*Warning: contains dangerous levels of fluff*
The corridors of the Royal London Hospital Intensive Care Unit had become a temporary art gallery for the month of February, exhibiting paintings and photographs by local artists. Bright colours were awash on the usually ash-coloured walls, lending the place a summery air quite out place with the endless stringy grey drizzle that could be seen through the windows. In the pictures, birds swooped noiselessly out of an azure sky, children gambolled with silent shrieks in green gardens, which were filled with flowers of every hue. Limestone churches glowed in golden sunlight while burgundy-clad choirboys sang a soundless psalm. In short, a veritable feast for the eyes of all that was vivid, vibrant and voiceless in the world outside the hospital's drab walls. Illustrations of life so very far removed from the reality of life in the ICU – a reality replete with the lurid red of blood tests, the screaming neon shades of heart monitors, the muffled pastels of the well-trod floors.
Joe found them all rather comforting. Since the case had closed, he had had nothing to keep his mind occupied throughout Emerson's gradual, painstaking recovery. The cheery scenes portrayed nothing Joe had ever seen in the hospital, or in the whole of Whitechapel for that matter. They were like an imaginary world only found in children's books, or in heavily photoshopped travel magazines. But that was the point of them, wasn't it? Aspiration – so that you could at least pretend, for a moment, that 'once this is all over' you would take long walks in the country, having quiet adventures which would always end well, with a pint and a comfortable bed. Erica, however, an artist herself, as Joe kept forgetting, refused to take them in the spirit in which they were given, and spent a lot of time critiquing the perspective, or the form, or how the particular way the bird's wing was drawn was symbolic of… something. It was her way of coping, Joe assumed, and, while a little obnoxious, it was probably healthier than Joe's typical methods. Miles had brought him a further four tubs of tiger balm since he got through the last two in about five seconds flat. Or so it had felt.
He had had a lot of time over the past three weeks to learn about Emerson's recovery process, so he had been prepared for his long slow crawl back to life since coming out of the coma. He had known, academically, to expect Emerson to be disorientated, distressed and confused – all the leaflets provided by the hospital had explained how regaining consciousness following a traumatic head injury was a difficult process. But nothing could have readied him for feeling so helpless at the inconsistency of Emerson's progress, struggling forwards then plunging backwards in a cruel see-saw. Moments of awareness, where he would raise his leg or pinch a finger on request, followed by hours or even days of inertia. As the wakeful moments became more frequent, his suffering only appeared to increase, as he lashed out and cried in deep-throated agony as the medics tested his responses. Broken mumblings accompanied the questions the nurses asked, ranging from confused but semi-cogent sentences to incomprehensible murmurs.
The worst moment, for Joe, had come a couple of days earlier when Emerson had scratched feverishly and frenziedly at the drip line inserted into the back of his hand, as though trying to pick it off like a scab. Joe desperately enveloped Emerson's hands within his to stop him from hurting himself, lulling whispers to calm him down. Emerson had looked directly at him, and for one marvellous heart-stopping moment, he thought he saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes. But that was rapidly, far, far too rapidly, followed by fear. It travelled across his irises direct to the centre of his pupils, the animalistic terror of a cornered wolf. A rending, grief-ridden howl ripped from his throat, limbs flaying in all directions as though Emerson were battling an invisible assailant. As Joe tried to pacify him, his fingernails tore down Joe's arm in a swift movement, shredding the skin into red and white stripes, which swelled and leached down his wrist and onto the formerly crisp white sheet. It was worse than the effects of any of Emerson's nightmares and there was no safe wakening. No opportunity to hold him close and hush him until the spectres dissolved.
A rushing of nurses quickly anaesthetised him and his ragged movements slowed, slackened, his eyes bowed shut, his breathing steadied. But what still tormented him beneath the surface, Joe could not guess. No, Joe had not been prepared for the fear and pain of watching the man he loved trapped inside his own body, unable to escape his demons in his head. Joe knew all about demons – hundreds writhed within him every day.
The nurse had told him to talk to Emerson as the sedation finally wore off.
"Let him know what's been going on while he's been away. Tell him stories, whatever you can think of. It'll help him to fix a time and a place when he finally does come round."
But what to say? Joe had no news to tell him – he had hardly left the hospital in a month. Since Emerson had started to have relatively normal sleep-wake cycles, Joe had felt he could afford to go home to bed for a few hours a night. But only a few. He would leave at around half midnight and be back at the hospital again for five a.m. He had not seen their flat in daylight since before Emerson was shot. He only knew it was still standing because, well, he must have slept somewhere last night. And he was clean, so he had had a shower. His wrist was scented with his own herbal body wash. And Riley would have said something if the flat had disappeared when she went round to check on the post for him. So nothing to report there.
A nurse strode past the window with a harassed glance at her watch. It was funny, Joe had stopped noticing the time passing, at least at the level of seconds and minutes. He measured it by the amount Emerson's hair had grown back, or the space between his breaths, or how cold Joe's tea got before he remembered that he had it. It was strange to see someone else still tied to the tyranny of the clock.
"I think the nurses are getting a bit fed up with me," admitted Joe to the sleeping man in front of him. "I've not been sticking to their visiting hours. I think they only let me stay because Miles has charmed them into it or something. He said he'd pop by later, if he gets a chance, but he's quite busy with tying up your case. Did I tell you we've got him – the one who did this to you? He's pleading guilty, apparently, so you won't have to go to court." He exhaled with a quasi-humorous sniff. "Not that I'll be letting you go anywhere for a while, not without an armed guard or something. I'd love to be a fly-on-the-wall at that requisition meeting… You won't mind me fussing a bit, will you? Just until you're properly better. The Commander has said I can have as much time off as I need. I never thought I'd be glad to hear him say that. And I think Miles is enjoying running the department again, especially now that DCI Pembroke has gone back to his old unit. I never like to speak ill of a colleague, but if I start acting like him you will tell me, won't you? Putting statistics before what's right – that's not what I joined the Police for."
Joe crossed and uncrossed his legs to aid his circulation. His right leg was beginning to feel heavy and stiff, like a wellington boot filled with swiftly solidifying cement. "Anyway, Miles has passed everything on to the anti-corruption unit at AC-12. A DI Matthew Cottan said he'd take a look at the files on Reeder and his contacts, so hopefully there'll be some movement there soon."
They said it would take a little while for Emerson to emerge from his drugged sleep. Joe wondered how it would be – would he come back suddenly, gasping to life like a survivor of drowning, or would it be incremental steps, a twitch of a fingertip here, the compression of an eyelid there?
Eventually, there was a rustling and shift of sheets upon the bed, and a distant, stretching hum tuned to a major third. Joe's insides twisted in anticipation as he silently watched Emerson shrug himself back into his body, pore by pore, muscle by muscle. He almost did not dare look as Emerson's eyes opened and sought out his. If Emerson were to have another terrible hallucination after looking at him, he did not think he could bear it. Eventually, he chanced a glance at Emerson's face. The relief was palpable, a physical heat soaking through him, as he saw familiarity, real recognition, sitting there. His gaze was wobbly, not fully focussed, but positively, unquestionably Emerson.
Joe felt the faint pressure of Emerson's fingers curling around his. An urge to pull the younger man to him swept over him, to crush their lips, their arms, their bodies together, and never be unfused. Only the pallor of Emerson's thin frame held him back for fear of breaking or bruising him. Joe contented himself with translating all his emotion, his gladness, his desire to touch into returning Emerson's hand clasp with as much force as he dared.
He glistened with a wet smile. "Hello, you."
Emerson battled his way into consciousness as though he were emerging from the bottom of a deep ocean or well. Whiteness swirled in a blurry haze, like a whooping whirligig. This had happened before, but he had never caught a proper feeling for his surroundings before sinking back into darkness again.
He thought he remembered wrestling with a snake that was trying to bite the back of his hand, before a calming familiar voice had gently soothed him, saying 'Shh Em, don't pull your drip line out.' He knew that voice, he trusted it, but he could not quite place it. It felt safe, like coming home after a long journey. But then, like a spiteful joke, the voice had transmogrified into something thick and strange. A frightening echo engulfed him, as though he were trapped inside the voice, only it was no longer the reassuring voice he knew, but a vicious croak, harsh as a raven's. He saw the blue sky, but eclipsed and darkened by a heavy oppression. The shadow grew and split into two twin bodies, broad and menacing. As they drew nearer, they became clearer, and Emerson had screamed as he recognised the faces that had haunted his nightmares for six years, phantoms formed out of shade stronger than flesh.
"If you won't shut your mouth, we'll shut it for you," he heard in a voice not of human speech.
His scars seared in a white-hot burning as he vainly tried to fight them away, kicking, scratching, wrestling. All to no avail. The Krays had reached for his throat, fingers grasping like greedy anemones – he had given one last fitful, useless struggle before darkness overtook him.
He wriggled free of the morphine bonds holding him under and wrenched his eyes open. The drugs evidently had not completely left his system as he came to, his surroundings taking a few moments to catch up with him. He felt translucent and unstable, like a balloon about to burst. A body glided into his vision, a tall golden figure with eyes shining like the blue end of a rainbow. Emerson felt himself fall into those eyes, tumbling and turning until he had no idea which was up or down. He gripped onto the closest thing to hand – strong fingers squeezed back.
The golden body spoke. "Hello, you."
Who was You? Was he You? He was sure he remembered being called Emerson, or was it Kent? But the golden man spoke with such authority, he must know. He shimmered as though the very air itself were vibrating.
"Are… are you an angel?" asked Emerson.
The man laughed melodiously. "No. It's me, Joe."
Joe? Emerson's head pounded, his eyes swam. Of course, he remembered.
"Joe," he sighed giddily. "The people in the sewer, they said you were an angel."
It was some days later, so he was told, before he was finally lucid enough to hold a proper conversation. His morphine-induced visions had kept Joe entertained and worried by turns, as Emerson introduced him to Dame Judi Dench (his heart monitor), who had apparently come to visit him, then burst into childish, inconsolable floods of tears because the room was spinning and he 'didn't like the rollercoaster anymore.'
But at last, after having been largely unconscious for nearly a month, Emerson was feeling much more like his old self. There was still a way to go, of course – a dull ache rose in his ribs each time he inhaled and his head felt as though it had been filled with pebbles and used as a baby's rattle. As he sat in his hospital bed, he was all but convinced that he had three arms, until one of them, the one with deep scratch marks gouged into it, left its resting place on his middle, ascended to pinch the bridge of Joe's nose and tilled its fingers through his hair.
"It was a year ago today," said Joe suddenly, presumably at the end of a silent trail of thought in his head.
"What was?" asked Emerson.
"When you told me that you loved me."
"You remember the exact date?"
Joe shrugged embarrassedly, before sinking back into thought. Emerson had always enjoyed watching Joe thinking. Not the overthinking, the spinning out of control type of thinking which forewarned of a stress attack. But his measured, methodical, peaceful ruminating – that was delightful to watch. His entire body would inhabit a tranquil stillness, with only small, barely visible, movements marking the precision of his thoughts. The tick-tock of his foot upon the chair legs, the tapping wave of his fingers over his cheek, the blinking of his eyes in some rhythmic morse code. Emerson found it nearly as hypnotic as watching him undulate in sleep.
Of course, this type of contemplation only usually took place when Joe needed to settle something in his mind. Emerson felt sure he would shortly find out what that was.
"When you were… you know… in the coma, could you hear anything going on around you? Me, for instance?" Joe spoke casually, but there was something about the bearing of his shoulders that suggested otherwise.
Most of what Emerson could remember of that time was blank nothingness, but a nothingness that had physical form and shape. As though he were trapped inside a hole more solid than its surroundings. He remembered struggling against the concrete void, wondering where he was and what was happening. Then, later, glimmers of sensation, just mere snatches of life beyond. Soft fingers caressing his forehead, his hands, lips meeting his lips in a fleeting kiss. Was there a bit of juvenile giggling while he was having a bed bath? Words too, indistinct, heard as though they came from the other end of a long curved tube. 'Make him happy, don't leave me, respond to pain, I wish, I love…' He could not be sure, though, whether what he thought he had heard had been real or not. The distortion was too great.
"There were bits and pieces. Nothing very specific though. Why?"
Joe's face drooped faintly, the corners of his mouth descending, its m shape gaining an extra curve.
"Oh, no reason," he said, a disappointed fall to his voice. "There were just a few things I said to you. Things I hoped maybe you had…"
The effort of remembering was making Emerson's sore head worse. It throbbed insistently, as though an enthusiastic drummer had taken up residence in his brain. He must have winced without realising, his body still slightly beyond control of his mind, for Joe broke off speaking and immediately gravitated forward, his eyes bright with concern. Joe pawed at him like a rescue dog, feeling his pulse, his brow, the side of his head.
"Stop fussing, Joe, it's just a headache," said Emerson, feigning exasperation, though in actuality he quite liked the way that Joe was clucking over him. It made him feel safe, loved. It drew him further out of the depths of unconsciousness that he had only recently escaped, and gave him form. Joe was rebuilding him, touch by touch.
The older man looked sidelong at Emerson, bent to an awkward angle. "I know, but just let me look after you. Please. I felt so helpless over the last weeks, not being able to do anything. All I could do was sit and watch. I spoke to you, you know, thinking maybe you could hear me and me talking would help. But apparently not. Seems like I was just a spare part, getting in the way."
There was a bitter edge to Joe's voice as his hands tugged jerkily at his hair. He looked exhausted, his hair askew, complexion the colour of porridge. While Emerson had been unconscious, the Joe of straight lines and right angles that he knew had been replaced by this rumpled, weary man, all crooked edges and curves. Emerson almost preferred it (Joe was softer somehow, calmer) but for the anxiety in his eyes that had still not fully drained away. Eyes that spoke of weeks of pain and sleeplessness. A few added lines had snuck onto his face, the signature of stress signed as a permanent reminder. An unbreakable contract engraved on flesh.
Emerson extended his arm towards Joe, careful not to dislodge any of the tubes still affixed to him. His fingers danced a slow waltz on his cheek, feeling the bristle of unshaven skin beneath them. Joe choked with a tuneless sob and clutched at Emerson's hand with both of his own like a lifeline, kissing it hard, as though drawing breath from it.
"Joe," said Emerson, gently. "It's okay. I'm okay. I'm here."
Joe sniffed and nodded, smiling weakly.
"And so are you," Emerson continued. "I may not have heard everything you said while I was… asleep… but I knew you were with me. I felt you by my side, always. So don't you dare say that you weren't helping. It… you gave me something to fight for." He cringed. "Sorry, I've just realised how incredibly cheesy that sounds."
Joe laughed wetly. "Yes, it does. But it doesn't matter."
"Good, because I don't have the energy to be any more eloquent at the moment."
They settled into a comfortable silence, Joe still holding on to Emerson's hand as if for safekeeping, or perhaps just to be sure it was really there. He fretted unevenly at the fleshy pad between thumb and palm, rolling and squeezing it tenderly between his fingers. Half-remembered tears teased their way down his cheek, their paths leaving looping, oddly blithe, trails behind them.
"You being… ill… it made me realise something. Well, not realise… I already knew it really. But it made me want to be clear, because I don't think I have been always. Not with you. Not as much as I should have been."
When Joe was trying to say something important, he spoke in a wonderfully bashful spiral, beginning at the outermost place and steadily working his way circuitously to the crux point. Emerson waited, his breath suspended midway down his lungs. He knew Joe would get there eventually.
"I love you, Emerson. I know this is at least a year overdue, but I do. More than I can say. When I thought I might lose you, I... it put everything into perspective. I couldn't bear the thought of not having told you how I feel. All the things stopping me before suddenly seemed… irrelevant." He looked deep into Emerson's eyes. Emerson felt a thrill run through his body as the blue irises soaked into his vision. His own face was reflected back at him, paler and thinner than he remembered, but no less solid for all that. His vision blurred again, mixing blue eyes with brown, Joe's face with his, both mingled in an equal harmony. He could not tell where Joe ended and he began – maybe there were no beginnings or ends anymore, just a complete circle. The most perfect sphere, without north, south, east or west.
He felt rather than heard Joe speaking. "I'm sorry that it took you getting hurt for me to stop being an idiot. But, if you'll let me, I'll make up for it by telling you, and showing you, every day how much you mean to me. I don't think I could stop now anyway – you'll get so fed up of hearing it." Joe brushed a light kiss against Emerson's lips. "I love you," he whispered. "I think I always have."
Emerson watched as Joe rotated his shiny key by ninety degrees in the lock of their front door, and allowed himself to be shepherded inside, Joe's spare arm lying protectively across the small of his back. He was grateful for Joe's steadying weight behind him, a supportive presence to bolster his still fragile form. He had been absurdly nervous about coming home. On the one hand, he could barely wait to escape the claustrophobia of the ward, where privacy was a thing unknown, but at the same time, just the thought of being back out on Whitechapel's streets caused a metallic tritone taste of fear in Emerson's mouth. He knew he was being irrational – that the Krays were dead and Bousfield behind bars – but that had not stopped him from lying awake for most of the previous night replicating both attacks in his head again and again until they merged into one. When he finally did sleep, his dreams were an atonal chaos of red screaming, of guns and batons and faceless men.
He had said nothing about his anxiety to Joe – he had caused him enough worry already – but he sensed that the older man had guessed anyway. There was a studied banality about the way he clicked and latched the door shut, the stoop of his back as he bent to retrieve the handful of letters poised on the mat and placed them, neatly, unopened, on the envelope holder in the hall. He seemed to be making a deliberate effort to create as indistinct a homecoming as possible, to put Emerson at his ease. And, to Emerson's surprise, it appeared to be working. Apart from the acute, but dulling, aches and pains he felt as he walked, and the hospital discharge form in his pocket, it could have been any ordinary day getting back after a long shift. Yet like a whole tone scale, it felt strange and familiar all at once. Strange because it was so familiar. After over two months in hospital, he expected the flat to feel different, that it would be jealous of its space, resentful of his prodigal return. But it welcomed him in as it always had, as though he were the missing note needed to resolve the chord back to harmony. It even smelt the same.
Gazing about the flat, regaining his bearings, Emerson noticed that the Pre-Raphaelite calendar on the wall was still stuck on January. It spoke volumes that Joe, usually so fastidious about things like that, had not moved it on while Emerson was in hospital. He smiled. Joe had literally stopped time for him. He flicked the pages over to the correct month of March, noting peripherally the day's date. He had not realised that it was Easter Monday – most people in the hospital were too busy to mark public holidays. He found that he felt slightly hard done by that no-one had offered him an Easter egg. It seemed fitting somehow, that he should have been let out of hospital at Easter time, the whole idea of Easter being about rebirth and resurrection. A fresh start. A green blade rising out of sleeping soil. Not that he believed in the religious element of it anymore, but there was a nice symmetry that the former chapel chorister in him could appreciate.
Emerson followed Joe into the sitting room.
"Thank you," he said faintly.
Joe frowned. "What for?"
"For… well, for everything really." Emerson made a vague globe-shaped gesture in the air to express what he could not find the words for. "Right now, for driving me home. But also for staying with me, not giving up. I know it's been hard for you."
He traced his fingers over the bleary grey beneath Joe's eyes, along the coral coloured scratch marks echoed on his forearm.
"I'm sorry I keep hurting you."
Joe grabbed him fiercely yet gently by the shoulders and directed their gazes together.
"You have nothing to apologise for," he said sternly. "You hear me? Nothing."
He pulled Emerson into him (or did Emerson fall?) and locked them together in a comforting and tender kiss. Dizzily, Emerson wrapped his arms around Joe's waist, both to stop himself from falling over and to create as little space between him and Joe as possible. He felt unable to ever let go. Joe's tongue nudged questioningly at Emerson's lips, as if seeking reassurance that he was there, alive and okay. Nodding against Joe's mouth, he sank further in, so that not a particle, not a microtone, separated them.
This was the thing he had missed most during all those long weeks in hospital – the sensation of being completely surrounded by Joe, their bodies fusing together through the pressure points of mouths, hips, hands. He broke off with a hiss when Joe's fingers accidentally brushed against the still delicate part of his ribs.
"Oh God, sorry." Joe withdrew in a fluster, sheepishly easing Emerson down onto the sofa.
"It's alright," said Emerson. "I'd rather that than you feeling you couldn't touch me. I couldn't bear that. Just… let me feel normal. As much as possible." He crooked a look at Joe out of the corner of his eyes. "And you don't have anything to apologise for either."
Joe smudged a smile. "Good, then. I'll make a start on some dinner, yes?"
He slipped off his jacket and laid it neatly over the sofa back, bending briefly to drop a soft peck on Emerson's forehead, before walking into the kitchen area. The jacket smelt of him, of menthol and musk, of morning and midnight rolled into one. Emerson leaned his head back, breathing in the scent. The herbal fragrance of residual tiger balm was certainly very relaxing. He could understand why Joe used it when he was under stress. A twinge of guilt stabbed at him when he thought about how often he had been the, albeit unwitting, cause of Joe's anxiety.
He had decided not to bring up the subject of marriage for a while. Not until he was sure Joe would cope with the idea. He did not mind waiting – he was happy, oh so happy, with what he had already. Joe loved him, and that was enough. He was not about to push his luck just yet. Although Joe seemed much more tranquil now than he ever had been, fuzzier at the edges, more placid. He could almost be described as cosy, and Emerson was sure he had never been called that before. And a little voice at the back of Emerson's mind prodded at him, reminding him of something he had forgotten, something encouraging but hidden.
"Carbonara alright?" asked Joe, clattering a pan onto the hob.
"Perfect, thanks," he replied, enjoying watching Joe's lean frame bend and twist over the oven.
"I was thinking," Joe said as the violet surge of gas whistled aflame. "Once you're fully recovered, we should go away somewhere. Somewhere special." A splash and rattle of dried pasta being immersed in water.
"You want to go on holiday?" said Emerson in surprise. "Normally it's as much as I can do to get you to clock off on time. And somehow I can't imagine you lying on a beach in your shorts."
Joe threw an irritated look at him. Emerson stifled a giggle, partly at the indignant expression Joe was wearing, and partly at the vision that had leapt into his head of him rubbing sun cream onto Joe's bare chest, while Joe reclined on a deckchair in Bermuda shorts. Actually, that would not be a terrible idea. Then again, Joe and sand would probably not make a good combination.
"Well, I think we deserve a break, don't you?" said Joe, in that exaggerated way that he had. "And I was thinking of something a bit more interesting than a trip to the coast. Somewhere that would be a 'trip-of-a-lifetime', as I believe it's called. Something we'd remember. Isn't there anywhere like that you'd like to visit?"
Emerson cocked his head in thought. "Well, I've always fancied going to Japan. You know, read some proper manga in the place where it originated. And you'd have all the sushi you could eat. And there are beautiful gardens, and temples, and so much history and culture." He sighed wistfully. "It would be amazing. But we'd never get the time off work to go. We'd need at least a couple of weeks, if not three, to do it properly and HQ wouldn't let us both take so much leave together at once."
"Why don't we call it a honeymoon, then? They can't begrudge us time off for that."
Emerson felt his brow crease into a confused frown. "Don't be silly. We can't call it a honeymoon unless we… get married… first…" His voice trailed off, as the full import of what Joe had said struck him. Anticipation sprang on his tongue, blocking his words. He hoped, prayed, that he understood correctly.
Joe's eyes spoke first, creasing at the edges and radiating a joyful yet mischievous beam across his whole visage. "Exactly."
He set the spatula down on the surface top, a neat parallel to the rings of the hob, but not noticing, or not caring, that a trickle of starchy water was pooling underneath it on the granite worktop. He loped over to the sitting room and knelt down beside Emerson. There was an unusual rosiness to his cheeks, most likely due to having been recently standing over a pan of boiling water. The possibility that the cause of his flush was something else occurred to Emerson, but he was still so stunned that his brain could not fathom what to do with that information.
"Joe?" He knew that he was doing his cow-eyes, his look of the wide-eyed innocent that he hated, but he could not help it. Something warm was soaring up his gullet and he did not know if he was about to burst into laughter or tears or both.
Joe looked at him, all teasing vanished. "To misquote you, this is a proposal, as long as you want it to be." He drew a deep breath, not nervously, not hesitantly, but a sure and solid inhalation. "Emerson Kent, would you, could you, marry me?"
Emerson grinned so hard his jaw felt as though it was about to come apart at the hinge.
"Yeah, go on then."
