thecapitol | You're the Swingset [Closed]

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You're the Swingset [Closed]

WHO| Howard Bassem and John Watson
WHAT| Howard explains he doesn't actually want John dead.
WHEN| After Howard's fight with Sherlock.
WHERE| A park in Panem.
WARNINGS/NOTES| Lots of emo.

Howard doesn't return to his room that night either. He finds a park instead, something for the little kids of Panem. It's fancier than any playground he's ever seen, with a big carousel and slides and monkey bars in rainbow colors. A metal and plastic lighthouse sits in the center, with a rope ladder up, and Howard scales it easily and crouches in the little nook at the top. He pulls his jacket close around himself, hoping it doesn't rain tonight because he can't think of any place indoors he'd feel safe in. Ironically, out here in the open, he feels at least the protection of the public eye.

He remembers his mother used to tell him not to use the slides because creeps might hide razors in them. He always thought that was stupid, that she was being paranoid back then, but now he wonders if he should have protested as much as he did. He wonders if she felt unwanted and invalidated as he does when her fears were written off as crazy. Then he dismisses that thought, because he doesn't want to be feeling any sympathy for the parents who disappeared on him one day.

He curls up and scratches something with his knife into the plastic of the lighthouse wall, next to the engravings of little kids trying to write out their name or draw hearts or carve out their first swear words, next to the wads of chewed gun and the promise that someday someone will see this. It's getting dark, and soon he has to use his communicator light for the second word. He shivers a bit and stretches his fingers so they don't get numb.

HELP ME. He doesn't know anyone he can tell it to out loud. He looks around the lighthouse and wonders if there are cameras even in here, wonders how fast it's going to hit the tabloids that Sherlock Holmes reduced him to tears, that Howard's managed to burn yet another bridge, that losing relationships seems to happen more often than sneezing with him, as effortless as breathing.

He knows shivering burns calories, so he pulls his sleeves down over his hands - there's plenty of extra fabric - and hides his head in his jacket hood, and, about four feet off the ground and staring out at the Panem park at twilight, with the sprinklers going off, clutches his knife.

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"Of course it's true, and he needs to be the smartest guy in the room, but he didn't mean to get you that upset. Might not have been the best idea to chuck popcorn at him, mind you."
He glanced over at Howard, noting the shiver, and nodded. "Good plan. Might even find a decent croissant."

"Yeah, well. Hindsight." Howard opens the door to the bakery and holds it for John, letting the doc go in first.

"Bet they have coffee." Because that's what he needs when he's already stressed out, at night. "Decaf. Promise."

"Don't suppose I can convince you to have a hot cocoa instead," John joked, letting Howard hold the door for him as he slipped inside. "Decaf coffee for my friend, please, a tea for myself and... a couple of those pastries, thanks, yeah," he said to the lady behind the counter, glancing over to a table very nicely in the corner with a good view of the door.
"Over there?"

"I can do both." Howard grins, but it's forced. His expression twitches a bit when John calls hm his friend.

"Yeah, that one's good." Howard brushes some dirt off the elbow of his jacket and takes a seat so they can both see the door. "I'm really your friend? Even after, you know?"]

He tries very hard not to sound too hopeful or needy.

"You've met Sherlock, I assume," John said dryly, though there was a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as he eased himself into the chair.
"We're fine, Howard. Relax."

"Yeah, well. I figure he tends to yell less than me." He drums his fingers on the table, clearly nowhere near actually relaxing. "People just don't tend to think I'm a real good friend, is all. I mean, I try, but..."

He trails off and shrugs. He doesn't know why they all leave.

"Well, I don't think he's ever told any of my friends that he hopes they'll have to watch me die, no, but- listen, Howard, and please, don't take this the wrong way. I was your age once, and I had friends your age too. What I didn't have then was the benefit of experience, and it feels like you've had more than your fair share of a very different kind of it, something I didn't have to cope with for years- and then, because of a career I chose. I can't speak to your past, alright? But there is absolutely nothing you've done that makes me think I'd be better off not knowing you."

He pressed his lips together, hoping he hadn't come across too preachy.
"We're fine, Howard. It's all fine."

Howard doesn't say anything for a bit. He wraps his hands around his elbows and hunches over the table, becoming smaller, watching as the barista brings over the pastries and drinks.

It doesn't feel fair, to be thrown into this world full of people who don't realize what it could be like. He's watching people get upset about how they have to dress from the Stylist and he doesn't know how to say he's happy just to have food in his stomach, to not be huddled in a corner chewing on cardboard to try and trick the hunger away.

But it's a comfort that John understands that, at least. Not the hunger, but what comes in its wake. The shadow that's married itself to your bones.

When the barista leaves, he finally says, "I come from a place where have a mass grave in the town square for children." He takes a deep breath and warms his hands on his coffee cup. "Can I, um, can I ask you something?"

John picked up his teacup and nodded, strangely relieved to hear Howard say something after the silence following his accidental sermon, even if it was to give him further evidence of the hell he had come from. "Yeah, of course you can," he said, taking a sip.

"C-can I..." He stops and takes a deep breath, then a sip of coffee, quelling his nerves. "Can I sleep in your room tonight? I got nowhere else to go."

"God, I thought you were going to ask me what kind of hell I must have seen to make me think I can lecture you on it," John told him quite seriously, a soft smile spreading across his face. "Of course. Though I thought you had a bit of history with Aunamee?"

"Nah, I figure with that, if you want to tell me, you'll tell me. If you don't, you won't." Howard knows better than to pry; not only does he appreciate it in turn, but he's never felt comfortable digging past people's barriers like that. Not people he likes, at least.

"If you can call getting held down and stabbed in the stomach a 'bit' of a history." Howard looks ill for a moment and hunches up his shoulders again, as if trying to curl into a ball. "But um. I can't sleep alone in my room. Not with Hyperion and Alpha stalking around."

He nodded. "Can't say I'd sleep too well with Karis in my suite either. I'll take the couch in the living area, if you like."

He didn't mention his gratitude at not being asked about his time in the army- it came without words, in the strangely comfortable understanding between them.

"No, it's fine, I can sleep on the floor," Howard says quickly. "You won't even know I'm there. It just...it helps to hear people. Breathing or snoring or tossing and turning, or whatever."

His cheeks are quickly turning red.

"Alright," he said, agreeing easily enough. He'd slept beside patients before and spent enough time wishing he could hear someone else's breathing in the long nights since being invalided out. "I'm not sure what I've got that we can put on the floor for you, but we'll work something out."

Howard raises an eyebrow. "You did notice that before you found me tonight, I was sleeping inside a play structure, right? I'll be fine. I can use my jacket as a blanket."

He finishes off his coffee. He's not shivering anymore, that's nice. "Do you want to call a can out to the Tribute Center?"

He's not going to say it out loud, but that limp was looking pretty bad earlier.

"Look, if I can't offer better hospitality than a bloody plastic lighthouse, I might as well throw in the towel right now," John laughed. "Eat your pastry and I'll call us a cab. No point going out and getting cold again."

The limp had been worrying John, too.

"Hey, that was a five-star plastic lighthouse. I had to book weeks in advance." Howard grins, and this time it's wide and reaches up to his eyes. "So, uh, I hear you're seeing Effie Trinket."

John grined too, enjoying his joke- though his cheeks reddened just a little at Howard's mention of Effie.

"Well, it's- it's early days," he attempted to explain, hurriedly. "But we've been having coffee. She invited me to some hot springs for a little relaxation as soon as she can find some time off, but her schedule is pretty full."

"Yeah, she's got all that murder to be coordinating." Howard's cheeks flush again and he bobs his head apologetically. "Sorry. That was mean."

"You should hear what Sherlock says," John sighed. "No, it's- it's alright, though you're wrong about her. She cares a lot more than people give her credit for and has done her best to give the tributes under her care the best possible chance of winning- and really, that's all someone in her position can do."

"Yeah, I'm just bitchy because I got dumped as unceremonially as possible." He shrugs and waves a hand as if it really, really doesn't bother him. At all. Look how unbothered he is. "Did she like, audition for the job or what? Seems like an awful job."

"I think she chose it, yes. And before you tell me it was for the prestige or whatever, before Katniss and Peeta 12 was the worst possible district to represent."
He can feel himself getting a little hot in the face, now, and forces himself to stop, looking mildly embarrassed.
"I'm sorry to hear about your breakup," he said, instead of going on about Effie.

"It's okay." Howard swallows and licks his lips nervously. "I don't...I don't understand what I did wrong. That's all. Kind of a pattern with me."

He smiled, a little awkwardly. "If I could tell you only one thing that I've learned, Howard, it would be this. More often than not, it really isn't your fault. People are complicated and have more than enough reasons to end a relationship all by themselves- they don't always need help. Mind you, the last... however many of mine have been because of me, but at least I knew exactly why."

He wants to ask why it was for John, but stops himself. Instead he just takes another drink of coffee.

"No one else gets ditched half as often as I do, though. I'm starting to think I give off some kind of 'leave my sorry ass' pheromone or something." He chews on his tongue. "I mean, it's one thing for girlfriends, but parents aren't supposed to just up and leave."

"No, they're not," John agreed after a quiet moment. "They're not. But they're people, like us, and they don't always get it right. I don't think I could ever do it, to be honest, be a parent- too much of a chance to really mess things up."

"I don't want you making excuses for them," Howard says, wrapping his arms tight around his torso.

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