Chapter Text
Geoffrey watched the sun creep long, bright fingers under the curtains.
Jonathan stirred sleepily behind him, as Geoffrey tightened his grip on his arm thrown around his midsection.
“Geoffrey?” he murmured.
He turned to face Jonathan, who blinked slowly at him.
“What…is it?”
“It’s nothing. Go back to sleep.”
Jonathan blinked and frowned. “It’s not nothing. You’re anxious.”
Sometimes it was really annoying that Jonathan could hear his heartbeat, as strangely, perversely romantic as he’d found it at other times. When he didn’t find it unnerving. He tilted his head down so he didn’t sigh into his lover’s face.
“Whitechapel.”
“Whitechapel?”
“Nurse Crane’s clinic is still overflowing. Your idea about house calls and spreading word is helping, but there aren’t enough doctors.” He glanced up to give Jonathan a sharp look. “And you can’t do it all by yourself, no matter what you think.”
“I know, Geoffrey.”
“You keep trying to though, and—” he huffed. There were eight hours of night this time of year. Jon spent six of them on duty in the hospital or making house calls on average, and the rest either with Geoffrey, or with his ailing mother, or checking on patients off-duty, or dodging Priwen patrols or Ascalon’s thugs, or just wandering and helping. Lately he’d been skimming back and forth in the shadows at sunrise and sunset, he was out so late. His choice to stay at the Turquoise Turtle was relatively sensible for him, even if not finding Jonathan in the hospital or any of their safe houses bloody near gave Geoffrey a heart attack.
“Summer’s creeping up. You don’t have so many hours to be out and about.”
Jonathan grimaced. He hated this conversation as much as Geoffrey did. He missed the freedom to walk in day or night. Days close to the summer solstice were a delicate balancing act what with the sun setting as late as ten. “I know Geoffrey.”
“And I’m sorry, my green patrols aren’t helping, I know I told them—”
“I know, Geoffrey,” said Jonathan with entirely too much patience, “They don’t set out to, they just don’t think. They see a ‘leech’ and they panic.”
“Clearly I’ve got a problem in their training regimens,” Geoffrey muttered darkly, “if they don’t think.”
“It’s fixable,” soothed Jonathan. He ran his hand up and down Geoffrey’s side. Despite himself, his muscles relaxed under the touch, and he rolled over to face Jonathan comfortably. “They can be taught to think, to not assume.”
Geoffrey almost disagreed in irritation, and said you can’t fix stupid, but Jonathan curled him closer with one arm, until he was safely ensconced under Jonathan’s chin and between his arms. What was he supposed to do but swallow his grumbles and curl into him? Jonathan was nice and warm from being wrapped up in warm blankets with Geoffrey.
Sleeping together—in the literal sense—was the best and worst thing, because that was time with Jonathan, just them, enfolded together, and because he was unaware of much of it. Before sleep was the best time, even without the sex, and the drag of pulling apart come nightfall was the worst time, as they pulled on clothes and masks and roles to play, the appalling dance around each other wherever eyes might see. A careful gap between them as they walked. Shoving down a smile when hearing the other’s name. Little notes snuck in with the caution of smuggling contraband.
His shitty attempts at poetry were testament to how love-sick Geoffrey was for this man.
Jonathan’s chest expanded, contracted, in regular rhythm. It soothed Geoffrey, the steadiness of it. The strange alikeness between them as they lay in bed. The verisimilitude was sometimes odder than the outright inhumanness: like how vampires did need to breathe, needed air even if they could hold their breath far, far longer than a human.
Jonathan didn’t find it odd, (“it’s a basic chemical reaction essential to cell function; blood gains its color from oxygen saturating the hemoglobin…”) in that scientist’s way of his. There was something odder in Geoffrey’s attraction to that part of him than the inhuman part, given he’d never been a scholar by inclination and most of those who were that he knew drove him mad. But earlier this week—the day of his latest insult to the art of verse—hadn’t he spent the dawn listening to Jonathan ramble about the newest medical journals, their findings and their methodical flaws and merits, the patterns in the data?
He didn’t understand half of it, but the frustration of that was worth hearing Jonathan think aloud on it, to glimpse that brilliant mind at work. And Jonathan listened to him ramble about poetry, especially from his old home country. Always asking questions. A brilliant scientist with the heart of a poet; a shoddy poet but gifted hunter who could be enraptured by an hour-long ramble on the fine details of the relationship between the pulmonary and cardiovascular systems.
They fit together like they were carved from the same wood, to mirror each other. It was worth the years of tense encounters, miscommunication, awkward conversations. With Jonathan amazingly willing to forgive; Geoffrey finding it in him despite the blood-darkened years to open up, mind and heart. They both loved like water rushing.
There just weren’t enough hours in the night for them and their duties. Summers had once been his favorite—and Jon’s too. But whenever they tried to spend more time out and about, trying to press a little more time together from the night…
“We were nearly caught a couple times in the last week,” he spoke low into his lover’s collarbone, the fears pulling at him coming to the surface easily, as they always did, with Jon.
“True,” Jonathan murmured. Worry creased his brow too.
Geoffrey opened his mouth, but had no words ready for once. The safe thing to do, the smart thing to do, would be to cut back on their meetings.
And he could hardly bear the thought.
“What do you suggest we do?” Jonathan asked.
Geoffrey scowled. “Aside from being more careful?”
“Do you think we should stick to one meeting place?”
Geoffrey considered it. “No. Safer to switch up when and where we meet.”
“Sound,” murmured Jonathan. Then he said, “I think we should avoid meeting face to face in public spaces, except in, well, places we can stage, so to speak. Keep up the illusion of…distance.”
Frustration built in Geoffrey’s throat like a scream. He knew they didn’t have much of an option, but he hated sneaking around, he hated lying about this.
“Fine.” He bit off.
Jonathan raised himself on one elbow to better look at Geoffrey’s expression. “I hate doing this too, Geoffrey.”
“You aren’t my dirty little secret,” Geoffrey said sharply, without thinking. Then swallowing, he finished, “This isn’t a dirty little secret.” He reached up an arm, a palm to cup the back of Jonathan’s head.
Jonathan brought a hand down to brush Geoffrey’s jaw. “If we could…” he whispered, “what would you want us to do?”
“What do you mean?” he asked, watching Jonathan’s eyes.
“If we didn’t have worry about your men finding out, or society finding out, or even my condition, what would you want us to do? If we could do anything?”
Geoffrey closed his eyes. Their love was surrounded by so many foes, so many snares, it seemed impossible to imagine navigating it without also navigating the dangers threatening them. It was a rose growing in a hidden place from a crack in the cobblestones, trying to get enough light without growing into a place where the garden shears could see it.
But—he focused on the frustration of hiding like hunted things.
He tried to picture walking straight up to their safehouse, without looking for spies— No, he pictured walking straight up to the Pembroke, meeting Jonathan at the stairs. Kissing him like he did whenever they saw each other in their safehouses. Walking down the stairs, talking about Reid’s research, the troubles of the city, a new book—
In this fantasy that became easier and easier to picture, the sun rose, and Jonathan’s skin did not burn. Instead, it only cast his handsome features in a different light—softer, warmer, closer to who he actually was. They walked, tired, and arm-in-arm to Reid’s house, passing one of his patrols without trouble, greeting Jonathan’s mother, who was quite happy to see them, as always. A quick shared dinner made by Avery, and then retiring to Jonathan’s room—falling asleep as the sunlight splayed over them.
Geoffrey opened his eyes and saw Jonathan.
He was terribly pale, and the sunlight snuck into the dingy room at once aggravated and took away from this. He seemed wane, almost as though he were ill. It was a natural consequence of vampirism, but Reid made it worse with his shitty sleep habits and irregular feeding. With his wide-open eyes bluish in the light and his lanky frame on display with no pea coat to pad it, he didn’t look dangerous. He looked nearly fragile. To hunters, to his curse, even to the sun.
He cupped Jonathan’s face in his hands. He instinctively moved between him and the encroaching sun. Jon brought up one hand to rest on Geoffrey’s.
“I shouldn’t be comparing you to a raven in my shitty poems,” he murmured. “You don’t even look grim and fearsome.”
Jonathan smiled and brought his other hand to lay upon Geoffrey’s. “What am I then?”
“Something fiercely kind,” Geoffrey replied. “Something bookish and reserved, but loud and fierce when he sees suffering…”
He could’ve said more, but he just had to kiss him then. Jonathan smiled and leaned into the kiss.
“I don’t know then,” he said.
“Not a bird then?”
“Mm. Not a bird. You certainly can’t fly.”
“Ah, that’s true McCullum. But I can do a far better imitation of it than you.”
Geoffrey snorted with laughter.
And they kissed again. Jonathan’s lips felt sun-warmed.