In Outlander fandom nobody can ever seem to mention that time Jamie offered to sleep with John without someone popping up in their face like Clippy to be like “Um ackshually the King of Men would never, in the books he tells Claire that was just a test and if John hadn’t refused he would have killed him rather than let him raise William.” And okay, I took that conversation to mean the same thing when I first read it because I’d seen it talked about like this so much. A good lesson in how preconceived ideas can mess up your reading comprehension!
Because um, no, that’s not what Jamie’s telling her in this scene. It was a test, kind of, but not in that way.
"I meant to see, ken, what sort of man he might be, for sure. This man who would take my son for his own."
…I moved to him by instinct, wanting somehow to patch the open wound beneath those words.
He was stiff when I touched him, not wanting to be embraced-but he took my hand and squeezed it.
"Could you...really tell, do you think?" I was not shocked; John Grey had told me of that offer, years before, in Jamaica. I didn't think he had realized the true nature of it, though. Jamie's hand tightened on mine, and his thumb traced the outline of mine, rubbing lightly over the nail…
"Ye canna be so close to another," he said finally. "To be within each other, to smell their sweat, and rub the hairs of your body with theirs and see nothing of their soul. Or if ye can do that ..."
He hesitated, and I wondered whether he thought of Black Jack Randall, or of Laoghaire, the woman he had married, thinking me dead.
"Well...that is a dreadful thing in itself," he finished softly, and his hand dropped away. There was silence between us...
Had I ever done that? Lain with a man, and seen nothing of his soul? Indeed I had, and he was right. A breath of coldness touched me, and the hairs rose, silent on my skin. He heaved a sigh that seemed to come from his feet, and rubbed a hand over his bound hair.
"But he wouldna do it. John." He looked up then, and gave me a crooked smile.
"He loved me, he said. And if I couldna give him that in return-and he kent I couldn't-then he'd not take counterfeit for true coin."
He shook himself, hard, like a dog coming out of the water. "No. A man who would say such a thing is not one who'd bugger a child for the sake of his father's bonny blue eyes, l'll tell ye that for certain, Sassenach."
"No," I said. "Tell me ..." I hesitated, and he looked at me, one eyebrow up. "If-if he had ... er... taken you up on that offer—and you'd found him..." I fumbled for some reasonable wording. "Less, um, decent than you might hope-"
"I should have broken his neck there by the lake," he said.
It was about seeing who John really is - and if he’s a safe person to raise Willie - by finding out how he treats someone in bed. Why all this talk about how being intimate with someone like that lets you see some of their soul, if all Jamie meant is that the offer itself was intended to be the test? The nature of this conversation doesn’t make any gd sense if all he’s getting at is saying John gave him the only answer that would have stopped him from killing him to protect William. Claire is so awkwardly struggling to put it delicately when she asks this last question because what she’s asking is what he would have done if John wasn’t found to be decent and kind as a lover. (Her question is not “what if he’d taken you up on the offer?”, it’s “what if he had and…?”) And Diana describes Jamie acting clearly very uncomfortable talking about this because he was prepared to go through with it.
This is consistent with the way Jamie acts in the flashback scene giving us the moment he made this offer from John’s perspective. His body language shows he’s very uncomfortable but trying to control it. After he’s struggled to get the words out John casually lays a hand on his arm and Jamie visibly struggles not to flinch away at his touch. He’s telling himself he’s prepared to make himself do this when he probably never could be.
And the fact that he dodged that bullet because John refused him is so important to their friendship. I really think Jamie at that point in his life was in such a low place, so deprived of agency for so long, that he’d really lost some perspective and any normal expectation of decency in people and the possibility that John would refuse and ask for nothing in return for his kindness did not even occur to him. It takes so much away from their relationship not to recognize that Jamie didn’t have much power here, he was desperate, and it was the first time John had a real opportunity to show him he doesn’t just want to get in his pants but truly loves him. He is finally, in a way that’s not violating Jamie’s clear boundaries, able to answer Jamie’s argument in that stable scene in TBotB that a man can’t actually love another man like that. It’s so important!! It’s this moment I think of in the show when he says “that bloody Englishman bandaged me with his friendship” - it was kindness that was unexpected and coming from an unexpected place, and I think was such an important moment for him beginning to heal from some of the most painful things he’d been through.
Here is Diana’s own explanation of what Jamie’s thinking here:
Why does Jamie offer himself to Lord John? A few readers…said the very thought made them ill…Jamie feels a deep—and deeply disturbing—sense of obligation to Lord John. Lord John, after all, has saved him from a dangerous fate (be-ing transported was often a death sentence, even for those without acute seasickness) and from permanent separation from his loved ones, given him as much freedom as possible, freely offered his friendship-and made no attempt at all to demand any sort of return.
Now Lord John has revealed that he knows Jamie's secret—that is, Willie's true paternity-and will not only protect the secret, but the boy as well. Knowing that Jamie must leave Willie, Lord John is willing to alter his entire life-even going so far as to marry Isobel Dunsany—in order to safeguard Jamie's son and ensure that Jamie will still have some connection with the boy.
Jamie, in his present position, can offer Lord John nothing at all as a gesture of gratitude or acknowledgment—except himself. His offering this particular gift is both an effort to acknowledge the great debt he feels he owes, and to show his final acceptance of Lord John, as a friend and as a man.
That is, he is aware that his earlier rejection (and the method he chose to implement it) has hurt John deeply. Though it is impossible for him to overcome his repugnance at the thought, he can force himself to the action (Jamie's made himself do quite a lot of things that he didn't want to do, after all), and thus show Lord John that he does not hold Lord John's nature against him—Jamie accepts him as he is.
This doesn’t seem to entirely line up with Jamie’s thought process then as he explains to Claire later. But she emphasizes the importance of this moment as a demonstration of his acceptance of LJ and what he is, and the above passage doesn’t retcon that. After what he’s been through he has to trust John a great deal to even consider this. But it’s not hard to imagine, considering this made certain readers feel “ill,” why a lot of the fandom wants to take this as a total retcon of Jamie’s intentions.
Yeah, it would of course make sense if John being willing to sleep with him on these terms would make Jamie decide he should not be trusted with his son. I think a version of Jamie who hasn’t been broken by the last many years and been coerced into sleeping with Geneva might see it that way. But Diana be normal about these things when she can make any relationship, especially between someone and Lord John, weirder? I guess that’s just not like her.
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