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John should have just paused the episode. The time was ticking away. This was the moment he had been waiting for, for so long. He had been waiting with such anticipation, in fact, that he had decided he needed something to keep him occupied until it was time to get ready, and that was what had led him into his current binge watch of Veterinarian Why. He didn't watch this show often because when he did he would get obsessed, and honestly, the writing had started going downhill in season 6 with the revelation that the mule character actually had two donkey parents and was simply conceived in a horse-drawn carriage to explain the horse traits.
But this was the climactic scene of the year. The horse main character, after making history by turning into a mare a few years back, was now turning back into a stallion and John was unbelievably excited to see how it would all go down. It was an open secret by now that Ncuti Gatwa had already been cast as the next voice actor for the horse and John was ecstatic to see what he would add to the role. But just as the horse begun to glow with yellow energy, a skinny man walked in front of the telly screen, holding out his arms so that he completely obstructed the view.
"Davey!" John protested, pointing a finger accusingly. "You're hijacking Ncuti Gatwa's big moment!"
"What?" asked Davey. He looked behind him at the screen and saw the poor CGI effects causing the horse to glow. "What?" He turned back to John, and his eyes lingered on a spot about two inches above John's head. "WHAT?!"
"What?" parroted John defensively.
"What," said Davey once more. "in the name of sanity, have you got on your head before a date?"
John was self-conscious now as he took the red garment off of his head, looking at it. "I wear a fez now," he said defensively. "Fezzes are cool."
Davey stared at him for a moment longer before sighing. "You're a mess." John opened his mouth to claim that he wasn't but Davey cut him off, "You've got a date in an hour and you're sitting on the couch watching the telly while wearing a fez. Have you even eaten? And is that what you're wearing?"
John crossed his arms irritably. He was in no mood to argue with his roommate right now. Besides, his outfit was perfectly fine. He wasn't planning on wearing these exact clothes to the date, but he'd probably get changed into something similar. "Lay off. You're not my mother." He held out his left arm. "Help me up." Davey extended an arm and pulled him to his feet. Standing up provoked an ache deep in his bones and a sharp stab to his left knee, but he hid it well, opting to change the subject in an attempt to distract himself. "Is the fez that bad?"
"Well," began Davey, grimacing. "I mean ... on the one hand," he continued, letting go of John and holding up his left hand to demonstrate. "On the one hand, it's ridiculous, obnoxious, outdated, and overall makes you look like a dork. On the other hand..." He held up his right arm in a way that caused his sleeve to ride up, showing his stub. "Oh, sorry, there is no other hand. You just have a bad fashion sense."
"Shut it, you." He glanced at his cane, Idris, which was on the floor next to the couch, wondering if it was worth the effort to get it already or if he should just grab it on his way out. "I'd better hurry up and take a shower, anyway."
"Obviously. You've wasted enough time already." He lowered his arms, clearing his throat. "I was just about to cook myself dinner. I'll make some for you too?" John wasn't usually the type to cook meals, in part because he was lacking in energy and in part because he had a tendency to create the biggest messes imaginable in exchange for food that was barely edible - to Davey, at least. To John, it was fine as long as he didn't get salmonella, which he didn't. Still, it was easier to just shove something in the microwave and spice it up with whatever sauce was on hand, and custard counted as sauce. Fish fingers and custard had been such a good combination he began going out of his way to make it.
"Sure, if it's not too much trouble." He would have had to eat at some point anyway and he wouldn't be allowed to bring food into the movie. It would be a bit of a time crunch, but probably he could grab a paper plate from a cupboard somewhere and eat while he walked. It wasn't like eating while walking had ever been a problem for him before.
Eating while walking was such a problem for him.
So, this was the thing, right. Eating? That was a two hand minimum. One hand to hold the plate and one hand to move the food from the plate to his mouth. Really, it was meant to be a three hand job - one hand to hold the plate and two to wield a knife and fork, not that that was a problem if you put the plate on a solid surface - but he managed to cut it down to two by forgoing cutlery. So, eating was two hands, minimum, and the cane was one hand, minimum, and with a little math and a little flailing he discovered that that added up to three hands, which was in fact more than the number of hands he had, which was two. So that was a problem.
The cane-in-mouth method that he usually defaulted to when he needed both hands was useless in this situation, and trying to hold food in his cane arm previously had resulted in an ice cream stain all over his trousers, which wasn't something he could show up to a date with. So he had no choice but to stop walking for as long as it took him to positively wolf down his meal, frisbee-toss the paper plate into the nearest rubbish bin - a hole-in-one, by the way - and keep walking. And that meant he had to walk even faster the rest of the way to compensate, which wasn't exactly fun for his throbbing left knee, or the rest of his leg, or his other leg, or his right wrist which was now really feeling the effects of wielding the cane.
"Sorry I'm late," he said breathlessly, when he finally reached the meeting point that he and River had agreed on. "I-" He was about to stammer an excuse but River once again managed to take his breath away. Her black dress wasn't particularly revealing, per se, but the neckline was at just the right place to show cleavage that could fell an ox at fifty feet, and the fabric around her arms looked almost transparent. It was a stark contrast to the more casual, practical clothes she wore during the day, though he supposed that was to be expected considering this was a date. But suddenly John felt both overdressed and underdressed at the same time in his tweed. Maybe he should have bought the fez after all. "Sorry I'm late," he said again. "I forgot how many hands I have."
River smirked. "Two, if you need the reminder."
"Yeah, I figured it out about halfway here. I hope I'm not too late." He had deliberately suggested meeting up a solid half an hour before the movie was due to start specifically in case of circumstances like this; he certainly wasn't known for his punctuality. Well, that and the fact that he'd only realised after suggesting it that movies were a rubbish date a lot of the time because of how little you got to actually talk to the person.
"You're fine," said River, waving off his anxiety. "We've still got a good twenty minutes." John had to hope she was rounding down and he hadn't actually kept her waiting for ten minutes. There was an awkward silence that John was all too familiar with - he had to be afraid that it was the silence while River pondered whether it would be more insensitive to as about the cane directly or pretend not to see it. He was very familiar with people getting stuck between those two options, as though there was no possible middle ground between those extremes. Then again, this wasn't the first time River had seen him, or Idris. Perhaps he was simply being paranoid. Perhaps this was just the normal first date silence, that always happened between two people who knew each other well enough to want to talk more often but not well enough to know what to talk about.
After another moment, he decided to break the silence. It was better to acknowledge it himself than to allow people to tiptoe around it. "If you're going to ask why I need the cane..."
"Well, I assume you need it to make phone calls, obviously." She gestured to the most noticeable sticker on the cane, the one that said POLICE BOX, with the words PUBLIC CALL in smaller writing between POLICE and BOX. John was grinning against his will - he hadn't heard that one before, surprisingly.
"Yes, of course!" It gave him some comfort to play along with the joke, because it meant River wasn't going to cringe and change the subject if he joked about it or acknowledged Idris at all. He took his weight off the cane - ouch, his knee did not like how much weight he was suddenly putting on it, but worth it for the joke - and held the handle up to his ear. "Hello, yes, this is Inspector Gregory speaking." He felt his face burning as he put Idris back down. "I don't know why I said that. I'm not Inspector Gregory. I'm not even an inspector."
River smiled at him - good God was she pretty when she smiled - and said, "Let's walk and talk. I think we should get to know each other a bit."
River was still studying, she explained to him - she'd spent a few years after high school unsure of what she wanted in life, working various jobs to pay the bills and entering various university courses that she inevitably dropped out of boredom, before deciding she wanted to be an archaeologist and completely ignoring everyone who told her that was unrealistic. John had to respect her refusal to bow to the opinions of others, even if he was one of the others that disagreed with her - archaeologists were a group that he just wanted to point and laugh at, and he said as much, getting a slight laugh out of River when he called them glorified grave robbers. She was also writing a mystery novel on the side, but she explained it in a way that seemed to indicate she was still in the phase of deciding what font to use.
"So what do you do?" she asked, not breaking conversation as she shoved snacks into her sleeves with no intention of paying for them. Apparently silence would draw attention to her. Snacks weren't even allowed in the movie when they were legally acquired. Naughty girl.
"What don't I do?" he answered, knowing she had witnessed at least some of his shopping centre adventures. "I mean, I get up to all sorts of wacky hijinks. I'll do basically anything you ask me to, even if I shouldn't, I'm just too adventurous. 'Course, though, sometimes weird things just happen around me. Or sometimes I go for a walk and just happen to come across, say, a murder mystery novelist and her friends freaking out over an enormous wasp - true story - and they need my expertise exactly to fix the problem."
River raised an eyebrow at him, smirking. "And your expertise would be... ?"
John found himself faltering in response to that, and his cheeks burned. "Err, well, I happen to know a lot of things that aren't exactly useful except in very specific situations, and I also happen to find myself in very specific situations a lot." He paused as he walked, eyes widening. "Oh. When you asked what I do, you meant as a job, didn't you?"
"Bit slow on the uptake, aren't you?" Dear God, her smirk. "And you think you're gonna point and laugh at archaeologists. Every archaeologist I know could run circles around you."
"I'd trip them up. I have advanced tripping-people-up powers." He cleared his throat. "You have to understand, that my wacky hijinks and adventures - they're only a few hours out of the day, most of the time. Any more than that and it'd put me out of commission for days afterwards, not worth it. So a forty-hour work week isn't exactly going to work." He gestured to Idris just to drive the point home.
"Ah. So no job for you?"
"I mean, I do odd jobs for a quick buck when I feel up to it from time to time. But nothing long-term, no."
"Is it..." River was thinking now, obviously choosing her words very carefully. "Is it okay for me to ask..."
"About my disability? No, I think I'd rather intentionally keep you in the dark as to what I'm talking about." He genuinely had no clue why everyone seemed to insist on one of two extremes in regards to Idris - asking about the cane was either something that was danced around at all costs even after he'd indicated he was more than willing to talk about it, or the first thing people said to him upon meeting him. Or even without meeting him; strangers would sometimes approach him to ask why he had a cane and then have no interest in talking to him about anything else. Perhaps one day somebody would be normal about it, asking about it when it was relevant to the conversation and letting it be the rest of the time. "You ever heard of fibromyalgia?"
"Can't say I have." There was just a hint of the long word fear that people tended to get when he actually tried to explain. As though anything over three syllables was automatically beyond human comprehension. Still, she was taking it fairly well.
"Basically, it's when everything hurts, all the time, for no reason. I'm oversimplifying but that's the gist of it, just constant pain. Especially the legs and especially when you walk, hence the cane. Hey, look at that!" A display of various novelty cups in a shop window caught his attention. Immediately he started toward it, with River right behind him. "Look at these cups. Look at them! They're cups, you can put drinks in them."
"Are you really in pain all the time?" asked River.
"Yes, more or less," he answered, staring at a specific cup. "I mean, it varies from day to day, hour to hour. Sometimes I barely notice it, sometimes it's incapacitating, but it's always there. But this cup says Don't talk to me until I finish this water. You could drink water out of it, and nobody could talk to you until you finished."
River didn't respond. She was silent for a long time. Eventually she said, "I'm sorry."
"It's okay, I forgive you." River blinked at him, obviously taken off guard by his bizarre response, then took the hint. "Also, this cup, it has a handle on it, so you could hold it without actually touching the main cup. That's genius, that is. It means that if you put something hot in the cup, you could drink it without burning your hand."
River blinked at him in stunned silence for a different reason this time. "That's - that's a mug. Have you never encountered a mug before?" She groaned. "Let's just go to the movie."
The movie wasn't as good as he'd expected. Well, the movie itself was fine; it was just the experience of watching it with another person that couldn't quite be what he'd expected. River was very much the sit in silence and watch the movie without disturbing the rest of the audience type, and John was very much not, and every time he tried to comment on the movie River would hiss at him to be quiet, but there was no real malice in her attempts to silence him. At one point he decided to try pointing at things he found interesting instead of verbally explaining them, but River lowered his hand and said, "Yes, sweetie, I know where the movie is, I know where I'm supposed to be looking." On one hand, that was probably the most embarrassing moment of his life, but on the other hand, sweetie? Yowzah. He was starting to think he should be an idiot more often if it would draw that word from her mouth.
"I thought a movie was the most mundane date you could manage," she said, pinching the bridge of her nose, interrupting his long rant about the symbolism of a character's watch. "And yet here you are, turning it into its own adventure."
"Adventure?" he protested. "You call this an adventure? We're just sitting here."
"You know what I mean." There was still no real anger in her voice, and she looked him fondly. "I bet you couldn't even count to fifteen without turning it into a fun adventure."
"Could too," he replied, stubbornly crossing his arms. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, the secret number between eight and nine, nine, ten, ten again, eleven, twelve, thirteen, ten, fifteen." River looked at him like he had positively grown a second head. "Fourteen is basically just a rehash of ten. I'm not counting it as its own number."
River gaped at him for a few moments, before asking, "And the secret number between eight and nine...?"
"Well, that's a secret. I can't tell you about it."
"Right." River was evidently deciding it would just be easier not to ask too many questions. "Let's just watch the movie."
Well, just watching the movie simply wasn't something John was capable of, and he fully intended to continue pointing out every interesting detail he noticed. River seemed to warm up to his commentary over time but she still hissed at him every time he got loud enough to draw attention to himself. John could work with that.
John had been analysing the end credits from a music theory perspective for about three and a half minutes when River cut him off. "That's lovely, sweetie, but are you planning on staying here all bloody night?" He suddenly became self-conscious of how people were filing out of the building. "Or are you hoping there'll be a post-credits scene?"
"No, I just wanted to explain that key change," he answered self-consciously. "And I had to talk for three minutes before the key change so it would make sense." He swung his legs under the seat and managed to kick Idris out from under the seat where he could reach out and grab her. He unfolded the cane, satisfyingly snapping her joints back into place, and adjusted her height. "Here, help me up." He swapped Idris into his right hand and held out his left for River to pull him up by. On instinct he swapped Idris back to his left arm once standing, then back to his right. River was raising an eyebrow at him.
"Having trouble picking a side?"
"Autopilot." She blinked at him. "Used to having to swap hands when someone helps me up." Another silence. River clearly wasn't getting it, so he wracked his mind for the clue she was missing. "Oh, my roommate's missing his right hand."
"Oh," said River, sounding concerned. "What happened to him?"
Well, Davey wasn't there to answer for himself, so John did his best to imitate what he would have said. "Crazy story, actually. See, it all started when he asked someone an invasive question about their disability. And naturally, that person got very upset with him, so upset in fact that they -"
"Okay, I get the message." From her voice, she was sulking just slightly about the unsubtle jab. "So your roommate's disabled too?"
"We met online, happened to live near each other, and both needed a place with cheap rent. Seemed obvious to try living together." That was, of course, a slight simplification. Living with anyone other than Davey - anyone who hadn't received similar invasive questions and rude assumptions to the ones John got on a daily basis - wasn't something John was certain he could risk. There were plenty of people out there, people who would go out of their way to annoy him in public, who didn't think he deserved the cane, didn't believe he really needed it and took it upon themselves to try and talk him into realising and admitting he didn't need it. In public, he could just walk away from those people, maybe tell an employee they were bothering him if they were particularly persistent. In his house, on the other hand ... He had to assume that Davey had dealt with similar issues. Not the same, obviously, since dropping the cane was a physical possibility in a way that growing a hand back was not, but similar. "Ended up working out, I'd say. Our disabilities are similar enough to benefit from the same accommodations in our house, and different enough to help each other out and cover each other's weaknesses." He left out the part where Davey was perpetually furious with him for his habit of putting the milk back in the cupboard when there was about a thimble left in the bottom of the jug, refusing to throw it out until it was completely empty. Nothing was perfect.
"Sounds like you've found a good roommate deal." Hearing the hesitant realisation in her voice - the one that means, I'm learning something new and it's making me self-conscious of having had to learn it - made him wonder if her earlier question was actually meant to be an expression of skepticism. Some sort of, what, two of you in the one house? That's awfully unlikely, isn't it? Or perhaps, what, are they segregating you into disabled-only houses? To which the short answer would have been "not exactly" and the long answer would have been an hour-long explanation of the intersection between disability and class. "I had a roommate once. We argued non-stop until the landlord got involved and evicted us both." She was starting to walk out of the building now, John following along behind her.
"Yeah, I was worried about something like that. Glad Davey's harmless, 'cause I imagine it'd be awful to have to spend so much time with someone you can't stand. Well, he's mostly harmless."
"Oh, it was awful for me. I was going out of my way to avoid being at home and barely sleeping. I'm better off just living alone..." She hesitated, looking away from him. "...unless I know someone well enough, I mean."
John stared at her, stunned. Was that her attempt at expressing an openness to moving in with him? Surely not; this was the first date, for crying out loud. He didn't know how to respond, so he thought it was best to change the subject. "Thanks for tonight, River. I've-" He swallowed thickly. "I've really enjoyed spending time with you." He cleared his throat self-consciously. "I'm sorry that I kept talking through the movie."
"No, I actually liked listening to you." Well, that's a surprise. "I mean, you did drown out a lot of the dialogue that was important for understanding what was going on. And I did have to ask you to fill in the gaps because I couldn't follow the plot based on visuals alone. And I did have to sneakily look up the plot of the movie on my phone because you would just go into another long and convoluted rant instead of actually explaining. But..." She sighs. "It was nice, to hear some insight into the details you notice, how your mind works. I'd like to do this again, sometime."
"You would?" He tried his best to keep his cool even though this was just about the best possible outcome, and it didn't seem possible. For the love of God, the woman in front of him had hair that just didn't stop and the bluest eyes he had ever seen and her body could just about stun anyone even slightly attracted to women, and he was - well, him. The man constantly being told off by his roommate - a roommate who was already eccentric by most standards - for being weird and for leaving near-empty milk jugs in the cupboard. "That's great! Oh, that's really, really great." Yeah, he wasn't keeping his cool. "I'd - I'd like that too." There was a long silence.
"Well?" River's tone was positively flirtatious as she looked up at him. "Are you really going to leave me hanging like this? Don't I at least get a goodnight kiss?" John looked at her lips and thought it was a miracle they weren't legally classified as some kind of weapon. But, well, she had asked.
Their kiss was long and deep and he swore it was enough to send sparks flying across his vision. Were his legs weak and shaky because they just did that sometimes, or because of his racing heart, or perhaps because of the lingering sense that this couldn't be real? His arms were wrapped around River's body, and he was leaning into her perhaps a little too much, in part because his cane was no longer touching the ground and it ... may not have been the only thing that was rising. And it was just an awkward position to hold overall, and River was strong but he was beginning to think he could feel her struggling, and he was struggling and his legs were killing him and somehow, he didn't want to let go.
It was River who finally moved away, though she kept her hands out to steady him for a moment longer until he regained his bearings. She was still smirking flirtatiously. "You've got lipstick on your face."
He patted down his pockets for tissues, and found none. Well, he couldn't very well wipe it on his sleeve, it would stain. "I'll leave it there." He cleared his throat. "So - until next time, River."
"I'll message you as soon as I can."
"Maybe next time I'll actually bring my fez."
"Your what?" She sounds magnitudes more appalled than Davey was. "Sweetie, as handsome as you are, if you come to a date wearing a fez I might actually have to shoot you. Or at least shoot the fez."
John just had to grin in response to that. "I'd let you."