A/N: I do appreciate your patience. Hopefully this story makes it well-rewarded!
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Eleventh Hour, I'm just playing with the characters. I promise I won't do any lasting damage!!!
Warnings: Hood on painkillers. Not to be taken particularly seriously.
MAD SCIENTISTS AND PERCOCET
Not for the first time, Rachel Young had to remind herself no to clench her teeth. Typical Hood. They'd come through a three-week assignment in Maine, where even at the end of April there were still patches of snow and ice in sheltered spots, without so much as a scratch. Then, two weeks after returning to Washington for a well-deserved break, Hood had slipped on a patch of wet leaves on the sidewalk, fallen at a bad angle, and broken his leg in two places.
Well, Rachel thought with an exasperated sigh, at least it wasn't a banana peel.
Regardless of the cause, Hood was currently in a cast from his toes to eight inches above his knee, completely unable to drive, and more than a tad giddy from his pain medication. By the time they'd left the hospital, he'd been singing Train's 'Drops of Jupiter,' only half under his breath. Rachel had considered stopping him, but he'd been on-key enough that she'd just smiled and enjoyed the performance.
That aside, it meant that Rachel had now been demoted from bodyguard/handler to chauffeur/nursemaid, and it was not a shift she found particularly enjoyable. Three weeks into an eight-week confinement to his cast, Hood was starting to get bored with his apartment, and Rachel was starting to get worried. A bored Hood meant bad things.
She managed to find curbside parking in front of Hood's building - a miracle in and of itself - and had just stepped out of the car when she heard a muffled explosion. Looking instinctively upwards, towards the sound, she saw a pattern of cracks appearing on a high window.
Hood's window.
Bad things, indeed. Swearing loudly enough to make several gawkers jump, Rachel put a hand on her gun and raced for the door.
By the time she reached Hood's floor, a slim, older woman that she recognized as the Superintendent was already bending over Hood's doorknob, fiddling with an oversized ring of keys.
"FBI!" Rachel barked at her, and the woman jumped sharply, barely avoiding dropping the keys.
"Open the door," Rachel ordered, breathless from the sprint and the fear closing her throat. The woman complied quickly, and within a a few torturous seconds, the lock tumbled, and a twist of the doorknob allowed the door to fall open a few inches before it snagged on the chain.
"Stand back," she snapped flatly, and dealt the door a kick with her good leg that snapped the sturdy chain and bounced the door off the wall inside. She caught the ricochet with her foot, keeping her line of sight clear over her raised gun.
Sweeping the uninhabited outer room, Rachel tried to keep all her senses as wide as they could go. "Hood?" she called sharply. "Hood!"
There was a crash from the kitchen and Rachel spun, sighting and targeting in one smooth move.
"FBI! Drop your weapons and come out with your hands up!"
"Rachel, I don't have any weapons, and I have to have one hand on my crutch. Will you promise not to shoot me?"
Rachel exhaled a disbelieving sigh, lowering her gun instantly and snapping the safety on. "Hood, get out here! What the hell is going on?!"
There was a scuffling sound around the kitchen doorway as Hood appeared, leaning heavily on his single crutch. He was wearing a pair of black flannel pajama pants, one leg hacked off above the knee to accommodate the cast. His good foot was stuffed into a fleecy navy-blue slipper, the color matching the vinyl apron he was wearing over his white tee-shirt. He was staring at her through a pair of clear plastic safety goggles, and the whole ensemble was topped off by a coating of gloopy white gunk that looked like he'd been attempting to bake a cake and had it literally blow up in his face.
Rachel holstered her gun and stared. "Do I even want to know?"
Looking a bit sheepish, Hood peeled off the safety glasses and tossed them onto the couch. There was a thin gash on his right cheekbone that had been hidden by the glasses, now oozing a thin line of blood in to the caked mess on his cheek.
"Er, well, do you remember when we were locked in that freezer, and you had to shoot the lock off?"
Hard to forget. She was still getting occasional bouts of tinnitus from firing her weapon in an enclosed space without ear protection, something she had very carefully failed to mention to her physician.
"...yes...?"
"Well, you asked me if I was going to make a a bomb out of champagne and baking soda?"
Ah, now it started to make sense. Well, sort of.
"So you decided to try it? Hood, you'd better lay off the Vicodin."
"It's Percocet, actually, and yes."
"Whatever. You actually got champagne to explode?"
"Add enough lemon juice to the mixture, fix in an airtight container, shake well..."
"You're insane, did you know that?"
"I've been told that," he answered, unoffended, scooting back a little to allow Rachel into the kitchen. She stopped two steps into the room, staring around in disbelief.
White glop had spattered almost every surface in the kitchen; floor, walls, cabinets. As she watched, a glob of it fell from the motionless ceiling fan to land with a muffled splat on the floor.
"Impressive," Rachel remarked sardonically, bending down to pick up a shard of blue plastic. "What is this?"
"Lid off one of those Ziplock containers. Part of it hit my window hard enough to crack it," he answered cheerfully, sounding downright amused by the fact he'd just managed to blow up baking supplies. Rachel just sighed.
"That what cut your cheek, too?"
He gave her a bewildered look, and Rachel just shook her head with affectionate exasperation. Typical Hood - he hadn't even noticed he was bleeding. After a moment of searching, she managed to locate a dishtowel that wasn't covered in gook. Dampening it in the sink, she motioned Hood to sit down on one of the stools tucked under the kitchen island and began carefully wiping the white mess from his face.
He winced when the edge of the towel caught the gash on his cheek, and Rachel paused, struggling to get a better look at the narrow wound without her glasses. After a second, she darted a hand forward, pinching the sliver of clear plastic between her finger and thumb, and yanked it out.
Hood swore, startled, and Rachel apologetically dabbed at the fresh dribble of blood with the towel. "First aide kit?" she asked mildly.
"Top of the fridge, but you don't have to - "
"Yes, I do. My job is to protect you from yourself, remember?" Retrieving the well-stocked kit from it's resting place, she picked her way through the mess back to Hood.
"They're not paying you enough."
Rachel gave a short bark of laughter as she dug out alcohol swabs, band-aides, and antibiotic ointment, laying them carefully out on the counter by Hood's elbow alongside the clutter of baking soda, a squeezie of lemon juice, a bottle of champagne, Ziplock containers, and... packing tape?
He either needs a much weaker painkiller, Rachel thought, or a much stronger one. What kind of idiot taped shut what was essentially a grade-school volcano in a box?
An idiot genius on painkillers, of course. No wonder it blew up like that.
"Why do you even have lemon juice on hand?" she asked after a moment, carefully fixing a butterfly bandage over the gash on his cheek. He glanced up at her, eyes shining delightedly beneath his thick black lashes.
"Let me up, I'll show you."
"Is it going to blow up?"
"Of course not," he answered, managing to sound insulted as he picked his way to the refrigerator around the gloopy spots on the floor. "Could you grab a couple of glasses out of that cupboard, please?"
Following his nod, Rachel found the lower shelf full of tall drinking glasses and retrieved a pair. Hood, meanwhile, was busy assembling a water pitcher, a bottle of purplish liquid, and a sugar bowl on the counter next to the lemon juice, before tripping back to the freezer to return with an ice cube tray and a stainless steel mixing glass.
With startling dexterity - particularly given that he was balancing on one leg - he began adding ingredients to the glasses at lightning speed, finally flipping the mixing cup over the glass, giving it three sharp shakes before setting it down in front of Rachel with a flourish.
"I'm impressed."
Hood glanced at her, one corner of his mouth quirking into that oddly secretive half-smile of his. "I tended bar through college."
Somehow, Rachel reflected as she cautiously eyed the pale-purplish liquid in front of her, that explained a great deal.
"It's a beverage, Rachel, not a science experiment," Hood informed her, busy mixing one for himself. "I promise you it's not going to blow up."
She shot him a dirty look under her lashes, but lifted the glass and took a cautious sip, blinking in surprise when the cold liquid touched her tongue.
"Wow!"
Hood rattled his way onto a barstool beside her, looking faintly smug. "Good?"
"Very good. What is this, anyway?"
"Pomegranate lemonade. My own recipe. Delicious and high in antioxidants." Smiling, he leaned over and topped off her glass with the open bottle of champagne before she could form an objection.
"Hood, I'm on duty!"
"Two ounces of champagne is not going to incapacitate you, Rachel. I can't drink it while I'm on Percocet, and I refuse to let a two-hundred dollar bottle go to waste."
Another glob of two-hundred dollar champagne and baking soda fell from the ceiling and splattered the top of Hood's head as punctuation. Rachel hastily took a sip of her drink to cover her snort of laughter.
Mad scientists on painkillers, Rachel thought ruefully, listening to Hood grumbling as he tried to wipe the gunk out of his hair. If nothing else, life is never boring. Taking another sip of her drink, she just shook her head and smiled.
END
A/N: I have no idea if Hood's little experiment really would blow up, but suffice to say I see no reason why it shouldn't. If you do attempt this experiment, please do so outside and take proper safety precautions. And then let me know the result??