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The day is more full than usual. Holly had reminded them of it all this morning: they have a meeting with a client, and then a phone call with a guy who might have a lead or might have been high, then they have to remember to pick up her good dress from the dry cleaners’ because she has the “fall fling” next week, whatever that means, and then they’re headed to the hospital so March can finally get his cast taken off.
Holly’s homeroom teacher had handed out little planners to all her students at the beginning of the year, nominally so that they could note down when their assignments were due. Healy was pretty certain Holly was the only one who used hers to remember things like meet with grandmother of pot dealer or stakeout in Artesia (gay guy?)
But hey, you never know. Might be some rival detectives out there with their own precocious, wonderful little jerk secretaries who were also in Ms. Renee’s first period.
Normally Healy had to drag March to any kind of doctor’s appointment. He hated everything about it- the poking and prodding, the pointed questions about how much he drank and smoked, the raised eyebrows when he inevitably came in with bruises covering at least 10% of his body. His solution, as it was for a lot of things, was to avoid it. He had gotten an awful chest infection about a month after the whole Kuttner situation had gone down, and when he started getting light-headed from shortness of breath, Healy put his foot down and asked who his normal doctor was so he could make an appointment. March, the little shit, had laughed at him.
Since then, Healy has used various tactics ranging from intimidation to guilt-tripping to physical force to get March to go to the doctor’s office (twice to settle the chest infection, once when he started having these awful recurring headaches that turned out to be from him having slept on concrete one time too many and wrenched his neck,) the dentist (the guy hadn’t been in years and sulked the entire way home, pretending his mouth hurt too much to talk to Healy, which lasted about an hour, because God love him but March could not shut up,) and the optometrist (it turns out March actually has the biggest blue eyes Healy’s ever seen on a guy when he’s not squinting constantly to read anything in front of him.) Every time, it’s a struggle, and every time, March is huffy for a day before eventually mentioning offhandedly that yeah, it feels better, but whatever they did, it was bullshit.
Today is different. March is absolutely thrilled to get his cast off, and Healy can’t blame him. He’s been complaining the entire eight weeks it’s been on that it’s itchy, makes him look like a dumbass, makes showering impossible, and also provides a convenient surface for Holly to draw embarrassing things on when she wants to get back at him for something. (Healy feels bad about being the cause of most of these things, except for giving visionary artist Holly March a canvas for her inspired works.) He’s in a great mood all day, up until he’s sitting on the paper-covered table and the doctor is coming at him with the saw, and then he starts to look like he’s back in the elevator at the Burbank Airport Hotel.
The saw makes contact with the plaster and March makes a high, strangled noise behind his teeth. The doctor, evidently used to this, continues unphased, and after a minute or two of grating sound (most of which comes from the cast, but March contributes as well) the two halves of the cast crack open and reveal a skinny, pale arm. March lifts his hand and wrinkles his nose at the scaly dead skin covering his forearm, and immediately goes to start scratching at it. The doctor grabs his arm and stops him, displaying March-wrangling instincts that Healy respects and admires.
“There may be some stiffness or pain for a bit. You can take Tylenol, 600 milligrams every four to six hours. Don’t take more than that, and don’t take it on an empty stomach. If you can’t control the pain with over the counter medication, if your skin’s still itchy or painful after a week, or if things start to feel any worse, come back,” the doctor recites.
March nods, still staring at his nasty-ass arm. Healy sighs and commits the instructions to memory, gearing up to fight the battle of getting March to drink less for a little bit, because his liver can use all the help it can get.
____
On the way back home, Healy tells March to stop scratching his arm no less than five times. The man does not cut his nails often enough and Healy is genuinely worried about him drawing blood with the way he’s tearing at his skin.
“Cut it out,” he says, for the sixth time.
“Oh, I’m sorry, do you see this? Do you see these fuckin’ lizard scales I got going on here? Motherfucker, you could come at me with an ancient sword of myth and I wouldn’t feel a thing.”
They had gone to see Jabberwocky a couple times. Holly loved it. March pretended he didn’t.
“Yeah, well, if you keep doing that you’re gonna get welts, and then it’ll still be itchy and it’ll burn too. Just hang on until we get home and you can put some lotion on it,” Healy insists.
March continues to scratch and mutter obscenities at him, and predictably, when they get home he starts to bitch about how it feels like he has a sunburn and poison ivy all at once. Healy continues not to feel as bad as he probably should about this whole situation, considering he broke the arm in the first place. He does, however, drag March to the bathroom, intending to go at the situation with a washcloth both to give March some relief and because the arm is actually pretty gross looking.
He comes up short, though, when he turns March’s forearm over and sees the puffy pink line along his wrist.
It had been one of the first things he noticed the first time he met March. Crisp white bandages on the left wrist, right over the radial and ulnar arteries. The sight hadn’t brought him up completely short- he’d seen worse things, caused worse things even- but it had been a little detail that made him feel for the guy just a bit. March was in a bad way that afternoon. His hair was messy and limp, he had eye bags big enough to catch a flight with, and he reeked of booze and sweat. None of it had stopped Healy from beating the snot out of him, but it was still a downer. Especially when he ran into Holly and he realized the man he had just fucked up had a kid.
He’d made assumptions. Of course he had. Cuts on the left wrist bad enough to be bandaged by a doctor, on someone who already seemed to be trying to drink himself to death and was involved in deep enough shit to have Healy getting involved? There was an obvious conclusion. It was upsetting, sure, but it made sense. He’d drunk his Yoo-hoo and hoped the poor son of a bitch got back on his feet, for his daughter if nothing else. And then he’d pretty much moved on.
At least until two assholes broke into his apartment, killed his fish, and kicked him face-first into a case bigger than he had imagined and a friendship that had become the most important thing in his life.
The thought had hovered at the back of his mind that entire whirlwind couple of days. Every time March fell off of a roof or said some dumb shit to a person pointing a gun at him or drove like a complete asshole, a tiny voice in Healy’s head would ask is this him trying to off himself? Eventually, he would come to the uneasy conclusion that March was just kind of a dumbass a lot of the time, except for the moments when he became a goddamn guided missile and pulled something insane off to the benefit of the case and the detriment of Healy’s heart health.
Over time, as they had grown closer, it had been something he meant to bring up but didn’t know how to. As a rule, March was prickly, in the way that he refused to let you get close to him. He deflected, and joked, and as a last resort would intentionally piss Healy off so much he had to drop whatever serious conversation he was trying to have in order to go and take a few deep breaths. The only way that Healy could actually get him to open up was when he was drunk enough to lose his inhibitions but not so drunk that he passed out. Those times were surprisingly few; after the whole Amelia situation, Holly had been quiet at the dinner table one evening and eventually blurted out that she didn’t know how she was supposed to take care of him when things got that scary. They all went silent, and March had stood up so abruptly that his chair fell onto its back and gathered her up in a hug, saying he was so sorry, baby, and it wasn’t her responsibility, he was her dad, and he would try to be better. To his credit, he had been.
Trying, that is. He had offloaded most of his alcohol onto Healy, and having to go out of the house to get really drunk meant that Holly and Healy could instead try to distract him with board games, or bad B-movies, or case discussion. Now, instead of being passively buzzed nearly constantly, most of the time March was either sober or completely gone. There were only a few times where he was in that sweet spot, loose-lipped and giggly (and touchy) and willing to actually talk about his feelings. Healy never liked March drinking, but the best he could do for his friend was try and support him, and sometimes that meant sitting next to him on the edge of the pool and listening while making sure March didn’t fall in and crack his head open.
On those nights, March would say things that filled Healy’s stomach with ice. Things like Holly woulda been better off if her mom was the one who survived the fire, prob’ly or d’you ever think about what would happen if you disappeared or when I fell into that pool I was just kinda gonna close my eyes, cuz I was so tired of everything, until I saw, fuckin’, Nick… Nicholas, uh, whas’ his name…
“Nixon,” Healy had said, as gently as he could.
March tried and failed to snap his fingers. “Yeah, him! ‘S fucked, man. Whooole thing.”
Healy had sat quietly for a minute, and then asked carefully, “Do you… feel like that often? Like you just wanna, uh, close your eyes.”
March tilted his head at Healy quizzically. “Um. Sometimes. When I’ve been, y’know,” he flapped his uninjured hand, indicating the world outside the fence and this private, delicate little moment. “When I’ve been out, doin’ whatever. Doin’ this. Don’ drink red wine, Jacky,” he said, suddenly intense before going hazy again. “Jus’ makes you wanna lay down for a while…”
“No, I mean. Hm. Do you ever feel like you just want to close your eyes and… and not wake up?” Healy was aware his voice was tight.
March was quiet for a long, long time, and when Healy finally got up the nerve to turn and look at him, he was asleep.
He would say things like that. And Healy would remember the bandages, and it would scare him, the idea that March had done that to himself, and for the exact reason he had imagined. The worst thought, and the one Healy kept coming back to, was that he would do it again. Despite all of that, though, he never got up the nerve to ask March about it when he was sober. He already felt like he was around too much, like he was too involved for a guy who had shown up, broken March’s arm, and then been partially responsible for Holly being in danger. And every time he thought about it, March was there to crack a stupid joke, or flirt horribly with a client, or smile in a way that made Healy think everything had to be fine.
It was all fine, up until this moment, where Healy was staring at the scar on March’s wrist and feeling like the floor was about to fall out from under him.
He clears his throat and goes to work with the washcloth. They sit in silence, March still pissed off and apparently not noticing Healy’s little crisis.
Eventually, after he gets most of the dead skin off of March’s forearm, Healy crouches down so that he’s not looming over March as much and clears his throat again.
March raises an eyebrow.
“So, I wanted to ask you something. And, uh, please don’t feel like you have to answer. I just… it makes me worried, is all, and I hope you feel like you can talk to me,” shit, he sounded like a dad about to tell March about the birds and the bees, this was not the tone he was going for, “I mean, we’ve been partners for a while now, and-”
“Healy, I cannot believe I’m saying this to you, but spit it out.”
Healy took a bracing breath and gently touched the scar. “Is this… did you hurt yourself?”
“Uh, yeah? It was just before we met.” March looks away, apparently a little embarrassed. “I cut myself. It was stupid.”
Healy feels like crying. How long has this been going on? Did March’s wife ever know? How would he keep Holly from finding out? She didn’t need this on her plate, not now, not ever. “Okay. Okay, have you… do you feel like you’re going to do it again?”
“I mean, not if I can help it,” March says, sounding confused.
“That’s-” what is he even supposed to say to that? “Is there anything I can do so that you don’t feel like doing this again?”
“I mean, if you want to start using those muscles and breaking down doors for me, I’m not going to say no.”
What?
“What?”
March squints at him. “Are you crying?”
Oh, this asshole.
All of Healy’s emotions bubble up and suddenly he’s yelling. “Yes, Holland! You tried to kill yourself two months ago and I’m trying to make sure it doesn’t happen again and you are making no fucking sense! Of course I’m crying, are you serious right now? Because if you are, if you’re trying to turn this into a joke, tough shit! We’re talking about it! Holly needs you here! I fucking need you here, Holland!”
He realizes too late into his rant that March has gone ghostly pale. Shit. This is definitely not how you’re supposed to talk to someone about their attempted suicide. He’s gotten angry, let March’s needling provoke him, and now he’s probably lost his last chance to help his friend.
“Um.” March is biting his lip, a nervous habit of his. “I think. That something has gotten lost in translation.”
“What? No, I- March, don’t you dare try and weasel out of this-”
March pulls his arm out of Healy’s hand to cover his own face, which is abruptly going from pale to fever-red. “Okay. Shut up for a second. No, Jack, shut your mouth, okay?”
Healy shuts his mouth.
“The way that I got this was… So, I was at this bar, and I was pretty sure they had receipts from Amelia’s credit card, but the fuckin’ bartender wouldn’t show them to me even though I offered him one of my nice polos-”
“The ten dollar bill shirt has literally never worked,” Healy cuts in, instinctually. At March’s glare, he cringes. “Sorry.”
“Sometimes it’s a twenty, smartass. Anyway, I figured that whatever was on those receipts could be exactly what I needed, so I may have perhaps. Tried to break in. And it may have happened such that when I punched in the window, the glass slightly grazed me. A lot. Pretty deep. It was kind of gross, actually-”
It’s Healy’s turn to bury his face in his hands. He has fucked this up six ways to Sunday, hasn’t he?
No, actually, wait a minute.
“You punched in a window?”
“The door was locked!"
“Fucking obviously the door was locked, March!”
March scowls. “Well, I did my best! I did the thing, you know, I got a rag out of the dumpster and wrapped it around my hand-”
“The dumpster?” Mary, mother of God, how does March not have sepsis right now?
“So sue me, I didn’t bring a rag with me! Anyway, there was a shit ton of blood, I kind of freaked out, woke up in an ambulance, got left on the side of the road by a nun, came home, passed out, and then you showed up and broke my arm. Which still hurts, by the way,” March sniffs.
Healy takes deep calming breaths until he feels less like shaking March until he gets some sense in his stupid head. “I am sorry for breaking your arm. Again.”
“Apology not accepted. You can, I don’t know, do the dishes for a few months and then I’ll rethink.”
“You don’t do the dishes. It’s either me or Holly because you don’t use enough soap,” Healy grouses.
March crosses his arms. “So I will continue not to do them. And also, no, you use too much. I’m having to take out a second mortgage on my goddamn house to keep up with your dish soap habits.”
“You also don’t have a mortgage,” Healy replies, smiling a little despite everything.
March laughs, then reaches out to gently tip Healy’s chin up. “Hey. I’m sorry I made you think that I- yeah.”
“No, don’t be sorry, I jumped to conclusions,” Healy says. “I’m sorry I freaked out. You just worry me, you know that?”
“Yeah,” March says. “I’ll try not to fall off any buildings for a little, okay? Even though I think I might actually be a Looney Tunes character, because nothing’s brought me down yet.”
“Knock on wood,” Healy says sharply. March rolls his eyes and knocks three times on Healy’s head instead. Fair enough. “And yeah, the falling off of roofs and balconies, if we could keep that to a minimum, I’d appreciate it. But also, just.” He takes a deep breath. “You’re a good person, you know that? You’re a good detective, and a good man in general. Holly is lucky to have you. So am I. So are the rest of the fuckwits in LA.”
March scoffs and looks away, and now it’s Healy’s turn to grab his chin and force him to make eye contact. “Look at me. Holland March, you are a good person, and you deserve to be happy, and I want you here. Whether you’re solving cases or having dinner with us or just laying on the couch, I want you here.”
“You- you sappy piece of shit,” March says, and Healy gives him the grace of ignoring the wobble in his voice or the glassy sheen of his eyes. Instead, he lifts up on his knees and wraps his partner up in a hug. March grabs on to him fiercely and mutters “making me cry in my bathroom, you big stupid wonderful motherfucker, saying shit like that to me in my own house.”
Healy smiles, fingers tangling in the shaggy hair on the nape of March’s neck. He’ll need a haircut soon, or he’ll look like an asshole even more than he usually does. He is stupidly fond of this man. “Yeah, well. I think I can get away with it. It’s just a rental.”
March’s shoulders shake with laughter in his hold, and not everything that they’re dealing with is okay, but a bit more of it is.