Guy manages to take down the flour, sugar, and a few mixing bowls before turning around to reach into a cabinet just by the coffee pot... only to find Julian utterly stuck.
He slides beside the man until their shoulders touch and pulls over the jar, opening the lid.
"Just a few spoons of it ought to brew a strong pot."
"Spoons. Right." Julian doesn't move to get spoons, though, he just laughs suddenly. "It's a day after my death and I'm making coffee with an old friend who turned out to be a double agent and we both have wings. This is mad." His smile has gone a bit...plastic. "Didn't know morphine could do this."
Guy seems to forget his own mission to whip up black sausages and eggs and toast and to slice up the fruit in the icebox to put with the cakes.
"When I first arrived with Anthony and Kim, we were kept in the Battledome. We all thought we'd been caught."
He won't bring Julian through their thought processes. Wondering if outside the open door there would be semi-automatic rifles waiting to mow them down. Whether outside the dome itself there'd be buried landmines and barbed wire fences, or this was all part of a bloody camp.
"I can't speak of coming back because I don't know. But I promise you, Julian..."
He looks him in the eye, his own smile replaced with steadfast, genuine, cockeyed optimism. The Guy Julian had always known. "It isn't so terrible here."
"But it's not real, is it? H-how can it be?" Julian's smile is gone now, and his eyes are slightly glassy. "Dunno if I'd rather be in some hospital out of my mind than in another world. I didn't think I'd be alive to face the consequences once I'd gone."
Consequences. His mother grieving. He was sure the lives of so many soldiers were worth his mother's broken heart, but it was a sacrifice he'd forced her to make. And his friends--Guy, last night, thinking he was an hallucination and acting like this had happened before.
"As brilliant as any man could be, no one could forge this."
He doesn't know how it could be done. There were philosophers that had discussed it, historians, a question that repeated throughout history just what consciousness truly was. He never stopped to think about the consequences of such things shifting. The dead simply didn't come back.
"And the consequences... as well as the benefits, are mutually exclusive."
He had to be careful as he explained this. So very careful.
"That's not what I mean." It's said irritably, and Julian's eyes are starting to sting. He leans back against the counter and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Shit."
To hear Julian speak in such a tone leaves Guy wondering if there is anything he can say at all in this moment.
"To be alive after you've died doesn't require you to have regrets about your former life." He nearly reaches for Julian, but just as his hand begins to, he retracts it. Physical contact won't help him. Not now.
"A second chance isn't a commentary. You lived and you sacrificed as your heart told you to. There's nothing to regret in that, Julian." Then, he adds far more softly, "I only hope I die the same way."
This at first seems to make Julian retract, his negative emotions containing themselves. Then, he releases them in a sigh.
His poor mother. She hadn't asked for the sacrifice. Did any mother who lost her son to war? At least he'd given her something to be proud of.
"I don't regret it, Guy. I'll never regret it. It's just...different, knowing for sure I'm not going back. But I...it's going to drive me mad, being here and not being able to do anything about what's going on back..." An ironic smile, something like a snarl. "Back on Earth."
Guy says so evenly, a look of strange resignation in his face. "Perhaps not to the same extent, but I bloody well know the feeling."
Here, he was no use to Russia. He couldn't work with making sure that Moscow got ahold of Ultra. Wonderful, wonderful Ultra, the taskforce that had broken Enigma, the only souls that were helping Russia to win the damned war on the Eastern front. Here, he couldn't work his way in and out of the rings of parliament, sniffing under Macnamara's nose to influence the swing of the right-wing political scene. He couldn't use the BBC to flit in and out of interviews with major leaders in France and Spain and Italy and Germany. He couldn't brilliantly make scenes within MI-6, walking out with their files and working as a talent spotter to place all those wonderful moles within the offices. Couriers, file takers, 'understudies' to report back and forth between he and well-placed Kim and Donald. Here, he couldn't watch Donald Maclean, a rather nervous fellow about infiltrating the embassy. They all were wary about Donald. They all were wary about him, too.
He was in a world where he couldn't use his talents. Here, there were no attainable upper rungs. The information was laid out and plain, there for the finding. There's very few secrets and Guy has lived his life by them.
He can't imagine not going back. He has to go back. He's nothing if he can't shape England for the better. Even if the only way to change her is through bitter, sloppy betrayal. If that metaphorical knife in the back is what it takes...
"The first week is hard. It's very hard, and I know it because of what I was here."
Guy turns away. There's too much passion in his face, and he knows he doesn't entirely understand all that Julian feels. Though he does know what it means to burn every bridge he knew. To throw around disillusionment like a cloak.
This is Julian's way of bucking up and finding that stiff upper lip he usually has too much emotional fortitude to need. It's nothing. It doesn't matter. "I guess I'm lucky."
It's a shame his back is turned, because if it wasn't, he'd be able to see Julian looking back at him with a sudden tenderness. It is consolation, knowing that despite how horribly they left things between them, they really can just...leave all that behind, if they want to. Be intimate friends again. Apostles, Cambridge fellows, telling each other everything. Julian has always had a deep fondness for Guy, although "fondness" might not be the right word. He loves him, surely, as a dear and highly respected friend ought to be loved. More than anything, this moment, Julian wants to drive away that awful gloom in Guy's posture, the gloom he is responsible for.
A poem comes to mind, and he hears the cadence of it so clearly in his mind.
There are no fortunes to be told, although, Because I love you more than I can say...
"If I could tell you I would let you know."
He turns back around, with the intent of explaining why he can't say these things. The look he finds is so poignant on Julian's face, it takes him a moment to recollect his thoughts.
"I'm no poet, but you were missed, Julian. Terribly, terribly missed."
"I missed you." It all starts pouring out now. "Not just in Spain, either. In China. When I saw you in London, I thought we would catch up, the three of us. We were such good friends, and..."
The rest of that sentence huffs out in a despairing sigh, as if he really can't explain this and isn't sure if he should.
"I know it wasn't your fault. You were doing what you had to do. But I want to be sure you're not beating yourself up about it, so...I forgive you. Can we just...be friends again?"
Hearing that he was missed, Guy seems almost overcome with a mixture of bittersweet relief and guilt. Both of which he tries to shove aside with failing effort.
"I love England. I am a traitor because I love her. Sacrifices were always necessary but... I never wanted our friendship to be one."
He smiles, though his eyes are bleary while they now sting with emotions and saltwater.
"I'm sorry, Julian. Of course. Of course we can be friends."
With that, and without warning, he takes the poet into his arms, embracing him tightly if just to hold him for a moment.
The moment he realizes what's happening, Julian throws his arms around Guy and grips hard, as if he can squeeze all the pain and grief out of the little man like toothpaste. The tension flows out of his arms, water running off leaves, hardly a drop left behind. A similar, if far less touchy-feely, reconciliation is due with Anthony, but he'll get around to that later. He knows it's coming.
The cathartic experience Guy had always wanted, craved, and sought was finally within his reach. While holding Julian this way, hugging him tightly with arms just as strongly wrapped around him was a way to purge so many things that had weighed down on him, it was a step.
Guy would always be haunted by not just this man, but by his unwavering love for him.
Guy turns his head, saying in a low tone what had always been most important, no matter how aching his heart.
Julian nods, trying to banish all the resentment he'd nursed against this man for the last month of his life. No, this is the Guy he remembers. This is comfortable and lovely and sweet, and for that, Julian can't be convinced that it's going to last.
Very well, then. These renewed friendships, this second chance at life. Even if it's all temporary, he'll take it.
It's a moment before Guy can bear to let Julian go, and he does so with a heaviness in his heart from the restlessness of holding secrets still. He doesn't mean to keep Julian at a distance. If anything, he wishes to keep him closely, but confessions of such dastardly romantic feelings is something he doesn't have the courage for. Not yet. Not now. Not in this very moment, here, when things are so uncertain still.
Not while he's still gripping to the leftover fear that he might lose Julian again. That much, he couldn't bear.
"Thank you."
For taking this so bloody well.
For understanding, even if it doesn't entirely make sense.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
SUPPROSE in present tense?
He slides beside the man until their shoulders touch and pulls over the jar, opening the lid.
"Just a few spoons of it ought to brew a strong pot."
Sure!
no subject
"When I first arrived with Anthony and Kim, we were kept in the Battledome. We all thought we'd been caught."
He won't bring Julian through their thought processes. Wondering if outside the open door there would be semi-automatic rifles waiting to mow them down. Whether outside the dome itself there'd be buried landmines and barbed wire fences, or this was all part of a bloody camp.
"I can't speak of coming back because I don't know. But I promise you, Julian..."
He looks him in the eye, his own smile replaced with steadfast, genuine, cockeyed optimism. The Guy Julian had always known. "It isn't so terrible here."
no subject
Consequences. His mother grieving. He was sure the lives of so many soldiers were worth his mother's broken heart, but it was a sacrifice he'd forced her to make. And his friends--Guy, last night, thinking he was an hallucination and acting like this had happened before.
no subject
He doesn't know how it could be done. There were philosophers that had discussed it, historians, a question that repeated throughout history just what consciousness truly was. He never stopped to think about the consequences of such things shifting. The dead simply didn't come back.
"And the consequences... as well as the benefits, are mutually exclusive."
He had to be careful as he explained this. So very careful.
no subject
no subject
"To be alive after you've died doesn't require you to have regrets about your former life." He nearly reaches for Julian, but just as his hand begins to, he retracts it. Physical contact won't help him. Not now.
"A second chance isn't a commentary. You lived and you sacrificed as your heart told you to. There's nothing to regret in that, Julian." Then, he adds far more softly, "I only hope I die the same way."
no subject
His poor mother. She hadn't asked for the sacrifice. Did any mother who lost her son to war? At least he'd given her something to be proud of.
"I don't regret it, Guy. I'll never regret it. It's just...different, knowing for sure I'm not going back. But I...it's going to drive me mad, being here and not being able to do anything about what's going on back..." An ironic smile, something like a snarl. "Back on Earth."
no subject
Guy says so evenly, a look of strange resignation in his face. "Perhaps not to the same extent, but I bloody well know the feeling."
Here, he was no use to Russia. He couldn't work with making sure that Moscow got ahold of Ultra. Wonderful, wonderful Ultra, the taskforce that had broken Enigma, the only souls that were helping Russia to win the damned war on the Eastern front. Here, he couldn't work his way in and out of the rings of parliament, sniffing under Macnamara's nose to influence the swing of the right-wing political scene. He couldn't use the BBC to flit in and out of interviews with major leaders in France and Spain and Italy and Germany. He couldn't brilliantly make scenes within MI-6, walking out with their files and working as a talent spotter to place all those wonderful moles within the offices. Couriers, file takers, 'understudies' to report back and forth between he and well-placed Kim and Donald. Here, he couldn't watch Donald Maclean, a rather nervous fellow about infiltrating the embassy. They all were wary about Donald. They all were wary about him, too.
He was in a world where he couldn't use his talents. Here, there were no attainable upper rungs. The information was laid out and plain, there for the finding. There's very few secrets and Guy has lived his life by them.
He can't imagine not going back. He has to go back. He's nothing if he can't shape England for the better. Even if the only way to change her is through bitter, sloppy betrayal. If that metaphorical knife in the back is what it takes...
"The first week is hard. It's very hard, and I know it because of what I was here."
Guy turns away. There's too much passion in his face, and he knows he doesn't entirely understand all that Julian feels. Though he does know what it means to burn every bridge he knew. To throw around disillusionment like a cloak.
"I'm sorry."
no subject
This is Julian's way of bucking up and finding that stiff upper lip he usually has too much emotional fortitude to need. It's nothing. It doesn't matter. "I guess I'm lucky."
no subject
"If it's any consolation at all, I can't say how happy I am to see you again."
Ba-bump. Ba-bump. As always, he could hear the hammering, loud as a howitzer on his sleeve.
no subject
"Guy?"
no subject
There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say...
"If I could tell you I would let you know."
He turns back around, with the intent of explaining why he can't say these things. The look he finds is so poignant on Julian's face, it takes him a moment to recollect his thoughts.
"I'm no poet, but you were missed, Julian. Terribly, terribly missed."
no subject
The rest of that sentence huffs out in a despairing sigh, as if he really can't explain this and isn't sure if he should.
"I know it wasn't your fault. You were doing what you had to do. But I want to be sure you're not beating yourself up about it, so...I forgive you. Can we just...be friends again?"
no subject
"I love England. I am a traitor because I love her. Sacrifices were always necessary but... I never wanted our friendship to be one."
He smiles, though his eyes are bleary while they now sting with emotions and saltwater.
"I'm sorry, Julian. Of course. Of course we can be friends."
With that, and without warning, he takes the poet into his arms, embracing him tightly if just to hold him for a moment.
no subject
no subject
Guy would always be haunted by not just this man, but by his unwavering love for him.
Guy turns his head, saying in a low tone what had always been most important, no matter how aching his heart.
"Friendship. Friendship above all."
no subject
Very well, then. These renewed friendships, this second chance at life. Even if it's all temporary, he'll take it.
no subject
Not while he's still gripping to the leftover fear that he might lose Julian again. That much, he couldn't bear.
"Thank you."
For taking this so bloody well.
For understanding, even if it doesn't entirely make sense.
For a chance.
For still being that bright, beautiful man..