(Sequel) John Laurens X !Mermaid! Reader

°Chapter 15: One plus one is exactly enough°

"Hey, are you okay?"

John snapped out of his daze and blinked for the first time in a while. He looked to the side and saw Y/N looking at him from the water. She probably hopped in the water from the temporary camp and swam to shore. "I heard about the incident," She continued and looked at the wood floating on the water. "Figured I should check up with you as soon as possible," She said looking back at him. 

"..." 

"You stayed here all night right?" Y/N asked further as she didn't get a response. 

"..."

"You know you should probably get some sleep,"

"..."

It wasn't that John was irritated or even angry at Y/N. It was more so that he didn't know what to say. Maybe a few weeks ago, he wouldn't have reacted so heavily. But this incident felt like something so heavy, so loaded. He couldn't keep himself from wondering.

"It isn't your fault, you know?" 

This finally caught John's attention. "What do you mean?" John asked to Y/N's surprise. "What I said: the fire, the men... you didn't do that," Y/N said. "You just happened to survive it-"

"Y/N, I'm so close to just-!" John suddenly yelled, making Y/N skip a beat. "I've been here for hours trying to figure out what I should do next, who I should be mad at, why I should or shouldn't be mad," He rambled. "Nothing you say can solve this!"

Realizing he snapped at her, John took a deep breath in. "Sorry," He apologized before turning away from her. Y/N was perplexed. She wasn't used to John apologizing for anything. If he'd do something sh*tty, he did it with confidence. 

"You said you don't know what you should do," Y/N said. "Maybe you should just move forward and see what happens instead of focusing on what you should do," She suggested. "We need to go to the fort, why don't we start with that?" 

Silence fell again. This terrified Y/N who thought she had just said something to tick him off even more. He turned around. He was biting the side of his index finger, his thumb placed right below his chin. Deep in thought; you could hear the gears in his brain tussle and turn. 

"That's the first smart thing you've said in a while," John said drilling a backhanded compliment right in her heart. 

"What?"

"Y/N, let's go get Robin's stupid item," John said reaching his hand out to her. "I just... I need a good trip to process," He explained as quickly as he could. How interesting it would be to look into the mind of John Laurens, Y/N thought. Irrational and swift decisions that contradicted each other. It doesn't make any sense.

She took his hand. "Let's do this," She said as they sternly shook hands. 

Throwing myself into work, John thought, is definitely going to distract me. It worked when I joined the revolution. Why wouldn't it work now?

"Herc!" John said as he ran up to the makeshift camp the crew had made near the cave. Hercules was talking to the gatekeeper who was still a bit dazed from the night before. "You're up," Hercules commented, turning toward him. "I am," John said a bit in disbelief himself.

In the corner of his eye, he saw Y/N who was silently gazing at the two from the edge of the rocky shore. "And I think Y/N and I should take our leave," He continued. "Already? Are you sure?" Hercules asked approaching John. He wanted to put a hand on his shoulder but decided at the last second not to. He'd seen John wrecked like this a few times before and knew he didn't appreciate the contact.

"I think this will help me clear my mind," John explained truthfully. "Right," Hercules sighed, scratching his forehead. "You're going to swim there, I presume?" He then asked to which John nodded. "Just head up further North, it shouldn't be that far away anymore," He told him. 

"But," Hercules sighed and looked at John. "Be careful," He added. "That fort is packed with dirty business dealers. I'm sure you'd have no problem getting there, but actually entering, grabbing your stuff, and exiting... that might be a challenge," 

"Don't worry about that, only one of us is going in anyway. I've done this countless times before," John said with a bright smile. "Yeah, yeah, don't let that get to your head," Herc said, flicking John's forehead. "Auch," John mumbled.

That night, Y/N and John sat at the edge of a rock right above the water, ready to depart. Having said their goodbyes, Hercules stared at the two from a distance. However terrible this experience may have been, it did help the two open up for better or worse. 

In an instant, the two jumped in. Almost like a bullet, they zoomed through the water in a straight line. John took a deep breath in, almost as if he had missed the salty water. Even if that were true, he wasn't going to admit it.

It was almost the same as a week ago, the two traveling together. But the clear difference was that now they both wanted that item in the fort. For different reasons, but they did it together.