"Husband" a jovier fanfic.
A short fanfiction about John thinking about his relationship with Abigail and his old with Javier.
The night was quiet and cold, not a single sound to be heard except the occasional sigh from the sleeping woman beside him as she turned. This was not what he had imagined laying next to his wife would feel like. Wasn't he meant to feel warm lying next to the person he would spend the rest of his life with? How was it possible for him not to feel warm when she was? Wasn’t it physics that he should be warm?
Abigail did look pretty laying there with her ruffled hair spayed over her sleepy face and her mouth slightly parted. That little feeling in the bottom of his stomach grew again and he wanted to vomit, that thought creeping in the back of his mind, pretty not attractive. Had he ever found her attractive? Had he never admired her in a way that wasn’t the same as when he admired Arthur? Someone he was close to who looked good but… not good.
What a fool he was, of course, he had, she was his wife, they had a child, they had laid together, of course he found her attractive.
It wasn’t just his own doubting voice that nagged at the back of his head, but another, one that had spoken to him many many years ago that still would not leave hin alone.
It had been a night just like that one, a quiet night that had been even colder, but he hadn’t felt cold, he had felt warm pressed up against Javier’s chest, looking at his lips, studying the ways that they slightly parted as he breathed in through his mouth, a little habit he had.
He had been happy then, properly happy, laying next to Javier, the two of them simply watching each other with soft, affectionate eyes. John had never felt as much affection towards anyone as his brother in arms, the man who had saved him a million times, the man he had saved a million times.
The man.
Even then, in the happiest of their moments, it had been there in the back of his mind. Man. He had been okay with it because he hadn’t seen it as something that would last. He knew he couldn’t allow it to no matter how much he loved Javier. Unconventional love was accepted in the camp, they had rejected the law so why not the social norms as well, but it still hung on a little bit. The gang would allow flings between men, heck it was common even, back then it hadn’t been uncommon for John to catch Sean and Lenny at it in his tent, but long-lasting love? The marriage kind? It still wasn’t accepted between the boys.
Javier had kissed John, John had kissed back, he loved Javier, he had known that, he had also known he had loved him more than Abigail, he just hadn’t accepted it. No matter what aspect of Abigail he thought of, whether it be beauty, intelligence or personality, he always liked Javier better… Javier knew, John knew that Javier knew and John knew that Javier wanted more. He wanted the kind of love that wasn’t theirs to have.
“We could do it, you know,” Javier said, breaking the comfortable silence between them. “We could do it.”
John let out a slight huff. “What makes you think we wouldn’t be skinned alive?”
“Dutch and Hosea has done it,” Javier replied as he brushed a few strains of hair behind John’s ear. “They are together, they ain’t married but they are together in every other way, no one has skinned them, people respect them.”
John shook his head. “They don’t respect them, they just fear Dutch and like his plans enough to overlook his love with Hosea, who no one respects. Was it Hosea with someone else? They would have tried to slaughter him, would they have come far? No, but they would have tried.”
“Then let’s make them fear us,” Javier cupped John’s face. “We got the looks for it, the record as well.”
John sighed. “I don’t think it would work Javi.”
“Do you love me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you love Abigail?”
“Yes.”
Javier raised a brow. “I meant do you love her the way you love her?”
“No,” John frowned. “Of course not. I love you like… I don’t know, a lot. I love her like a wife, I guess.”
Javier sighed. “John, you won’t be happy with her, she won’t be happy with you either. She feels the way about Sadie as you do with me, you are just trapped by the idea that a man and a woman is the only way love will last.”
John wiggled his way out of Javier’s arms, sitting up and looking down at Javier. “It is the only way.”
“Hosea and Dutch.”
“Dutch got Molly.”
“But he doesn’t love her,” Javier sat up and looked at John’s conflicted face, he knew, but he wouldn’t accept. “Not like he loves Hosea. If they can, so can we.”
John shook his head, covering the panic in his stomach with a disgusted face. “No, no we can’t, Javier we can’t-”
Javier sighed as he got to his feet, looking down at John. “Don’t come running when you realize I am right.”
It had been eight years since then and ever so often Javier’s words would pop up in John’s mind, but it was first then that he truly accepted that being Abigail’s husband did not mean the same as being Javier’s husband meant.
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