milliways_bar | (no subject)

Guppy is in the kitchen. There's a pile of pancakes ready for people to help themselves to, but at the moment he is trying to scrape one off the ceiling.

Sam comes in, after receiving a note from Bar, looking like he's recently come in from a fight; though he has cleaned up.

"I don't think there could be a better time for pancakes for me." He says, voice tired and a little dry from coming off the adrenaline high.

"Help yourself, there's a pile of hot ones on that table." Guppy says, as half the pancake drops off the ceiling onto the floor.

"You okay?"

Sam makes a grab for pancake but misses it by a inch or so.

"Yeah, minor injuries and exhaustion. Sprung a trap with a friend and it turned out to be a much bigger trap than we thought." Sam sighs as he says this, clearly bothered. "Bad guy guys nearly played us."

"Sorry to hear that. Do you need medical attention?" Guppy asks, hopping down from the stool - the pancake on the ceiling can wait - to make him a hot drink.

"I think I'm okay, but thanks."

"Things okay with you?"

"They're okay thanks." Guppy says. "My oldest is preparing to go on his first residential school trip, hoping he pulls it off okay; my daughter's all excited because she's got her Rainbows enrolment the same day, it's all go as usual."

He slides the hot drink over to Sam.

"How did you end up in a trap?"

Javert has no interest in pancakes, nor in support of any kind, but he has been keeping an eye out for Guppy since he received that note. He watches him go into the kitchen and when he does not come out - what can a man be doing in there for so long? - he eventually follows.

'Doctor Sandhu.'

His tone is a little stiff, and he holds the note up.

'I received this, and do not understand it.'

"The content, or my French?" Guppy asks, as a glob of pancake drops off the ceiling.

'The content.'

The French was clear enough, if not entirely perfect.

'I thought your stance was perfectly clear.'

Guppy jumps down from the stool and faces Javert.

"I have never, ever, refused to treat you as a patient." he says. "Despite you dislocating my arm, despite your constant rudeness, despite the way you have in the past treated my child. You have declined my help, but I have not refused it. I built a case against Lecter, at significant personal risk, in order to stand up for you and the other victims.

"And now I hear you're going around telling people - colleagues, even - that I won't treat you. I never refused to treat anybody here, not even the disgraced Lecter when he was shot, and that is how I know you aren't telling the truth. If you have mistakenly inferred that I wouldn't from something I have said, then my apologies; but really, to go around spreading things like that, you have behaved most dishonourably indeed."

Javert blinks at him.

This man is exceedingly strange.

'To begin with - and I cannot believe I have to state this again - I did not dislocate your arm. I stopped you falling from the roof, you lost control of yourself and dislocated it through your own actions.'

He had been trying to help, a mistake he will not make with regard to Guppy again.

'And on the other matter - I have knowingly told two lies in my life, neither of which involved you. You told me...what was it? The doctor-patient relationship had broken down, and I should stay away, was that not it? I have not spread anything; I have not needed a doctor for a long time! The conversation I had with the student was not regarding myself.'

He sees now that Joly must have thought it was to begin with, which is also stupid.