Chapter Text
The spare room was finally getting some use.
"You get back in that bed!"
Halfway down the stairs, George sighed. He continued his limping descent, clinging to the banister as necessary.
John popped his head out of the kitchen into the narrow hallway and scowled to find George's slow progress to the ground floor had succeeded.
"I'm moving to the sofa," said George, implacably. "Make yourself useful, John, go and get me a blanket." He didn't especially need one now that it was summer, even on the windswept Northumbrian moor, but it would give John something to fuss over.
"Do not touch the kettle," John warned him. He headed up the stairs, casting a brief suspicious glance at George as he went in case he keeled over right there in the hall. But evidently he wasn't prepared to start another argument about the stick, because he just went into George's bedroom to fetch the blanket.
He was back down before George had even got himself properly settled on the sofa, his footsteps slapping down the wooden stairs. For the past several months, John had been giving the impression that he believed George would have a heart attack if he took his eyes off him even for a minute.
George had pointed this out to him. John had just said that the last time had George buggered off on his own he'd got himself shot. George hadn't really had a riposte to that.
Between them they arranged the checked blanket to their mutual satisfaction. George had brought down a book with him on the Napoleonic wars, which he now opened to the bookmark, which was a rather nice handmade effort from Leigh-Anne. She'd made one for all of them: Mummy, Daddy, Mr Gently. George didn't know if Lisa's new partner had got one, and wasn't about to ask John.
John stood there looking at him for a minute, maybe looking at the bookmark or maybe just seeing if there was anything else he could chivvy George about. Then the electric kettle started to bubble and rock on its metal base, and John went to see about the tea.
George felt a twinge of pleasure for how well he'd timed his escape. He was getting heartily sick of being almost confined to bed. He'd never claimed to be a good patient and his current convalescence was wearing him to his limit. He'd already had several arguments with John, only partly justified.
But John had moved into that unused spare bedroom as soon as George was released to finish his recovery at home. He'd given up his naff bedsit ("It's got its own bathroom, it's a flat," John had kept insisting) and just installed himself in George's house, and he hadn't given George a chance to object.
"You're not my guv'nor any more," he'd said, even though two months on he was still calling George 'guv'. "And you plainly can't look after yourself. We're not having an argument about it."
"You can't just tell me what to do like you're talking to Leigh-Anne," George had protested. John had just installed his tooth-mug in the bathroom with a decisive clunk.
John came back into the living room bearing two mugs of builder's. George felt a reluctant twinge of affection in his chest as he watched his erstwhile sergeant put the mugs down on an end table on their accustomed coasters. Tea-making at the station had been a duty mostly delegated to Taylor or whoever else in uniform was available. Having John make them both tea in George's home was pleasantly domestic. George hadn't had someone make him tea first thing in the morning for a long time.
"What you smiling at?"
"You," said George, which was perfectly true. John, thinking he was being made fun of, wrinkled his nose. George smoothed his page, took his reading glasses out of his pocket to settle them on his nose, and proceeded to ignore John in favour of Trafalgar.
John went to the French windows at the back of the living room, which ran the whole depth of the little cottage, and looked impatiently out at the garden. Such as it was: it was more a part of the moor on which it stood. George liked gardens, but he wasn't much into gardening. The tough perennial hebes were thriving, several hollyhocks he hadn't planted had shot up, and the apricot climbing rose the last occupant had optimistically put round the back door had gone completely wild and now threatened to make mincemeat of anyone putting out the bins.
George, his face turned to his book, watched his unlooked-for housemate over the top of his glasses. John wasn't good at being still. He fidgeted, he smoked, he irritated whoever he was with just for the sake of stimulation. He had all that suppressed energy in him, which was what made him - in spite of the nose and the chin - attractive to women. And he could talk, of course. Sarcastic, and clever with it, and he got a proper smile out of George at least once a day even when the pain was killing him, just killing him.
And yet, no woman. Nothing since the Nunn affair, which George had thought was actually a goer. For a man who turned to watch women's backsides as they walked away and talked about the physical attributes of WPCs until George told him to shut up, John's sex life seemed to be lived more in fantasy than reality.
Well, George supposed, fantasy couldn't hurt you. Unlike an unhappy marriage and a very real divorce.
John wheeled to turn a suspicious eye on George, as if he thought the patient might have keeled over when he wasn't looking. George modestly turned his gaze back to Trafalgar and pretended he'd been engrossed the whole time.