[Harry Potter] [Godric/Salazar] Per Mare, Per Terram.
Title: Per Mare, Per Terram.
Summary: In which Godric joins the Royal Marines and Salazar pretends.
Characters/Pairings: Godric Gryffindor, Salazar Slytherin, OFC, Godric/Salazar, mentions of Salazar/OFC, mentions of Godric/OFC.
Genre: AU, romance, angst
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Medium: Fic
Word Count: 3741
A/N: Title is the RM motto, which translated means 'by sea, by land’. It was this or ‘A Life On The Ocean Wave’, which is their quick march. The more you know. There's a link to more detailed notes at the end, as they may spoil you :) Fanmix, as always, can be found here.
Godric’s a little bit drunk, on something more than alcohol. The beer’s stale in his mouth, clinging to his teeth, but there’s a burn in his belly and a clanging in his chest that makes him want to run, if only he could he find it in himself to get off the sofa.
Salazar’s eyes are fixed on him, and he knows them well enough that he sees them behinds closed lids, sees the blue and the black and the little specks of hazel it took him six months to notice. He doesn’t need to look to see the corners of the mouth, turned down to a jaw set hard and fast with furyangerwrath and a little bit of something he doesn’t want to think about.
“What’s up with those two?” Someone says, a voice distinct from the repetitive beats and the thumpa thumpa coming from the stereo. He wants to lift his hand, give whoever it is a one fingered salute, but that feels too hard, his limbs suddenly made from lead and his heart pounding way too fast.
Salazar doesn’t seem to be having the same problem, not in the way he wraps his hand around the top of Godric’s arm and pulls him from the sofa. He can feel Salazar’s nails digging into his skin, leaving bruises he knows his sister will eyeball in that way of hers.
His legs feel fuzzy, buzzing with static and weighed down with too much energy. Salazar’s grip gets tighter as they stumble up the stairs, too uncoordinated to make it without bruising their shins against the sharp edges of the stairs.
“The Marines,” Salazar finally says, the first thing he’s said since Godric admitted it, the words lost between a mush of Ebba’s new boyfriend is a dick, and I need new shoes. A too early confession, the words warped with alcohol and the arm around his shoulder and the music playing, thump, thump, thump. “You’re joining the Marines.”
“Yes,” Godric says, slumping down on his bed. Salazar’s still standing in the door, staring at him, frowning like he’s trying to solve some sort of logistical problem, a particularly tough maths question, something, anything. “Probably.”
“Have you ever even done a push up in your life, Godric?” There’s scorn in Salazar’s voice, and more than anything, Godric wishes he was sober enough to defend himself because sure, maybe he prefers watching TV to exercising, but it’s not like he’s stupid, not like he doesn’t know what to expect.
“Fuck you,” he manages instead, and tugs the pillow over his head. It smells like Ebba’s strawberry body spray, from when she was in here, earlier, giving him booklets and forms and rolling her eyes when he said don’t tell mum, don’t tell dad, keep it quiet. She’d given him the alcohol then, bottles of vodka and beer clinking together in Tesco bags.
“When were you going to tell me?” Salazar says. Godric waves a hand at his desk, where the things Ebba had given him were thrown, half covered by a Tools Direct and a spare scrap of paper covered in notes about the Crimean War.
“Only Ebba knows,” Godric mutters, and rolls onto his front. “I’m not keeping this massive secret from you, Jesus.”
“What about university?” Godric feels the bed shift as Salazar sits down on the edge of it. A hand rests on his ankle, a finger pressed into the barely there gap between sock and hem. “Are you going to make it a career or do you just want adventure?”
“I can go later,” Godric says, and presses himself closer to the mattress. That’s the end of it, he thinks, when Salazar shifts away, hands no longer touching Godric, but the load on the bed doesn’t lighten.
Later, much later. It’s quiet downstairs, which means Ebba’s come home, kicked everyone out, done what Godric should have done, she’ll probably give him shit for that. He’s half asleep, that space where he doesn’t know if he is or he isn’t, when his brain is active with too many thoughts that could be dreams.
“It suits you,” Salazar says. “The military.”
They don’t say anything else.
a diversion.
They kissed, once. Hot breath mingling, gasping pants of breath. Desperate. Salazar’s hands around Godric’s neck, thumbs pressed into that space beneath his jaw. He’d bruised, two not quite perfectly circular dark marks stark against winter skin. Salazar’s bottom limp had held a mark in the shape of Godric’s teeth after they’d pulled apart, unable to quite look at each other.
Two days later, Godric was taking Katie Smith to the cinema, and Salazar didn’t like to think about it.
&
In the end, the application process takes longer than Godric expected. Salazar’s firmly entrenched at Cambridge by the time Godric makes it to basic training. They both mean to go and see each other, before, but Salazar’s got this thing with Charlotte Perkins, and the lazy mornings spent listening to her quote Proust almost seem more important, and Godric has training, by which he means running laps around the park, and every thing’s so hectic. Instead, Ebba turns up on Salazar’s doorstep with a bottle of wine and a print out of the spreadsheet Godric tracks his push up records on. She doesn’t tell Godric she went, and Salazar assumes he knows.
&
When Salazar finally makes the time to see Godric, he doesn’t find the almost-weedy seventeen year old he left behind. He doesn’t find hair falling in his eyes and three days worth of stubble. He does find jeans with holes in, and that crooked grin. He finds someone who can do fifty pull ups in a minute, and lift his sister three feet off the ground. He finds hair shaved close to the scalp, and a jaw lined with shaving nicks. He finds someone who stands, habitually, with his hands behind his back. He finds someone who tells jokes he can’t figure out, and jerks when someone shouts his name.
“You look the same,” he says, picking at the label of his beer. “They haven’t kicked you out, yet?”
“I heard your Froggy girlfriend dumped you,” Godric replies, arm slung over the back of the sofa. His fingers just about touch Salazar’s shoulder. “Did her pussy taste of escargot?” Salazar can’t think of any other time Godric has said pussy, but the word doesn’t sound out of place. He mouths it himself, shapes the letters, s-s-y, and can’t imagine it in his voice. Suddenly, he realizes how far away he is from Godric, even cramped together on this couch.
“She wasn’t French.” The label crumples in his hand, a tacky ball he tosses to the coffee table. “She just spoke French.”
“Sure,” Godric says. “But my question still stands.”
another diversion, a trip back in time, if you will.
They met when they were five years old. Godric had scabs on his knees and a frog cupped in his hands. Salazar was in his Sunday best, and got sent to bed without pudding after he climbed out of a pond, Godric close behind him, grinning madly.
They’ve been best friends since that day, and Godric never stopped following him into ponds.
&
Ebba becomes their bridge. She finishes university, and she moves to London. Twice a month, she visits Salazar, brings wines and flowers and chocolates, brings books and movies and take away from the Thai place down the road. They talk about culture, they talk about politics, they discuss the merits of Spielberg, but agree that Tarantino is their favourite.
They talk about Godric, or, rather, Ebba gives away snippets of his life, and she cries on Salazar’s shoulder when he’s deployed, her sleeves muffling her sobs.
They sleep together, once, heady on good wine and good company and the way she smiles at him. He doesn’t think about how she shares Godric’s cocksure grin.
She meets Godric in pubs, once a month, that smell like smoke, and they share a lunch they eat with their fingers. They drink beer, and ale, and she brings him key chains and stories about their mum and her latest passion.
They talk about cars, and Eastenders, they discuss the merits of coca cola, and decide that they can’t be related, not if one of them likes Pepsi better.
They talk about Salazar, or, rather, Ebba tells Godric about his latest girlfriend. Neither of them cry.
Godric sleeps with her best friend instead, in the bathroom, hands pressed tight to walls so they don’t fall, and Godric finally figures out the merits of all those push ups.
before
Salazar, for a period that spanned about three years, in stops and starts, once had the biggest crush on Ebba. He’d tried to convince Godric to do things that involved her, tried to invite her to hang out with them. She let him down gently each time, never quite pointing out that he was the best friend of her baby brother. Her friends, when met with Godric’s ridiculous pick up lines and love of Spiderman were never quite so kind.
&
Godric comes back. He stands on Ebba’s doorstep, covered in desert sand and the off putting smell of someone who can’t remember the last time they showered. He leans against the door as he knocks, trying to figure out if he lost the spare key in the middle of Afghanistan.
He tries to ignore the way Ebba cries when she opens the door, and instead pretends like he knows it’s impolite to just turn up on somebodies door step without even calling.
He spends forty minutes in the shower and falls asleep in the spare room for twenty-four hours. She doesn’t say anything, just makes sure there’s bacon in the fridge and good coffee ready for when he wakes up.
“I guess you haven’t spoken to Salazar recently?” She says, over a mid-afternoon breakfast of bacon sandwiches and salt & vinegar crisps. “He’s doing okay.” She looks at Godric, shovelling food into his mouth like he’s starving, and she tries not to think about what it was like, out there. For a moment, she sees her baby brother, who once let her dress him up in the mum’s clothes, who slept in her bed more than once when he was scared, who came to her, nervous and shy, and asked if she could help him, because he kind of wanted to join the Marines, and he didn’t know where to start. She blinks, and she’s looking at a twenty year old who’d probably still let her dress him up, who probably doesn’t get scared, who probably doesn’t know what nerves are like any more.
“He still dating that Annie?” Godric says, picking the crusts off his sandwiches, piling him at the edge of his place. “Or Amber, or-”
“Annie.” She shakes her head, scoops his crusts off the plate and tosses them into the bin. “No, she dumped him.” She doesn’t tell him that that was eight months ago, because he’s got an excuse for not knowing that, really.
“It’s because he doesn’t ever smile, I reckon.” His chair tips back, and she wants to tell him to be careful, to try not to crack his bloody head open. There’s a scar on his thigh though, peeking out from beneath his boxers, and she thinks that might have been from something more dangerous than rocking back on his chair.
She thinks she doesn’t know how to treat him anymore.
“I was thinking we could have a party,” she says, piling the plates in the sink. “A welcome back, Godric party. I’ll invite some of my friends and you can try and flirt with them. I’ll invite Salazar too.”
“A welcome back, Godric, well done on not getting your legs blown off party?” She grips the edge of the counter, and tries to imagine him grinning, finding joy in making her uncomfortable, but she can hear that he’s not grinning, there’s no laughter in his voice. “Can I invite the guys?”
She can do this, she knows who the guys are, she knows they like to talk about their cocks and they’ll probably terrorize her friends, and she knows she’ll be hearing gossip about royal marines for the next three weeks.
“Sure,” she says. “You’re paying for anything they break though.”
&
Salazar turns up late. He hadn’t meant to, but he had. He’d known he was going to be late. He didn’t hurry up.
Godric answers the door, skin bright with a tan, face lit up with that crooked grin of his.
“Sally, mate, Jesus, I haven’t seen you in yonks.” He’s pulled into a hug, Godric’s arms wrapped tight around him, squeezing tightly until Salazar coughs out a breath and Godric pulls away. “Fucking hell, mate, you look miserable.”
“I’m just tired,” he says, and winces. But Godric doesn’t say anything, just wraps an arm around his shoulders and drags him into the flat, still grinning like it’s the best day of his life.
They make introductions; Salazar shakes hands who could crush him with their little fingers, and nods at all the people he’s met before. He doesn’t think about the fact he knows Ebba’s friends and hasn’t a clue who any of Godric’s are. He tries to remember names, but gets lost after the third person’s introduced with a nickname. He learns that they call Godric Braveheart, but nobody tells him why.
He watches Godric, so clearly in his element as he piggy backs around the room on the back of someone they call Curious George, from the edges of the room, with Ebba by his side.
“I’m glad he’s back,” he says.
“It was quiet without him,” Ebba says.
Neither of them need to say that the noise is preferable.
Godric finds him later, sitting on the patio with a cigarette in his hand. Godric’s carrying two beers, and they’ve sloshed over his fingers.
“Ebba said you were being sulky,” he says as he sits down. He sets the beers between them, nudges one towards Salazar and smiles when Salazar picks it up. “Well, she said you were sitting outside, so I assumed you were sulking.”
“It’s loud in there,” Salazar says, resting the can of beer on his knees. There’s a sudden burst of noise, too many people yelling all at once, as if to prove his point.
“I had to live with those lot,” Godric says. “It’s like background noise to me now.”
Salazar passes him the cigarette, and for a moment, it’s like they’re 16 again, hiding cigarettes from their parents, banished from the house because Ebba’s friends are over and they’re dorks. Except that’s shattered when someone leans out of a window, calling for Godric. He waves them off with a smile, and passes the cigarette back.
“I missed you, mate,” Godric says, when they’re alone again, into the quiet. When Salazar looks up, he realizes Godric is close, too close, and he remembers a time ridiculously long ago, when they sat in the dark, too close together like this. “We grew apart, huh?”
“We’re still the same.” They both know that’s not true. Godric stays too close, his shoulder catching against Salazar’s with every breath he takes. “Godric,” he says, but he doesn’t know what he wants to say.
But that’s okay, because then Godric is kissing him, hard, more like a bite, but perfect. Godric’s lips are chapped and dry against his. One of the cans of beer spills, and Salazar will never get that smell out of his trousers, but he doesn’t care, not right now, not with Godric’s hand on the back of his neck, not when it feels familiar and right in a way nobody else has.
&
Godric wakes up, tangled around Salazar, with bruises on his hips. His face is pressed to the crook of Salazar’s neck, drawing in the smell of Salazar’s cigarettes and the fancy aftershave he’s used since he was seventeen.
“Good morning,” Salazar says, when Godric finally lifts his head. It’s early morning, dawn, Godric would guess, from the light filtering in through the window. Everything looks soft, comfortable and easy. “Are you going to have some weird freak out? Because we weren’t drunk, and you kissed me.”
“No,” Godric replies. “I need to piss.”
When he comes back, Salazar’s still in bed, stretched out, arm’s resting above his head. There’s a tattoo on his left flank, tiny, easy to miss, and Godric can’t read what it says. His fingers trail across it as he clambers back into bed, tracing the curve of the first s before he settles down again.
“What does it say?” He asks, and Salazar quirks an eyebrow.
“I’m more interested in why on earth you have a tattoo of a lion wearing a crown,” is the only reply he gets. Salazar’s hand is on his bicep, almost covering the tattoo. “I didn’t know you liked lions.”
“They’re cool,” Godric says, curling back up, arm slung low over Salazar’s hips. “Now shut up, I’m tired.”
a big sister
Ebba likes to think she noticed the thing between Godric and Salazar before they did. It’s true, she knows that, but it does feel a little egotistical.
She saw the way, as teenagers, they were always together. They were teenaged boys who were awkward around girls, of course they spent a lot of time together, but it seemed to go above and beyond.
She saw the way Salazar looked at Godric, sometimes, and the way Godric would leave his girlfriend-of-the-week’s side should Salazar come calling.
She saw them kiss, out in the garden, and she saw the dazed look on their faces.
She saw the way they retreated into themselves when they grew apart, and she heard the way Salazar always compared women to Godric, even when he didn’t hear it himself.
She knew what she was to him that one time they slept together, and she scrubbed her skin raw in the shower the day after.
She’s not surprised when she catches them in the garden again.
&
Godric wakes later, when the sun is high in the sky. Salazar’s not in the room anymore, but the door’s open a crack and he can hear the low murmurings of Salazar’s voice, and the clanging of pots and pans.
When he stumbles to the kitchen, rubbing at a leg too stiff and unaccommodating, Ebba’s smiling at him like he’s announced he’s leaving the Marines. He wonders what Salazar’s told her.
“Does he always walk around in his pants?” Salazar’s leaning against the counter, a mug in his hands, looking fresh and clean and in different clothes from yesterday. Godric wonders if he went home, or if he’s here so often there’s a spare pair kept for him.
Godric doesn’t want to think about what that could mean, because it means thinking about his sister naked.
“At least I put some on.” He slumps in the chair, rubs at his forehead where a headache is growing, and wonders at the domesticity of it all.
“He didn’t, the first day.” Ebba puts a cup of tea in front of him. It’s in his usual cup, and he’s in his usual chair, and he doesn’t know when things became usual, and he wishes they weren’t. “I’m going out for a fag,” she says. “Watch the rice.”
They both know what she doesn’t say. You should talk. Don’t argue.
“I have to go back to Plymouth, soon,” Godric says, and wonders if all sisters notice when their brothers stop talking their tea with milk and two sugars, and start taking it black. “And then I don’t know where. I could go back, maybe, or, I could sit in the middle of an ocean and plait my hair.”
“You don’t have hair,” Salazar says. “I hope you don’t go back.”
“No,” Godric says. “We should take it slow, or whatever you’re meant to say.” Salazar sets his cup down with a clatter against the counter. He peers at the rice, and then out the window at Ebba, before he looks back to Godric.
“Slow,” he says. “That sounds pretty good.”
&
He gets sent back. Before his leg’s even stopped hurting in the mornings, he’s got papers in his hands that send him straight back to the desert. He makes jokes about an amphibious force being sent to somewhere with nothing more than sand, and they ignore the look in his eyes. He kisses Salazar goodbye, and a photo of the three of them at the zoo sits on Ebba’s mantlepiece.
&
Ebba gets the news first. A call from her parents, her dad’s voice, so still and she knows somethings wrong before they even get past the hellos. Her hands shake and the phone drops to the floor. It breaks, shatters into tiny little pieces, and it doesn’t occur to her that that’s a problem until she realizes she’s got someone else who needs to know.
She takes a taxi, she doesn’t trust herself to drive. She forgets to bring a gift, but she doesn’t know if it’s appropriate. There’s a photo of Godric in her purse, a passport photo he couldn’t use because of the smile on his face, and she wonders if that counts. She thinks about the etiquette classes she was forced to take, and thinks about how they didn’t prepare her for this.
Salazar smiles when he opens the door, bends down to kiss her cheek, and she tries to plaster on a shaky smile, like it’ll hurt less, like she can make the blow softer. The photo’s clenched in her hands, crumpling in sweaty fingers. She looks down, and through the cracks between her fingers, she can see his smile.
“It’s Godric,” she says, and she knows he knows, knows he guesses, right then, because the look in his eyes changes. His lips shape the word ‘no’. She doesn’t know how to say this, her degree in English is useless to her now, because there’s no words for this. There’s words she could say, harsh words, words begining with letters she never liked in the first place. “He won’t be coming back.”
the end
Or, if you now want to poke at me with sticks while crying, here’s an alternate ending. If you’d like to read the notes/commentary/explanations behind this fic, those are here.
Summary: In which Godric joins the Royal Marines and Salazar pretends.
Characters/Pairings: Godric Gryffindor, Salazar Slytherin, OFC, Godric/Salazar, mentions of Salazar/OFC, mentions of Godric/OFC.
Genre: AU, romance, angst
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Medium: Fic
Word Count: 3741
A/N: Title is the RM motto, which translated means 'by sea, by land’. It was this or ‘A Life On The Ocean Wave’, which is their quick march. The more you know. There's a link to more detailed notes at the end, as they may spoil you :) Fanmix, as always, can be found here.
Godric’s a little bit drunk, on something more than alcohol. The beer’s stale in his mouth, clinging to his teeth, but there’s a burn in his belly and a clanging in his chest that makes him want to run, if only he could he find it in himself to get off the sofa.
Salazar’s eyes are fixed on him, and he knows them well enough that he sees them behinds closed lids, sees the blue and the black and the little specks of hazel it took him six months to notice. He doesn’t need to look to see the corners of the mouth, turned down to a jaw set hard and fast with furyangerwrath and a little bit of something he doesn’t want to think about.
“What’s up with those two?” Someone says, a voice distinct from the repetitive beats and the thumpa thumpa coming from the stereo. He wants to lift his hand, give whoever it is a one fingered salute, but that feels too hard, his limbs suddenly made from lead and his heart pounding way too fast.
Salazar doesn’t seem to be having the same problem, not in the way he wraps his hand around the top of Godric’s arm and pulls him from the sofa. He can feel Salazar’s nails digging into his skin, leaving bruises he knows his sister will eyeball in that way of hers.
His legs feel fuzzy, buzzing with static and weighed down with too much energy. Salazar’s grip gets tighter as they stumble up the stairs, too uncoordinated to make it without bruising their shins against the sharp edges of the stairs.
“The Marines,” Salazar finally says, the first thing he’s said since Godric admitted it, the words lost between a mush of Ebba’s new boyfriend is a dick, and I need new shoes. A too early confession, the words warped with alcohol and the arm around his shoulder and the music playing, thump, thump, thump. “You’re joining the Marines.”
“Yes,” Godric says, slumping down on his bed. Salazar’s still standing in the door, staring at him, frowning like he’s trying to solve some sort of logistical problem, a particularly tough maths question, something, anything. “Probably.”
“Have you ever even done a push up in your life, Godric?” There’s scorn in Salazar’s voice, and more than anything, Godric wishes he was sober enough to defend himself because sure, maybe he prefers watching TV to exercising, but it’s not like he’s stupid, not like he doesn’t know what to expect.
“Fuck you,” he manages instead, and tugs the pillow over his head. It smells like Ebba’s strawberry body spray, from when she was in here, earlier, giving him booklets and forms and rolling her eyes when he said don’t tell mum, don’t tell dad, keep it quiet. She’d given him the alcohol then, bottles of vodka and beer clinking together in Tesco bags.
“When were you going to tell me?” Salazar says. Godric waves a hand at his desk, where the things Ebba had given him were thrown, half covered by a Tools Direct and a spare scrap of paper covered in notes about the Crimean War.
“Only Ebba knows,” Godric mutters, and rolls onto his front. “I’m not keeping this massive secret from you, Jesus.”
“What about university?” Godric feels the bed shift as Salazar sits down on the edge of it. A hand rests on his ankle, a finger pressed into the barely there gap between sock and hem. “Are you going to make it a career or do you just want adventure?”
“I can go later,” Godric says, and presses himself closer to the mattress. That’s the end of it, he thinks, when Salazar shifts away, hands no longer touching Godric, but the load on the bed doesn’t lighten.
Later, much later. It’s quiet downstairs, which means Ebba’s come home, kicked everyone out, done what Godric should have done, she’ll probably give him shit for that. He’s half asleep, that space where he doesn’t know if he is or he isn’t, when his brain is active with too many thoughts that could be dreams.
“It suits you,” Salazar says. “The military.”
They don’t say anything else.
a diversion.
They kissed, once. Hot breath mingling, gasping pants of breath. Desperate. Salazar’s hands around Godric’s neck, thumbs pressed into that space beneath his jaw. He’d bruised, two not quite perfectly circular dark marks stark against winter skin. Salazar’s bottom limp had held a mark in the shape of Godric’s teeth after they’d pulled apart, unable to quite look at each other.
Two days later, Godric was taking Katie Smith to the cinema, and Salazar didn’t like to think about it.
&
In the end, the application process takes longer than Godric expected. Salazar’s firmly entrenched at Cambridge by the time Godric makes it to basic training. They both mean to go and see each other, before, but Salazar’s got this thing with Charlotte Perkins, and the lazy mornings spent listening to her quote Proust almost seem more important, and Godric has training, by which he means running laps around the park, and every thing’s so hectic. Instead, Ebba turns up on Salazar’s doorstep with a bottle of wine and a print out of the spreadsheet Godric tracks his push up records on. She doesn’t tell Godric she went, and Salazar assumes he knows.
&
When Salazar finally makes the time to see Godric, he doesn’t find the almost-weedy seventeen year old he left behind. He doesn’t find hair falling in his eyes and three days worth of stubble. He does find jeans with holes in, and that crooked grin. He finds someone who can do fifty pull ups in a minute, and lift his sister three feet off the ground. He finds hair shaved close to the scalp, and a jaw lined with shaving nicks. He finds someone who stands, habitually, with his hands behind his back. He finds someone who tells jokes he can’t figure out, and jerks when someone shouts his name.
“You look the same,” he says, picking at the label of his beer. “They haven’t kicked you out, yet?”
“I heard your Froggy girlfriend dumped you,” Godric replies, arm slung over the back of the sofa. His fingers just about touch Salazar’s shoulder. “Did her pussy taste of escargot?” Salazar can’t think of any other time Godric has said pussy, but the word doesn’t sound out of place. He mouths it himself, shapes the letters, s-s-y, and can’t imagine it in his voice. Suddenly, he realizes how far away he is from Godric, even cramped together on this couch.
“She wasn’t French.” The label crumples in his hand, a tacky ball he tosses to the coffee table. “She just spoke French.”
“Sure,” Godric says. “But my question still stands.”
another diversion, a trip back in time, if you will.
They met when they were five years old. Godric had scabs on his knees and a frog cupped in his hands. Salazar was in his Sunday best, and got sent to bed without pudding after he climbed out of a pond, Godric close behind him, grinning madly.
They’ve been best friends since that day, and Godric never stopped following him into ponds.
&
Ebba becomes their bridge. She finishes university, and she moves to London. Twice a month, she visits Salazar, brings wines and flowers and chocolates, brings books and movies and take away from the Thai place down the road. They talk about culture, they talk about politics, they discuss the merits of Spielberg, but agree that Tarantino is their favourite.
They talk about Godric, or, rather, Ebba gives away snippets of his life, and she cries on Salazar’s shoulder when he’s deployed, her sleeves muffling her sobs.
They sleep together, once, heady on good wine and good company and the way she smiles at him. He doesn’t think about how she shares Godric’s cocksure grin.
She meets Godric in pubs, once a month, that smell like smoke, and they share a lunch they eat with their fingers. They drink beer, and ale, and she brings him key chains and stories about their mum and her latest passion.
They talk about cars, and Eastenders, they discuss the merits of coca cola, and decide that they can’t be related, not if one of them likes Pepsi better.
They talk about Salazar, or, rather, Ebba tells Godric about his latest girlfriend. Neither of them cry.
Godric sleeps with her best friend instead, in the bathroom, hands pressed tight to walls so they don’t fall, and Godric finally figures out the merits of all those push ups.
before
Salazar, for a period that spanned about three years, in stops and starts, once had the biggest crush on Ebba. He’d tried to convince Godric to do things that involved her, tried to invite her to hang out with them. She let him down gently each time, never quite pointing out that he was the best friend of her baby brother. Her friends, when met with Godric’s ridiculous pick up lines and love of Spiderman were never quite so kind.
&
Godric comes back. He stands on Ebba’s doorstep, covered in desert sand and the off putting smell of someone who can’t remember the last time they showered. He leans against the door as he knocks, trying to figure out if he lost the spare key in the middle of Afghanistan.
He tries to ignore the way Ebba cries when she opens the door, and instead pretends like he knows it’s impolite to just turn up on somebodies door step without even calling.
He spends forty minutes in the shower and falls asleep in the spare room for twenty-four hours. She doesn’t say anything, just makes sure there’s bacon in the fridge and good coffee ready for when he wakes up.
“I guess you haven’t spoken to Salazar recently?” She says, over a mid-afternoon breakfast of bacon sandwiches and salt & vinegar crisps. “He’s doing okay.” She looks at Godric, shovelling food into his mouth like he’s starving, and she tries not to think about what it was like, out there. For a moment, she sees her baby brother, who once let her dress him up in the mum’s clothes, who slept in her bed more than once when he was scared, who came to her, nervous and shy, and asked if she could help him, because he kind of wanted to join the Marines, and he didn’t know where to start. She blinks, and she’s looking at a twenty year old who’d probably still let her dress him up, who probably doesn’t get scared, who probably doesn’t know what nerves are like any more.
“He still dating that Annie?” Godric says, picking the crusts off his sandwiches, piling him at the edge of his place. “Or Amber, or-”
“Annie.” She shakes her head, scoops his crusts off the plate and tosses them into the bin. “No, she dumped him.” She doesn’t tell him that that was eight months ago, because he’s got an excuse for not knowing that, really.
“It’s because he doesn’t ever smile, I reckon.” His chair tips back, and she wants to tell him to be careful, to try not to crack his bloody head open. There’s a scar on his thigh though, peeking out from beneath his boxers, and she thinks that might have been from something more dangerous than rocking back on his chair.
She thinks she doesn’t know how to treat him anymore.
“I was thinking we could have a party,” she says, piling the plates in the sink. “A welcome back, Godric party. I’ll invite some of my friends and you can try and flirt with them. I’ll invite Salazar too.”
“A welcome back, Godric, well done on not getting your legs blown off party?” She grips the edge of the counter, and tries to imagine him grinning, finding joy in making her uncomfortable, but she can hear that he’s not grinning, there’s no laughter in his voice. “Can I invite the guys?”
She can do this, she knows who the guys are, she knows they like to talk about their cocks and they’ll probably terrorize her friends, and she knows she’ll be hearing gossip about royal marines for the next three weeks.
“Sure,” she says. “You’re paying for anything they break though.”
&
Salazar turns up late. He hadn’t meant to, but he had. He’d known he was going to be late. He didn’t hurry up.
Godric answers the door, skin bright with a tan, face lit up with that crooked grin of his.
“Sally, mate, Jesus, I haven’t seen you in yonks.” He’s pulled into a hug, Godric’s arms wrapped tight around him, squeezing tightly until Salazar coughs out a breath and Godric pulls away. “Fucking hell, mate, you look miserable.”
“I’m just tired,” he says, and winces. But Godric doesn’t say anything, just wraps an arm around his shoulders and drags him into the flat, still grinning like it’s the best day of his life.
They make introductions; Salazar shakes hands who could crush him with their little fingers, and nods at all the people he’s met before. He doesn’t think about the fact he knows Ebba’s friends and hasn’t a clue who any of Godric’s are. He tries to remember names, but gets lost after the third person’s introduced with a nickname. He learns that they call Godric Braveheart, but nobody tells him why.
He watches Godric, so clearly in his element as he piggy backs around the room on the back of someone they call Curious George, from the edges of the room, with Ebba by his side.
“I’m glad he’s back,” he says.
“It was quiet without him,” Ebba says.
Neither of them need to say that the noise is preferable.
Godric finds him later, sitting on the patio with a cigarette in his hand. Godric’s carrying two beers, and they’ve sloshed over his fingers.
“Ebba said you were being sulky,” he says as he sits down. He sets the beers between them, nudges one towards Salazar and smiles when Salazar picks it up. “Well, she said you were sitting outside, so I assumed you were sulking.”
“It’s loud in there,” Salazar says, resting the can of beer on his knees. There’s a sudden burst of noise, too many people yelling all at once, as if to prove his point.
“I had to live with those lot,” Godric says. “It’s like background noise to me now.”
Salazar passes him the cigarette, and for a moment, it’s like they’re 16 again, hiding cigarettes from their parents, banished from the house because Ebba’s friends are over and they’re dorks. Except that’s shattered when someone leans out of a window, calling for Godric. He waves them off with a smile, and passes the cigarette back.
“I missed you, mate,” Godric says, when they’re alone again, into the quiet. When Salazar looks up, he realizes Godric is close, too close, and he remembers a time ridiculously long ago, when they sat in the dark, too close together like this. “We grew apart, huh?”
“We’re still the same.” They both know that’s not true. Godric stays too close, his shoulder catching against Salazar’s with every breath he takes. “Godric,” he says, but he doesn’t know what he wants to say.
But that’s okay, because then Godric is kissing him, hard, more like a bite, but perfect. Godric’s lips are chapped and dry against his. One of the cans of beer spills, and Salazar will never get that smell out of his trousers, but he doesn’t care, not right now, not with Godric’s hand on the back of his neck, not when it feels familiar and right in a way nobody else has.
&
Godric wakes up, tangled around Salazar, with bruises on his hips. His face is pressed to the crook of Salazar’s neck, drawing in the smell of Salazar’s cigarettes and the fancy aftershave he’s used since he was seventeen.
“Good morning,” Salazar says, when Godric finally lifts his head. It’s early morning, dawn, Godric would guess, from the light filtering in through the window. Everything looks soft, comfortable and easy. “Are you going to have some weird freak out? Because we weren’t drunk, and you kissed me.”
“No,” Godric replies. “I need to piss.”
When he comes back, Salazar’s still in bed, stretched out, arm’s resting above his head. There’s a tattoo on his left flank, tiny, easy to miss, and Godric can’t read what it says. His fingers trail across it as he clambers back into bed, tracing the curve of the first s before he settles down again.
“What does it say?” He asks, and Salazar quirks an eyebrow.
“I’m more interested in why on earth you have a tattoo of a lion wearing a crown,” is the only reply he gets. Salazar’s hand is on his bicep, almost covering the tattoo. “I didn’t know you liked lions.”
“They’re cool,” Godric says, curling back up, arm slung low over Salazar’s hips. “Now shut up, I’m tired.”
a big sister
Ebba likes to think she noticed the thing between Godric and Salazar before they did. It’s true, she knows that, but it does feel a little egotistical.
She saw the way, as teenagers, they were always together. They were teenaged boys who were awkward around girls, of course they spent a lot of time together, but it seemed to go above and beyond.
She saw the way Salazar looked at Godric, sometimes, and the way Godric would leave his girlfriend-of-the-week’s side should Salazar come calling.
She saw them kiss, out in the garden, and she saw the dazed look on their faces.
She saw the way they retreated into themselves when they grew apart, and she heard the way Salazar always compared women to Godric, even when he didn’t hear it himself.
She knew what she was to him that one time they slept together, and she scrubbed her skin raw in the shower the day after.
She’s not surprised when she catches them in the garden again.
&
Godric wakes later, when the sun is high in the sky. Salazar’s not in the room anymore, but the door’s open a crack and he can hear the low murmurings of Salazar’s voice, and the clanging of pots and pans.
When he stumbles to the kitchen, rubbing at a leg too stiff and unaccommodating, Ebba’s smiling at him like he’s announced he’s leaving the Marines. He wonders what Salazar’s told her.
“Does he always walk around in his pants?” Salazar’s leaning against the counter, a mug in his hands, looking fresh and clean and in different clothes from yesterday. Godric wonders if he went home, or if he’s here so often there’s a spare pair kept for him.
Godric doesn’t want to think about what that could mean, because it means thinking about his sister naked.
“At least I put some on.” He slumps in the chair, rubs at his forehead where a headache is growing, and wonders at the domesticity of it all.
“He didn’t, the first day.” Ebba puts a cup of tea in front of him. It’s in his usual cup, and he’s in his usual chair, and he doesn’t know when things became usual, and he wishes they weren’t. “I’m going out for a fag,” she says. “Watch the rice.”
They both know what she doesn’t say. You should talk. Don’t argue.
“I have to go back to Plymouth, soon,” Godric says, and wonders if all sisters notice when their brothers stop talking their tea with milk and two sugars, and start taking it black. “And then I don’t know where. I could go back, maybe, or, I could sit in the middle of an ocean and plait my hair.”
“You don’t have hair,” Salazar says. “I hope you don’t go back.”
“No,” Godric says. “We should take it slow, or whatever you’re meant to say.” Salazar sets his cup down with a clatter against the counter. He peers at the rice, and then out the window at Ebba, before he looks back to Godric.
“Slow,” he says. “That sounds pretty good.”
&
He gets sent back. Before his leg’s even stopped hurting in the mornings, he’s got papers in his hands that send him straight back to the desert. He makes jokes about an amphibious force being sent to somewhere with nothing more than sand, and they ignore the look in his eyes. He kisses Salazar goodbye, and a photo of the three of them at the zoo sits on Ebba’s mantlepiece.
&
Ebba gets the news first. A call from her parents, her dad’s voice, so still and she knows somethings wrong before they even get past the hellos. Her hands shake and the phone drops to the floor. It breaks, shatters into tiny little pieces, and it doesn’t occur to her that that’s a problem until she realizes she’s got someone else who needs to know.
She takes a taxi, she doesn’t trust herself to drive. She forgets to bring a gift, but she doesn’t know if it’s appropriate. There’s a photo of Godric in her purse, a passport photo he couldn’t use because of the smile on his face, and she wonders if that counts. She thinks about the etiquette classes she was forced to take, and thinks about how they didn’t prepare her for this.
Salazar smiles when he opens the door, bends down to kiss her cheek, and she tries to plaster on a shaky smile, like it’ll hurt less, like she can make the blow softer. The photo’s clenched in her hands, crumpling in sweaty fingers. She looks down, and through the cracks between her fingers, she can see his smile.
“It’s Godric,” she says, and she knows he knows, knows he guesses, right then, because the look in his eyes changes. His lips shape the word ‘no’. She doesn’t know how to say this, her degree in English is useless to her now, because there’s no words for this. There’s words she could say, harsh words, words begining with letters she never liked in the first place. “He won’t be coming back.”
the end
Or, if you now want to poke at me with sticks while crying, here’s an alternate ending. If you’d like to read the notes/commentary/explanations behind this fic, those are here.