Title: A Fixed Point
Fandom: Culture Club
Pairing: Boy George/Jon Moss
Rating: G
Length: 1191
Content notes: Content warnings for anxiety/panic attack, discussion of near-drowning, implied past trauma.
Author notes: Inspired by Jon Moss having an actual phobia of deep water and boats due to nearly drowning as a child, and the fact the video for Karma Chameleon takes place on deep water, on a boat. OOF.
Written for: Challenge 510 - River
Summary: It's just a video shoot. The river looks calm... Jon doesn't.

The Thames was calm that morning, deceptively so. It was the kind of calm that sits on top of something deep and dark and brown and very very cold.

The band and the video crew had gathered at the riverbank, the air already buzzing with activity -- extras being costumed and guided into place, chattering amongst themselves. Roy and Mikey were changing into their Victorian garb somewhere nearby. George was doing his makeup, unhurried and precise as ever.

But there was one noticeable absence from the noise.

Jon had already gotten into costume. He stood apart from the rest, closer to nothing and no one, eyes fixed on the water. His hands were shaking. His breathing was picking up.

He didn't like this.

He didn't like this at all.

He could feel the coldness of the water despite being on land. Could feel it pulling at him, enveloping him, patient and inevitable. His hands shook harder. In his mind, he was already under -- the cold going over his head, filling his lungs, dark and silent and --

"Jon."

Mikey's voice cut through it. He appeared at Jon's side, not touching him, just present, his expression caught somewhere between casual and concerned -- the particular look Mikey reserved for things he'd noticed but wasn't sure he was supposed to have noticed.

"You alright?"

"Yeah,. Brilliant." Jon gritted out, not quite managing to keep the panic from the edges of his voice.

Mikey's eyebrow went up. He took in the full picture -- the pallor of Jon's face, the visible tremor in his hands, the way he was breathing like a man trying very hard not to be seen breathing like that.

"Yeah." Mikey said, after a moment. "I'm not buying it, mate."

Jon said nothing. His jaw tightened. His eyes didn't leave the water.

Roy wandered over with the particular casualness of someone who wasn't sure what he was looking at yet. He stood there for a moment, taking it in. Jon's stillness. Mikey's careful proximity. The water.

He didn't say anything, just stayed for a few minutes, hands in his pockets, before quietly slipping away.

George was mid-conversation when Roy appeared at his elbow.

"Roy, not now, we're nearly --"

"Something's off with Jon."

George laughed. "When is something not off with Jon?"

Roy didn't laugh back.

George looked at him properly for the first time. Roy's expression was flat and serious in a way that made something shift in George's chest. He glanced across the bank.

Jon stood at the edge of all the activity, Mikey beside him, both of them facing the river. Even from here George could see it -- the unnatural stillness, the pallor, the slight tremor running through Jon's shoulders.

George stopped laughing. He watched for a moment longer than he meant to.

Jon hadn't moved. Still facing the water, still shaking, Mikey still beside him like a quiet sentinel, not touching, not speaking, just there.

Something about it made George's chest do something complicated. He made his way across the bank without quite deciding to. He came up on Jon's other side, close enough that their arms almost touched, and said nothing for a moment. Just looked at what Jon was looking at.

The Thames. Brown and calm and deep.

"Jon…" he kept his voice low. Easy. The voice he used when he didn't want to spook something.

Jon's jaw tightened. "I'm fine."

"Yeah." George said, not believing it for even a second. "What are you looking at?"

A long pause.

"Nothing." Jon said. "Just the river."

George was still watching Jon's hands when the director's voice cut across the riverbank.

"Right, everyone on the boat!"

He saw it happen in real time -- the way Jon's whole body went rigid. The sharp breath through his nose. The almost imperceptible step backward before he caught himself.

Mikey and George exchanged a look over Jon's shoulder.

Jon lifted his chin and walked toward the boat. George stayed close, without making it obvious he was staying close.

The gangplank. Jon's hand found the railing and didn't let go. Then they were on the water. The Thames moved beneath the boat in that quiet insistent way water has -- present, inevitable, indifferent -- and Jon stood very still in the middle of all the chaos of more costume adjustments and camera positioning and George watched him breathe.

In. Out. In. Out.

Like a man reminding himself how.

George drifted closer.

"Jon." Quietly, under the noise.

Jon's eyes stayed forward. "Don't."

"I'm not doing anything."

"George."

"I'm just standing here." A pause. "You're shaking."

"I'm not shaking." Jon said. Then, after a beat -- "Boats just have that effect on me. Lovely experience."

The joke landed badly, and he knew it before he'd finished saying it.

George didn't laugh. Jon went quiet.

The Thames moved beneath them, steady and patient and cold, and Jon stared at the middle distance with his jaw tight and his hands wrapped around the railing like it was the only solid thing left in the world.

George said nothing for a moment. Then, very quietly, very deliberately, he moved to stand beside Jon at the railing. Close enough that their arms were touching.

He didn't ask anything. He just stayed.

"Nearly drowned." Jon said quietly. "When I was a kid."

He didn't look at George, didn't elaborate. His knuckles were white on the railing.

George absorbed this. Looked at Jon's profile -- the set jaw, the careful breathing, the eyes that hadn't left the water -- and understood suddenly that this had nothing to do with today and everything to do with something that happened to a boy who grew up repressing his feelings about it and so many other things.

He didn't push it.

"Right." George said softly. Just that. They stood together at the railing while the Thames moved beneath them and the crew shouted directions and somewhere behind them, Mikey and Roy were being positioned for the camera.

George filed it away carefully. Later, back at the flat, when the river was far away and it was just them, he'd come back to it then.

-----

Somehow, Jon got through it. Take after take, the cameras rolling, the extras dancing and laughing in their Victorian costumes, the Thames glittering around them -- and Jon stood where he was supposed to stand and did what he was supposed to do and smiled when the shot required smiling.

George never moved far. Not obviously. Not in a way anyone would notice or comment on. Just… present. A fixed point. Every time Jon's eyes started to drift towards the water, George was just there in his peripheral vision, solid and real and not the river.

It was enough.

When they finally got off, Jon's legs felt strange on solid ground. Like he'd forgotten what it felt like. He stopped at the bottom of the gangplank and just breathed for a moment. He felt George's hand, brief and warm, between his shoulder blades. There and gone. Jon didn't turn around, but something in his chest loosened, just slightly, for the first time all morning.