Title: Parachute
Fandom: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
Rating: PG
Content notes: author chooses not to warn
Author notes: Set before the Ungentlemanly Warfare universe begins
Summary: William is his best friend, but there are things he cannot say





There are things he's never going to tell William. About the shadows under William's eyes and the way his hand shakes sometimes. William must know about it, Grant can see him being careful. Holding his glass just so, to hide the tremor. But he doesn't say anything so Grant isn't going to either. William has said too much before about pilots being condemned for Lack of Moral Fibre for Grant to risk saying something that implies William is visibly under stress. Grant also doesn't ask why William didn't go home to Laura for his crash leave, even when it coincided with Christmas.

They go out to celebrate. William drinks a lot, too much maybe, and with the ease of someone used to drinking. He talks a bit, about night flying and near misses. He does a light hearted routine, as befits a flyboy, but the smile on his face doesn't quite match his old smile and his jokes hover uneasily on the boundary of being too bleak to be funny. He speaks of his crew, or fellow pilots, with affection but in the past tense. Grant wonders first if they have been transferred elsewhere and is glad he didn't ask when it becomes obvious that the men William talks about are dead.

Sharing Grant's room and the only bed, William makes excuses not to sleep. He claims wakefulness, not needing to sleep much any more, being used to flying at night. It is only when Grant himself pretends not to be tired and intending to stay up that William finally sleeps, apparently reassured by someone else being on guard. Stripped to his underwear, the bruises of a parachute harness are still visible on his shoulders. Grant has had the same bruises a few times now after going into France, but never so deep. There are marks on his hands too, telling the story of how hard William must have fought to get out of his cockpit and away from his falling, burning plane. Somehow the only one left, even though he stayed the longest to give his crew time to escape.

He looks older. Grant can see it, in a shocked way that he doesn't feel when he looks at his own face in the mirror, even though he knows that Dunkirk has left a mark on him. Somehow the William in his mind had been untouched. Still half a schoolboy as he was when he joined up. Lying awake and listening to William, snoring like a man getting his first good sleep in weeks, Grant comes to the realisation that if William keeps doing this it will kill him. He'll be flying himself to death if the Germans don't get there first. He also knows that William will never give it up, certainly not to save his own neck.

They have been friends for a long time now: they've shared a great many things. Things Grant cannot imagine sharing with anyone else. Their school days and holidays, from the humiliation of dancing lessons to first kisses, finding their way in life as boys and then young men. Grant had even been William's best man when he married Laura. They are closer than Grant is to his brothers. It is unimaginable to have a future without William in it.

Arthur Wellesley wants a pilot for the new team they are forming. That much is true, and they need someone they know is good, someone with courage aplenty. Wellesley had told him to find the best pilot he could. Perhaps it is biased to choose a friend, but Grant sees it more as a way to solve two problems. Give the unit its flyboy and maybe, just maybe, save William's life along with it. Given the circumstances it's the best thing he can do.