Work Text:
“March… March!”
Holland came to his consciousness upon hearing this, he tried to blink in an attempt to get a better vision, which of course failed since he hadn’t even opened his eyes yet. He felt like he was lying at the middle of the ocean, hardly having the tinniest bit of power to move his body, not even a lift of his toes.
As the fuzzy state of his brain started clearing out, a wave of migraine kicked in before he managed to articulate any thoughts. Guess he must’ve filled himself with alcohol again last night…
Slowly, he realized “March” was his last name, and he actually recognized the voice of the person calling him.
Holland’s opened his eyes vigorously to find that he was in fact lying at the middle of the pool in his house. The water brushed his body calmly, as if he was a dead body floating around in the sea. This former placeholder of the world’s biggest ashtray had resumed its true form of a pool under the hands of a very reluctant Holland March upon the order of his newly-moved-in detective partner. Words didn’t even begin to describe how much Holly loved the idea.
In the moment, he found his partner standing next to it, eyes glaring at him, his mood for a good morning jog clearly gone. “What the hell are you doing in the pool?”
Holland blinked very slowly, the chloride in the water made his eyes really uncomfortable. “Doing my morning exercise,” he said, “like you.”
“I don’t jog with a coffee in my hand, though,” Healy was pulling that face again, arms folded and eyebrows knotted. March was always welcomed by this look of his when he returned home from a particularly messy drinking night out, the words “let’s see how you try to talk yourself out of it again this time” went without saying.
March lowered his eyes to himself before noticing there was indeed a coffee cup in his hand. HHHHhe’s guessing what was once in it had probably become the digesting brown stain on his shirt now. “That’s my breakfast.”
Healy apparently struggled between asking him how the fuck do you have breakfast in the pool, or how is coffee a breakfast, or cutting to the chase so he can tell him off for getting wasted again. Eventually all he did was unfolding his arms and the harsh line of his mouths, as he walked towards the pool with a determined expression. “Coffee does shit for sobering,” he signed as he stepped into the water, “idiot.”
Holland held his hands out as his partner approached him in the pool. Healy managed to pick his partner up with both his arms under his necks and knees, not without having pool water dripping from Holland staining all over his T shirt.
“Maybe it does,” Holland muttered in Healy’s arms when his partner pulled open the door and made his way into the house, before walking down the hallway to the bathroom at the end of it. Between the morning twittering they could vaguely hear Holly’s little snore coming through her door.
“What, the coffee?” Healy gave Holland a look, after settling him beside the bathtub.
“See, not much of it go into my stomach. It could’ve worked, ya know.”
“No it couldn’t have. I read findings on it,” Healy said as he adjusted the showering head above them. “You can only wait for your liver to do the work.”
Holland frowned in doubt, which drew a look from Healy. “I used to drink a lot too, you know… I wanted to change the way my wife… never mind.”
For a moment, they waited for the water to heat up in silence. Holland moved his fingers until he recalled Healy had snagged the cup out of his hand and placed it on the coffee table. “How did you do it? How did you quit?”
“I didn’t quit, you just… don’t think alcohol helps you anymore.”
“That’s horseshit. Of course it does.”
“You do make a strong example.”
The shit-eating grin of happiness on Holland’s face told it all. “Weren’t you on your way to a jog?”
“Don’t wanna come back to you slipping in the bathtub or stuff. You know, you should really be thankful for not catching a cold immediately, don’t push your luck.” Healy groaned. His tone was probably less than friendly, but the words kinda soothed out a bit of Holland’s hangover.
After the water was done heating up, they watched as the hot water filling the bathtub up, before Healy started, rather awkwardly, “I could wait outside.”
“No way man, what about the whole luck pushing speech? Eating your words already?” Holland said, eyes wide opened.
To his words, Healy gave a shrug, “Well, you have a point.”
Which was something he had barely said to his partner, but he brushed it off by finding a seat on the closed lid of the toilet and said in a matter-of-fact way,
“Alright, let’s get you out of those wet clothes before you catch a cold.”
-End-