“ no, sod that. you don’t get to say it’s my fault for staying. ”
‟ Then it’s my fault for not pushing you away. For not putting an end to it. Is that what you’d rather hear? ” Where he couldn’t offer a defence for his own actions, Jack could most certainly offer venom, raising his voice to almost match the very reasonable, if heated, accusation being levelled at him from across the room.
There was no question about it: he shouldn’t have left John in the lurch. To just up and vanish from London without so much as a word – on a genuine errand, to track down one of Beckett’s allies from outside of the city, but one that had simultaneously functioned as an excuse to put some distance between the two of them – wasn’t his finest moment, but what else could he have done? The prospect of danger didn’t frighten John Watson; on the contrary, Jack had noticed that the nature of his lifestyle seemed to only attract, not repel him. And if that was the case, then confronting the ex army doctor about trying to keep him safe from manipulative, lordly bastards surely would have gone down as well as this current conversation.
He’d want to be in the bloody thick of it – quite literally. And, in this particular case, with this particular opponent, that thought scared Jack half to death.
As his gaze remained fixed, intense on the other man, Jack swallowed down a few more venomous remarks lingering on the tip of his tongue. He’d regret them all later, when his quick tongue was no longer clashing with John’s quick temper, and he once again sat down to think about just how much he enjoyed the other man’s company, just how understood he felt even without a single word exchanged between them. And now he’d gone and fucked it all up, as per usual. ‟ I wasn’t supposed to get attached, John. To anyone. Not until I’d dealt with Beckett. ”
He made a vague, waving motion at John, his voice both flippant and yet oddly resigned. ‟ But here you are. ”
meme tag / @crimeblogger
