," I add quickly, because that's probably an insulting thing to say about a military dragon.

"We had some difficulty explaining to her that capital must be gained in battle," he says, looking pained, though the memory does raise a smile. "That not just any fishing boat from Plymouth harbour would do."

I laugh, because I can't help myself.

"Sorry. I know she's caused you no end of trouble, and I'd probably find her maddening myself, but I quite like your Crocodile."

"She does have her moments," he says, somewhat grudgingly. "And I'd not be without my time with her. Not for all the world."

It's so clear how much he loves her that it makes me sad he's forced to be without her here.

"I could turn to piracy if you'd like," I offer, only half joking. I am not a replacement for a dragon, but I would try, for him, to recreate part of the experience.

"I think I've had more than enough of that in my time, thank you."

For an officer in his Majesty's Air Corps and a coal merchant's son besides, John Granby could effect a surprising level of primness when it suited him.

"If I want to be a pirate, I'll be a pirate."

For the daughter of the aristocracy, I can be remarkably prone to rebellion.

I jump up from the table to fetch the copy of Peter Pan that I've filched from the library (the bookshelf is not that kind to me, but it just didn't feel like home without it around), which I bring back and place on the table for John.

"For if you get bored. It'll explain everything, Captain Without a Hook."

She teases him often - he's used to it. One eyebrow raises and he reaches out, picking up the book.

"I'm almost afraid of what will happen if the two of you ever meet," he says.

"Next time you go visiting, take me with you and we'll find out."

I know people have no control over when or where the island might send us, or if we'll even come back, but I hate the idea of him being in some other world I can't access instead of in a hut just a few minutes from my own.

"I like to think we'll be great friends. If she likes me at all, that is. I don't know how I'd get on with dragons."

"I think you'd get on with her," he says, toys th the rim of his teacup, face thoughtful as he considers it. "She wouldn't view you as a thread, anyway, although....she has always encouraged...that. She liked Little. I think she just doesn't like to think of me as lonely."

"I can't see a dragon being much threatened by me. Unless they're much smaller than I imagine, or can be talked to death." I can tease myself, too. I sip my tea and smile at him over my cup. "I'm an entirely different sort of company for you, but she and I do have that in common."

"They can be terribly insecure creatures," he says, leaning back in his chair. "And she can manage to be discreet, most of the time, at least."

"Maybe I am a dragon, in the body of a girl." I may still play a good game of confidence, but I know myself well enough to recognize what my time with the Gestapo did to me. "Still no fire breathing, but you never know what might happen here."