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The ride from Fraser's Ridge to Mt. Josiah plantation usually took nine days, and Jamie made it in six. He would have made it in five or even four, if not for the welfare of his horse. The poor beast had little more than Jamie himself to carry, yet he huffed and trembled when Jamie dismounted, leading him by the reins into the door yard of Lord John's home.
"Hello, the house," Jamie called, or tried to, his voice dying in a hoarse croak from lack of use and water. He'd let the horse drink earlier in the day but had forgotten to take some for himself. He'd forgotten or neglected virtually everything save his own name, this desperate agony in his chest, and the unshakeable need to see Grey, confusing and frightening in its intensity.
Jamie worked his tongue to wet his mouth and tried again, finally getting out a gruff, "Hello, the house."
Jamie didn’t recognize the young woman who met him at the door, but he presumed her to be a servant. She inquired his name, then invited him into the house, before shuffling off, presumably in search of Lord John.
His assumption was proved correct in a mere moment when Lord John appeared in the shadowed foyer. The first time Jamie had seen him since…
“My God, Fraser, whatever are you doing here?” Grey asked, tense as a soldier waiting for the start of battle.
He shouldn’t have come, Christ, what was he thinking? But also, how could he not have come? This wasn’t the sort of thing one told a man in a letter, yet when Jamie opened his mouth to explain, nothing came out. Perhaps he might have devoted a fraction of those six days of hard riding to coming up with a reasonable explanation for coming here, but all he’d thought of was fleeing. Fleeing his family, who needed him, his tenants, who were distraught. They all wanted to help, of course, but how could they? They were Jamie’s responsibility, not the other way around. So instead, he stood here in this narrow foyer, staring at the one man who, by all rights, should never wish to see Jamie again. And all Fraser could see beyond the rightful distrust in Grey’s eyes and his stiff shoulders was the promise of unassuming comfort.
“I… I’m sorry, it’s late,” Jamie said, clearing his throat with a cough to reclaim his voice. “I should have sent a letter ahead, but…” He flexed his right hand, drawing John’s attention to the mangled shape of it for just a moment.
The servant had made herself scarce, though Grey would likely not want to have to say any of the things they may have to say to each other feeling exposed in the open foyer of his house. His eyes narrowed, and it was obvious he remained wary. “Would you care to further explain your presence here in the privacy of my study?” he asked, curiosity winning out it seemed.
Frankly, Jamie didn’t really care about privacy, not for his own sake, and not anymore. But John did, so Jamie nodded and followed him.
He hated this, hated the icy expanse between them, nevermind that it was all his own doing. Some time yesterday, Jamie’s left hand developed an intermittent tremor, exhaustion likely to blame. It started up again and Jamie clenched his fist briefly, then shook it out at his side, concealed in the dusty skirt of his coat.
Grey hesitated, but then shut the door behind them. Perhaps deciding a shut door made little difference. If Jamie wanted to finish what he’d started the last time they were together, his small servant offered Grey no protection in that regard. “Care to state your business here, Mr. Fraser?” So goddamn polite and formal even now…
All Jamie had to do was tell John what had happened. Short sentences. A few words, that was all it would take. He opened and closed his mouth over and over, nothing happening. Because if he said the words, then it was real, and it could not be real.
Candles and a gentle fire lit the study, windows behind Grey’s desk bared to the starry sky, heavy drapes still open. And Jamie still couldn’t speak. He reached across the narrow, frigid distance that separated them, took Grey’s face in both of his hands and kissed him roughly. It was a far cry from the soft experiment of the first time, and lacking the tender passion of the second. It was harsh and it was desperate, the last-ditch effort of a man with absolutely nothing left, save the possibility of comfort without demand.
Grey jerked back, though he did not manage to escape Jamie’s grasp entirely. His eyes were wide, alight with a mire of emotions Jamie could not possibly name, certainly not now when his own emotions were just as dangerous and confused. His mouth opened and closed like a fish washed ashore, but no words ever left his lips. “Christ,” John said. “I’m having that dream again.”
Words failed Jamie once more and he dove back in, cutting John off with another kiss, even rougher than before. One hand went to John’s waist, sliding under his coat to his back, pulling him closer with a harsh jerk. He threw himself at Grey, begging him to understand, to acquiesce. Need was the only thought in Jamie’s head, nothing but urgent need. “Want ye,” he gasped, pulling away and scraping his teeth down John’s neck. “Please.” Don’t make me explain.
“If you expect me to turn you away as I did before, just know, I only had the strength to do it once.” Grey was breathless as he spoke through his teeth, trembling, wild-eyed. His hands were curled still into his fists at his side, like he was unsure what Jamie might permit him to do with his own body, so he opted to do nothing.
Jamie hadn’t wanted Grey to turn him away before, and he didn’t now, and he couldn’t make himself say any of this, damn it. But it was permission and that was good enough. Jamie shoved Grey’s coat off of his shoulders, steering him backward toward the desk, one determined step at a time.
He could feel Grey give in to him, not relax exactly, but accept the offer and allow himself something he’d only ever before been able to imagine. As he had admitted to doing with Claire in his bed. Oh, Claire. God, Claire. Grey had no idea what had brought him here, driven Jamie to spiral into this long-awaited madness, and he wouldn’t know. Not now. Not yet. Not here.
Escape, that’s what this was, not love or tenderness, but a way out. Anything to take Jamie out of this world that was so hollow and empty, even for a moment. Bizarre, wordless agreement was all that passed between them. Jamie’s hands coarsely turning Grey around, John bending over the desk right in front of the open window—Christ, if they should be discovered. It didn’t matter, Jamie could accept this fate for that, would welcome it. His hands were clumsy on his flies, nerves shot to hell, reason long gone, abandoned days ago on some mountain trail.
Grey’s hands flexed on his desk, and his legs seemed to spread naturally as Jamie worked his breeches down his thighs, leaving his knees trapped by the fabric. He glanced at the pale skin dusted with hair but looked away just as quickly. This wasn’t about what he could see, but what he could feel. Perhaps he would commit the whole act with his eyes screwed shut if that were possible. Is that how John had done it then, when he’d imagined Jamie’s body in place of… or had it just merely been too dark to see anything of each other?
Jamie shook his head, meaning to toss those thoughts from his mind, even though hardly a day had passed that he didn't think of it since Grey had snapped, We were both fucking you.
But that… no, that didn't matter, not now. John's legs were warm against his thighs, smooth over his hard cock. More, oh God, he needed more. Jamie spat into his hand, smeared it over his prick, and with one hand resting on Grey's hip, eased himself slowly, carefully into John with a groan.
Grey jerked beneath him, one hand smacking against the desk, the other flying to his mouth to choke off his cry. He stilled then, Jamie could feel every muscle in John’s body tense around him. Grey had to be stunned, confused, especially given what had occurred the last time they were together. Jamie couldn’t blame the man for his apprehension, even if Jamie was finally giving John what he’d been wanting for decades. Though, perhaps, he thought abruptly, Grey had pictured their positions reversed.
Once he considered it, Jamie couldn't stop thinking of that reversal, the madness that consumed him driving out the last vestiges of old fear and pain. And why not? Fair was fair, wasn't it?
Jamie let out a low, wordless growl of pure hedonism, thrusting hard into John over and over. He tried to slow down, to be gentler. Something in Grey's posture set off an unaccountable, predatory need to possess him, to stake a claim he had no right to. John was no delicate flower, Jamie reminded himself, and Jamie had never been a particularly patient or gentle man.
Grey let out a string of curses, muffled by his hand pressed to his mouth. Was he more aware of the others in this house? More concerned with the possibility of being caught? Or was he as lost in this as Jamie was? As resigned to whatever consequences might ensue as a result? Because for Jamie, nothing else mattered outside of this moment. It couldn’t. Because the only thing waiting for Jamie outside this moment was the poisoned black void of life without Claire. Again. Only a few shattered parts had survived the first time. A second time? That was hopeless.
And God help him, that emptiness terrified him to his core, the horror of the outside world mingling with the overwhelming physical pleasure of taking John like this. Jamie would crumble like spent cinders and scatter to the four winds when this was done.
Jamie reached around Grey and wrapped his hand around his leaking cock, rougher than he meant it. He pounded into John, suddenly remembering that the door was unlocked. The risk of discovery sent a thrill down his spine, drizzling into the pleasure pooling in his gut. Jamie moaned, making no effort to stifle it save to bury his nose in Grey's hair and inhale the scent of him.
Grey’s hand dropped away from his mouth, an involuntary movement it seemed, and a hoarse whisper fell from John’s mouth. “Jamie,” he said, then said it again. “Jamie.” Soft as butter. Grey spilled in Jamie’s hand, his body rippling, from the center of him and moving out in all directions at once, like a lake interrupted by a dropped stone.
Jamie's own release surprised him, his arms tightening around Grey's middle, clutching him tight to his chest. He sank his teeth into the fine material of John's waistcoat over his shoulder, failing to stifle a guttural cry as he poured into him. Then all at once, the spell was broken, and days upon days of exhaustion sank into his bones, leaving him weak and trembling, clinging to Grey for support.
“Oh, God, Claire,” Grey gasped, a sudden tight panic in his throat. “Your wife will kill us both.”
No, no she wouldn’t. Claire would never know, would never have a thing to say about it at all, in fact. Jamie stumbled back from John, the truth dying in his mouth before he could say. If he said it, it would be real. “I’m sorry.” Sorry for what? He didn’t even know. Jamie fumbled his flies closed, going for the door. “I should see to my horse,” he said, stupidly, bizarrely, leaving John alone in the study.
It had been several days since Grey had been abandoned in his study, aching, half-naked, and in a state of absolute shock. He’d taken his time to gather himself and then gone looking for Jamie. He’d scoured his property, but there was no evidence the man had ever even been there. Could he have dreamed it all? But no, his servant remembered Jamie’s arrival, and the next day, Grey could still feel where Jamie had been with each step that he took.
He couldn’t make sense of what had occurred no matter how many times he tried to wrap his brain around it. All Grey knew was that something felt wrong, no matter how fantastic it had been to have Jamie buried deep inside him. He’d started three different letters to Claire and discarded each of them. What could he possibly say? He didn’t want to lie to her, but he would have to lie, at least by omission. In the end, none of the words he’d written seemed adequate, so he gave up, resigning himself to the swirling pit of nerves building and building in his stomach.
The one thing he’d wanted most in this world, had given up even dreaming of—especially after Jamie nearly killed him for the mere mention of Grey’s desire for him—had happened. And then Jamie had spirited away, and he was left alone and confused and on the edge of madness.
The wind outside shifted, blowing hard enough to knock tree branches against his bedroom window. Except that couldn’t be it. There wasn't a tree that close to this side of the house. The tapping grew louder, purposeful. Someone knocking on the second floor window. Not just someone, of course, Jamie, climbed up the lattice like a monkey, face flushed and red hair wild in the dim of the late evening. "John?" he hissed, as if anyone else could bloody well be in here.
“Christ, Fraser,” Grey spat, nerves spinning in his belly. He hurried to the window, the sound of each footstep thunderous as his heartbeat, then threw it open, letting in a rush of cold air. “Where in God’s name have you been?” If he sounded like a scolding mother, he was honestly far too frustrated to care.
Jamie didn't say a word, damn him, just climbed through the window as if he were forty years younger. He wore the same clothes as before and that infuriating, incomprehensible expression of his. A cursory glance around the empty room, his madman eyes landing for just a moment on the closed door, before finally settling on Grey with an intensity that flipped his stomach. Then, quite without warning, Fraser's hands were cool and callused against Grey's face, his mouth warm and insistent on his. Jamie drove him back against the nearest wall, his tongue wet in Grey's mouth, body hard against him.
The reasonable part of Grey’s mind told him to push Jamie away, extract himself from the sticky web of Jamie’s body, Jamie’s want, and demand an explanation for his behavior. But there was another deeper, more primal, and far more convincing part of his mind that didn’t give a damn. It was that part of him that won, that kissed back, hands tearing at Jamie’s shirt. Perhaps if he shredded the thing, leaving him half naked, Jamie might not disappear afterwards.
Seams groaned, buttons strained, and after a confusing flurry of discarded garments, they crashed bare-chested into each other. Jamie’s skin was still cool from the elements, warming rapidly under Grey’s hands, and Jamie fumbled with John’s flies. Giving up, Jamie dropped to his knees, forcing Grey’s breeches open with a hail of ruined buttons, and shoving them down his legs. Wordlessly, Fraser swallowed him near to the root, burying his nose in the coarse hair at the base of Grey’s prick. Jamie wrapped his arms around his hips and made a desperate noise that sounded like relief.
The string of curses that left his mouth were in a flurry of multiple languages, some he wasn’t even sure he spoke. He sank his hands into Jamie’s hair, skimming the man’s scalp with his fingertips and moaning at the pleasure rolling through him in powerful waves. Grey pulled back, but only so this wouldn’t be over too quickly, and somehow managed to haul Jamie to his feet.
Jamie made an inexplicably broken whine, strong hands clinging to Grey's back, sucking a painful mark into the flesh on the side of his neck. "If ye'll no' have my mouth," Jamie said, voice muffled against Grey's throat, teeth scraping and making him shiver. "How will ye have me then?"
“More,” was all Grey’s feeble mind managed to say. That and slower. “Slower.” If Jamie was going to leave him again, floundering and confused, for God knows how long, he would take everything he could manage. Grey put a hand on Jamie’s chest and dropped to his own knees, returning the favor.
"John," Jamie groaned, sounding like he'd crumble to pieces any minute. The big muscles in his legs twitched and trembled under Grey's hands, Jamie's fingers tight in his hair. "Oh God." Gasping and panting, he started a shallow thrust, as if by reflex, tightening his grip in Grey's hair, pulling.
He kept at it, reveling in knowing for sure a taste he’d only imagined. Grey could keep licking and swallowing until Jamie flooded his mouth. He could and he would, he thought deliriously, just stay here until the end, knees aching on the hard floor, using his mouth to coax a litany of sounds from Jamie that made Grey twitch and leak onto his leg.
The window was still open to the windy night, a distant, inconsequential thing, the breeze cold on Grey's skin. Jamie let out a low whine, pulling Grey away from him with a firm tug on his hair. "Wait, John, I need..." He knelt on the floor in front of Grey, awkward with his breeches still trapped around his ankles by his boots. "Lie down." With surprisingly gentle touches, Jamie coaxed Grey to lie on his back, the floorboards brutal beneath him. Jamie hovered over him, nudged his prick back between Grey's lips, then bent forward and took him into his mouth again, sucking with determination, if little finesse. Jamie made that relieved moan again.
His lips ached, his jaw too. His back as well for that matter. But the pain didn’t matter. Nothing mattered other than what was happening between them. Grey could be torn limb from limb at this moment, and it wouldn’t matter. Grey wouldn’t stop because he’d been needing this for decades. Most things you wait that long for fail to meet one’s expectations. But not this. Not Jamie. Not ever.
The desperation with which Jamie clung to him, rough hands digging bruises into Grey's thighs, was frightening. Beautiful and heart-rending, for all it was madness. Jamie cried out, the noise muffled around Grey's prick, all the warning he got before Jamie flooded his mouth.
The taste of him was indescribable, and Grey almost didn’t want to swallow. Wanted to swirl it around on his tongue like an excellent wine. But Jamie’s cock still between his lips gave him no choice but to swallow and let the warmth of him slip down Grey’s throat, while his own dribbled from the tip of his prick, awaiting its own full release.
Whether driven by his own physical pleasure or eagerness for Grey's, Jamie serviced him with clumsy enthusiasm. More and more and more, as if he could wring the ecstasy out of Grey's body by pure, decadent force.
And he could, of course he could. Grey spilled suddenly into Jamie’s mouth, his whole body arching and tensing enough to shatter before melting back onto the hard floor, gasping for breath with Jamie’s name still on his lips.
Fraser shuddered, held perfectly still for a bizarre, wonderful, long moment, then sucked him clean. He pressed a single, lingering kiss to the inside of Grey's thigh, and climbed awkwardly off him. Jamie was unsteady on his feet, skin flushed and pebbled in the cold air. He said nothing, gave no indication of the inner workings of that impenetrable head of his. Just bent, pulled up his breeches, fastened what buttons remained, and moved like a spectre toward the window.
“James Fraser!” Grey spat, sitting up on the floor, still tingling from what had just happened between them. “Where are you—? Don’t you dare fucking leave, you bastard.”
Jamie muttered something in Gaelic that sounded like, “I’m sorry,” and disappeared through the window.
For five more days, Jamie watched Lord John’s house, saw Grey go out and look for him as before, but not for as long. He waited for the courage to enter the house as a guest again, or to leave altogether, but found neither. When the sorrow and the loneliness overtook him again, Jamie waited in the trees until the house went dark, then climbed the lattice under John’s window. Grey was in bed, turned on his side facing the window, eyes closed in sleep.
Jamie managed to slip the blade of his sgian dubh between the window panes and worked the latch open. A chilly, gentle breeze blew in behind him as he climbed through the window, breathing a little life into the banked hearth. Was his shirt still in here? Or his waistcoat or coat? Jamie had left without them.
Before he’d left the Ridge, he’d had the presence of mind to stuff his oldest plaid in his saddle bag, and that’s all he’d had to wrap around him, save for his breeks. Moving silent as a ghost, he slipped off his boots and breeches, creeping to John’s bed with his plaid. “John,” he hissed, one hand on the coverlet, waiting.
John jolted upright with a shrill startled gasp. In the pale moonlight streaming in through the window, shock and panic in John’s expression shifted to fury when he woke enough to recognize who was in his room. “You bloody bastard,” John snarled at him.
Aye, he was that. Guilt dropped into the pit of his stomach into the roiling mass of sorrow and grief, and Jamie clenched his teeth. He owed the man a very large explanation, but how does one tell the moon that the sun has gone cold? The sea of rage that had left him blindly terrorizing the trees and bloodying his hands had finally ebbed. All that remained now was the quiet madness threatening to consume him until there was nothing left.
"I'm sorry," Jamie said, voice a broken whisper. He had no right to ask this of Grey, and yet he dropped his plaid and slid naked into the bed with John.
“Jamie,” John breathed his name, an impossibly low sound. “I feel as if I’m going mad.” Still, he shifted close enough that Jamie could feel the heat of his body, could smell the familiar, intoxicating scent of him.
Jamie knew he was going mad, and all he could say was, “Aye.” He’d not felt the cold for days and days, not really, but now that he was in the warm bed, with Grey right there, he shivered. All it took was a scoot, as natural as breathing, and they were touching, Jamie’s bare skin against the soft fabric of John’s night shirt. Slow, he reminded himself, fighting the urge to collapse into John’s arms, to be hasty and rough as he had before. He could just explain… No. No, not yet.
Lord John’s body went stiff next to him, still on alert. Jamie combed his fingers through Grey’s hair, tightening his fist against his scalp just to have something to hold onto, and pressed a kiss to his parted lips. For a moment, it was thirty years ago on the muddy bank of a lake in the English countryside. Then Jamie inhaled sharply through his nose, breathed in the smell of John’s skin, and he froze. Please, God, touch me…
John rolled on top of him, knees on each side of Jamie’s thighs, and he kissed Jamie, pressing his head to the pillow. He didn’t speak, but much was said just in the way John held himself. He wasn’t going to allow Jamie to just take and take with little regard for his feelings. This time, if Jamie wanted this, he was going to have to give a little too.
Jamie sighed in relief under Grey’s solid weight on top of him. He wrapped his arms around John, feeling as if he could sink right through the featherbed, disappear into the warmth of it and the safe shelter of John’s body. I’m sorry, he thought. Forgive me for being a bastard. But the words caught in his throat. Jamie slipped his hands under John’s night shirt, dug his fingers into the strong muscles of his back, and parted his lips for John’s tongue.
John broke away with a gasp and, panting, slid down to take Jamie’s cock his mouth. The pressure overwhelmed him—hot and quick and wet. Very wet. Then John was kissing him again, biting his lips, moving down to the pulse in his neck. Jamie would be bruised there tomorrow. With no warning, John reached back to line himself up, and sank all the way down on Jamie’s cock with a loud, primal moan.
"Christ, John!" Jamie groaned, the sudden heat of Grey's body overwhelming, blinding him for an instant. When his vision cleared, when the shock subsided, all he could see was John. John's face looming over him, John's eyes boring into him, demanding that Jamie stay, that he let this be more than a cold, rushed romp. "John," Jamie begged. "Please. Dinna stop kissing me." He raised up to meet him halfway, shoving Grey's nightshirt out of the way to feel as much flesh as possible.
John did as he was asked, kissing Jamie with a passion years in the making. He kissed and he kissed, but he also kept moving, up and down, slowly, shivering with each movement. They were both trembling and kissing and grasping for each other in the darkness. “I don’t know why you’re here,” John whispered against his lips. “Why now?” Was John genuinely asking for answers or had his thoughts just escaped unbidden?
"Not yet," Jamie answered, a breathy moan in John's ear. If he told John now, then that would be real and this would be over, and the only reality Jamie could bear yet was this one. "I just need ye." Merely thinking it started his left hand shaking again, and he pressed his palm flat to John's sweaty back to still it.
With a quivering breath, John nodded, solemn somehow, despite everything else happening between them. He sat up, leaning back and stretching his body as he moved, tight against Jamie’s body, so tight Jamie worried that he had to be hurting John, though nothing about the man appeared pained. In fact, John appeared to be in a state of near perfect ecstasy.
For a startling moment, the sight of John, enraptured and panting, took Jamie's breath away. And the feel of him, God. Jamie's arms and legs tingled, warm with pleasure, every breath a gasping moan. He'd not taken the time to appreciate how John looked, how he felt, not when he'd been desperate for release himself. It hadn't been an exaggeration when Jamie had said he needed John. He did, all of him. The comfort of his body, the kindness of his heart, would die without it. Jamie moistened a palm with a lick and wrapped his hand around John's cock. When they collapsed into a sated pile in each other's arms, then Jamie could tell him.
It happened faster than Jamie expected, faster than he wanted. He could have lived in this moment forever. This moment where nothing mattered but want and need and pleasure, nothing but the way John felt, so warm and incredible around him. But it couldn’t last, nothing this good could ever last long. If Jamie had learned one thing in his life, it was that. And suddenly, John was crying out his name and spilling all over Jamie’s hand and stomach.
Jamie pulled John down so he could wrap his arms around him and bury his face against John’s neck as he followed him over the edge. John’s hair tickled his cheek, smelling vaguely of sweet things and spice. “John,” he said, his lips moving against John’s sweaty skin. “John, oh, God.” All the muscles in Jamie’s body went weak and weary, his bones felt made of glass.
This was it, he’d hit his limit. He couldn’t face one more thing. The fight had gone out of him, a long, long life of moving from one battle to the next stretched for decades behind him, and he’d never been so tired. He couldn’t make himself let go of John, didn’t dare loosen his grip. Jamie clung to him, listening to their breathing slow.
“You said not yet, before,” John whispered against Jamie’s ear, his voice trembling as he spoke. “What about now? I think perhaps it might kill me if you leave again and I don’t know why any of this is happening or if it will happen again.”
“I’m sorry,” Jamie whispered, meaning every damnable thing he’d ever done, but especially to John. “I didna ken what else to do.” He had to tell him, he knew that, but the cowardice had dug its claws in him again. He had to face this, and John had a right to know. She was John’s wife too, he supposed.
“Ye’re the only person I ken that I’m no’ responsible for. I hoped ye’d understand…” Jamie squeezed his eyes shut, a hot tear slipping between his eyelids, and he held tight to Grey, trying to focus on the warmth of his body and not the icy emptiness in his own middle. “Claire.” He had to force her name out. “She died.”
John went as still as if he were the one who had died. Still and cold. Finally, he said, “You don’t have to say anything else.” He knew John had to be curious, could hear the tremor in the man’s voice, though it was obvious Grey was trying to cover it up. “Whatever you need or don’t need from me, take it.”
Jamie nodded, words stuck in his throat, and pressed his lips to Grey’s shoulder. Just a touch, not really a kiss. A place to hide and to feel, to smell sweat and spilled seed. The quiet and the stillness, that’s what he needed just now.
Everything had been madness and violence since she’d drawn her last breath. Ian and Roger Mac dragging him away finally so that Brianna and Jenny could clean her up. Nearly killing himself digging her grave alone because he refused help and shouted and swore and nearly beat Roger Mac when he tried to take the spade. “I’ve never abandoned them before, but…” He blinked into the soft tangle of John’s hair in his face, vision going watery and blurry with tears. “I canna take care of them anymore, John. I ken ye were a great comfort to—” Jamie swallowed hard, “to Claire, when ye thought me dead. I thought…”
John hushed him gently, like Jamie would the horses at Helwater, stroking back his hair. “Claire. I… she was the most remarkable woman I’ve ever met, excepting perhaps her daughter. But, no, Claire was truly singular. How can she be gone?” Grey drew in a sharp breath, trying and failing to catch a sob from cracking though his lips.
Jamie took John’s face in both of his hands so he could see his face, startled. Uncharitable—no, contemptible—that he might have been surprised by the pain he saw in his friend. “Ye did care for her, for her own sake.” Jamie was a prick for ever thinking otherwise. “I’m sorry, John. I’m so sorry that I ever doubted it.” He kissed Grey on the mouth, close-lipped and with a sweetness that he’d not expected.
“I married her for your sake. To do you one last service after I thought you were gone, but the friendship we developed after, that was very real.” John let out a quivering breath, brimming with emotion. “I wish I could have said goodbye.”
"It was quick," Jamie said. A quick death should have been a comfort, but it was only hollow details. The illness had come on her like an ambush, rendering her thoroughly incapacitated before she could figure out what was wrong or tell anyone else what to do. "What would ye have said, if ye could have?"
He hesitated a moment, relaxing into Jamie, obviously seeking the same sort of comfort he was giving. “I would’ve thanked her.” Grey’s words were hoarse, choked off as he said them, but then with a gentle sigh, he pulled himself together again. “For being someone I could talk to.”
Jamie nodded, letting his own tears fall silently without a fight. He was far too worn down to fight anymore, about anything. "She would have said the same of ye as well. She trusted ye a very great deal, and she was right to. I'm sorry for ever treating ye to the contrary. I kent better, and now she's—" A broken sob stole Jamie's words, and he had to let it pass before he could continue. "She's gone, and ye never had the chance to truly be friends because of me."
“There’s no use thinking of the past and wishing we’d done things differently. We all could have made better, smarter choices. All that’s left is what we’ll do now.” John sank his fingers into Jamie’s hair, brushing it off his face. “I understand that at this moment the future feels impossible, but we’ll get through today, today. And tomorrow, tomorrow, yes?”
Jamie nodded. It felt good, John's kind hands on him, the firm weight of his body, anchoring him to the earth. The first thing Grey had offered him personally had been comfort, and Jamie had vehemently refused, the temptation terrifying, and because he didn't think he deserved it just then. Everything John had ever done for him, for those he cared for most, all of it was to bring Jamie comfort or peace. To make things just a little easier, a little safer.
Well, Jamie still wasn't sure he deserved it, but it didn't really matter. Christ, he was tired of being stubborn. "I promise no' to run away again," Jamie said. "I should send word to Brianna tomorrow, tell her I'm alive." He blew out a long breath. "But that's tomorrow. Tonight…" He looked up into John's eyes, at the sorrow and the worry there. "I dinna wish to spend another night grieving alone."
“And you won’t have to.”