{BUFFY} vampire slayer (i_diedtwice) wrote in we_coexist, @ 2011-02-08 20:33:00 |
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Entry tags: | buffy summers, john watson |
Let's play doctor! [Buffy/John, TBC in comments]
(Takes place shortly after this.)
After the Doctor left, Buffy helped herself to the Magic Box’s first aid kit, which was exactly where she remembered it. There wasn’t much she could do besides cover it with a basic dressing. What do you put on a burn caused by an energy beam from an alien robot? With her arm down carefully to conceal the damage, she hobbled towards home. She did not, however, conceal the small curved cut above her left brow.
On the way she sent John a text: you busy?
Buffy could count the number of times she’d faced a villain that had given her similar (temporary) battle wounds. The Master, Adam, Faith, Glory-- maybe a few others. That was about it. It was a pretty short list.
Had she known that only moments earlier John had been strapped to an insane machine that nearly killed him, the slayer would have left him alone. Oh well. She could feel bad about it later.
John was having a Day. Possibly not as bad as the Doctor’s, but as days went? He’d had better. First he’d been snatched off of the street and strapped into some riddle-asking automaton. Then he’d been electroshocked. He’d had the ‘pleasure’ of watching Sherlock worry. He still didn’t understand the oddball alien.
But it had worked out. He’d survived, his limbs had all remembered how to function, and he and Holmes had found their way to a street with taxis. Normally he’d insist on walking, because it was ridiculous to ride everywhere, but he wasn’t in the best shape. When the text arrived, John was on the curb waiting for an unoccupied cab to pull up.
It was Buffy. So, he texted back. no. not busy.
He was not technically lying, he reasoned, as his time as a shock-absorber had just ended.
Sherlock had not wanted to leave him on his own, but well, of course he’d come to some great conclusion after the encounter with the machine and needed to dash. Ah, well.
Buffy sent another text: need a hand. ur place or mine?
She didn’t want to state explicitly what she needed a hand with. The slayer didn’t want to worry him. At least not until he could see the damage for himself.
mine. Sherlock was going to be out and, to be honest, John wanted a little quality time with his mirror and his own medicine kit. He didn’t think there’d been any burns from the experience, but it would be foolish not to check. out, came the follow up text, be there in twenty.
It took the cab ten, and John used the rest of the time to give himself a once-over. He’d probably have been better served going to the hospital, but after his experience in Arkham? He was leery. If he could possibly handle something himself, he wanted to do so. Besides, if something were terribly wrong, he’d have someone there who could call for aid.
It took the slayer twice that time to reach Baker Street. The City liked to see John in cabs while it also seemed to insist Buffy do nearly everything on foot as she had in Sunnydale. By the time she reached his apartment she looked drained, leaning against the wall and trying to will herself not to wince so visibly as pushed the buzzer to John’s apartment.
Buffy knew-- okay, she couldn’t have really known-- it wasn’t life threatening, but pride kept her from wanting to reveal just how much the Dalek had hurt her. It wasn’t the job of anyone else to worry about the slayer, she felt. It was her job to worry about everyone else. She didn’t care if that was hypocritical-- Buffy was not above pulling the ‘I’m the Slayer’ card.
At the sound of the buzzer, John got up and hobbled downstairs. He’d pulled his cane back out for the occasion, though he didn’t expect he’d need it for long. Psychosomatic injury aggravated by new mental trauma, etcetera. Troubles of the mind weren’t his area, but the last time his leg had acted up, all he’d needed was a distraction.
Little did he know that distraction was already at his door.
“Buffy?” He asked, abruptly concerned. “What happened?”
John immediately gave her a cursory once-over, looking for all obvious injuries. He stepped away from the door to let her in.
“I could ask you the same thing,” Buffy offered a small wry smile. She’d never seen his cane before and assumed it was new. They made quite the pathetic, hobbling pair and already she felt a twinge of guilt for coming to him. Once she was inside and the door was closed, she removed the large gauze pad she’d applied. Her top was ripped so he could get a first look, but she wasn’t about to remove her shirt in the hall.
“Had a close encounter with a killer trash can. With a ray gun. And an evil toilet plunger. ...Don’t ask. It was weird.”
Whatever kind of energy beam the Dalek released, she was lucky only to be grazed. At full power with a more direct hit, it was unlikely even the Slayer would have survived. The massively bruised skin due to at least some (minor?) internal bleeding which surrounded the burn suggested as much.
“...a killer trash can with an evil toilet plunger.” John would have probably known a Dalek if he’d seen one - he was British, over a certain age, and familiar enough with his popular culture to recognize the icon if it had been set down right in front of him. However, he was not a Doctor Who fan (and only a casual viewer of television). The description went right over his head, just as the Doctor’s name and species had sailed past him when he’d met the fellow.
“What is it with murderous bits of metal?” He asked. “Sherlock and I just had a fight with some sort of riddle-asking automaton. It’s been a bizarre day all over the City, hasn’t it?”
John leaned in to observe the wound, and it was all he could do not to hiss. He’d had training, though - he could control himself enough to keep his expression steady. If the doctor panicked, what hope was there for the patient? “Well, it’s not over your kidney, so that’s a small mercy. I’ll have a look. I really need to get on at a clinic or the hospital - what I wouldn’t do for some proper equipment.”
He hobbled into the living space, favoring the cane until they’d reached a space with better light. At that point, it was as if he’d forgotten his leg. He still leaned on the cane, but not as heavily. He did not look for a seat.
“Can you tell me more about the ‘ray gun?’ Is that what gave you the burns? But it looks as if there was some concussive force to the blow, too.” Meanwhile, Watson set about digging for his medical supplies. Luckily they were already out, left over from having treated himself.
"Yeah, it was intense,” Buffy frowned. “All I know is that is was some kind of energy beam? Whatever that means. I have the worst luck with robots.”
Buffy recalled her doppelganger robot and decided not to elaborate. Instead she decided to peek around his apartment, curious. Since Sherlock had returned it was now considerably more cluttered. At least there weren’t any of his more offensive experiments in plain sight.
“Where do you want me?”
“Ah. Somewhere elevated - not an armchair. Table?” He could clear it off. Watson hobbled over and began picking up the morning’s paper. His laptop sat open, so he reached out and lowered the screen. Then he moved it off onto a chair.
“Alright, energy beam. It looks like it was able to burn and punch.” Nasty. Very nasty. John suddenly felt lucky that he’d gotten by with electric shocks. He never thought that would’ve been the case, but it was true.
Once the table was clear, John set about putting on gloves. He kept a few pairs about, mostly because he always half-expected to come home and find that Sherlock had been shot, or had left blood about the apartment as part of one of his experiments, or that there’d be fingers in the fridge or something disgusting out on the counter. Latex gloves were surprisingly useful around 221B. Properly prepared with a sterile layer between himself and Buffy, Watson turned so that he could start examining.
If she’d known John a little better there might have been inappropriate humor to keep the mood light. Buffy decided to keep her mouth shut and with a light wince, lifted herself onto the table with her legs dangling over.
“Back home, Sunnydale was positioned over a Hellmouth. Basically it’s like a mystical magnet for badness. Sometimes the City doesn’t feel so different. Less sun, more crazy but still big on the monsters.” The slayer settled on small talk, hoping it would distract from any potential awkwardness.
“Sherlock’s -- I wouldn’t say made friends, but he’s met this strange man in a bow tie. He claims he’s an alien, can you believe that? I almost laughed at him when he first said as much, but now I’ve been a dog and I’ve spent an afternoon shackled into a robotic sphinx. I don’t know what this says, but ‘alien’ is starting to sound normal.” John laughed. The chatter helped - he was usually good at ignoring his emotional reactions to pain and blood, even when working on people he’d come to know and like. You had to, or people would die of their wounds while you were hesitating. This was a little different. They weren’t on a battlefield - this was a city, and while awful things happened in cities, you didn’t expect them as easily.
Perhaps his thinking about the City would have to change.
“Tell me if I hurt you,” John said. Then he moved from visual inspection to physically touching Buffy’s side. The cursory examination had been hopeful, but he wasn’t ready to decide if he ought to take her to a proper hospital quite yet.
“You mean the Doctor? I just met him today. He was there with the killer espresso maker looking robot... thing. He also totally stealing Bill and Ted’s thunder with his phone booth space ship getup. Sadly, Keanu Reeves was not present. But alien would explain the bow tie. No one wears bow ties. Even my Watcher stopped wearing bow ties. To be fair, I stopped wearing animal print pants. Ah, high school. Why haven’t I burned those pictures...?”
Buffy drew in a quick breath as soon as she felt his fingers, but she would have been unlikely to say anything if he really had hurt her. Slayer complex.
There were so many interesting bits to Buffy’s ramblings that John didn’t quite know where to start. Ought he focus on the mention of a phone booth spaceship, or the fact that Buffy had met the strange man too? Should he zero in on the animal print pants (animal print pants?), or was the real question why Buffy seemed so unconcerned about having been ‘watched?’
“What,” Watson began, “is a Watcher? That sounds --” Creepy? Like some sort of voyeur? But Buffy had said ‘my Watcher’ and she hadn’t used the tone of voice that would equate ‘watcher’ with ‘stalker,’ so he was assuming that his first guess was flatly wrong. “Aaah. I don’t know what that sounds like.”
He was going to be a gentleman. Really.
“And what does a Watcher do? Beyond watch things, one would imagine.”
“They find and train slayers, sorta like a secret society. They’re usually the ones that have to break the news to the new girl that vampires and monsters are real. They also keep records of all the slayers and different demons and stuff. When I lived in LA my first watcher didn’t live long, but when I moved to Sunnydale the Watcher’s Council already had one of their own there to continue my training. He was sort of like a second Dad to me.”
Buffy would have shrugged but she didn’t want to move her side. Instead she found herself watching John as he examined her. It was nice to see someone besides her in action.