Chapter 35: Macaroni.
"'Oh, you wicked wicked little thing!' cried Alice, catching up the kitten and giving it a little kiss to make it understand that it was in disgrace."
-Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass.
"Jim, come here for a second."
"The water is boiling, though."
"Well, turn the heat down and get in here."
Several seconds later, one consulting criminal ducked through the doorway and made a little side-step over to see what John was watching on the telly. It was a crime report, and the picture on-screen was a reporter in front of a Ben&Jerry's.
"…apprehended on Thursday, pleading innocent, but his fingerprints are definitely a match for those found on the body."
"Care to explain?" John asked, gesturing to the scene. "Adam Newman, being charged for the murder of a young woman, killed at the Ben&Jerry's?"
"Well, you know, if his fingerprints matched..." Jim shrugged, looking innocent.
"Let me guess. The analysis is only as good as the men who take care of it," John recited.
"No, actually!" the other man grinned. "This time I really DID hack the system. I switch around my fingerprints and your ballistic reports whenever there's a chance that they might come into play with the police."
"So you get an innocent man convicted for every crime you commit?"
"Oh, no, they're usually far from innocent," Jim smirked. "Well, innocent of those particular crimes, but take this man, for example." He made a negligent gesture towards the mug shot of Adam Newman. "He was involved in a series of very nasty murder-rape cases about seven years back, and two of my Misfits were, unfortunately, targeted. Dear Adam will be arrested, detained, imprisoned, raped and branded by his carefully chosen cellmates, and then he will be killed."
"Seven years ago," John repeated. "And I thought I could hold a grudge."
"Amateur," Jim smiled, and headed back into the kitchen. "What are you doing on crime news? Thought you didn't want to see any of my work."
"Better to get used to it," John said carefully, and he could hear Jim's grin when he next spoke.
"You'd better. Now get in here and heat up the sauce for the macaroni, won't you?"
Oooo000oooO
Dinner that night was typically loud. There were only two people in the hospital for actual injuries, and they were both awake, so everyone was crowded around John's story-telling throne. They had served dinner, and there were pieces of macaroni all around the floor. John had given up on trying to clean it all up.
Sebastian was back from Scotland, and he and John had spent a bare half-hour chatting before both men had work to do, John preparing dinner and Sebastian getting settled back into his own rooms in Brewer's. It was nice to have him back, to be able to talk to someone so openly. John had told him about the men he had killed for Jim, and Sebastian had told him his story of his own first job for Moriarty.
Today's story for the Misfits was stolen from the Brothers Grimm, and it was one of Jim's requests, the allusion obvious; The Wedding of Mr. Fox. There were two separate versions to the story. In the first, a Fox believed that his wife was unfaithful, so he pretended to be dead. Many animals came to woo the widow, but she would have none of them, until she found a Fox with nine tails, just like her late husband. Then she agreed to marry him. But the Not-Dead Fox leapt up and killed all the wedding guests, then threw his wife out of the house. In the second story, the Fox really died, and Mrs. Fox found herself a new husband and lived happily ever after.
The kids applauded, and John took a seated bow as best he could, then he moved out of his chair and started collecting bowls from the kids.
"Thank you, John," said Randy, giving him a hug.
"Thanks for the story," Lily said, and planted a kiss on his cheek.
"Dinner was great!" exclaimed little-Jim, and patted the doctor on the head. Socks, sitting beside him, just nodded. He didn't talk much around the other kids, but when he was alone with Jim and Leo, apparently he could talk the ears off an elephant.
"Th'nk you," Gabriel said with a smile. He was only four, and wasn't actually working for Jim yet. He lived in Brewer's, being parented by an entire community, and was a source for unexpected mischief throughout the building.
"You're amazing, daddy," Sammy said, and gave him a kiss on the forehead, like Glinda the Good.
"Absolutely brilliant," Jim told him with a Cheshire smile. "Couldn't have told it better myself." He gave the other man a very loud kiss on the forehead, and then grinned at John's expression. "Don't look at me that way, sweetheart."
"I'll look at you any way I want, darling," John returned sarcastically, and then straightened to see Sebastian looking at them with a stricken expression. Oh, shit. He remembered the way that Sebastian had talked about Jim, the same dreamy obsession that John had heard in his own voice when he talked about Sherlock. "Sebastian, it's not-" Of course it looked like they were a couple. Jim didn't really talk to anyone else like that… it was no wonder that Sebastian was jumping to conclusions.
"I don't want to hear about it," Sebastian said, and then turned and walked out, his steps jerky and his face blank. John turned back to Moriarty, who was looking thoughtfully after his right-hand man.
"That was on purpose, wasn't it?" John asked, anger coming into his voice unbidden.
"Didn't want to directly address it," Jim shrugged. "He'd feel embarrassed. Didn't want to lead him on, either. It's best that he think I never knew about his little crush, and that I never returned his feelings." John looked up at the door that Sebastian had slammed behind him, with mixed feelings.
"So now we're going to be pretending to be a couple whenever we're around him?"
"Oh, just be yourself. You heard Sammy; she already thinks we're a couple, fucking or not."
"Jim…" John said, but it was too late, he could already hear the in-drawn breath from the children around him. There was a moment of silence, in which the word seemed to echo.
"You just said fucking!" came one young voice, and John covered his eyes with one hand as the room burst into laughter and the word 'fucking,' repeated over and over.
"Everyone shut up and listen to me!" Jim shouted over the tangle of noise. "QUIET!" he screamed, standing up with eyes like black holes. Everything faded quite quickly after that, big eyes staring up at the man standing over them. "If John or I hear anyone saying that word, they will be banned from three dinners. It is not a word for young people," he said in a calm voice.
"Does this mean you're being banned from three dinners?" a girl asked. Jim looked down.
"Nope, the rule was made after I said it. Five seconds ago, everyone was saying it, so if it applied before, then there would be no one at the dinners at all." He sat back down beside John.
"My hero," said John, and laughed at the way Moriarty winced. "Okay, get used to it. I'm going to point it out, every time you do something nice. Even if it's for your own benefit."
"Oh, joy. I'm not a hero, Johnny boy, don't make me into one."
"No, we're done with that sort of talk. You're not a hero, obviously, but you're not just a villain. You can't make yourself into the devil when you aren't him. You're just a person, and you should get used to having your good qualities pointed out. In fact… hang on."
"No, John, don't-" John stood up.
"Hey, guys, listen up!" Jim growled his displeasure, but fell silent along with everyone else, knowing that protesting would only make him seem powerless. "Jim here doesn't think that he's done good things. I don't agree, and I bet that you don't either. I want you all to shout out something you like about him, on the count of three. Okay, everyone got something? Three…two…one."
The result was a mess of noise, but several words stood out to John, and he smiled.
Sammy's cry of 'ice-cream!", his own of 'changeable,' and the repeated themes of 'awesome,' 'iPhones,' 'nice,' 'marshmallows,' and 'short' were enough to make him laugh. He grinned down at Jim, and Jim rolled his eyes, but he was grinning as well.
"Thanks, Misfits. You're all super-awesome too, but I think it's time to go home." The familiar chorus of disappointment rose from the kids. "Yeah, but come on, who wants to stay in the hospital wing? Go home with your friends, have a good sleep, work hard tomorrow, and I'll see you in 22 hours. We'll be roasting hotdogs over a portable fire pit, all thanks to the amazing Jim!" He made a gesture to the dark-haired criminal genius, who made a little Queen's wave to the kids, making them laugh. "Alright, guys, love you all and good night!"
The kids were just getting up off the floor, chatting and laughing, when a man that John didn't recognize ran in the door.
"Doctor, quickly, he's been shot!"
"Oh, god. Another sniper? Where is he?"
"My friends are bringing him in. He was shot just outside Brewer's, we don't know who it is yet."
"How long ago? How much blood has he lost? Where was he shot?" John asked. Then he remembered the kids, who were hesitating, caught between running and watching. "Misfits, get out of here. Jim, make sure they all leave. There's someone outside the building, so you should probably do something about that. I'll text you when I want you. Everyone, move!" The last line was shouted with all the authority of an army Captain. "Now answer my questions," he said, turning back to the unknown man.
"I don't know, I just ran ahead." The Misfits flowed between and around them, feet stomping in a wild rhythm as they moved. Jim passed between them, his face grim and telling John that he wasn't happy with this new development. John gave him a small smile, letting him know that there might be hope for the sniper, and Jim blinked at him, taking that information into account as he left. John watched him go, then snapped his head back to the task at hand.
"How long ago, at least? Did you see him shot?"
"No, we heard the shots. Three, I think. Only about three minutes ago." That would give John and his patient a fighting chance, at least.
"Male?"
"I didn't get a good look at them, but yeah, I think it was a man."
"Alright," John said. This was definitely not good. He hoped that it was unrelated to the Sniper deaths, because if it was connected, that meant that the Sniper-Shooter was right outside Brewer's, and that might result in a Dwarf Drill, which John absolutely detested. It involved moving everything down a level in a very short amount of time, some rooms sealing off and trapdoors being activated, so that in seven minutes, Brewer's would look like nothing more than an abandoned factory, just as it should be. Several of M's men would remain behind and hold up the intruders, pretending to be a basic street gang rather than the criminal network that the floors and walls were quietly concealing.
"Leo, you're going to be doing the morphine, get it ready." The young boy gulped, but scurried off to get the equipment. It was the newest thing he'd learned to do, put in the morphine tube, and John was trusting him with it now.
That was when two people, a man and a woman, came in the door, carrying another man between them. He was losing blood fast, it was dripping onto the floor in a steady pattern. That meant artery, which meant a higher probability of death. Numbers swirled around John's mind, but he couldn't really calculate odds and minutes until he could see the location of the wounds.
"Bring him over here and put him on the table," he told them, and they did as he asked. He looked down at the man on the metal operating table, features lit in the harsh lights. "Oh," he said softly, déjà vu washing over him. This man had been on his table before, blood on steel and life in John's hands. He had succeeded in saving him, that first time, and they had gone on to be friends. "Oh, god, Sebastian," he said.
Sebastian's face was pale with blood loss and pain, thankfully unconscious. Or was he? John's eyes picked out two chest shots and a leg shot. Blood loss, possible punctured lung, one of the shots could have even gotten to his heart. His chest wasn't rising and falling to John's eyes. Please, if there's anything up there, don't let it be too late, John begged, although he had thought he had lost all his faith to the reality of war. The absence seemed to echo the words back at him, futile and hopeless. He was alone in this.
A/N: I'm pretty good with avoiding cliff hangers, right? I mean, this is only the third or fourth in the entire story... Sorry?
So this is probably it for the week, and I'll post on Saturday. I'm cleaning my room today, you know, and yes, I will be taking breaks. But you see, I'm trying to catch up to my friend on Supernatural, and I'm only on the second season, so... It would take a lot of reviews to switch up my priorities... But it could be done! So review! And have a fan-diddly-tastic day! (Don't ask, I have no clue where that came from.)