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“Louis, I’m sorry.” Sherlock Holmes’s voice pulled Louis out of his thoughts for what felt like the hundredth time, thoughts he was using to hold himself together. His injured left hand rested in his lap, hanging limply between his knees.
Louis focused on the time, at twelve years old, when he had fallen from a horse and his arm had gotten trapped beneath him at such an unfortunate angle that his wrist broke. The pain was similar, but back then it had felt sharper, as though it consumed his entire world.
When Sherlock grabbed his hand and the ground suddenly disappeared beneath his feet, he had only felt the thud and the quiet crack, the world had not gone white before his eyes. But it still hurt, and Louis clenched his teeth hard so he would not give voice to it.
He had not spoken at all since stumbling out of the training hall together with Sherlock, first to the university’s medical room, then from there into the back of an ambulance that transported him to the nearest hospital.
Sherlock had accompanied him: he sat beside him in the ambulance, then in the waiting room of the emergency department as well, endlessly repeating that he had never wanted Louis to get hurt because of him. At first, terror had echoed in his voice, then, seeing that Louis neither cried nor hissed nor cursed from the pain, only mild worry and guilt remained, but Louis found the constant repetition irritating.
If he spoke, the pain intensified, because together with his thoughts he too was forced to return to the present moment.
“Stop it, Sherlock, your apology won’t make it hurt any less. And I’m not angry,” he added, preventing Sherlock’s expected protest before it could begin.
His roommate fell silent. Louis truly was not angry with him, and the more time passed, the more he cursed his own stupidity. They had been practicing basic self-defense holds, and it had been pointless to wait for the instructor’s command or Sherlock’s warning: the entire purpose of the exercise was learning how to react properly to unexpected situations, and Louis had failed to defend himself in time. If he had moved the moment he noticed the motion from the corner of his eye, Sherlock would not have slammed him to the ground so mercilessly, and his hand would not have twisted beneath him at such a horrible angle.
While waiting for the examination, he kept hoping his hand was not broken and would not need a cast. He would have hated failing all their practical subjects that semester because of a stupid accident.
Sherlock’s concern revolved around the same thing, which kept prompting him to apologize again and again, but Louis wanted to put an end to it. Still holding his injured hand in his lap, he turned toward the boy sitting beside him, avoiding looking directly at the swollen wrist if possible, because even the sight of it filled him with dread.
Sherlock looked disheveled, though his face had already lost the redness from running. They were both still wearing their training clothes and stood out sharply against the sterile atmosphere of the hospital. Sherlock had tied his hair back, but the ponytail had loosened, and part of the dark, wavy strands clung to his forehead. Louis wondered how he could tolerate it when his own hair irritated him terribly, but he did not want to adjust it again.
He was glad that when he lowered his head, his blond fringe at least partly cut him off from the outside world, while Sherlock sat on the side where nothing hid Louis’s face from him. He could not conceal even the slightest painful twitch, so Louis minimized every unnecessary effort and focused solely on calming his breathing.
He was grateful Sherlock did not force conversation. When Louis glanced at him again, he was fiddling with his phone, but he stopped as soon as he noticed Louis watching him. Louis gave a slight shake of his head to indicate that it did not bother him. He could not have cared less what Sherlock was doing; he did not entirely understand why he had come all the way to the hospital with him in the first place, since his leg was not injured and he would have been perfectly capable of getting home alone. Yet Sherlock had insisted on accompanying him, and when Louis’s name was called from the examination room, Sherlock rose from his chair as well.
Louis closed his eyes. He took another deep breath and tried to speak in the most neutral tone possible as he pulled his phone from his pocket and pushed it into Sherlock’s hand.
“Hold this for me and wait here,” he requested, taking away Sherlock’s opportunity to follow him; enduring Sherlock’s worried expression beside him once at the university medical office had already been more than enough.
Louis had not yet reached the point of informing his two brothers, and during the examination he found himself wondering whether he truly ought to trouble them with something like this. It had been a tiny accident, at best merely a sprain that might heal without a trace by the next time they met, yet Louis still felt uneasy at the thought of keeping it secret and only mentioning it half a year or a year later in passing over a family lunch.
Or never, but that sounded impossible.
He steeled himself while sitting on the examination table as the doctor rotated his arm.
His wrist was X-rayed, and his expectation proved correct: it was not broken, but one of the bones had cracked, and he was forced to keep it rested in a sling. For four to six weeks he could not participate in any exercise that required the use of both hands, which first filled Louis with despair, then irritation.
He could still run. If crawling was necessary, he would somehow manage it. And it was time he learned how to snap handcuffs shut with one hand. The thought pulled a bitter smile onto his face, but when the nurse made some sort of comment about it, he quickly let the thought go and tried to force the appropriate seriousness onto himself.
Once he received proper treatment, the further instructions, and the date of the first follow-up examination, Louis was free to leave; Sherlock was already waiting impatiently outside.
“You had a call,” he returned his phone as soon as he spotted him, but Louis’s arm in a sling interested him far more than wasting additional words on that. Louis checked his phone, while Sherlock waited for the details. “So, what’s wrong with it? Is it broken?”
“No, you can see it’s only bandaged.”
Louis did not even look up. It was Thursday, and Albert had called to ask whether he was still going home the following day after all.
I don’t feel like it anymore, he thought, because he did not want to listen to their pity and concern.
Besides, he had studying to do, but he had already been forced to skip the weekend spent in London the previous week as well, so Louis was hardly thrilled at the idea of once again not sleeping in his own bed.
Sherlock was too impatient to remain lost in thought beside him for long. He shifted from one foot to the other and glanced around restlessly, like someone who desperately wanted to be outside the building’s walls already, and he frequently adjusted his hair as well. The unnecessary movement suggested he did not know what to do with his hands; it occurred to Louis that his roommate had not smoked once in the more than three hours he had spent with him, because for obvious reasons neither cigarettes nor a lighter were in the pockets of his training trousers.
“How serious is it?” he asked once Louis finally pocketed his phone again, postponing the call until later. Alongside the tension, something softer, something like guilt, echoed in his voice, and Louis was beginning to get thoroughly sick of it. Neither of them was at fault, but if they started searching for someone to blame, Louis would become irrationally angry quite quickly, and there was no way and no one to take it out on.
“For a good six weeks you’ll have to throw someone else to the ground.” Sherlock hissed softly through his teeth. He understood perfectly well what a disadvantage so much lost time would cause Louis.
They were both studying criminology with a practical focus, and unlike Sherlock, Louis did not intend to specialize in criminal investigation. Preserving his endurance was more important to him, and Sherlock had obstructed that, and it could not be smoothed over with a few apologies.
The only thing that comforted him was that it was early October, and Louis did not seem particularly dejected. They had known each other for a month and a half, but Sherlock had already established at the very beginning that if Louis had truly been angry with him for what happened, he would not have allowed Sherlock to remain beside him. In the worst case, of the two of them Sherlock would have ended up on a stretcher in the back of the ambulance, yet Louis had not harmed him even with his gaze.
True, sometimes he looked rather sharp-eyed, and he had his biting remarks, but Sherlock did not know him as a genuinely violent person. It did not fit the image he had formed of him, yet he was convinced that if he provoked him enough, he would awaken something dangerous inside him. He deliberately circled around that boundary, but never stretched the cord to its limit, and Louis had become capable of adapting to Sherlock’s peculiarities fairly quickly.
In a way, both of them counted as outsiders, because a significant portion of their coursemates, though for different reasons, was wary of them. Louis was characterized by quiet, cool intellect and mild reserve, while in Sherlock’s case this was accompanied by an irritatingly cynical manner, but in truth neither of them harmed anyone, they simply were not initiators in conversation and did not try to make friends with others either.
Louis had it slightly easier; when he was not deep in thought, his face seemed surprisingly friendly, and if someone spoke to him, he could answer kindly. Sherlock, on the other hand, grimaced whenever he forgot himself, and if someone addressed him unexpectedly, he responded more harshly than necessary, which offended some of their fellow students and discouraged others. Louis was not among them, and after they began living together in the dormitory as well, he started sitting beside him during shared lectures whenever his usual seat in the third row were occupied.
He had not wanted to befriend him, but a surprisingly strong harmony had developed between them, at least regarding their abilities and interests. Living together caused Louis some difficulty, because he was far more restrained than Sherlock, while he attempted to remedy some of his roommate’s extremely irritating activities with noise-cancelling headphones.
Sherlock, however, was remarkably gentle by his own standards beside him while they left the hospital and crossed the narrow parking lot toward the nearest bus stop. The dormitory was twenty minutes away. The accident had happened during their final class, well after lunchtime, and Louis wanted nothing more than to finally take off his training clothes and shower.
Sherlock did not speak much to him, but occasionally cast him a glance that Louis caught from the corner of his eye. The bus was crowded, and Louis raised an eyebrow when Sherlock sat him down in an empty seat and remained standing beside him; he did not know what to do with the sudden kindness.
“You do know there’s nothing wrong with my leg, Sherlock?” he remarked, though he sat down anyway to avoid arguing with him. Sherlock sighed, brushing dark strands away from his face.
“Of course, but I don’t need someone bumping into your hand and injuring it worse.”
“Oh God,” Louis groaned, but did not continue, too tired for a pointless argument. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back. He tried to follow the route in his mind, but after the third gentle turn he no longer knew where they were, and allowed Sherlock to nudge his shoulder before they had to get off at a stop.
“You really don’t have to fuss over me this much, you know?” Louis said this later in the dormitory, standing in their tiny kitchen, because Sherlock had appeared beside him again after showering.
He took the kettle from Louis and poured water into his mug, then prepared tea for himself as well and retreated with it to the room. Louis watched his actions with a furrowed brow. He was not used to anyone doing anything for him, and taking care of himself came entirely naturally to him anyway.
“Is it a problem that I’m being nice to you?” Sherlock’s voice drifted through the open doorway. “We’re friends, aren’t we? Besides, you can’t lift the kettle.” This was undeniably mocking, and Louis smiled in relief. At least he did not seriously think he was going to coddle him from now on, Louis would have died of that.
If Sherlock had decided he wanted to nurse him because he genuinely felt guilty over it, Louis would have fled the dormitory for the weekend. In any case, he still had an entire day to decide whether he wanted to face the combined concern of his two brothers, or whether enduring Sherlock’s whims would be enough for him.
He still had not called Albert back. He postponed answering until after he showered and curled up in bed with his tea, which had cooled to a pleasant temperature.
“Hey, Sherlock,” he addressed his roommate, who looked up from the notes he had been reading, “are you going home for the weekend?”
“I don’t think so.” The dark blue eyes settled on his face with interest. “Why, are you?”
“I don’t think so either.” Louis took a deep breath. “Do you feel like hanging out with me after I’m done at the library?”
“What are we doing?” Sherlock looked enthusiastic. Louis had not expected such delight, and became embarrassed; the completely ordinary suggestion that they watch the series he had started, so he could switch his brain off a little before falling asleep, suddenly felt unusual, almost inappropriate.
“Do you want to watch Hannibal with me?” Sherlock did not answer immediately, which made Louis feel even worse, but after a few seconds of silence he sounded genuinely excited.
“When do we start?”
“Tomorrow after classes, I’m tired now.” Louis was not entirely lying; by the time he got into bed, the ordeal of the entire day and the medication were beginning to knock him off his feet. Sherlock nodded.
“If you want, I can go out while I finish this.” He was already preparing to rise from the bed together with his notes, but Louis shook his head no and lay down on the pillow. He turned onto his right side to spare his arm, and as a result saw Sherlock in front of him unwillingly until his phone blocked him from view.
I’m sorry, I’m staying here for the weekend. I’ll call you tomorrow.
After managing to answer Albert, he started texting William instead, but he kept glancing up at Sherlock, who was no longer reading but staring at him openly.
“I didn’t say I wanted to sleep,” Louis remarked, feeling as though he had been caught doing something, “just that I’m tired. Stay here, Sherlock, you’re not bothering me.”
Sherlock hummed something and turned away from him. When he next glanced toward Louis, he was already asleep; the phone had slipped from his hand and lay on the pillow a few centimeters from his fingers.
He kept his injured arm held away from himself, and Sherlock watched the carefully secured white bandage. Louis’s wrist was surprisingly thin, and until he touched him for the first time, he had not realized how strongly he was capable of gripping him.