Chapter Text
There had been signs. One cannot say that it came entirely out of the blue, although it may have seemed so at the time. Of course, it should go without saying, there had been those ordinary awkward moments between male friends -- the clumsy maneuvering through a doorway, the second of eye contact held after a laugh dies down. But these were the sort of wobbly steps that one should expect to see between men who become fast friends as adults, without having had the chance to learn each other’s rhythms in childhood, and when their bashful enthusiasm can resemble the infatuations of youth.
Indeed, those things were to be expected. But by the time that Jamie’s term at Helwater ended, the ground was subtly shifting, giving way to something strange and unnerving. And if anyone with keen enough eyes had been at hand, they would have seen it approaching.
For one thing, there was the chess game in which Jamie let an imprudent word pass his lips for the first time in years. Playing chess, of course, was their familiar habit, almost a shared vice. For several years Grey had used his supposed duty to “check up” on his ward as a pretext for a match, although soon enough it became clear to most that the reality was the reverse -- the chess matches were his pretext to see his ward. This particular game took place in early spring, shortly before Easter. John Grey knew that he would be summoned any day to report to Greenwich to prepare for possible deployment across the Channel—after their success at Cherbourg, the high command was eager to try out more “descents” on the French coast—and so John was determined to spend several days at Helwater first. John also knew that he was enamored with Jamie (that much he had to admit to himself) but by this time he had further managed to convince himself that he liked Helwater, the grounds and the fresh air, the tasteful house, and even its generally dull but agreeable occupants. This conviction made it easier for him to govern his emotions around Jamie; the whole situation was more seemly if John could at least pretend to appreciate the charms of Lady Isobel, or of some particularly scenic stand of birch.
So at first this particular chess match appeared no more or less awkward than their usual routine. With the ground still muddy from lingering snowmelt and the morning mist just burning off, John and Jamie had fumbled their way through the south meadow in search of a suitable spot to set up their little table and stools. Neither of them was so bold as to claim a corner of the drawing room for a match between a gentleman and a groom--not that there was usually anything indiscreet about their friendly chatter as they set up and began their games. On this morning, as usual, John plied Jamie with questions about small matters – horses born, bought, and sold, illnesses overcome, and guests coming and going from the estate, leaving little wakes of petty gossip behind them. John interrogated Jamie, countering the older man’s natural reticence, for the pleasure of hearing his voice, of observing his expressions, of flattering his self-importance, and also, in truth, in hopes of distracting Jamie from the opening moves on the board. The gambit did not succeed in this instance, since after John advanced one of his knights into the center of the board with an eye towards setting up a fork attack, Jamie shook his head with a bemused smile and interrupted the casual chatter, remarking, “you always like to advance those knights without delay, do you not, my Lord?”
John blushed and shrugged slightly, replying, “What can I say? Horsemanship is my only talent.”
Jamie clicked his tongue and countered, “Oh, I very much doubt that.” As he parried with a pawn, the wry smile returned. “I do not believe that horsemanship alone can allow a man to rise to the rank of a major,” he declared, with a barely suppressed hint of Jacobite derision, “in His Majesty’s dragoons.”
John sighed. “I have known some men who have risen to this rank without even that qualification.”
Jamie laughed and dropped a hand onto his thigh while John made another rather reckless move with his bishop. “Ye mean to say, my Lord,” Jamie inquired, “that not every officer in His Majesty’s service is as brilliant a tactician as yourself?”
“As I?” John asked incredulously, while Jamie glanced down at the board. “It seems I cannot even manage to win a chess match against a groom.” John winced momentarily at his own words—he had aimed for self-deprecation, yet somehow managed to remind them both of Jamie’s degraded position.
“Well then,” Jamie scoffed gently, looking up from the board with one distinctly arched eyebrow. “Ye must be reminded, my Lord,” he remarked with exaggerated haughtiness, “that ye are engaged in battle with the Laird of Lallybroch.”
John was relieved by Jamie’s slightly self-mocking tone; “Of course,” he conceded, with only the gentlest hint of irony, “how could I forget?” As Jamie parried again, nearly completing a solid defensive line through the middle of the board, John sighed. Surveying the unfriendly terrain before him, he remarked absently, “regardless, I am thinking that I should quit the Army, anyway. As soon as this business with France is over, at least.”
Jamie leaned back from the board with a scowl, then looked at John askance, his head cocked slightly to the left. “Aye? What leads ye to say that?”
John shrugged. “I’m not – I’m not sure, exactly. I think that Army life does not agree with me as well as I thought it did.” He paused, then continued with a note of wistfulness, “or maybe as much as it used to.”
“Oh? Is it… tiresome? Are ye weary of it?”
“I suppose – I am tired of certain things. The discipline, and the bad food – though I suppose I don’t mind those as much as some men do. I suppose it’s….” He leaned over the board, looking for another line of attack. “I suppose I feel a certain tedium, with the constant shuffling off, from one camp to another, one fortress after another.” He moved his other knight. “I like to travel, and to see the world, very much, but – eventually all of those camps and barracks start to look the same.” Jamie grunted softly in apparent recognition. “I suppose I’m just at an age now that I want to be home.”
Jamie glanced quickly back and forth between the board and John’s face with a grave expression-- whether due to the game, or to the conversation, or both, John could not tell. After a deep breath, Jamie said, “d’ye ken what ye would wish to do then? If ye did resign the army?”
“I don’t, or, I haven’t really thought about it,” John said, beginning to feel the warmth of the sun and glancing up into the canopy of the nearby woods. As he began removing his coat, he observed, rather absently, as if to himself, “I suppose I would become bored just betting on cards, in London, or someplace in the country, and,” as he glanced toward the house, “being a gentlemen – hosting balls, or whatever it is these people do.”
“There is a great deal ye could do,” Jamie began to say, with slight impatience, before trailing off, and realizing he had no particular ideas to propose. What did an English gentleman do outside of going to war and managing estates? Wasn’t there something more impressive for John? There was politics, of course, but – Jamie dropped that line of thought in favor of another. “I mean to say, my Lord, have ye never thought of the Navy?” With a slight smile returning, Jamie moved his bishop out beyond his defensive wall.
“What do you mean? Request a reassignment?” John felt an almost immediate queasiness at the thought of a small shipboard cabin.
“Aye. It seems natural; ye could see the world, as ye say, but also yer home travels with ye, like the shell of the snail.” John scoffed, glancing up from the board, but Jamie persisted. “Ye have heard how sailors speak o’ their vessels – the pride, and attachment – almost….” He paused for a moment; “almost like… like a lover.”
John looked at him for an awkward moment, then shook his head wryly, “It hardly seems practical. My skills in horsemanship wouldn’t mean much on a ship. And I think I’m rather old now to learn the arts of seafaring.”
“Ye would learn them, I am sure. Ye are young yet; and more, ye have the mind and the heart to master it.”
“The heart, maybe, but the stomach--hardly. And besides it’s quite impossible to play chess at sea, Jamie. The ground is unsteady. The pieces fall over,” he concluded with a sigh.
Jamie waved his hand dismissively. “Ye would invent a board to hold them in place. Like knives in a knife box.”
“Maybe so, Jamie. And suppose that I did. Who would serve for my opponent? Jack Tar? The ship’s cook?”
Jamie looked him in the eye for a long moment, before saying firmly, “I am sure ye would find someone.”
Jamie’s intense look gave John pause, and he held the gaze for as long as he could before looking up at the sun beginning to shine through the cloud cover. “I suppose….” he trailed off.
“I don’t believe ye would be alone, John.” His Christian name, naked of its proper title, hung rather ominously in the air. John hesitated to respond. Jamie began again, as if correcting himself, “but truly, my Lord, if ye decide to leave your commission, ye can excel at any endeavor that ye set for yourself. I believe that.”
John replied wearily, “Except beat you in chess.” He looked up at his opponent’s face as Jamie’s grave look softened again.
“Nay, that one may lie beyond your grasp, my Lord.” Returning to his firm and deliberate tone, Jamie continued, “But ye are in truth – my Lord, ye are the most remarkable, the most exceptional man in my acquaintance – that I have ever known, truly, outside of my own kin.”
“Of course, outside of your kin” John concurred, afraid of betraying the bittersweet emotions that Jamie’s words evoked. Teasingly, he added, “Ever loyal to the clan, are we?”
Jamie smiled as he leaned forward, planting one elbow on his knee. “Aye, indeed, always,” he said, “though ye should take the praise as none the lesser for that.”
Flattered but apprehensive, John broke from Jamie’s gaze to look closely at the board. Forcing himself to concentrate, he at least picked out two moves by which he could capture Jamie’s bishop. Still, he was sure that his opponent would block his scheme in time. “The tricky thing about chess, Jamie,” he said with exasperation, “is that you have to let the other fellow take a turn.”
Jamie laughed again, this time near enough for John to feel a soft wisp of his breath on his face. “Aye, that ye do,” he confirmed, “but ye will find a way around that, I am sure enough, Sassenach.”
Distracted by Jamie’s sheer closeness, John took more than a moment to register the coarse epithet that the Scotsman had just casually dropped into the conversation. Jamie’s smile vanished, and he cast his eyes down at the board as if frantically searching there for an excuse; “I do not mean – I am sorry, my Lord, I mean to say that ye – I, I am not,” he stuttered.
“Well,” John interrupted half-jokingly, “that is a bit crude, I should say, for a Laird of Lallybroch.”
John’s joke did not land. Jamie looked at him, his eyes wide with terror and confusion. “I did not mean, my Lord – I truly beg your pardon.” He cast his eyes down again. “I, I don’t – I don’t know why I said such a thing.” He ran a hand back over his hair. “I never say such things – ”
“What, never?” John sensed something strange in Jamie’s excessive contrition, and did not know whether to dismiss it or search it out.
“I would never --”
“It seems you just have,” John observed, trying to keep a note of levity in his voice. Something had hit a nerve; it he just managed not to scare Jamie off, he might figure out why.
“Aye, my Lord,” Jamie conceded in frustration. “I – I apologize, sincerely, my Lord. I mean to say, it has been years since– that – you must understand that I would never use such a word in earnest--” He stopped.
“But you use the word in jest, I take it?”
“Aye, only – Never in a serious manner, my Lord, certainly. Except – as – “
“Except as? Go on, truly I am more intrigued than insulted. Or should I be?”
“Except, I should say, as a term of – of affection. Of a sort.”
“Affection?” John asked incredulously.
There was a long pause, as Jamie’s eyes darted around the small table and the ground around it. He looked at John’s face again momentarily. “Aye my Lord. In my own fashion.”
John looked at Jamie’s hand as it repeatedly, nervously squeezed a captured pawn. Though he was sure that there was something more that Jamie was not revealing, he decided not to press the point. “A strange affection,” John observed. “But no matter-- we shall forget all about it,” he concluded with a slight wave of his hand over the near edge of the table, even as inwardly he took satisfaction that the Scotsman’s blunder had given him a slight upper hand in their contest of wits, if not in the chess game.
The pair managed to return the conversation that morning to horses and the Navy until the match limped its way to a close. Jamie had been rattled by the mishap, but no more than John was confused and distracted, so the result was as expected. As they recapped the events of the game, each lamenting his own blunders, Jamie cleared the pieces into their cloth pouch. John stood to begin folding up the table, but Jamie made a move to stop him, leaning forward and objecting, “you needn’t do that, Lord John.”
“It is my pleasure,” John assured him. “And you needn’t call me Lord John.” Then, in a moment of rare abandon, John put his hand on Jamie’s shoulder and added, “you may call me, ‘Lord Sassenach.’” Jamie laughed, even as a moment later he turned red and swallowed nervously, before finally collecting the chairs to return to them to the kitchen.