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There is water on the bathroom floor. Not usually a cause for concern except that he has been on shift at the hospital for the last fourteen hours trying to keep his residents under control and not lose any of the victims brought in from a multi-car pile up. The point being that there has been no one in to take a shower and leave a puddle on the floor. There is also water on the toilet seat, on the tank, on the counter and currently running in steady small streams down the mirror hanging on the wall.
Herc gives the ceiling a glare of contempt. The ceiling predictably doesn’t care. He waffles between calling the building’s super or ripping the guy upstairs a new asshole and then calling the super until part of the drywall above him gives way and starts leaking a new steady stream onto his head. To say that he is in a bad mood is probably an understatement.
He storms up the stairs between floors, angry intentions making his steps echo loudly.
He can hear the shower running in apartment 316. Herc knocks on the door so loudly that one of the neighbours across the hall in 312 opens her door, starts shushing him and then stops and thinks better of it when she gets a good look at him. He must make quite the sight, exhausted man in crumpled up scrubs soaked hair and wet shoulders. There's no answer at 316 by the time the woman shuts her own door so Herc starts knocking again. This time he hears enough of a vague muffled sound that he gives in and tries the door handle.
The door swings open with a loud creak and the bumps and clatters loudly against a pile of boxes in the entrance way. The shower is still running and someone, a man, in the bathroom is calling out.
"...Like if you're here to rob me that's ok but please just come in here first. Please?" He'll admit to bring intrigued. Not enough to go into the bathroom though.
"I'm not in here to rob you, you fucking psycho, I'm here to get you to turn off the fucking shower. You're leaking water theough my bathroom ceiling."
"Yeah, I'm not really sorry about that," the man says. "Could you come here please?"
"What kind of a person just floods someone else's bathroom from above, doesn't apologize and then tries to get random strangers who walk into his apartment to join them in the shower?" Herc demands. "Turn the fucking water off before I call the goddamn cops."
"No really, I'll do that! I'll totally apologize too just please don't leave. Please come help me!" There's enough panic in the man's voice that Herc does just that. Finds his feet moving him through the familiar layout, down the hall and pushing open the bathroom door with the toe of a boot before he really thinks about it. And then he starts laughing.
The man, a young guy. Blonde, well muscled, short blonde hair and crazy blue eyes is kneeling naked in the tub, the water lapping up over the sides and flowing down into the laminate flooring and presumably dripping down into Herc's own bathroom.
He's handcuffed to the hand rail attached to the wall that all the bathrooms in the complex come equipped with.
"Yeah, sure, laugh it up," he scowls. "You're not the one who's been stuck here for three hours waiting for the asshole in the apartment below to notice his goddamned ceiling is leaking!" Herc is still chuckling and wiping tears of mirth out of the corner of his eye a minute later when he finally gathers himself together enough to reach over and turn the tap off. At least the water had been warm.
"Yeah and how long did it take for you to decide on this plan anyway?" He asks.
"Well, it took almost an hour before I realized Paul wasn't coming back," the guy sighs. "And then, like, an hour after that where no one was answering while I shouted."
The man's wrists are bruised but thankfully there's no torn skin under the metal of the cuffs. The cuffs are real deal too, he notices, not play cuffs with an easy latch.
"So where's the key mate?" He asks and tries not to laugh at the way the kid squirms.
"He took it with him I think," he says. Herc pats him on the head.
"You got a screwdriver around here?" It turns out the kid does not, so Herc takes a detour back to his own apartment and collects his tool box and then back up to the kid's.
It's the work of a few moments to unscrew the shower bar from the wall. Herc laughs again at the obvious embarrassment on the kids face when he has to have help to stand up, buck naked, to get out of the tub. Herc gets him wrapped up in a large fluffy towel he finds in the hall closet and then sits him down at the table in the kitchen and sets about making some coffee.
The kid's name is Raleigh.
"You can call me Rals though," he mumbles, I usually let people who see me naked call me Rals."
"Don't worry about it, mate. I'm a doctor, that's by far not the worst thing I've seen. It's not even the worst naked thing I've seen." He gets a large blanket and pair of sweats from Raleigh's bedroom under direction and helps the kid balance enough to put them on and wrap him up before he pushes a cup of the fresh brewed coffee into Raleigh's hands and pours a cup for himself.
He finds out, while he examines the cuffs for some way of releasing them with a key, that Paul is Raleigh's boyfriend.
"We've only been together for a while." He says. Paul is also a cop.
"Apparently a kinky one," Herc mutters. They had decided to play a game.
"Paul cuffed me to rail and then we're out of condoms and he left me there to go get some."
"Just left you, handcuffed to the shower wall, mate I don't think I need to tell you how stupid that was."
"Well I told him it would be okay," there's a blush high on Raleigh's cheekbones. "But the he was supposed to be back in like five minutes. He was only going to the corner store." Herc admits defeat with the cuffs and wraps Raleigh's hands back around his mug of cooking coffee.
"Looks like we're going to have to cut them off," he says. "I don't have bolt cutters but I think the super has some in the boiler room. I can check," he really doesn't want to leave the kid alone. He's half naked and shivering under the blanket and the only colour in his face is his blush. Also the second he suggests leaving the apartment the kid panics a little. His hands clench uselessly against his cup and his breathing gets a little laboured.
"No, please. Just wait?" Raleigh asks. Herc gives him a reassuring smile.
"Yeah, okay Rals, we'll wait." He plans on giving it ten minutes but two minutes later the door to the apartment flies open and a man comes crashing in out of breath and in an obvious panic.
"Raleigh!" There's relief in his voice and Herc who stays quiet while then rushes to touch Raleigh's cheek and hair and then fumbles a set of keys out of his pocket and quickly unlocks the cuffs around Raleigh's wrists. "Are you okay?"
"I'm..." Herc interrupts what is clearly about to be a lie.
"Does he look alright you bludger? You left him cuffed to the bath for hours. What the fuck kept you?" Just like that the relief in Raleigh's eyes turns to anger.
"Yeah Paul, where we're you?" Paul stares helplessly.
"I'm sorry, I got a phone call from work and got caught up with something I had to take care of at the station."
"So you just left him there, cuffed in the bathtub?" Herc demands.
"Maybe you should butt out," Paul says. Raleigh laughs, startled.
"Maybe you should fuck off," he says to Paul. There's a log more colour in his cheeks and Herc stops worrying about shock. "I had to fucking flood his bathroom to get someone to help me, you can just leave and never come back. And maybe don't play with cuffs anymore."
Thoroughly humiliated, Paul does indeed fuck off and Herc just shakes his head. Raleigh sighs and the holds a hand out to Herc as the door shuts behind his ex-boyfriend.
"Hi, nice to meet you, I'm Raleigh and I live on the floor above you. I'll totally pay for the water damage repairs."
Herc grins and shakes his hand. "Herc Hansen, and you're damn right you will but there are probably better ways to meet the neighbours." It's worth it to see the younger man laugh. Herc wants to make that happen again.