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It was not a good time to lose an arm, if there ever was such a thing.
“Laurence,” Granby said, a little desperately, and hating himself for it. He licked his lips, mouth gone dry as bone as he looked up at the half a dozen men who had clustered around him as he lay on the surgeon's table. Fear burned away the alcohol and the laudanum in his veins. “What if we gave it a few more days? Surely now that we're not bouncing all about aloft and things can have a chance to heal…”
He could feel himself grinning, wretchedly, a nervous grimace that he hoped would invite Laurence to nod and agree that yes, of course with a little rest and good food he would be good as new in no time.
“Or,” Granby continued on gamely, “if not good as new precisely, better a gammy arm than no arm, surely?” It was hard to speak, his tongue clumsy in his mouth.
“John,” Laurence said, an anguished look crossing his face, and Granby saw his chance.
“Look, tell them I don't want to do this anymore,” he begged. “Let us just give it another few days, please. Please, I don't want to take it off. Please, will you go get Iskierka? She won't let them do it.”
He jumped as someone put hands to his injured arm. A leather band cinched painfully above his elbow, and he jerked away from it with a shout. Pain shot up wrenched muscles, making him gasp, and he gasped again as hands closed around his wrist and forearm, bearing it down before he could jerk away again.
“Hold him!” Someone—the surgeon—hissed. More hands reached for him. He found his feet seized before he could kick, and someone else threw their weight across his legs. He bucked them away, and shouted some more, some crazed energy taken hold of him.
“Enough! Enough! I’ll die with two arms. Don't touch me!” He turned his head to snarl at the surgeon's hired man who had taken hold of his good arm. It was only a boy, really, whey-faced and spotty, who flinched away from Granby’s poisonous look. He blanched under the spots and his grip on Granby loosened for an instant, until he was shouldered away and his place taken by an older, broader man, who bore a look of placid remorselessness. Granby tried to wrench his arm away, but the man dropped his weight across it. He heaved against him anyway. Two men had thrown themselves over his legs again, heavy as sandbags. More hands pressed his shoulders down and he felt the terror well up in him like a wave threatening to crash over his head. “Iskierka! Iskierka! ”
He knew, distantly, that she had been lured far out of earshot, with Temeraire sent with her to keep her away either with guile or main force. He knew, distantly, that he was run half mad with fever and rum, incapable of a sensible thought. He knew, distantly, that this was the rawest cowardice that sent him thrashing against the men who held him down, and calling out for Iskierka in a voice that cracked and broke. He knew all these things and found he could not care.
“He's panicking,” another voice said, as Granby heaved and fought against the hands that held him down. Many voices were talking and shouting above him all at once. Someone was shouldering determinedly through the crowd. Granby's wild, roving gaze lit desperately on the bright shock of blond hair.
“Laurence!” Granby said, twisting his neck to find him.
Laurence was pressing forward, pushing his way through the throng of men surrounding him. For a moment, Granby's heart leapt in relief, waiting for Laurence to throw off the hands that held him, but the gauzy fantasy came apart as Laurence only reached to take a proffered hand from the man on the other side of the table and swung up to straddle him.
The breath rushed out of him as Laurence's weight pinned him to the table. Laurence leaned forward, bracing a forearm on either of Granby's shoulders. There was no more anguish in Laurence's eyes, only a tightly set jaw and a grim expression of purpose. “Oh damn you,” Granby said to him breathlessly.
He was panting now, exhausted, weighed down to the table at every point of leverage. The stupefying effects of the laudanum made his limbs leaden and his head thick. There was no room to move, no ally left. He could only breathe, trembling, fighting down the high keen that threatened to force its way up his throat.
Hands settled about his head. Laurence's thumbs rested against his temples, not to hold him fast, but steadying him. He looked up and found no quarter, but Laurence caught his gaze and held it. Granby tried desperately to focus on him, struggling to match his shaking breaths to Laurence's.
“You must bear it.” Laurence lowered his forehead to press against Granby's. He was very close, his voice low and fierce in Granby's ear. Granby felt a brief spark of mettle kindle in his breast, then break apart again. He could not shake his head, with Laurence bearing down so close. Laurence pressed on. “You must bear it. For Iskierka. You have a duty to her.”
The thought of his maddening, impossible, precious beast, who had carried him so resolutely through the jungle, wrenched a harsh sob from his chest. There was no free hand to press to his mouth. He closed his eyes against it instead and was appalled to find his lashes were wet.
“Sod duty,” Granby breathed miserably. “Sod it all.” But he took the bit of harness they slipped between his teeth, the leather harsh and tannic in his mouth.
A flash of bright metal out of the corner of his eye made him jolt like a horse. Laurence put a hand to the side of his face, and Granby let his head be turned away.
It is not a good time to be short an arm, if there ever was such a thing.
He had worried—in Rio, still newly lopsided and painfully thin from fever—that Little might turn away from him and Granby might find himself living the monk's life after all. When Little had pulled him into a frantic embrace behind Immortalis’ wing, Granby had been very nearly stupefied with relief. He has thrown himself into every liaison since determined that Little should not find him the lesser for it.
It has turned out a missing arm does not signify terribly in the logistics of a hasty, upright fuck below-decks, nor when one or the other of them drops to their knees in a dim corner of a dragon transport or makeshift covert. Tonight though, is the first time in nearly a year they've found themselves alone behind real walls and a door that locks, and it is proving an impediment to the sort of slow, languorous lovemaking they've promised each other in a thousand whispered pledges.
He feels ungainly, unbalanced. This fumbling about in bed is somehow so much worse than learning to move about dragon-back again, or the hundred and one other adjustments and concessions he has learned to make in the last year. It's all another chafing reminder that he no longer has a body that can simply do whatever he asks of it.
The prosthetic and hook lie in a discarded heap back in Granby's rooms. He would be no more likely to bring them into bed than he would to bring his carabiners and harness. Less likely, even, as he is as used to harness as a second skin. The hook is still an uncomfortable, slightly alien thing that he is happy to shed at the end of the day.
Without it however, there is no elbow to prop himself up on if his hand is occupied. If he braces himself with a hand, he cannot do what he wants most: worry every last stitch of clothing from Augustine Little's body.
Granby does not mean to be a complainer though, even if he has found his good cheer spread increasingly thin. A little—a lot—of rum has gone a long way to smoothing off the rough edges of the evening. Most importantly, he could not want for better company. Little is fine-boned, and lithe, and sweetly flushed under Granby's attentions. The whole night stretches out in front of them—if Granby's good arm does not give out and send him collapsing down onto Little’s face.
He is found out. Little's eyes flick to Granby's trembling arm, and then back to Granby's, a bright glint of mischief in them. Then suddenly they are rolling on the narrow bed. Granby gives a hastily muffled exclamation as Little hooks a hip and flips them both. Their positions reversed, Granby finds himself pushed back into the pillows, Little leaning over him.
The breath rushes out of him as someone else throws their weight across his legs, heavy as sandbags.
The frisson of memory is jarring and unwanted, catching Granby unaware. He has just enough time for a surprised gasp, and then the world goes dark and muffled as Little pulls his shirt over his head.
It takes some getting out of, voluminous and half pinned underneath him as it is. He can hear Little laughing softly on the other side of it. Granby half sits up, twists, and Little's hands run up his sides, sliding the rest of the fabric over his head. Little is grinning when Granby emerges. Granby grins back, making a show of tossing his mussed hair out of his eyes and at the same time determinedly shaking away the strange, intrusive jolt of anxiety.
Little sits back to survey him, trailing light fingers along his ribcage, his gaze following his hands and Granby feels a new twinge of unease from a different quarter. He regrets not putting out the candle, uncomfortable with this new scrutiny.
The end of his arm is crossed with scars, still angry and puckering even after many months. Across his chest the straps of the prosthetic have left the skin hairless and shining where they rub. There is a perpetual bruise at his collarbone where a buckle sits, like a parody of a love bite. The candlelight paints Little in heady, sweeping brushstrokes of smooth pale skin. Granby doubts it is as kind to him.
Little stops him with a gentle hand when he twists and stretches to reach for the candle. Granby, chagrined, lets himself be pushed back down again. Little leans in close, until his dark hair falls like a curtain around both their faces. “I want to see you,” he says and kisses him with a smiling mouth.
The kiss is slow and sweet at first, the heat building slowly between them. Granby relaxes into it, thinking at last only of the pleasure in it. Granby reaches up to brush an errant strand of Little's hair away, then lets his hand trail down the side of Little's face, the smooth line of his neck, to his shoulders and and down his back.
He presses his palm to the small of Little's back, encouraging him to move and Little makes a soft, urgent noise against his mouth and shifts. There is a single, delicious roll of Little's hips, and then his hand finds Granby's shoulder and the pleasure is gone, ephemeral as a soap bubble.
The feeling of alarm is rising in him again, even as Granby struggles to quash it. He keeps his attention fixed on the face above him. Augustine, over and over in his head is almost a mantra to blot out the unease of the weight straddling him. His breath is coming in stuttering pants, and his heart is quick in his chest. It is harder and harder to convince himself it is excitement now, and more and more like the blooming edge of dread.
Then Little, face intent, slips his fingers between Granby’s lips, and everything goes wrong.
Weight pins him at hips and shoulders. He is bare to the waist. Rum makes his tongue thick and his head swim. The shadow of a person leans over him. Something presses into his mouth. There is no room to move, no ally left.
Granby surges up, knocking Little’s hand away and nearly sending him sprawling. Little makes an ungainly noise and throws arm out to catch himself before he can tumble off the bed. In the next moment Granby is over him in a graceless scramble of sharp knees and elbow and staggering to the window. It takes a few seconds of fumbling with the clasp, and then it is undone and Granby throws the window open.
The night air is brisk, the cold washes over his shoulders and bare chest as he hangs out the window, gulping a draught of air. Behind him, Little gives a soft curse and leans over quickly to blow out the candle and throw them into darkness.
The edge of the windowsill digs into his belly. Sweat cools on his back. This is not Rio. There is no tropical heat, no stale scent of sweat, no tinge of blood. It is only an excess of rum that makes him lightheaded, not laudanum or fever. “You're in bloody Dover ,” Granby murmurs to himself, and a little of the panic ebbs, though his hand still clutches the window frame and his legs still do not want to bear his weight.
“John?”
Granby takes a last breath of air. Little has righted himself and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Granby goes to him. Little's mouth hangs open in question, but Granby stops and catches him up in a hasty kiss before he can speak again.
Little's lips are still slack with surprise under his own. Granby breaks the kiss before Little can pull away, and drops to his knees before him instead. He presses his mouth to the inside of Little's thigh, and hears Little’s sharp inhale above him. The skin is familiar under his lips. Granby breathes deep, willing the familiarity to quell the incessant racing of his heart.
“Let me,” Granby breathes. He can do this, at least: please a lover. The possibility of his own climax seems as far away as the moon. There is no room for the heat of desire in his belly, not with the sunken pit of dread that sits there.
“ John ,” Little's hand slips under his chin, tipping his face up. Granby allows it. In the dark, he can only see the vague, pale oval of Little’s face above him, edges softened by the curling, dark halo of his hair, two dark sweeps of brow knit together in concern. “What—?”
“Gave myself a bad start for a moment, is all, and too much rum,” Granby says, which is utterly the truth. He traces his hand up Little’s leg, thumb trailing over the familiar plane of his thigh and then the smooth curve of his hip bone. He is here, in Dover, with the smell of clean linen and with Augustine Little under his hand.
A match flares, stinking of smoke and sulfur, and Little holds it to the candle. His features are striking in the candlelight, and at once Granby sees under the consternation, an intolerable mixture of concern and pity. He looks away at once. Little's hand tries to catch under his chin again, but he turns his cheek into it instead, turning it into a caress. He presses a kiss to the center of Little's palm. “I won't let it spoil the fun.”
He reaches for Little again, brushing past Little's hand. Granby has the uncomfortable inkling that he's pawing at him. He presses on, desperately, until Little's hand wraps around his wrist, almost painfully tight. Little's voice is terse.
“Stop.”
It is like being plunged into ice. Granby jerks back as if stung. The short rebuke hangs in the air between them. They stare at each other for a long moment, then Granby thrusts himself away.
Little reaches out for him, speaking again and sounding more gentle now. “You're white as death,” but Granby is already rising to his feet and speaking over him.
“Pray, forgive me. I'm not good company this evening.” His shirt is on the floor, his boots still leaning haphazardly where he kicked them off at the door. He has the advantage on Little, who has shed his clothes entirely. In a moment Granby has dressed, then stands there, stupidly. Every nerve is clamoring to escape, but he has not thought farther than the overwhelming urge to flee. Little is still staring at him from the bed, lips parted and eyes wide.
The smell of the burnt match still hangs in the air and Granby realizes, suddenly, that he wants nothing more than to find Iskierka.
“I– I will see you tomorrow,” he says, with hopeless inadequacy, and pulls the door closed behind him.
The covert is deserted at such a late hour. There is no one to see Granby stumble across it, as colt-legged as an ensign after his first action. The rum has curdled in his stomach. He detours and is quietly sick behind one of the waterbutts in the courtyard, then rinses and spits, feeling hollowed out. The hand gripping the edge of the waterbutt will not stop shaking.
Iskierka lies in a sinuous heap on the flagstones at the edge of the courtyard, jetting little wisps of steam in sleep. He doesn’t need the prosthetic hook to scramble over her coils. He could probably do it half asleep, the many scalding footholds and handholds of her spines effortlessly familiar to him. He feels the heat of them vaguely through thick calluses. She stirs when he drops down to the flagstones at the center of her coiled body. He manages a wan smile as she cranes her neck about to twist and look back at him. The dark tongue flickering out to taste the air about him is less welcome. He bats at her as she pushes in closer and she retreats only a little, nosing about him looking for illness or injury.
“I’m all right, dear heart.” It is easier, somehow, to bear a twenty ton nursemaid than a human sized one. “I’m all in one piece.”
The tongue flickers out again. Granby makes a noise of distaste, and she draws back, satisfied for now that he is not bleeding or maimed. She lowers her head to regard him narrowly, her eyes closely set and glittering predatorily in the low light. “ Something is wrong, clearly, ” she rumbles, all flashing bright teeth and steaming nostrils. “ Who has upset you?”
The air rushes out of Granby in a long sigh. He is at once aware of an incipient headache and a bone deep tiredness. He lowers himself slowly down to the flagstones and rubs a tired hand over his face. “No one. Only a hundred drunken sailors at the bottom of the sea.”
This is an old road they have trod. Iskierka snorts derisively, a little pop of blue flame just visible at her nostrils. “Well then you had very well better stay with me,” she says perfunctorily. Her head draws back and there is a susurration of scales as she shifts to coil about him more tightly. The walls of scales and spines rise higher than his head. “I will watch for both of us,” she says, her voice now muffled on the other side of her coils. “And you must rest.”
The flagstones are cool, Iskierka’s hide pleasantly hot. He can fit himself between any of her spines and be as comfortable as a man at the Turkish baths. She makes a pleased noise as he leans back against her side. Behind him is the odd gurgling and hiss of her internal mechanisms, resonant through his chest. He takes one breath, then half a dozen, and feels the panic recede a little more.
She is coiled so that opposite him lies the gnarled, cauterized scar from their flight from the Inca. The scales have grown back bubbled and puckered, with a queer rippling sheen like oyster shell. He reaches out with a boot and nudges at one of the twisted scales affectionately. Surprisingly, vainglorious creature that she is, she has none of Temeraire's mania for covering them.
He had watched the poor blistered scales regrow, night by night, in Rio, when she would not be settled for the evening without him. Iskierka had implacably ignored both the surgeon's mutterings about miasma and Granby's own blusterings about mollycoddling. She had gotten her way, of course, and Granby had slept the sleep of the dead, safe within the bower of her spines.
Tucked against her side once more, the incessant thrum of fear has eased, but now in its place is a sour despair at the ruin of the evening. He closes his eyes, mortified. He desperately wants a cup of sweet tea, a night's sleep, and a way to pretend that none of this has ever happened. How he will ever face Little again after such a stunt he has no idea. He is damningly sure he will not be invited into his bed again; he is not even certain how he might approach such a thing, not with this new, creeping horror hovering at the edge of any future intimacy.
The sound of footsteps dredges him out of his miserable reverie. The pitch of hisses and bubbles in Iskierka's internal mechanisms shift slightly as she wakes, and Granby can imagine her cracking an eye open. There is the deep reverberation of a growl, more vibration than sound, and then Little’s voice, rising over the warning hum, unperturbed.
“You needn't hiss at me, you impossible wyrm. I'm only here to see to him.”
The growl stops, Iskierka evidently having chosen the most inopportune moment in her life to be obliging. Granby steels himself, and a few moments later Little drops down over the edge of Iskierka’s coils, shaking the heat from reddened palms. He is dressed in shirtsleeves, his hair pulled back from his face. Granby can only watch him as he crouches down next to him to peer into Granby's face.
At last Little sits back on his haunches, giving Granby a little space to breathe. “I would ask you if you were well, but I think that would only make you more of a liar for the evening.”
Granby lets out a breath he has not realized he'd been holding. “Oh hell,” he says, wishing to be anywhere else. “I hardly know what to say to you.”
“Something I did upset you,” Little says, sounding more curious than piqued.
“No!” Granby says quickly, but Little’s eyes flick to his immediately, eyebrows raising.
“You are a liar,” Little reproves gently.
There is nothing to say to that. Little’s hand raises to tuck a lock of hair behind Granby's ear, and Granby realizes at once that he is all over sweat, his shirt sticking to his back and his hair straggling in damp tendrils. “Oh, don't,” Granby says, raising his hand to brush Little’s away from the grimy mess of his hair. “I'm not in a fit state.”
“I do not mind,” Little says, but he takes his hand away, looking down at it instead, rotating his wrist and flexing his fingers slowly, until they are both watching it. Little’s gaze lifts to his shoulder. “You have never— I had not thought about how someone atop you might strike you.”
This is intolerable, mortifying. “You atop me is the last thing in the world a fellow could complain of,” Granby protests, but Little ignores him.
“When they took Robertson’s foot off it took three men to keep him still.” Little’s voice is quiet.
“Ha! For me it took six!” The jesting boast falls so incredibly flat that Little looks at him incredulously, and Granby finds he has come to the end of his forced cheer. A lump has risen in the back of his throat, difficult to swallow around. He closes his eyes against it for a long moment. When he does speak, his voice is shamefully thin. “I do not like to think of it, I suppose. I– was a prat about it, just before.”
“A prat,” Little repeats dubiously.
He has to swallow again, against the bile. How to explain the raw terror that had left him the worst sort of coward? How to admit that he is so craven that even the memory of Rio stalks him now, cropping up to ruin him when he least expects it. He shrugs, helplessly, unable to meet Little’s eyes.
“Ah,” Little says in understanding. There is a bitter note of irony in his voice. “Bad enough to lose an arm. But then you could not bear it without acting the feckless, wailing molly.”
Granby looks up, stricken, reeling as though he's been struck. The words are so close to what he hears in his own voice in his head. It is as though Little has plucked the seething knot from the pit of his stomach and held the ugliness for confirmation.
“It is not easy,” Little says. His jaw is set tight, his mouth in an uncharacteristic twist, but his eyes are regarding Granby with an almost infinite tenderness. For a moment Granby sees him as others must see him: slight of build and smooth cheeked and undeniably pretty, holding his own in a life of rough service.
“No,” is all Granby can say. “It's not.”
Little draws close, his hands raising to cup Granby's face. There are tears wet on Granby's cheeks. He cannot catch his breath. “John, it's all right.”
“You will undo me,” Granby whispers.
Little does not draw away. “You may trust me, of all people, to keep your secrets.”
Granby weeps: for the arm, for the ruined night, for the whole bloody mess of it. He weeps as he could not before, in harsh, gulping sobs that shake him. Little’s hand rests at the back of his neck, holding him steady as he presses his face into Little’s shoulder. Iskierka makes an alarmed rumble, but before Granby can muster himself to reassure her, Little is already speaking low, soft words that Granby only half understands, and the coils around them shift as Iskierka settles again, placated.
At last the tide of feeling recedes with a few final hitching breaths, leaving him washed up on shore again. He is curled on his side with his head in Little’s lap. Little leans back against Iskierka's hide, legs stretched in front of him. One hand threads softly through Granby's hair, smoothing it over and over again away from Granby's neck.
Granby closes his eyes, secreting away these last few stolen moments, jealously sealing up the memory of someone's gentle fingers at work in his hair and the clean, expansive ache that fills his chest now that his tears have run dry. In a moment he will rouse himself. In a moment he will rise and scrub his face fresh again. He will beg Little’s pardon, and reassure Iskierka, and see them both settled to their beds, and go back to his own.
In a moment.
Little’s voice stirs him from his reverie. “Thank you,” Little says, and Granby blinks, bewildered.
A half dozen easy deflections rise to Granby's mind: Little has been starved of company for too long, if this is his idea of a pleasant assignation; next time he'll be better off taking himself to the find some company at the Lamplighter for the evening; this is the sort of good time Granby only shows to the men he really likes. They all die on his lips though, at the hoarse, earnest note in Little’s voice. “Augustine?”
“Sometimes—like now—I think…I want…” Little pauses, at a loss for words, and his hand hangs in the air in a helpless gesture. Granby twists to look at his face. Little shuts his mouth with a rueful expression and shakes his head. “We are in a hard service. It's not the sort of life where one can make promises.”
There is a lump in Granby's throat for an entirely new reason. Granby reaches up, catches Little's hand in his own, intertwining their fingers. He means to bring them to his lips, but before he can a great, heaving hiccup escapes him.
“Oh!” Little's eyes go wide first in surprise, then crinkle with mirth as another rollicking spasm seizes Granby, this time with enough force to lift his head from Little's lap. Little puts a hand to his mouth, though the smile peeks out the edges. “Oh dear.”
“Oh hell— UHHP! ” They are coming fast and hard, forceful enough to jolt him about and patently ridiculous. “Oh, why damn you— UHP —belay that Augustine, stop— UHP —laughing.” This last Granby gives up as a bad job as Little’s shoulders are shaking with mirth. Some last hard knot is unwinding in him too, and he finds himself grinning back, until they are spiraling upwards in hilarity with each new gulping hiccup until they are both breathless and Granby aches behind his ears from smiling.
Finally it is Little's turn to wipe his streaming eyes as Granby waits, cautiously, to see if his body has at last settled into quiescence. He stares up at Little who is blotting at his own eyes with a shirtsleeve. Iskierka's humidity has turned his hair into a cloud, dark strands escaping his horsetail in all directions and wisping about his face. He is pink cheeked from the heat, and the laughter, and looking at Granby in a way that makes him feel the most fortunate creature in the world.
“May I sleep in your bed tonight?” Granby blurts out. He finds himself loath to be parted and the quick look that passes over Little’s face tells him his ask is more boon than burden. The echo of Little's earlier fumbling words, promises, is still rolling about his head and he adds, low, “I would stay as long as you'll have me.”
The air leaves Little in a great rush. “Sleep in my bed? My dear John, you may sleep in my arms,” he says grandly, and plants a great, smacking kiss to Granby's temple, wet enough that Granby, protesting, must wipe it away.
There is nothing insincere though, about the way Little curls around as much of Granby as he can when they have smuggled themselves back to Little’s bed, or the way he presses a soft kiss to the nape of Granby's neck before his breath grows steady and even.
Granby closes his eyes in the dark. He is in Dover, with the smells of clean linen and Iskierka's brimstone still clinging to their clothes. Little snores softly behind him, unexpected and endearing. There is the faint flap of courier wings outside, and the sonorous noise of many sleeping dragons. Granby breathes with them, and falls asleep with arms about him, holding him tight.