Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Confusion, a rising sense of panic, and another’s hand in his. The sensations, his memory, even time itself became a blur, their facets morphing into a slow-moving blackness that encroached on him until the moment that Sir bolted upright and bellowing in a hospital bed.

Save him the room was quite empty; a blessing, elsewise he would have been swarmed with (rightly concerned) medical professionals before he could begin to get his bearings. With a swimming head he looked about, managing to take in the contents of two of the walls before weakness and nausea pushed him back down against the pillows. From what he could tell with closed eyes they had him hooked up to several different monitors with varying types of beeps, some funny clip was clinging onto the end knuckle of one of his fingers, and he even thought there might be something attached to his nose.

Before he could bring a hand up to check that final observation the swarm of medical professionals decided the time was ripe to arrive. The minutes that followed served less to inform Sir of his circumstances than to compound his disorientation, as people in scrubs bustled around the monitors pressing buttons and tugging at things while a person with a clipboard stood at the foot of the cot and spouted various phrases that Sir did not possess the knowledge or patience to try to understand.

“Listen,” he finally broke in, a touch desperate to regain some of his authority, “I don’t have the first clue what you’re standing there blathering about. Why don’t you get to what’s actually important and fill me in on what happened? I don’t remember—”

—staggering out of the hotel lobby, the world a choking haze of heat and screams, shaking in the earth and rumbling in the skies and sirens distant on the air; pain, pain, pain in his chest and all down his arm and in the bones of his right hand, clutching still for all the life left in him onto—

“Charles,” he tried to say, but the name cracked apart in his throat: the flashback and his resulting agitation triggered a terrible coughing fit from which Sir did not recover until the doctor was already waffling again.

“As we were attempting to outline, sir, you were driven to this hospital by ambulance after being picked up outside the remains of the Denouement Hotel. Your arm sustained a moderate amount of burning and you appear to have suffered a degree of smoke inhalation. We’re going to keep you here for observation until we can determine the extent of the damage to your lungs.”

The lines of Sir’s face deepened as he frowned. He could always tell when people were saying his name without the proper capitalization; plus, he didn’t like the physician’s summary. Not at all. “What if I don’t like that?” he challenged. “What if I’m of a mind to just walk right on out of here?”

All of the medical staff’s eyebrows made acquaintance with their hairlines. “I’m afraid you’re in no condition to do that, sir,” one of the nurses spoke up.

“You can’t tell me what to do. I’m a very important man in my profession, you know. I’m the boss.”

But truth be told, Sir didn’t feel very boss-like at that moment. His suit was gone, his hat was gone, and there wasn’t a cigar to be seen. He was horizontal, weak, in a pasty seafoam-colored gown, and being stared down by someone who was now frowning at him in turn.

“A patient is a patient, no matter what title is on their business card,” the doctor said, not entirely without sympathy but with enough sternness that Sir’s retort was decapitated before it had even fully formed. “As such, you fall under our purview, and that means we have the right to keep you here until you’re beyond dangers like infection.”

Sir fumed a minute, searching the situation for something in which he could assert himself. “Then you better let me see my partner,” he finally settled on, grinding the words out with as much gruffness as he could manage with a scorched throat. That was the very least amount of control he would accept here.

“Pardon?”

“The man who was with me before your ambulance yanked me here.” How stupid were these people? “Charles. I know he got picked up at the same time as me.”

The doctor—Haines, the nametag said, Sir made sure to get the nametag so he could make a report later if necessary—was beginning to look discomfited. “Are you in fact sure of that, sir? A minute ago you claimed that—”

“Never mind what I claimed! I’m ordering you lot to go get him and put him in the free bed, right this very instant.”

Haines’ answer was something that stopped Sir cold. “I’m afraid that at this time there is no way to confirm that who you’re looking for is one of our patients. None of the other male survivors of the fire have regained consciousness, and only a handful of them had any form of identification on them at their admission.”

Sir experienced a vivid mental picture of his and Charles’ wallets both lying on the desk in their room at the time they’d left for the trial, and swallowed down a mixture of panic and phlegm. “What’s stopping me from just pointing him out to you?”

“For one, you’re on strict bed rest for at least the next twenty-four hours. For another, intensive care is not a prison line-up—you can’t simply peruse every occupied room until you maybe happen upon the person you’re looking for. There are privacy laws.”

“Then what happens?” he demanded. “I’m supposed to sit on my hands and wait for him to come looking for me?”

“Legally,” Haines said, “yes, that about sums it up.”

Apparently satisfied with having assured his physical stability and wrecking his mental faculty, the fleet of nurses began to file out of the room. Haines was last to go, giving one last stale remark about wishing they could do more. Then the door closed behind them, leaving Sir with only machines for company, and something cold crawling inside his spine that he slowly came to realize was fear.

Chapter Text

In theory, Sir should have rather approved of hospitals. If the world was never going to be short of something, it was sick people. Injured people. People who were dying. And that meant people were going to be in want of that fancy little thing called insurance, a concept which when studied from afar deserved a firm handshake—it was one of the best schemes he’d ever seen, convincing people to pay you every month purely on the chance that something happened to them. Even supposing nothing happened they were still responsible for giving you money, and supposing something did, then they were unfailingly liable for a percentage. And in some cases, increased rates on future payments! Impeccable. Genius, genius business.

Being stuck on the inside cogs of such a brilliant business, however, instead of approvingly nodding down upon it, meant that in practice Sir in fact detested hospitals.

There were forty-seven tiles in the ceiling above his bed, which he knew because he’d taken stock of them four times that morning. The odd number was accounted for because the vent system took up one of the corners. He’d only gotten halfway through tallying the little pastel fruits on the wallpaper before he’d decided that he’d rather them remove his IV with a pair of needle-nose pliers than continue any further.

God he needed a smoke. The desire for one of his cigars was second only to his desire to leave the building, but they’d prevented that chiefest of wants with some judiciously applied restraints after his second attempt to exit the ward, and so he was left with little to focus on but the extended lack of his habitual indulgence. He’d cut down at Charles’ request, sure, but no kind of cold turkey was ever happening anywhere in Sir’s vicinity if he could help it. There was still an image to maintain. Patient status schmatient status, he was still a boss. The boss.

Sir grumbled out loud and kicked the railing at the foot of the bed again. That was pretty good stress relief, he’d found.

Finding…

He still hadn’t worked out where Charles was. Every attempt he’d made to snoop around the floor had been shut down, hacked off at the roots by the hawk-eyed hospital staff. One room—one room was all he’d gotten to see in before they went off on him about that whole privacy thing again, bleating legalese all the way back to his cardboard dinner. Sir was very unaccustomed to being taken anything but seriously and it was doubly hard having to deal with it from people who were less than half his age. Really, where did they get off keeping them apart from one another?

His fingers flexed, a phantom ache in them from where they recalled gripping his partner’s as the hotel came down. There was an ache in his chest too, but he liked to tell himself that that was only from the effects of the fire.

They were checking him for many things resultant from the fire, as it happened. The burn on his arm wasn’t healing very well, its expanse such that it was prone to cracking and inflammation, and none of them ever seemed happy after they shone their little lights down his throat. Morphine, constant morphine. Multiple x-rays, too.

The clock on the wall told him that his next bone check was in about five minutes. On one hand it would break up the tedium a bit, but on the other he knew it was going to be one for his chest, which meant that he would have to take it standing. Standing was an effort that lately left him feeling the need to throw up if he was at it for too long. Walking, oddly, he found much easier, but they “didn’t recommend” that and would tend to stick him in a wheelchair on any ventures out from his room.

And here came the wheelchair, actually.

“Is it really necessary to keep the machines so far from the intense care facility?” he complained along about halfway down one of the long corridors. There was a warren of employee-only hallways between one area and the other, and it disoriented as much as irritated him how many times he had to wait upon the attending nurse to swipe his access card to get through double doors.

Sir was sure he heard said nurse mutter that “no, it was purely to inconvenience you,” but other than that received no reply. Oh, if he’d but had something to record that up-jumped twerp…

Finally they got to the now-familiar door, the purple and yellow ‘radiation area’ plaque shouting its politely worded warnings down at them both as they passed through it to the dim room beyond. Sir was taken directly alongside the torso x-ray equipment and bid to stand. Despite the nurse’s proffered hand he did this with no aid, setting his jaw against the pain it caused and resolutely keeping it out of his expression. Seeming mostly disinterested either way the nurse instructed him where to plant his feet and then busied himself with setting up the machine.

The air in the room was very cool. It had a sneaky, unpleasant way about it, where you noticed it in the initial entering but then started to really notice it, little gusts of it snaking its way into all the gaps that loose-fit hospital clothing amply provided. Sir’s feet felt it the worst, and it wasn’t long before he was flexing his toes in discomfort.

“Any way to hurry this along?”

The man was unperturbed by the tone of the question, focused on getting the cross of light from the x-ray apparatus placed just so onto Sir’s chest. “’Fraid there isn’t. Shortcuts taken in this type of procedure just lead to needing more pictures in the end.” Satisfied with the positioning at last, he briefly stepped near Sir to tape something small to the half of the machine at Sir’s back, and then made his way around a corner where the camera controls lay.

“Now make sure to keep as still as possible,” the technician called back to him. “Take in what breath you can, and then don’t let it out until we call clear.”

He wanted to give that direction the laugh of disdain it deserved, but he had no desire to have to be hauled bodily back into that hated chair after the kind of coughing fit he knew was all he’d get out of it. Instead he settled for stony silence, attempting to retain some dignity even as he began to tremble with the strain of keeping himself upright.

The x-ray machine was very loud as it did its work; it never moved, but its bulk did to a degree give one the impression of being caught between hammer and anvil. For some reason, Sir experienced a vivid mental image of the mill worker that’d lain sprawled and smashed-up beneath the logo-press that day so long ago. He felt a little bit odd, then, in tandem to a chill even he could not blame solely on the air conditioning.

In due time the procedure was over. Sir kept his head down and his gaze on his knees as he was wheeled back towards his room. The nurse did notice that this seemed a different sort of silence than the gruff mill boss’ usual, which were almost vulture-like in their brooding, but, probably wisely, opted to just enjoy it rather than draw attention to it.

The mood perhaps would have stayed that way, possibly even as far as back to Sir’s room, had not his chair been jostled in a swerve to avoid another patient being led to where they’d just left. Sir’s head raised reflexively, his eyes glazed but still lucid enough to register with a detached sort of curiosity the gurney being rolled past. The head of the person upon it was just about level with his own… His heart stopped, and he thought it profoundly unfair that the world did not screech to a halt with it.

Sir knew that hair. He knew that hair, and bolting to his feet confirmed that knew that face—

The world did start screeching, then, though far less pleasantly than any kind of freeze-frame: in his profoundly weakened state his body was ill-equipped to handle any kind of emotional shock and just as badly reactant to sudden movement, and so to have both occur within moments of each other was just too much. He was vaguely aware of hitting the wall and of a very sharp pain in his hand, but any physical sensation came second in his focus on Charles lying unconscious not ten feet from him. He’d been right, he was vindicated, his partner was here after all, he just…had to make it to him…

Choking out the syllable of his name was about as far as Sir made it before the little black holes manifesting in his field of vision began to widen with a vengeance. They sucked him down into darkness so complete he was not even conscious of falling, let alone of the hands that only just managed to save him from colliding with the floor.

Chapter Text

The police in his room had been there all of thirty seconds before Sir was sick and tired of it. He didn’t have the time nor the energy to deal with being reminded of the existence of people who had more authority than he did, let alone being subjected to their lines of questioning. In any other circumstance he’d have been glad to go on about having been so grievously wronged by the hotel and those infernal Baudelaires, but presently, with his medications wearing off and the ever-present knowledge that Charles was somewhere out there, in an unknown condition, he really just could not give less of a damn.

“Yes, that’s all I know,” he reiterated, aggrieved. “No, I didn’t actually see who started the fire. But if it doesn’t turn out to be an insurance grab from the hotel owners, I’d be willing to bet that it had something to do with those blasted kids. They would have done anything to get out of that trial.”

“Trial?” prompted one of the officers.

Sir explained a bit of what had been going on preceding the blaze.

The two officials looked at one another, then briefly withdrew out of Sir’s hearing.

“You think he’s on too many meds to get an accurate account?” one whispered.

“Could be,” the other one murmured back. “I don’t know if we can trust the testimony of somebody who thinks the general public can just go and do something like that willy-nilly.”

“He must have just been watching the news running a story on those Bodeyleers before the building came down.”

“Mm. Smoke inhalation did the rest.”

“And who knows, probably age too. Guy looks pretty old.”

Sir was extremely glad when the police representatives departed without much further conversation. Something in their mannerisms after they came back over to his bedside set his teeth on edges they almost no longer possessed due to years of grinding them. Plus, his arm was starting to burn like he’d lain on carpet fashioned from wasp stingers.

Begrudgingly, Sir fumbled for the call-nurse button that was attached to a cord on the side of his bed. His regular attendant had softened towards him somewhat, which he was given to believe was a reaction to his having borne witness to Sir’s reaction to finally sighting Charles, and Sir was still unsure quite how to feel about that. On the one hand it was great to finally be shown a bit of deference in this antiseptic blot upon the neighborhood, but it came at the cost of having been visibly vulnerable—even more so than he’d appeared already in his injury-ridden state.

It could be dangerous, in this unquiet world, for strangers to know how much you cared about someone. And even in normal circumstance it had never been Sir who had been overly given to any kind of declarations in description to what was between them; overt affirmations, that had—that had always been something that Charles had been the one more drawn to… Sir realized that he was thinking wistfully of the last meal his partner had made him, a sandwich he’d constructed from store-bought ingredients because Sir hadn’t liked the day’s brunch menu, and with a frown and a considerable sense of distraction he brushed the memory aside.

By and by the nurse answered his call and came round with his usual question (“Time for a refill?”), fiddling with the IV still attached to Sir’s hand and ensuring another little while of pain relief. He also checked Sir’s bandages, making tutting noises every now and again as he re-dressed the burn on his arm. “It’s getting there” was all he said in response to a query on how the healing was progressing.

“And what about my other question from before?” Sir asked, somewhat more brusquely than he initially intended. But he figured that was alright, really, because he hadn’t had a good snap at the attendant in the past day or so, and who could really blame him for being belligerent while the new wave of painkillers was torching its way up the veins in his arm like so much ignited gasoline?

“We’ve actually got some good news for you, there,” the nurse replied. Incredibly, he looked as though his mouth were threatening to entertain the thought of smiling. “Since it was so clear you knew who he was, the head of the department said that if he asks for you when he wakes up, we can take you to him.”

Sir was happy, but the feeling was nonetheless constricted by the red tape of it all. And there was something in that sentence that he hadn’t liked, though it took him a few seconds to put his finger on it. “You say when he wakes up,” he said slowly. “Does that mean he hasn’t been conscious since we were admitted?”

That was more than three days ago, now. He felt somewhat numb.

“I think he might have been,” the nurse offered. “But I don’t think it was with much coherency. I can’t tell you much beyond that, though, we’re barred from discussing the cases of other patients in too much detail.”

“Don’t I know it.” He wanted to growl but was having enough trouble holding off a spate of coughing just breathing as normally as possible. His vocal range lately had been persisting in resembling the dulcet tones of mixing gravel.

The nurse was lingering. Sir glanced at him, trying and failing to shoo him with eye alone.

“What?” he finally asked.

“I’ve got another test to perform,” was the reply, and Sir did not like the semi-apologetic way in which it was delivered. This aversion was completely validated when he found out the nature of said test: apparently something resembling an over-lengthy ear cleaning tool was to be put down his throat.

“We’ve got to take a culture from the cotton swab,” Sir was informed as his head was compelled to lean backward to get the best angle for the procedure. “They want to make sure nothing’s gone and become infected in your throat.”

My throat is fine, he had time to think before the swab was in and doing its short but invasive duty. He was left spluttering, only just managing to catch the resulting and revolting spray of sputum in a hastily-snatched tissue from the box on the bedside stand.

“I’ll get rid of that for you,” the nurse promised, but then seemed to rethink the matter once he’d utilized a sterile glove set to take it into possession. “Actually, come to think of it, the lab might want this too…”

Sir was left alone for a fairly long while after that, which he was grateful for. Being disgusted on so many levels at once took a lot out of a man.

---

It was near supper that the call finally came. Sir, for once, got into the wheelchair without any kind of grumbling at all.

It occurred to him, as he was trundled toward a room at the very end of a hall, that he was nervous. Which was patently ridiculous—nerves? in a man like him?—but the feeling nagged all the same. He held tightly onto the arms of the chair and to the notion that Charles definitely wished to see him, else they would not be allowing him down. He asked for me.

“Now, he is still quite tired” –his escort was a young woman, this time, an intern who had been assigned to Charles’ room– “so your talk might not last long, and be aware that he has a concussion, so he might not make a lot of sense sometimes…”

He tuned her out, that he might focus better on slowing his heart down so it wouldn’t batter his lungs into another of their lingering convulsions. They were going through the door, and Sir’s partner was sitting up in bed, and he was looking at him with an expression that walked a tightrope between smiling and sobbing.

“Sir,” he croaked.

Those technicians had to have been wrong the other day, when they’d checked his ribs for fractures. What else but broken bone could cause such an ache in someone’s chest?

Sir started wheeling the chair forward on his own, whilst mercifully the intern showed herself out and shut the door. “Charles,” he greeted him back, glad he could blame his hoarseness on the smoke from the Denouement. He tried clearing his throat. “It’s good these idiots develop listening skills after a while, or we’d still be waiting to see each other.”

His attempt at lightening things with his usual snark fell short; Charles was not yet ready to reestablish the status quo, his eyes remaining tearful and fixed on Sir’s face. “I was afraid that I didn’t keep a tight enough hold,” he whispered. Timidly, but with feeling, he fumbled for Sir’s hand. “I thought we lost each other.”

Sir swallowed thickly, and it took him several moments to speak. “I think that concussion’s still addling your head,” he said. “You know that I’m not an idiot, Charles. Even if your grip got loose, the notion that I’d ever let go of you is absurd.”

Very deliberately, he not only allowed him to take his hand but to interlace their fingers. And when Sir followed that with a reassuring squeeze the tightrope came quietly undone, tears from Charles’ crying catching in the corners of the smile he wore.