Overflow Post
This post is for responding to prompts from prompt posts that are full, or continuing WIPs that have already been started but the prompt post is now full or near to full.
PLEASE POST ALL NEW FILLS TO THE NEW OVERFLOW POST!( Read more... )
PLEASE POST ALL NEW FILLS TO THE NEW OVERFLOW POST!( Read more... )
He keeps on setting goals for himself, to be up and about by 7, but that gets pushed back to 8, and when 8 rolls around, well, he’s earned a lie in, hasn’t he? He aims for 9, then, which becomes 10, then 10:30 and suddenly he blinks and it’s 12:19 and the most energy he can muster is to roll over, putting the clock at his back.
Nothing in particular fills his mind. How much sleep he missed the past month. The last time he did laundry. What he needs to buy at the shop. That is why, when the sitting room door scrapes open, he notices immediately. The unmistakable clicking of high heels on hardwood sounds tentatively through his shut door, and after his initial reaction of curling slightly tighter into himself, he wonders who it could possibly be. Couldn’t be Mrs.Hudson, it sounded nothing like her. Sarah? No, she favored flats.
It isn’t until the heels approach and bring with them a hesitant call of his name that he discovers Sally Donovan has come to visit him. Confusion, along with a hearty desire for her not to see him wallowing in bed, is enough to propel him from out of his cocoon to poke his head out of the barely wide enough opening of his bedroom door. In an impressive balancing act, Donovan freezes when she sees him, one foot firmly planted while the other floats in mid-ascension. She melts a bit, too, the tight press of her lips becoming a relieved smile when they lock eyes, and John wonders, just briefly, what anyone could possibly have to be relieved about.
“Sorry to burst in. I knocked, but I guess you couldn’t hear it?” She brings her foot down and stands, still relieved, in the stairwell. It makes John feel a bit better, somehow. This isn’t Dimmock, loitering uninvited in his sitting room; this is Donovan, who has enough tact to know that she might not be welcome. That alone is reassuring enough for John to give a shrug in response. Most likely she used to key to the flat that her team uses for their impromptu drugs busts; one too many passive aggressive comments by Mrs.Hudson was enough to make John feel justified in just giving a copy of the key to Lestr-
“Can I help you?” It comes out far too quick to be anywhere near his usual friendliness.
Donovan is undeterred. “Just wanted to see you. Came by the hospital the other day, but apparently you’d already checked out.”
“You just wanted to see me?” John’s tone is dubious, because her statement is dubious. They rarely exchange more than greetings whenever they see each other; their relationship is nowhere near the visit-one-another-in-the-hospital phase.
“Yeah. Wanted to make sure you were doing alright.”
“Oh, yes,” words slide out without his consent, and the lack of intonation is a bit surprising; he’s usually much kinder than this, “just fantastic, thanks.”
It makes her a little uncomfortable, he can tell; spine a little stiffer, lips pressed together, she shifts ever-so-slightly in his stairwell. Part of him feels terrible about it. Most of him can’t muster the ability to care.
“Yeah, that was a stupid question. Can we talk?”
“We are talking.” Which is true, of course; what is also true is that John does not want talk to Donovan anymore, but is far too polite to say so directly.
“It feels more like negotiating to me.” She shifts her weight side to side, almost swaying. “Meet you in the kitchen? I’ll make the tea.”
The mere thought of going downstairs, into the sitting room, or even the kitchen, makes John’s stomach tremble. He hasn’t eaten since he’s left the hospital, there’s nothing for his stomach to expel, but all the same he’d rather not splatter bile all over the floor. Again.
“No,” John sighs, heavily, “no. Just… come in. Say your piece.” She won’t leave until she has, he knows that much, and he leaves the door ajar as he shuffles to sit down on the side of his bed.
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