Chapter Text
Even with Arthur's warning, even after every god awful thing that's happened these last few months, there's still some little bit of John's brain that hoped it might not be so bad when he came back.
Hoped things would somehow have settled, maybe even hoped Dutch would have the slightest hint of relief on his face that his supposed son is alive, but God's went and proved again that John just ain't deserving of anything nice.
The camp's in disarray, disorganized and blanketed with a sickly quiet that sets the air stale and still. Folks move like ghosts, or like minecarts on tracks, stuck going through motions but unable to leave.
It's bad. God, it's bad. John's talented at very few things aside from trigger pullin' and stubbornly ignoring what he doesn't wanna think about, but this? This is impossible to ignore. And ain't a bullet in the world could kill the phantom snake squeezing the life out of everyone.
Abigail fusses over him, drags him by his arm into their tent and makes him change out of his sweat-stained stripes. Charles helps him free his ankles, blistered raw, from their shackles. Dutch eyes him warily from across camp, Arthur's pale visage regards him solemnly like he's watching a man die slow. Micah sneers at him, all gold-capped teeth and steely eyes and not a single good thought behind either.
Everyone else ignores him. If they're ghosts, so is he.
He wishes he was, anyhow.
Unsettled by the incredibly unpleasant atmosphere and unwilling to feel whatever emotions may come with laying beside his woman and his son, John spends that entire first night back sitting on the little ledge just outside camp, overlooking the river and the trees. Just hidden enough that he can feel alone, but not so far that he can't run back in the not-unlikely event of disaster.
He tries his very damnedest not to think, but even as dull as he's certain he is, his brain won't quit. Just turns the same cluster of thoughts and fears over and over again inside his skull for hours until it all makes even less sense than before.
Is this it? Is he finally gonna snap, lose his mind for real? It's a long time coming, he reckons. Hopefully insanity is peaceful.
"John."
He startles violently, whips his head around in the misty early morning light to peer at whoever's interrupting his terribly un-peaceful meditation.
"Javier." He greets the man who stands at his back, enough distance that John knows he's being cautious.
If they hadn't slowly become strangers, John might say straight to his face that Javier looks like hell.
He's fully dressed despite it being likely no later than four or five in the morning- disheveled like he never went to bed in the first place, actually, but John knows he weren't on guard duty. Probably was sitting up, just like him, all alone, just like him. They've always been so similar, them two, similar and different. A reflection in a trick mirror.
"Welcome back." Javier says, and it feels like testing the waters more than it does an actual greeting.
John's eyes go from Javier's boots, to his untucked shirt, and finally to his face- scruffy and unshaven, framed by strands of hair falling haphazardly from the tie that's supposed to hold them. The least polished he's seen him since he first joined up all them years ago.
"Yeah. Home sweet home." John says, something between wistful and bitter, and turns back to look the way he'd been looking before.
If Javier's still got some piece of the old him inside that jumbled outer shell, he'd know John's offering the chance to be nearby. Turning his back as if to ask, can I still trust you enough to avert my gaze and bare my spine?
Will you let me?
Silence from behind, 'side from the sound of Javier shifting his weight from one foot to the other. John just waits.
One hesitant footstep, then a few more, then Javier's coming to sit beside him, no more than a foot to his right. John's just glad he chose the side where he can still glance at him in his periphery, his left eye shot just like so many parts of him these days- his smarting shoulders and back, his bullet-shaped souvenir from blackwater that throbs and aches in the cold. The angry, open skin adorning his too-bony ankles.
And like him, Javier's broken, too.
In the edge of his vision, Javier rubs a palm absently over the knee of his left leg where it's stretched out in front of him. Stiff, like it don't bend right, or like he's scared to try.
"Cuba ain't treat you well, huh?" John asks, quiet so he don't break whatever fragile thread is still stretched between them.
"Guarma." Javier corrects, says the name like it tastes bad on his tongue. "And no."
John wants to snark back at Javier's clipped short answer how he would have even just a few months ago, when it was still safe to push at him, still comfortable to poke and prod, but it ain't that way anymore. Hasn't been. Certainly not after everything. The man beside him could so easily be alien to him if John didn't know him inside and out.
"I'm sorry."
Really, truly, it's all John can think to say. It comes out genuine and earnest and tired, and it's the strongest, saddest tug on his heart because he is sorry.
Sorry about Guarma, sorry about all the loss, sorry about how things turned out in the gang and in the world and between them two.
Especially between them two.
John finally turns his head to look at Javier. Trails his eyes over that big, nasty scar that curves from brow to cheekbone. Meets dark brown eyes when they pitch sideways to look back at him, and despite all their shared brokenness, his eyes ain't changed a bit. Tired, reddened from lack of sleep, but still flitting from spot to spot on John's face like he's committing him to memory just as he's always done.
"Yeah." Javier's response, hardly louder at all than the soft sound of the water below. An apology on its own, John reckons.
He looks conflicted, just for a second. Then he's leaning toward John, snake-quick, and he's kissing him. No part of them touching but lips, and John don't even get a second to be annoyed by the feeling of this damn scruff on his face rubbing against Javier's overgrown mustache before the other man is pulling away.
Barely even a kiss. John don't even know what to call it, but whatever it was, it wasn't right. Wasn't enough, wasn't worth the risk of being so close to camp or the risk of being so close to someone who he knows so well and so little anymore.
So his hand flies up to grasp the back of Javier's neck and pull him back again, fingers caught up in the messy, loose hairs that are tangled up there.
"Just…" John breathes slow and steady into the scant space between their lips. Just one more time, just let us have each other like we used to do. Just pretend with me that it's gonna turn out alright, that's what he'd say if he knew how.
"Let me have this." Is what he says instead. It comes out half-plea, half-request, and Javier grants- ever the desperate diplomat.
They kiss, and it's almost how it ought to be. Something both needy and unrushed, 'cause they were always good at pretending the world around them didn't exist for a little bit. So many moments of stolen time that it must add up to a significant number.
Javier kisses him like he missed it sorely, a sigh John can only call relieved warming the skin of his cheek as it leaves his old friend's nose. John's other hand, still dirtied from the subhuman living conditions he had behind bars, comes around to rest against Javier's back. He can't tell if he just don't know him anymore, or if something's really changed since the last time he laid a hand soft and careful on this body, but either way, it ain't quite how he remembers. Even still, it rests comfortably there between a pair of shoulder blades he should know by feel alone.
They drift slowly closer, as always, hands searching for some unknown and finding it in wrapping tight around each other, holding and being held back.
And he can't remember the last time he kissed someone long and deep this way and wasn't chasing some sort of an end, the last time he kissed someone like this without the motive being a good fuck instead of just the simple human desire to be connected.
It's something so basic but so precious to him, and it strikes him hard enough that it nearly makes him want to cry when the kiss finally comes to its natural conclusion as all things must.
Instead of crying, he rests his forehead against Javier's shoulder. Drops his hand onto the cool, grey rock they're sitting on, scoots it 'til it's touching Javier's own, just barely. And God bless his friend for meeting him halfway and letting his palm come to rest over John's fingers. The two of 'em, broken but with jagged edges that fit real nicely together.
They sit in that atmosphere, heavy and quiet. And just for a while they can be close again, let them jagged edges wear soft and pretend not to worry whether it'll be the last time as they march in tandem toward whatever end is in store for them.
Just for a while, they have this.