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So, it turns out, magic is a little bit dangerous. Yeah, yeah, I know, you already knew that and so did I and so did Thomas bloody Nightingale. Only this time it wasn’t the monster of the week come crawling out of wherever monsters crawl out of (cracks in the pavement, the caverns of the London underground, the depths of the Thames – take your pick). Instead, it was one of my practical experiments which got me into hot water. And, of course, Nightingale was going to lord it over me for as long as we both should live. But it was a bloody good thing he heard the explosion, honestly, and I wasn’t exactly going to start complaining when he offered to patch me up.
I may have been a bit melodramatic about the danger. Well, except for how I’d only escaped getting decapitated by about four inches and then only because I’d ducked. It was sheer luck, really, that I only wound up with a shallow gash on my arm as a sign of how fucking stupid I was.
“I know, I know,” I said to Nightingale, “Don’t play with fireballs indoors.” I was going for flippant even though my legs were feeling a bit less stable under me than I’d generally prefer.
He’d just put out the small fire I’d started. He'd used a spell to do it, of course, and not even a spell which conjured water. He'd just sort of snuffed it out by magic and I couldn't even guess what the formae might be. I was just starting to wonder whether he was about to do some fancy thing to put the antique vase I’d shattered back together like nothing had happened when he took hold of my arm.
I was actually about to say “sorry about the carpet” and I think I might have got half the words out, only I looked down at his hand on my arm and how I was bleeding and wound up saying “oh” because “oh” seemed to be about all I could manage just then. Shock is weird like that.
I don’t remember if he said anything or if I said anything after that. At least not in between him touching my arm and taking me into the bathroom and sitting me down on the toilet seat with the lid down whilst he pulled out a first aid kit from inside the cabinet above the sink. I watched blankly as he just sort of kept doing things with a methodical calm that I suppose I ought to have expected.
He got a flannel out of one of the cabinets, too, and not one of the ones you get when you’re a kid which expands and has a picture on, but a really pristine, brilliantly white one which he ran through with water and then pressed against my arm. I noticed that it really wasn’t bleeding all that much which was one good thing at least.
I held the flannel there, because it seemed like he’d gestured me to do that, and tried not to let any of the slightly pink blood-tinged water drip onto the floor – mostly by using my jeans as a barrier.
Then he got whatever he was looking for from the first aid kit, took the flannel away, gently wrung it out over the sink and rinsed it through a few times before cleaning the surface of my arm with it a little bit. After he rinsed it out a second time, he took one of the things he’d extracted from the first aid kit, a bottle with a blue-green label, and dabbed some of the contents onto the flannel. It smelt fucking awful which, really, told me all I needed to know about what it was.
TCP is the stuff just about every self-respecting parent keeps around to torment their kids with whenever they get a grazed knee from falling off their bike or out of a tree or, in my case, getting into a fight at school and lying to their parents that it was because they fell out of a tree. My dad used to call it “tom cat’s piss” on account of the way it smells more or less exactly like the urine of a particularly virile and unpleasant unneutered kitty cat. To be honest with you, I’m not entirely sure how come my parents fell into the TCP purchasing category given that my mum wasn’t exactly one for buying branded goods when some traditional method passed down in the family probably would’ve done and that my dad, well, I can’t even remember him being conscious any of the times I got into fights as a kid.
I was jerked out of my sensory trip down memory lane when Nightingale put the damn cloth back on my arm and, fuck, did it sting. I mean, it wasn’t so bad that I was going to complain about it (for all that I think my eyes welled up a little – though I could definitely safely contend that that was down to the smell). Nightingale could at least have said “this may sting a little” though.
I looked up at him then though and there was this look of genuine worry in his eyes. At least, that’s what I interpreted it as. He was frowning a bit and I was totally, weirdly aware of the way that his left hand was gently supporting my arm in place while his right hand was applying the disinfectant with a measured degree of careful pressure.
I found myself weirdly aware of a lot of things Nightingale did these days and I knew why. It’s not like I’m stupid or in denial or closeted. (Okay, well, maybe I am a bit closeted.) But Nightingale was just a really bad idea and I knew that, fuck, did I ever know it. But since when has something being a bad idea ever deterred me? Right, since never. But I wasn’t going to do anything this time because, even if I knew what I wanted when it came to Nightingale, I also knew what a ridiculous thing it was to even contemplate making a move.
When it came down to it, I had far too much to lose to risk it. There was my job, obviously, and then, given that I lived in the same massive cavernous house as him and that it came with said job, my home; there was my connection to the whole fucking world of magic; and, of course, there was him and his respect which ought to be a really distant last to all the other stuff but somehow really wasn’t.
And, okay, I may have gasped a little when he pulled the disinfectant-sodden cloth away but I swear that was a reaction to the wound meeting the air. I didn’t know exactly what the chemical formula for TCP was but whatever was in it, I’d bet it had some kind of harsh reaction to being oxidised. There’s no way I would’ve reacted like that otherwise, admit though I might that Nightingale’s hands on me made my mind stray places it shouldn’t.
On which note, the next thing Nightingale did was to get out a long roll of old fashioned bandage and start winding it round my forearm with way more care than seemed strictly necessary.
I found myself watching his hands, long-fingered and far too adept at this. (Which, really, wasn’t a nice thing to think about given how he’d fought in an actual war and presumably seen a whole lot more serious injury than any man should.) Only I wasn’t thinking about his dead and wounded friends and comrades so much as how stupidly good it felt when his fingers actually brushed against my skin.
I realise that it’s really fucking sad to be so touch-starved that your boss straightening a bandage after you get yourself lacerated playing with fireballs becomes a big deal to you. And I was seriously thinking that I really ought to just get laid. I was, seriously. Except that I couldn’t stop myself from thinking that Nightingale was the one I really wanted to get laid with which was, even by my standards, a really, really stupid idea.
I could just imagine myself getting drunk enough to think it was a good idea to ask him if he wanted to have sex with me or to parade around the Folly in not many clothes and attempt to lean seductively against things as though I was in a particularly low rent porno (or a particularly clichéd romantic comedy which, honestly, I’d be more ashamed to admit to having watched).
He took his time bandaging me up, cutting the bandage to an appropriate length and gently securing it into place. I wasn’t sure whether to consider the care and contact as a gift or a curse. The silence certainly should have been awkward and I might’ve broken it sooner if I’d been looking at his face rather than down at his hands.
He still looked, well, pretty fucking worried. That would normally be enough to freak me out, except I knew that this cut was no big deal and no-one else was dying or in danger, so it was just kind of inexplicable to me.
It was only as he turned away from me, going to pack away the scissors and the rest of the roll of gauze that I actually said anything because I figured someone was going to have to eventually and it didn’t look like Nightingale was ready to break.
“Sorry about the vase and the fire and any other damage I caused.”
I wanted to say that I’d done the same experiment before in the coach house and that nothing had exploded then but somehow I didn’t think that would reassure him.
“Vases are replaceable. You, however, are not.” Nightingale said, only inclining his head slightly in my direction so I didn't get much of a view of his expression.
“Is that your way of saying you care about me?” I asked, going for the easy joke and getting the tone just right and everything except for how it was still damned inappropriate, as it turned out.
“I care about you deeply, Peter, and if you don’t know that then you’re more of a fool than even your half-baked experiments make you out to be.”
He didn’t look at me as he said it and that hurt somehow. Not because of any of the other weird motives I might’ve had for getting him to confess that he had feelings about me but because I felt like a combination between a naughty kid who’d caused their parent no end of worry and an emotionally insensitive partner who’d broken a promise about something very fucking important.
He closed the lid of the first aid kit and it was a quiet, dull sound, utterly without the sharpness of finality. A really terrible attempt at a metaphor for something which, I guess, didn’t really deserve one.
I didn’t want to tell him that I’d never do it again because, under the broad definition of ‘stupid and potentially dangerous experiments’, I knew I would. I even knew I’d probably do the exact same experiment again, just far away from anything flammable or breakable. But I couldn’t quite let it go, either. So as he put the box away back in the cupboard, I reached out toward him and touched his arm. He’d taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves before tending to my wound which I hadn’t really thought too much about, nor had I really thought about the fact of the touch before I’d initiated it, but there it was, my hand on his arm, like it was nothing. Except for how it didn't feel remotely like nothing.
He turned to look at me, his other arm still about at eye level, resting on the edge of the shelf where he’d stashed the first aid kit. I said “I’m sorry” again and then “thank you,” because those words on their own seemed big enough somehow and because they weren’t a lie or an admission.
“It’s quite alright,” he said and it sounded genuine enough. Still, he moved his arm a little away from my touch and turned back to the cupboard to close it before adding “the bandage will need changing tomorrow, sooner if it starts bleeding again. Be sure to tell me if it does and I’ll help you with it. There’s no sense in your struggling to do it one-handed.”
He left the bathroom without looking back; though, once out of the room, he did add in a more light-hearted tone, “and, Peter, you may insist on performing foolhardy experiments but please think carefully before you revisit that one. I’d rather not make a habit of putting out fires in the drawing room.”
I sat there for a while afterwards, even after I’d heard his footsteps die away down the corridor, and if I buried my head in my hands for a good half a minute, it didn’t have anything to do with my concerns about the state of the drawing room carpet.