Chapter Text
Flint doesn’t seem too eager to have her stay over – when asked, he moans about Rackham and Anne and Max and Vane, and Madi loses track – so he comes over to hers instead. Her place isn’t big – a studio apartment, with a bed and a couch and a surprisingly nice kitchen, but there’s nowhere to escape to if either of them needs to be alone – but they get on well. Flint is the kind of person that half the time gets up with the sun, but he’s quiet enough that Madi can still get her precious eight hours of sleep; Flint is clean to a fault, though in a disorganized sort of way (he always cleans and puts way the dishes in the kitchen, but always out of place), but Madi doesn’t mind too much having to open three cabinets before finding her breakfast mug. He keeps her fridge fuller than she ever had, and makes sure she’s eating three full meals a day even though Madi knows he only truly eats about once a day. It makes her feel pampered in a way she’s never felt, and she grows to like it. Mostly, though, there’s a quiet sort of peace that she feels when they’re together – when they’re sleeping, or when they’re reading, or when Madi wakes up when Flint gets out of bed in the morning and gets to watch him walk quietly into the bathroom – that she’s not sure she ever felt before.
It keeps her grounded even as the beginning of summer comes, and Madi starts properly worrying about job applications and stressing about finishing her dissertation. She can’t go out with him as much as she’s been, but Flint still brings her food, still keeps her space in order and, occasionally, even massages the kinks in her shoulders and neck until she’s putty in her hands, so satisfied she almost falls asleep.
They don’t say I love you – not in those words, not in the way people are supposed to – but, in the nights where she manages to get everything done in time and goes by the shop to pick him up, Flint smiles and pushes his chair away from the table, letting her sit in his lap and kiss him as much as she wants, and she knows they both know it anyway.
And then, she sees him.
The first time it happens, it’s so quick Madi promptly convinces herself she had just mistaken it. It’s not until the second time, when she and Flint are leaving Nassau after dinner and Madi sees him lingering by the shadows up the street, that she knows she wasn’t wrong then, and she isn’t wrong now.
She keeps seeing him. She considers bringing it up with Flint, but she never truly manages it. Though it was his absence that brought them together, her and Flint’s relationship has grown beyond him. She’s not sure she wants him to come back, even though seeing him again makes her heart ache in such way it takes everything in her not to scream his name.
But no, she won’t. If he wants to come back into her life, then the least he has to do is be the one to approach her. He left without telling everyone, without even telling her, so she won’t be the one to make it easy for him.
And so, if every time she leaves Nassau now, she has to contend with knowing his eyes will be following her from the shadows, that’s just as well. And if she kisses Flint harder sometimes before they part ways, just because she can… Well, she figures she’s allowed her pettiness too.
Flint, it seems, is made of stronger stuff than her.
“He’s back,” he tells her over dinner. They’re at her place, some soft jazz sounding through her Bluetooth speaker. “Silver,” he adds, as if she needs any explanation.
Madi looks up at him. “You’ve seen him?”
“Yes,” Flint agrees, his eyes watching her closer. She knows he’s seeing it. “I take it you have too.”
Madi nods. She looks down at her plate, suddenly feeling very, very tired. “I didn’t know how to say it,” she says quietly. She twirls the pasta on her plate with her fork – a recipe Flint’s been trying out, with Madi as the happy subject of his experiences. “Have you talked to him?” she asks, attempting to look at him without actually raising her head.
It’s enough for her to see Flint shake his head. “I didn’t,” he says. He sounds tired too. “I think I will, though. I just-” He cracks. “I can’t stand not to,” he sighs.
Madi looks up properly. She wants to tell him not to, to let him- to let John, it’s John, she forces herself to say his name. John should be the one groveling. But she can see in Flint’s eyes that it doesn’t work like that for him, that Flint is fine to do whatever it is he needs to do, as long as he gets to have an answer from him.
“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything sooner,” Madi says, resting her elbow on the table so she can rest her head on her hand. Her temples are throbbing.
Flint smiles. He’s not someone who smiles often, so Madi always loves to see it, loves watching his features soften, his mouth widening. “I understand,” he says, and Madi knows he does, and that’s all there is to be said.
“Madi.”
Madi rises her head, startled, thinking she’s surely heard wrong, but no. Sitting in front of her, looking just as he did the last time she saw him, is John.
She blinks, trying to make sense of the sight. On a second glance, she realizes he doesn’t exactly look the same: the beard is gone, for one, making him look more youthful than he ever seemed, and his hair looks shorter and lusher. His cheeks are lightly pink and a bit fuller – whatever he’s been, he’s clearly been well. Her heart loosens, though her temper grows.
Madi puts her pen down and straightens up. She’s so mad she can barely see straight, but she tries to keep it in.
“John,” she says, keeping her voice down but making it as explicit as possible that she’s not willing to play his games.
John looks at her, as if expecting her to say anything, but Madi stays quiet: she doesn’t ask him what he’s doing here, why he decided that now was the time to come back, why he stalked her for almost two weeks before doing it. Most importantly, she doesn’t ask him why he left. She won’t. He’s the one who needs to speak now.
John, though, seems to wait for her to say something. His eyes linger on her, eager, his mouth opening and closing almost imperceptibly. Madi arches her brow, and waits.
“I’m-” John tries, and then straightens up too, as if trying to appear better than he is. “I’m back,” he says at last, almost solemnly.
Madi continues looking at him for a few long seconds, but John seems to have reached the end of his speech. For once, words fail him. It’s just as well, Madi figures; words wouldn’t save him now anyway. “I can see that,” she says, and looks back down to her paper, dismissing him.
John doesn’t leave – there’s no scrapping of the chair on the floor, none of the tell-tale sound of his uneven walk – but Madi pretends not to notice. She finishes reading the page she was on and, concluding it won’t give her what she wants, turns the book back to its index, determined on looking through it again to see if she actually finds what she’s looking for.
In the back of her mind, she hears John swallowing. She almost smiles – serves him good to be nervous – but keeps it in, determined on playing her role.
“I’ve been…” John tries again, his tone almost pleading. “I’ve been looking for you,” he says. Madi wants to scoff, maybe throw the book at him for good measure: it’s not like he hadn’t found her weeks ago and, more importantly, he never would have to look for her if he hadn’t just fucking vanished. Instead of doing that, she keeps her composure, her eyes rushing through the index even though she’s not taking anything in.
John shuffles in his seat before speaking again. “I’ve… seen you,” John says, and Madi knows he isn’t referring to her in particular, but to her and Flint, together. “I went to Nassau’s the other day, and I saw you leaving and- You were-”
He doesn’t finish. Whatever grand speech he had planned, it clearly isn’t working out – Madi’s always been immune to them, anyway.
She looks up. John is looking at her intently, his eyes open and unblinking, the blue of them so bright and so uniquely his own, but she can still see Flint in them. She always has, she realizes now; by the time she came into the picture, Flint and John were already in too deep not to reflect on each other.
“We’re together,” she says simply.
“Oh,” John says, blinking at once, before turning his gaze to her again. “You’re to- How? Why?” His voice gets progressively more panicked and indignant as he speaks, and Madi feels herself growing angrier over his tone. Who does he think he is, to come to her for explanations like that?
Madi remains calm, or tries to. “Because we want to,” she says, not willing to explain herself to him. “Turns out, we actually have a lot in common,” she throws, knowing it will hit like salt in the wound.
It does. John flinches: not dramatically, but like someone has just thrown sand in his face, his features twisting for a moment.
Madi keeps going, “But it’s not like you get to come back and just ask me to explain my life to you. You left,” she says, and as the words leave her lips, she realizes it is the first time she’s allowed herself to say them aloud, to comfort the aching hole it left in her, head on. “You left,” she repeats, swallowing back the tears, “and you don’t get to come back when you feel like it and ask me to explain myself to you.”
John seems broken. She looked away as she spoke, unable to cope with his gaze, but as she looks back now she can see the crumbled angles of him, the devastation in his eyes. She’s sorry and she isn’t and she doesn’t know what the hell to do. She just wishes John never put them in this position.
John blinks and licks his lips, seeming to recover some of his color as he does so. “Why- why him, though?” he insists, just as Madi knew he would, because when it came to Flint, John always had to be the one with the last word, and Madi never knew enough for it to be any other way. “You know how he is. He is- Madi, he is mad-”
“Listen to yourself!” Madi admonishes, cutting him off, almost unable to keep her voice down. She let him speak like that once, before she knew better, before she actually got to see for herself who Flint was, but she won’t let him anymore. John is reckless when he’s afraid, she knows, and he must be scared half out of his mind after lurking in the shadows for nights on end, seeing them together, but she won’t let him do that again. “He’s your friend, you do realize that, don’t you?” she asks, because Flint doesn’t deserve it, and Madi knows he won’t ever stand up for himself where John is concerned. “How dare you speak of him like that?” John, though, seems to not understand her. He stares at her, puzzled and astonished, and it’s too much. Madi can’t do this right now, not like this. “I have to go,” she says, already rising from her place, shoving her things in her bag carelessly.
She’s out of the library before she realizes. She doesn’t bother to check if John is following her, she just works on getting to her flat as fast as she can. She shoots Flint a text as she walks, telling him she isn’t feeling well and decided to go home early, knowing that will be enough to make him come to her whenever he happens to remember he has a phone.
She’s breathing heavily by the time she gets home, and it’s all she can do to hold on until the door is closed behind her, so she can crumble into the floor, a desperate sob ripping through her at last.
After crying herself out, Madi decides to rise and get all the chores she usually neglects done: she vacuums and changes the sheets, she goes downstairs to do the laundry, she goes through her cabinets and throws out all the expired packages she finds. She’s hoping it will make time move faster, make Flint arrive sooner.
It’s way past dinner time now, though, and Flint still hasn’t checked in. At first, Madi thought he had probably just forgotten to check his phone, but the hours kept passing, and when by dinner time he still hadn’t arrived – even though it’s rare that a day goes by where they don’t see each other – Madi started realize that he probably wouldn’t come.
She doesn’t know what’s happened, but she can guess. It’s what makes sense, anyway, that John, after unsuccessfully trying to breech the topic with her, would go to Flint. And Flint, she knows, would let him; he’d be angry, but he’d answer John nonetheless, because the thought of seeing him walk away again would simply be too painful.
She goes to bed later than usual, but stays awake, turning this way and that, hoping sleep will come. It doesn’t, though, not for longer than twenty or thirty minutes at a time. Madi is not used to feeling anxious in this way, but she feels the kind of restless energy crawling under her skin that she felt when John first left. It makes her want to reach out for him, make sure he’s here, but this time there’s the underlying anxiety of just wanting Flint to arrive, so he can tell her what happened and she can tell him her part of the story, and they can both be miserable together.
Madi stops. Is that why they bonded the way they did? Because misery made them so? But- No. It can’t be. Her time with Flint, their dates, their encounters, had always been too joyful for that. Maybe it was misery that had brought them together, but Madi refuses to believe that that was what made them stay.
Someone knocks. Madi sits up in bed, startled, her eyes finding the door in the dark, and sure enough, the sound comes again, the dry rasp of skin on wood. She rises from bed and makes her way across the floor barefoot. Looking through the peephole, she sees Flint’s red hair. She sighs, her shoulders relaxing, and opens the door.
She doesn’t really get to see his face before she’s throwing herself in his arms, searching for his warmth. Before she can talk about anything, she just needs to know he’s there and, Flint, thankfully, only puts his arms around her, one of his hands on her skin from where her top has risen, letting her bury her face into the worn fabric of his windbreaker without a question.
They’re seating in her bed, looking at each other in the dark. Flint has taken out his clothes and traded them for one of the old t-shirts he likes to wear as pyjamas, and they sit across from each other now, Madi leaning against the headboard, Flint sitting by the foot of the bed, his legs extended, one of his feet touching Madi’s thigh.
She listens to him quietly. The room is dark, but she can plainly see the worn-out look in his eyes, the way his face seems more wrinkled then usual. He looks a bit like when she first met him – except, she realizes now, over time he had gained something jovial, something that seems altogether seeped out of him now.
He tells her about John coming to find him at work, about asking if they could talk, about going to Nassau together so they could have somewhere to talk, away from prying eyes.
“Did he tell you why he left?” Madi asks, once Flint has told her all John had told him, about where he’s been and what he did. It seems, by Flint’s tale, that he was mostly fine during that time, but none of that answers the thing Madi actually needs to know.
“He…” Flint pauses, tilting his head. “No, I don’t think so,” he says doubtfully, and Madi doesn’t need him to elaborate on how John manages to shape his rambling in such a way that it looks like he’s answering their questions without actually doing so, but Flint tries anyway.
In return, Madi tells him her part, about him coming by the library, tells him what he said and how she reacted. Flint shifts uncomfortably when Madi tells her about John’s nosiness, and Madi almost interrupts herself to ask him why he’s reacting that way, except she already knows: everyone can see how good Flint can be, except himself.
It’s well past four now. They’re lying in bed now, and Madi has her arm around Flint’s waist, her head buried into the familiar scent of his hair, but neither of them can sleep. She knows they’ll both have to be up soon enough, but the eminence of morning isn’t enough to prompt them to unconsciousness.
“What do you want to do now?” Madi asks him, unable to keep the question in any longer. She needs to know where they stand, she realizes.
“What do you mean?” Flint asks, his voice frail and soft.
“Now that John is here,” she says, her heart leaping at the words. “What… What does that mean for us?”
Flint shifts, turning onto his back so he can turn his head to look at Madi. They’re lying too close to see each other properly, their noses almost brushing, and Madi leans into it, lets her forehead meet his so they’re only speaking into the inches of space separating their lips.
“I-” Flint tries, his breath warm against her skin. “I-” He’s struggling with his words, and Madi waits. She knows what he’s going to say, she realizes, but she waits for him to be able to say it. “I love him,” he says at last, and Madi stays still, keeps her arm around his chest, her forehead against his, hoping that will be enough for him to know she doesn’t mind. “I don’t- I don’t know what happens now, but I do know this.”
Madi nods, just slightly, for she doesn’t want to break contact. “I know,” Madi says quietly. “I understand,” she adds. “It’s just- I’m so mad at him,” she says, feeling the tears prickle the corners of her eyes again. “If he was scared, why couldn’t he just come to us?” she asks, finally saying what John refuses to admit.
Flint shrugs. “It’s who he is,” he says simply, and Madi knows that Flint will always be there. No matter how many times John runs, he’ll wait for him, because that is who he is too.
“I deserve better, though,” she says, not bothering too argue that Flint does too. “If he wants to be with me again, then he has to be better. I know- I know that no relationship is risk free, but I need to know that I can trust him enough for him to come to me first.”
Flint is quiet for a while, his exhales sharp against her skin. Finally, he says, “Then tell him that.”
Madi nods, sniffling a bit, one tear daring to leave from the corn of her eye and wetting the pillow below her. “You’re not- We’re okay, though, right?” she asks him. The vulnerability makes her feel sick, but she forces herself to stay put, to let Flint help her.
“I’m staying right here,” Flint promises.
His head shifts, so his forehead is no longer in hers, but he replaces it with his lips soon enough, his kiss dry against her skin. She holds him closer.
It’s Saturday, and Madi’s got a meeting on Monday with her supervisor that she should really be preparing for, but she makes her way to the waterfront instead. It’s windy this close to the sea, so she holds her jacket tighter, trying to keep the coldness out as she searches the beach. She finds them seated side by side on the rocks, way from the water.
When she arrives, they both startle and look at her. She knows she hasn’t broken up any conversation though, not with the heaviness of the silence that surrounds them.
“Here I am,” she says, sitting down cross legged, crossing her arms over her chest. It’s maybe a bit too defensive, but she feels defensive, and she feels cold, so she holds the position nonetheless.
It’s not the first time she sees John ever since that day in the library, but she’s still surprised by how young he looks now, without the beard and the long hair. She always knew he was closer to her age than Flint was, but it was harder to remember under the roughness of his looks. Now, though, he looks so boyish, so fresh and sparkly-eyed. It hurts to look at him.
Flint, in turn, still has that tortured look about him, his brow furrowed and the corners of his eyes pinched as he stares at them in turn.
Madi waits for either of them to break the silence. She had said her piece – to Flint, that night in bed; to John, two days later, when he came to find her on campus – and it’s on John’s hands now.
“So, hum…” John starts, his voice light, but with a a doubtful look on his face, the one that lets Madi know he still feels out of his depth, even with all the time he had to prepare his speech. Good. “I think, first of all, that I need to say that I know it was wrong for me to leave without telling anyone. I know it made you worry and- I shouldn’t have done that.”
Madi frowns. It wasn’t the apology she was waiting for, the one John owes them. Instead of pressing him, though, she asks, “What I need to know is if you’ll do that again.” She tries to keep her tone cold, detached. She’s not sure she manages it.
The thing about John, the most insidious part of it all, is that he has a propensity to lie. Madi had known that from the start, back before they got together, when all she did was watch him from afar, except that John had never lied to her. It would’ve been useless, anyway; maybe it was all the observation she had done, but she knew how to spot his lies, and knew that he had never tried one on her.
Still, she can’t be sure. There’s so much she doesn’t know, so much he hasn’t shared. And she has tried – God, she has tried – to prompt him to open up, to tell her. Just the smallest bit of information would be enough, would make her feel like she was finally being let in. But he never did, and now she’s left wondering: if he tries to lie to her now, if he tries to promise her he will stay even though his heart isn’t in it, will she be able to tell?
He’s looking at her, cataloging her reactions, until something in her face makes him look away.
“Flint and I have been talking these past few days,” he says, his voice quieter than before as he looks down at his hands. “I know- I know you both feel like I’m hiding something from you, like I’m keeping myself at arms length on purpose. But that’s not it.” He stops, his hands twisting in his lap. “Truth is, I just don’t know what to say,” he says with a shrug. “Whatever happened to me before I met you, it… It doesn’t matter anymore. I know you think there’s some special meaning hidden there, but there isn’t. Who I am now, it’s in despite of all that, not because of it.”
He looks up at last, and something in his gaze has changed; there’s a brokenness now that he has never let them see before – or never let her see, at any rate. Madi watches it, her chest twisting in pain. She’s not sure life works like that, if whatever horrors John has witnessed and been part of can so swiftly been put under the rug, but something in this moment makes her finally understand.
She understands now that opening up about them would be unbearable, would require things from him that he simply doesn’t have. It would be an intolerable sacrifice, something that he just can’t give.
“Who are you now?” Madi asks, and, without noticing it, her hand is reaching out, searching for his, and it only stops when she has it in her grasp, held so tightly it hurts.
John looks down, eyes wide, but doesn’t pull away, on the contrary; he covers her hand with his other, his palm warm against the back of her hand.
“I am- I want to be,” he corrects, still looking down, “someone you can rely on.” He looks up, his eyes troubled and wide and wet. “Madi, it will never happen again. I promise you.”
In all their time together, John had never promised her anything.
Madi reaches forward, so she can get her hands on his face and kiss him, their lips meeting urgently. There’s something salty about it – one of them, or maybe even both, have started crying – but they continue on regardless. Kissing him feels like coming up for air; by the way John’s hands are squeezing her shoulders, she thinks he feels something similar.
They watch the waves come and go side by side, the sky getting darker, the clouds heavier. It will probably start raining soon, but neither of them have tried to leave so far. Madi somehow ended up sitting in the middle, one of Flint’s and one of John’s hands in her lap, so they’re all holding onto each other, and Madi has her head on Flint’s shoulders, and John’s head is on hers, and her heart feels like it might burst right out of her chest.
“So, you two really are together?” John asks, with none of the provocation from last time, with honest curiosity.
“Yes,” Madi says, Flint grunting in agreement over her voice.
John chuckles to himself. “Who would’ve said?”
Madi lets herself chuckle, even though she’s not sure she agrees. Her and Flint coming together felt like the most natural thing, like the only thing that could happen once they’ve met each other and seen each other.
They stay quiet for a while. Madi stares at the sea, and the coming and going is almost meditative, making something in her untwist at last.
“Can I stay over tonight?” John asks at last, and he moves his head now and shifts his position so he can turn and look at them. He’s looking more composed now, but Madi can now see the vulnerability that lingers under his skin.
“Yes,” she says, smiling.
“And you?” John asks, turning to look at Flint.
“I-” Flint hesitates, and that is enough to make Madi move too, dislocating her head from Flint’s shoulder so she can look at him. Flint cowers under her gaze, his eyes moving between her and John helplessly. “Yes?” he tries at last.
Madi smiles, nodding. She leans forward to kiss him, letting herself linger for a few long seconds. “Good,” she says when she leans back.
Flint laughs to himself, almost surprised, and Madi turns in time to see John roll his eyes, before he too is reaching for Flint and kissing his cheek. “You silly, silly man,” John says, amused.
They settle down again, and Madi reaches for their hands until they’re on her lap again, so they’re all holding each other again. John kisses her shoulder before laying down his head, and Madi feels Flint lean his head against hers when she finds her place in his shoulder, and she is happy.