I didn’t feel like waiting until Sunday since Caroline was a saint and got this back to me.  Hilton considers wheelchair locks and friendship, Davey considers murder.

---

Hilton was trying to help
Porky Johnson (what a name, the poor child, but then his own name was Hilton
Cubbit, so) weed the herbs.  The boy was
good natured after a fashion, the sort of boy-man who would have not been out
of place in London a century ago.  He was
seventeen and built like a cow shed, not one for decorum, and struggling to
identify the difference between cilantro and weeds.

The boy thought slow and
hit fast, most recently in defense of Kitty Patel who had her tomatoes
trampled.  There had to be a way talk to
the boy about the bludgeoning he’d delivered, but Hilton had no idea how to
even start the conversation.  (Being an
adult was hard, he hardly had his own life in order, never mind trying to
advise sad children on how to make good choices.)

“Don’t know,” Porky was
saying.  “Don’t think Kitty and me would
be good friends.  Not much to me, is
there.  Bit boring is all.”

“You can do boring,”
Hilton tried.  He caught someone in his
periphery in the way only someone in the midst of an awkward conversation could.  “Oh,” he said.  “It looks like we have a visitor.”

The sound of Porky’s
swallow sloshed around in his throat.
“I’ll be off then,” he said too fast, his face gone a bit too tight, but
before Hilton could say something he’d fled.

A pair of sleek brown shoes
came into view, neatly pressed slacks, pale fidgeting hands tight around a
bunch of flowers.  He’d know that way of
actually looking like an adult anywhere.
(It was the crime of the century, the man always looked like he’d stepped
out of costuming for some big budget film with a great soundtrack.)  Davey looked down at him and then away, sun
flashing off the man’s clunky dark rimmed glasses.  

“Davey.”  Hilton smiled as he eased his way up and back
onto his wheel chair.  (He still had a
hard time just climbing into his chair from the ground and trusting he
remembered to use the wheelchair lock.)  He’d
got mud on it again, but that was what the wash was for he supposed.  Wouldn’t be the first time.  Since Porky had wandered off he might as well
bring Davey to the gazebo.  He could use
a break anyway.

“Sorry,” Davey said, voice soft and even.  His pale hands twitched, holding the bunch of
flowers he’d brought closer to his chest.
The lower half of his face hidden behind branches and blossoms.  “Didn’t mean to scare him off.”

“It’s fine.”
Hilton curved forward and down between the rows, crossing over his wheel
tracks from before.  Davey fell into pace
with him with a smooth pivot, just far enough away Hilton’s elbow didn’t catch
the man in the leg when he pushed his wheels.
“I think he was trying to avoid the conversation anyway.  Those are interesting.”   He
nodded at the conglomeration of flowers.
Davey’s pale hands shifted on the canvas and plastic so they rustled
like the boughs of trees.  Like autumn.

Davey shuffled next to
him.  “I thought something agricultural
would be thematic.  I think the white one’s
lemon blossom, there’s apple in there somewhere too.  I don’t know.  Flowerkats, things.  A mojo flower and a day dayli.”

Hilton laughed, Davey
smiled, shrugged.  The lines on the back
of his suit so well cut the motion looked liquid, hot butter on toast
smooth.  Who was Davey’s tailor?  Maybe Hilton should ask.  Elsie always looked like herself, which was to
say a goddess, and the girls followed suit.
Hilton just followed her around trying not to look too big for the room
he was in.

But he needed to focus on
Davey right now (his mother always called it woolgathering), Davey who’d driven
out to meet him from London.  How long
did that drive even take?

“They’re nice, Elsie will
love them.”

Davey shrugged again, “They’re
just some kind of flowers.  I just told
the florist what I wanted.”

“Don’t be too modest, you
were thoughtful.”  Hilton came to a hard
stop, the earth soft under his wheels.
“David.”

Momentum pulled Davey a
few steps ahead of him.  Arms hanging at
his side, Davey stood still.  The flowers
looked fresh and dewy, purple, white, and yellow.  Had he seen Davey’s face today?

“Davey.”  He bit at his tongue, held it still for a
moment between his teeth.  “Davey, can
you look at me, please?”

David was such a
heartbreakingly gentle man, so kind, it made Hilton want to wrap him in cotton
wool sometimes.  The man didn’t resist
his request, of course he didn’t.

It hurt a bit to think of the kind man
wandering around the world Hilton had had to learn could be awful unkind
sometimes.  Now he had a good look at the
man, Davey looked hungry, harried, the dark circles under his eyes looked
applied with thumbs full of stage paint.

“What’s brought you to
our door?  You’re welcome always and for
whatever reason.  Just.”  He hated this, he felt all giant limbs and
hands and mouth.  At least when he could
walk he could stand eye to eye with the man, give him a hug.

Davey tucked his chin
down, lips thin and tucked in the way Johnny’s did.  Like his father had.   It was a learned behavior, something that
Davey had absorbed through exposure.  An
expression he thought through between arranging his face.

What was he supposed to
say?  He should say something kind and
good, like Davey was, so the man would know how much of a friend the man had
been to Hilton.  How gentle and
loving.  Something so the man would know
how much Hilton cherished their friendship and wanted him to be happy.

“I miss my dad,” Davey
said first.

It felt like the first
step in some sort of dance.

Hilton breathed out.  His hands gripped the wheels of his chair, he
felt the handrim press against the bones of his hand.  He’d become very aware of his bones since
he’d been shot.

“I was there when my dad
died, I saw him jump.  I saw his
body.  This shape that fell to fast.  Just this falling stone and too much blood.”  David swayed, his center of gravity drifting
between the balls of his feet and his heels.
Hilton stared at the center of his chest, watched his breathing.  “I was there.”

“Oh, Davey,” Hilton
breathed out, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes.  He let out a little distressed hiccup,
refocused on Davey.  He needed to move
beyond his own horror, he needed to listen.
To be here in the conversation.  It wasn’t about him, it was about his friend.

“I’m in charge now.  In charge of being kind, in charge of being
enough.”

Hilton finally looked at
his friend’s face, how blank it was, like a doll’s.  Not like a doll’s, like the pearl handle of a
straight razor.  He reached out a large
hand, hard and deft from all the PT.  

David gripped his hand
like a life line, skin pale against his.
Like the flesh of some nocturnal thing.
Like the appearance of a ghost.
He didn’t like his friend to look so transparent.  Maybe Hilton should take him further up into
Cheshire.  Cheshire where everything was
lovely and green and less like a ghost.
That’s what he wanted, an opaque Cheshire.   Elsie had been hinting about a holiday
anyway.  They could go to the shore.  Take their time looking from sea to sky, eat
so much terrible food they died in a marmite mausoleum.

But that was just running
away, Hilton looked at their hands, looked at Davey’s pale face.  You couldn’t run away from things like this,
they were always faster.  Hilton had had
to learn that too.   “What happened to
make you so angry then?”

Hilton tried to be calm,
not scared.  To be what he needed to be.

“Mycroft gave my brother
a panic attack, an existential crisis.
He hurt my brother to prove a point, and I was told not to interfere.”

Humming, Hilton gripped
Davey’s hand tight.

“I want to kill him.  I want to take my time, I want to cut him to
pieces.”  

That made something in
the sorrowful dove of Hilton’s heart startle and want to fly away.  He jerked, his hand tightening around
Davey’s.  For a moment he didn’t
understand, didn’t want to understand.
Davey’s hand tightened around his, his eyes tinged with desperation.  Hilton couldn’t help himself.  Before Elsie had recovered and after the
nurse had gone home for the day, it had been Davey who carried Hilton to his
chair, who helped him with a lot of things that– that paralysis meant he needed
help with.  

Having choked that out,
Davey turned his head, pressed his free hand to his mouth.  Seemed to put a padlock on himself.

Davey had helped Hilton
because the man was good and he cared about Hilton.  It was just expected that Hilton would take
care of himself, Davey expected that because he cared about him.  So Hilton had.  Davey talked about PT and medication and
gardening again like they were whens.
Like if didn’t exist.  Davey had
believed and so Hilton had done it. That was the type of friend Hilton had,
that was the type of friend Hilton should strive to be.  A man worthy of that belief.

He held onto Davey’s hand
even tighter.

“Please, please
Hilton.  You’re a good man.  You’re a real good man.  Tell me something.  Tell me anything to make me not break my
exile.  To make me not break the
Watson-Holmes treaty.”

How was he supposed to do
that?  How was he supposed to do anything
like that?

“I’m trying to be good
too.  Hilton, please.  Please.
I don’t want to disappoint you.”  His
eyes flashed behind his glasses, his hand trembled in Hilton’s.

“Why must you kill him?”
Hilton asked, the words like poison in his mouth, like venom to be spat out.  His words sounded distant, stilted.  Strange, who talked like that?

“So he can’t hurt Baby
Brother ever again.  So no one will hurt
us.”

“Hurt him like it would
hurt Johnny to have a brother who took the choice away from him?  More than it would hurt Johnny to have
someone he loved treat him like someone too weak to stand up for himself.  Even more than it would hurt him to have a murderer
for a brother?”  Hilton sat up
straighter, pressing himself up higher with his elbows and upper back.  He felt terrible, he felt like a holy
horror.  Separate and unmerciful.  He shook, scared of Davey and of the way
sweet Davey had told him the truth when he said he wanted to kill Mycroft
Holmes.

Davey sort of crumpled
down to his knees.

He curled forward until
he could hide his face in the space between Hilton’s leg and the side of his
chair, back hunched like an animal.

He held onto Hilton with
a trembling hand.

“David,” Hilton said,
deep breathing through the alarm.  “Tell
me what to do.”

The sounds David made
were not the sounds Hilton had ever heard a human being make.  They were sounds scored by teeth, framed by
savagery, sharpened and shining like the flash of something’s eyes in the
night.  Hilton bowed his body over
David’s, trying to protect him.  His
pressed the breadth of his palm over the bare space of his neck, held his face close.

“David, David.  You must be good.  You can hide here with me as long as you need
to, but you must be good and not try to hurt Mycroft.”

David trembled.  His body melted like Byrony, Hilton’s sweet
baby girl did, going soft and all dead weight.
Hilton combed his fingers through his hair, waited.  Byrony seemed to like it anyway.  He looked at the way David was trying to disconnect
from everything.  “Here, Davey.  Hand me the flowers, I’ll put them to the
side.”  This was so far out of his realm
of anything he was comfortable with he had to hold onto anything he could.  Manners and politeness in the face of some
sort of breakdown.  And doing the whole
moral debate with flowers in play while they sat seemed like a bad idea.  “They’re lovely, I want to keep them safe.”

He looked around himself
for anything, he couldn’t just set it down on the ground.  There was one of his giant just washed off
boots set to the side to dry that would work.
Elsie always insisted on a heavy boot so he didn’t have his feet banged
without realizing it.

“I, um.”  He laughed, the sound strained and thin,
dropping the flowers in the boot.  “That
should be a new thing.  Boots and blossoms,
has a ring to it.”  Now Davey’s hands
were free they pulled back from Hilton, tucking into his lap.

They say like that for
ages, Davey sitting on the ground with his face against Hilton’s leg and Hilton
trying not to have an emotional breakdown.

He always told the
children to put themselves in the other person’s shoes and so Hilton tried his
best to do that.  Tried to think about
seeing his father die, and then suddenly finding himself head of household, of
having little brothers to take care of that were as stubborn and determined as
Johnny and Roost.  He genuinely tried to
think around the fact Davey had seen his
father die.  Leaning forward, Hilton
curled over Davey, trying to protect him from what had already happened.  Davey was so brave, and so good, and so
sad.  It broke his heart to think of the
man unhappy, to think of him hurting.
There he was thinking about himself again, he needed to be wise for
Davey.  Try to be wise.  No one had ever accused him of it before.

“Let it go Davey, please
just let it go.  Mycroft may have done
something wrong to prove a point, but you’re better than him, better than
that.  You don’t have to do something
wrong to prove a point back.”

“You’re crying,” Davey
said, looking up at him.

“Of course I’m crying,”
Hilton sniffed.  “You’re unhappy.  I want to help you, but I can’t.  I want you to be happy.  A series of terrible things happened and you
feel like you have to bear the brunt of…
of… of the whole world all over again.
You’re my very best mate, Davey.
You’ve always been there to support me and help me be a better
person.  I just wish I was better at this
sort of thing.”

“You’re… you’re okay,”
Davey sighed out, looking up at Hilton with a strange sort of fascination.  “There, there.  Don’t cry.”

“I’ll cry if I want to!”
Hilton grumped back.  “Promise me you
won’t do anything that might get you in trouble.  I want you to be safe.  Besides if you murder Mycroft you’ll have to
call me to help you hide the body and I’m terrible with corpses.  I’d faint right out of my chair.  They’d find my wheel tracks and I’d be
implicated, you’d have to be my cell mate and my awful snoring would keep you
up.”

“You snore?  But Elsie’s such a light sleeper, isn’t
she?  I thought that was why she never
slept after the twins were born, they’d roll over and she’d wake up.”

“Oh, I’d never snore next
to Elsie.”

Davey laughed.  He wished the sound was a little less wet and
a little happier.  The man had reason to
be upset though, Hilton couldn’t try to take that from him.  

“Do you want to stay the
night?  Elsie and the twins should be
back in two or three hours.”

“No.  I’d love to.
There’s going to have to be an accounting in my family, and I have to be
there.”

“Okay,” Hilton said.  “How can I help you now other than reminding
you not to murder someone?”

“Remember that old folly
I had fixed up for you about six years ago for your birthday?  The one your however great grandfather
built?”

“Uh, yeah.  The old tower.  The foundation was faulty and it was about to
fall down.”

“Yeah,” Davey said and
ducked his head.  “I’m going to have to
blow part of it up.”