Fic: An Hour Badly Spent

Title: An Hour Badly Spent

Author: cathedral carver

Pairing: John/Sherlock

Rating: PG

Word count: 3,700

Warnings: Spoilers for TGG. Has anyone not seen this episode yet?

Summary: The existence of forgetting has never been proved: We only know that some things don’t come to mind when we want them.*

A/N: Once again, many thanks to csinut214 for the stolen ideas inspiration and the lovely suggestions. You rock.



//



-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

~Elizabeth Bishop



//



Boom.

I should be used to it by now.

I should be, as it’s happened often enough over the years. I think. Maybe it hasn’t. Sometimes I forget these things. But either way, I’m not. Used to it, that is. And, I’m not sure why, which is the most troubling part of all this. It’s not the blood. After all, I’ve seen enough blood in my time, especially my own. It’s not the noise, or the destruction, the liquid, the fire, the heat, the overwhelmingly glorious brutal incredible heat, the shatter of glass—

No.

It’s the surprise.

The, everything-is-fine-I’ll-just-mix-this-with-this-and-add-a-few-drops-of-this-and-I-think-everything-is-perfectly-all-right-until—

Boom.

Yes.

That kind of surprise.

Another huge explosion kind of surprise.

Well, not huge, really, but huge enough to throw me backwards, throw me against the kitchen counter, throw my head back, arms sideways, flailing uselessly. Big enough to rattle the windows, but not shatter them, thankfully, because goodness knows we don’t need that. I slide rather gracelessly to the floor as everything, the detritus of this latest experiment, falls around me like snow, like dirty snow.

Well.

Oh.

Oh fuck

Not again.

On one level it’s almost too boring to be believed, really.

Smoke and broken glass are predictable but—

The surprise of it all. And, the blood. Blood everywhere, on the counter, the floor, my shoes. And, oh dear, it all seems to be coming from my face.

My face.

Sigh.

The flat is quiet and still and quiet now, so when I touch my face and groan because I’ve touched my face, my voice is very loud in my ears.

I should be used to this by now.

Shouldn’t I?

And, shouldn’t there be someone here who can…fix these kinds of things? I’m sure there should be, but as I look around, there isn’t. There isn’t anyone here except me and it’s so quiet and still—

I take a deep, steadying breath. I’m alone. I don’t know why I’m alone. And, I don’t know why I’ve managed to blow everything up again.

But.

These are the things I do know:

There’s a surgery close by.

I think.

I probably need stitches.

I put my fingers to my face.

drip drip drip drip dripdripdrip

Hmm.

No, no. Not probably. I do. I need stitches. Yes. I do.

I pull myself up. I grab a dishtowel from the counter, shake off the dust and bits of plaster and hold it to my face. I look around, look down, nudge a bit of stray glass with my toe. I sigh. Who on earth is going to clean all thisup?

Not me. Goodness.

I sigh again.

All right, then.

Off we go.



//



Boom.

We should be used to this by now.

The threat, the danger, the possibility of everything going to hell at any moment.

The surprise.

Still, I never expect it.

And, it’s huge and overwhelming, light and dark at the same time, lifting up and pushing down, somersaulting and cartwheeling and skidding along tiles and there’s water and a lot of harder things that hurt a lot more than water.

I’m holding on to him, best I can, the slim solidity of him, the bones and muscle of him, the skin and cloth of him. We’re flying, we’re actually flying through air and space and who know where we’ll land? I don’t even care, at this point, because I have both my arms around him, and we’re together, at least, so there’s that.

When we do land, it’s hard, and it fucking hurts.

I’m panting. He’s not making a sound. Nothing.

And there’s blood. So much blood.

And it’s all coming from his head.



//



I approach the receptionist. She glances up at me, then away, then back again. The classic double-take, if ever I saw one. Only, why? Why? I’ve never seen this woman before in my life. She doesn’t know me.

Maybe it’s simply because my face is covered in blood.

“Oh,” she breathes. “You.”

“Yes,” I say, irritably. “Me. Sherlock—”

“I know who you are,” she whispers.

Oh. Have I been here before? It’s possible. Sometimes I forget these things.

“Oh,” I say. My heart is hammering. I wish it would stop. “All right, then.”

She makes a show of looking down at her appointment book.

“How serious is it?”

I think about it. I’m standing. I’m coherent. I’m breathing. No major internal organs appear to be affected. I look around the waiting room. An elderly gentleman, coughing into a handkerchief. A young mother with a feverish child. A middle-aged woman with a swollen ankle.

“Not overly,” I admit.

She nods.

“Dr. Sawyer isn’t here today, but Dr.—”

“Whomever,” I snap, pressing the blood-soaked towel harder against my face.

“All right,” she says, shaking her head slightly. She scribbles something down, glances up at me again, then away. “You can have a seat.” She arches her chin. “Over there.”

And, over there I go.

The other patients look at me, then look away, except for the child, who stares openly, mouth agape. I like children for that very reason. At least they’re honest about their morbid curiosity.

Ten minutes pass, 15, with my hand pressed against my face, and the sensation of my own warm blood pooling there. What kind of surgery is this, anyway, and why did I even come here in the first place—

Then the woman appears in front of me, a vision in white and pink, with a pale yellow chart, saying my name. Her voice is high and shaky in the silence. I rise and follow her down a short hallway to a small room.

“The doctor will be right with you,” she says, and she looks just as frightened/puzzled as before. I nod, stiffly, my hand hard against my face. The blood flow has slowed, I know, but my heart. My heart continues to pump it.

I settle on the examining table, gingerly, paper crinkling beneath my legs. I look around. Blood pressure cuff, black. Otoscope. Sink. Paper cups. Fluorescent lights, too bright, illuminating the blood on my hands, my shirt, my pants, my face, stiff with it. Head throbbing.

The room stinks of antiseptic. There’s a box of latex gloves on the counter. For a moment I consider pinching some. They always come in handy and mine are forever full of holes/dissolving/disintegrating. Hmm. How much time do I have? I push the towel against my face even harder, glance at my watch. The doctor could walk in at any moment. I sigh. Silly to risk it. Instead, I study/memorize the luridly coloured charts on the walls: A detailed cross-section view of the anatomy of human heart. Superior Vena Cava. Pulmonary Trunk. Perietal Pericardium. Hmm. And, the lungs. Left Sublavian Artery. Tricuspid Valve. Papillary Muscle. Oh, and a bright yellow sign with thick black lettering: Stop Smoking NOW!

All right, then.

There’s a knock at the door. I suck in my breath and hold it. I don’t know why. There’s a pause. Expectant. I clear my throat, am about to say, Come in, when the door opens.



//



It takes an hour for someone to find us.

I know this, because as I hold onto Sherlock and talk to him, I’m counting, in my head, keeping track of time, counting down seconds and minutes and—

Hang on Sherlock, I keep muttering, over and over and over. Please. Please. Please.

He never opens his eyes.

He never says a word.



//



The door swings open, hits the wall behind, swings back a bit and stops. The doctor stands there, for a full beat, eyes wide, my chart in his hands. He’s staring at me. He knows me. He is surprised to see me (why?), but he tries, very hard, to not let me see either of these facts. Silly man, obviously he doesn’t know me at all: Slight tremble of fingers, light sheen of sweat across his forehead, elevated breathing, difficulty swallowing. All classic signs of stress (why?). He clears his throat, steps inside and shuts the door behind him with a solid thunk. When he speaks he’s staring very hard at my face and his hands are clutching my chart so tightly the paper is buckling between his fingers.

“Oh god what you have done now?”

I peer at him. My face feels very stiff and sore. I’m confused.

“Pardon?”

He shakes his head quickly, sharply.

“So,” he says, jovially. He’s someone else now, not the person who walked in. He’s Professional now. I’m more confused now. “You’ve gone and hurt yourself, have you?”

He has a very kind face. Careworn and lined, younger than he looks, I’m sure, but kind. Very kind. His eyes, when he looks right at me, make it difficult for me to draw a full breath.

I nod. “I have. Apparently.”

He’s staring at my chart. Staring and staring, as if the answer to the meaning of life lies therein.

At last, at long last he looks up, looks at me, right at me

“What did you do, then?” he says and his voice is all clipped and querying, but underneath there is something else: concern. Professional concern, I think, but it feels like more. My mouth is dry. I try to remember the last time I had something to drink. The last dregs of some cold tea, perhaps. When? Hours. Hours and hours. I should ask for water. I don’t.

“An experiment,” I say. It seems stupid to admit it, infantile, even, but still. It’s the truth, and the doctor needs to know the truth, doesn’t he?

“Oh?” He wants to say more, is eager I know, wants to know more, but he doesn’t ask. (Why? Why?)

I nod again.

He looks back down, makes a scribble with his pen, a nonsense scribble, I realize, nothing legible, not even for a doctor, but I don’t say a word.

His pen stops. He sighs. He looks up again.

“Something like…a scientist, then are you?” He smiles a little, but the smile is sad (why?).

I shrug, one-shoulder. “Something like.”

We stare at one another. I’m about to say something else, don’t know what, exactly, when he puts my chart down, at last, pulls on some gloves.

“Let’s have a look, shall we?”

I nod, and slowly, carefully, peel the towel away from my face.

I concentrate on my hand, which is not steady, not in the least, as it pulls/tears/yanks against the skin of my face. I’m shaking, if I’m honest. Blood loss, I tell myself. Blood loss. That’s all.

And, shock.

Nothing else.

Oh, and dehydration.

That’s all.



//



He’s in the hospital much longer than I am. Six months, in the end, then three more in private therapy.

I’m fine. I’m fine. I am. Despite everything, I’m just…fine.

He’s not.

But why am I telling you all of this?

You already know this part.



//



His gloved hand touches my face, cups my chin, lightly. His fingers are still trembling (why?) as he gently pokes and prods, moves my face this way and that. I can feel his breath on my cheek, little stutters and puffs of tea-scented warmth. I close my eyes.

“Well, now,” he says at last, forcing a cheeriness he does not feel (why?). “Not as bad as I thought. Couple of stitches, that’s all.”

He smiles at me, right at me, but I can’t smile back. He wants something, but I don’t know what he wants. One of the fluorescent lights is flickering. It makes me squint, makes my eyelids flutter. The wall is a pale green, like shelled peas. I think I should voice this fact, but in the end I don’t.

I squint. I think I grimace.

He stops smiling.

I wait patiently as he administers some local anesthetic (one two three tiny jabs), and as it takes effect, he moves to the sink, get a cloth and wets it, then begins wiping away the dried blood on my face gently, so very gently. I can feel his eyes on me the entire time. Wipe wipe wipe wipe. It actually hurts, because some of the blood is dried now, but I don’t complain. I try not to move, to make a sound, because I like the feel of his fingers and the cloth on me, cleaning me. He’s watching me closely, I know, as he works, as the light above us flickers occasionally, as the pea-green walls assault my eyelids, as I clench my fingers in my lap and hold in my breath.

Eventually he stops. Then:

He pokes at the flesh around the wound.

“Can you feel that?” he asks and I shake my head. Only pressure, there. Not pain.

“Okay,” he says.

The needle pushes in through my skin, then out. In out in out. I can’t tear my eyes away from his mostly steady hands, caught in my peripheral vision. There’s some blood there, on his gloves. My blood, I think. It’s very quiet in the small room. I can hear the tiny, whispery tickticktick of his wristwatch as it nears my ear, then moves away. Near away near away. I can hear his breathing, then mine, even though I keep holding mine in until the pressure is too much and my lungs burn and I release it in a long slow hissssss through my nostrils.

“Does it hurt?” the doctor asks.

I shake my head, very slightly.

He smiles. “Good.”

He finishes at last with a tug and a snip and moves back, admiring his work. I look at him.

His face is flushed along the cheekbones, but his neck and lips are pale and he’s still having trouble swallowing. I wonder if the cut was worse than he said, or if he’s simply not feeling well, if the blood has turned his stomach. He clears his throat.

“Listen—” he begins, but I never do learn what I’m meant to listen to, for at that exact moment the door swings open, bangs against the wall behind it, and Mycroft appears, seemingly out of thin air, though that is ridiculous.

No one and nothing appears out of thin air.

Even I know this.



//



Mycroft appears out of nowhere one morning. I’ve worked a six-hour shift and now I’m sitting in the too-quiet flat with cold tea and an unread newspaper.

“Listen, John,” he says.

I close my eyes, because I know what’s coming. I’ve been expecting it, to be honest.

“I know you two were pals and all, but really, he’s going to need…well, round the clock care for some time, perhaps always, and you have a job and…a life and. Yes.”

I pretend I don’t understand.

“I don’t understand,” I say.

“You’re being…” he pauses. “Excused.”

I laugh. It sounds like something else. Something not amusing at all.

“Sorry? Excused?”

“Yes. From your responsibilities.”

“As what? As his friend?”

Mycroft frowns. “You can’t afford the flat on your own and I have no clue when, or if, he’ll ever be fit to return to it. Or, to any kind of normal life, really.”

This is all true, of course. Everything he’s saying is true.

“I know you were fond of him, as he was of you.”

“Was.” I laugh. It hurts.

Mycroft bows a little. An acknowledgement.

“But really. Before this incident, you knew one another all of, what, five, six months? Surely you didn’t form a,” he sniffs politely, “serious attachment?”

Serious.

Serious. I shake my head without uttering a word.

He looks at me. Right at me, for the first time, I realize, since he walked in the room.

“Listen,” he says again.

And for the first time, I really do.

And I realize I’m not only being excused from Sherlock's friendship.

I’m being excused from his life.



//



We all three stare at one another. The doctor now looks paler and more shaken than before, if that’s possible. I wonder if the poor man is actually ill, or if his nerves are shot.

“My brother,” I say, both introducing and apologizing. I manage to not roll my eyes.

“Yes,” the doctor stammers and attempts a grotesque parody of a smile. “Hello.”

“Hello.” Mycroft nods stiffly, his eyes shifting rapidly back and forth between the two of us. “I apologize, profusely. I would have been here much sooner, but—”

“I’m fine, thanks for asking,” I say loudly, making them jump a little. Mycroft looks at me guiltily. Good.

“I’m sure you are,” he says softly. “You have been looked after by the best, after all.”

The doctor closes his eyes at this.

“We should be going,” Mycroft says in my direction.

“If I could just speak to you for a moment,” the doctor says to Mycroft, and the tone in his voice brooks no argument. I’m startled. No one talks to Mycroft like that. Well, except me.

“Of course,” Mycroft says. “We’ll be right back, Sherlock.” He pats my hand as they leave. I want to punch him.

I wait all of three seconds, then, of course I follow them. They’ve only moved into the empty room next door, and left the door open a crack. Silly.

“— so very sorry,” Mycroft is saying. I frown. Why on earth would Mycroft be sorry? “Had I known, I…you must believe me—”

“How could you not have known, Mycroft? Christ. You know…everything. You know when he takes a piss— And why was he alone in the first place? Where the hell was the nurse?”

“Out buying groceries, apparently. She has already been severely reprimanded. Trust me.”

The doctor pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Thank you, for looking after this,” Mycroft says quietly. “I know how hard it must be—”

“You have no fucking clue—”

“I can only hope you didn’t say anything—”

“Mycroft, for Christ’s sake— Of course I didn’t say anything—”

“It’s only—”

“It’s only nothing. I can’t imagine why he came here—”

“Well, it’s close. Convenient. Plus, he knows—”

“Knows what—”

Mycroft sighs. “It is familiar to him, on some level, I suppose.”

“You mean, I’m familiar.”

“I don’t know. No one knows.”

The doctor, he’s crying now. He’s actually…there are tears and I want to, god help me, I want to comfort him. Why? I don’t know the man. Yes, he has stitched up my head, he has been very gentle and kind. But, why on earth is he crying?

I push open the door and march in. The doctor hastily scrubs at his face. Mycroft clears his throat.

“Thank you,” I say. I hold out my hand. The doctor looks down at my hand for a moment, a long moment, and he closes his eyes briefly, then opens them, then smiles a little, then takes my hand in his and holds it, briefly, squeezes it, flesh against flesh.

“You’re welcome. Sherlock.” He looks right at me, then, blue eyes and worn face. “Just…try to stay out of trouble, will you?”

“Time to go, Sherlock,” Mycroft says again, more firmly. His hand on my lower back, pressing, guiding.

“Good-bye,” I say to the doctor. I am puzzled. I don’t know why. I am sad. I am bereft. The doctor looks at me.

“Good-bye,” he says.

Or maybe he doesn’t. He says something so quietly it really could have been anything.



//



The Personal Blog of Dr. John H. Watson

—because I should be used to this by now, right? Right?

It’s been going on long enough.

But I’m not. That’s the thing. And seeing him today, for an hour — an hour! — after so long, it only made me realize how very not used to it I am.

And the funny thing is I could have sworn he knew today, just for a moment there, when he looked at me like that, and when he touched my hand, right at the end. You’re all going to scoff, I know, say I’m imagining things. But, if I am, let me, all right?

Because there was that time, that one brief time before. Just before it all went boom. I try not to think about it, believe me. Would be better if I didn’t. It’s so long ago now, anyway, I sometimes wonder if I dreamed the entire thing.

Just an ordinary night. Well, ordinary for us, at least. Two foot chases and one almost-stabbing. Walking back to the flat, high on adrenaline, maybe, sucking in cold-night air, walking close together, hands brushing, skin on skin and fingers and then ducking into an alley and up against the bricks, breath on breath and mouth against mouth, the smallest whisper of clothing rubbing together and his lips on mine. Just like that, out of nowhere. Out of thin air.

“You…kissed me,” I breathe. He pushes against me again, presses his forehead to mine. I feel him nod slightly.

“You kissed me back.”

I nod. I did. It’s true. And then we just went home. And didn’t talk about it again. I always wonder what brought it on. I always wonder what would have happened, later, if we’d had the chance.

And I’ve never told anyone this. No one, and Christ Mycroft, I hope you do read this, just so you know. So you can realize what you’ve done, how in your infinite wisdom, you alone decided it would be “better” if we no longer, how did you put it? Co-habitated.

And no, I’m not drinking. Much.

And no, for those of you who will ask.

He still doesn’t remember.

Oh, he remembers how to eat and walk and use the toilet, and he remembers his goddamn brother and he can waltz into my surgery no problem because he still remembers which chemicals to throw together in order to very nearly get himself blown up. He remembers all that.

He just doesn’t remember me.



//



Call me, John. Please.

Harry Watson 12 Sept 10:15 a.m.



//



You shouldn’t be alone right now, John. Really.

Harry Watson 12 Sept 12:40 p.m.



//



John?

Harry Watson 12 Sept 2:14 p.m.



//



-30-



*Nietschze