Going Down (The Captain / Julian)

Chapter 5

Eventually, it started to rain. Cheap, conventional British summer rain which fed the Button House grounds with a sense of obligation, as if there was a quota for that sort of thing and the clouds had forgotten to do this earlier. The rain drizzled through Julian's spectre dispassionately, watering the grass underneath him. Although the rain was oblivious to the presence of spirits in its path, the change in weather still brought a lightness to the air which anyone - living or dead - could register. It lifted the oppressive heaviness in the atmosphere and allowed Julian the chance to catch more of his breath.

The rain pattered on, unhurriedly. Despite the levelling of his breathing, the receding bleakness in his mind, Julian found himself pressing himself ever firmer against the Captain's side. He didn't want to pull away. It was novel to find that being held, to be secure in someone else's arms, to have someone's chin resting protectively on the top of your head as you struggled to keep the pieces of yourself together, worked so well. Julian wasn't sure whether he had ever been held like this. From what he could recall, companions in life were far more likely to slip something in his mouth to calm him down when he was so out of it. That was, when anyone was around to notice he was out of it. That had been, admittedly, rare.

"Settled?" the Captain asked, very quietly. He had apparently also sensed the change in the air, or perhaps smoothing of Julian's breathing.

"Mmm," Julian murmured, unwilling to commit to 'settled'. He also very much didn't want to move. He felt exhausted, wrung out like a flannel, aching to rest. Wondered if he'd be allowed just a little more time, to gather himself, to get enough of himself back to restore the performance and face the public. Who could begrudge him that?

Julian snaked his own arm around the Captain's lower back, slipping his fingers between the supple leather of his belt and the radiating heat of the man's body, pulling him just a touch closer. The man ran astonishingly hot. As comforting as a log fire in a blustering snowstorm.

"You didn't fall away."

"How could I?" Julian muttered, pressing his forehead against the Captain's lapel. "You were holding me."

*

That night, the heat of the summer gave way to drumming thunderstorms, satisfying the thirst of the dry air with torrential rainfall. Button House sang a percussive song of plonk-plink-plonk as a swarm of colourful plastic buckets welcomed the dripping water from gaps in the roof.

The distant rumble of thunder was a felicitous backdrop to the misery of that night's activity, where Julian was summarily exposed to, shoved through and / or instructed to prod all the possible 'triggers' which Alison had collected on behalf of the house. Of course, not one had brought about any symptoms. No vanishing from Alison's sight, no unexpected falling through to floor and no loss in Julian's ability to touch anything physical. The only joy Julian had managed to muster through the whole affair was through his insistence that the measurement of his ability to touch would be through pressing keys on Alison's computer. His twitter account had been woefully under-utilised for the past few days, and he didn't want any of the ancient twerps on the committee handling Rachel's first private member's bill to think for a second that their mysterious blackmailer had suspended their campaign.

Eventually, the household's amusement of making Julian jump through a sinister-looking hat stand time and time again was interrupted when the neglected drainpipes - which had been on their last legs even before they had been asked to deal with a week's worth of rainfall in four hours - collapsed under their own weight, sending a curtain of water down the outside of the east wing.

The Captain called for all hands and soon Julian's little 'issue' was forgotten under the more pressing matter of trying to find all the cracks in the rusted gutters. Julian found that task much more his style. It was very enjoyable to poke his head out of one of the upper windows, find another leaking fracture line, yell to Alison, hear Alison repeat the call to Mike, and then hear Mike's exasperated "for fuck's sake!" echoing up the floors between them.