Chapter Text
Joseph carefully breathed through his mouth, hyper sensitive to the near-overpowering smell of blood in the air as he tended to the doctor slumped against the wall while Sebastian examined the monitors. He looked up when he heard his partner utter a curse. There was a flutter and then someone in a tattered white coat was between him and Sebastian.
“Seb!” Joseph called out, standing, but his partner was already crumpling to whatever the person had done to him. He reached for his gun as the man turned around. He was horribly scarred, burns most likely, but his eyes, his piercing, deadly eyes froze Joseph’s hand.
“Seb?” The man in tattered white echoed in a gravelly voice, “Alright, let’s find out what else you know.” A blink later the man was mere inches from him, reaching out a hand.
“I hope you’re happy,” Sebastian growled, advancing on him until he was backed against a table. “I’ve been suspended during the investigation with Internal Affairs.”
“Of course I’m not happy, Sebastian,” Joseph fired back while his heart thudded heavily in his chest and his stomach felt like it was caught in barbed wire, “but that’s why I filed the report. You’re drinking yourself to death.”
“It’s not affecting my work, so what I do on my own time is my own business.”
It took all of his strength, but Joseph placed his hands against Sebastian’s chest, shoving him away. “Seb, I’m not worried about your work, I’m worried about you. You’ve barely ever been sober since Lily died, and you won’t talk to anyone. You’ve become more reckless than ever. You could get killed! What else was I supposed to do?” He wanted to hit his partner, swear at him, shake some sense into him, but nothing he’d tried so far had worked, and Myra was too buried in her work to help, avoiding their daughter’s death in her own way.
He couldn’t watch them fall apart.
Sebastian froze in shock. No, he wasn’t moving at all. He wasn’t breathing, just standing there, features twisted in anger.
“What a sad tale.” Joseph heard a deep, rottenly sweet voice from behind him. He spun around to see a man in a tattered white coat and pants, skin burned, eyes hard, lips quirked in a mocking smile.
“Who-”
The man’s hard, grating voice rolled right over the rest of his question, “Betrayal. I can use that.” The man breached the distance between them in an impossible flickering of steps, and then disappeared.
Joseph instantly felt nauseous and started coughing. The barbed wire that had tortured his stomach reached up with snagging tendrils around his heart, crawled up his throat, and his coughing splattered blood on the ground.
But even as he felt horrible, a horrific anger was welling in him – why was Sebastian always blaming him for everything, always tearing him down when all he was trying to do was help? Again and again he was yelled at, insulted, even while he wrangled the drunkard out of a bar and into his own car; he couldn’t get the smell of vomit out of it. Nearly every night it was a fight to get him into bed because Myra was nowhere to be found. Not once had Sebastian thanked him for the consideration, for the help. No, it was fine, he wasn’t in it for the gratification, why did he keep doing it, because he’s hurting, all Seb really wanted was to follow after his dead daughter.
Maybe he should. He was a burden on everyone.
Joseph pulled his gun from its holster, no no no no no, three shots to the chest and Sebastian fell backwards with a dull thud, no no no. There was sharp, bubbling laughter that wasn’t quite his as he stood over his partner. The man was gasping for air, blood staining his lips, eyes wide and startled. Of course the great detective wouldn’t see this coming, wouldn’t think someone would get fed up with him.
Joseph shot him in the head.
And then screamed, pressing his hands against his head. “No no no no no!” He dropped to his knees, irrationally trying to plug up the holes he had created in his partner. “Seb! Seb oh god, why did I-”
Sebastian was holding his shoulders. Joseph was damp and cold from a slimy liquid coating the lower half of his body.
“Thank god you’re ok,” Sebastian said, rushing him into a sitting position.
“I don’t know what I am,” Joseph responded, trying to keep his voice even over what he’d just done, so glad that it had just been a nightmare. Even so, he was ashamed of the vicious thoughts that had lead to him shooting his partner and wondered if they’d always been there. He looked up at Sebastian, “but it’s definitely not ok.” Joseph glanced around the room, attention catching on the machine with the upended tub awkwardly in the center of the room. “You brought me here?”
A pain stabbed through his chest and then up into his brain. He grabbed the side of his head trying to calm it and bit back the scream that reverberated in his thoughts. After a couple seconds where he thought he might pass out, the sound subsided like a receding tide. “Jesus. What happened? My head feels like… like…” The tinny sound was a light pressure against his eardrums. “Can you hear that?”
“We need to get out of here,” Sebastian responded quickly, starting to pull him up, “Can you move?”
“Yeah.” Joseph took a step with his partner’s help, but the second Sebastian let go a wave of dizziness shoved him back down to his knees. He gasped, trying to breathe around coughs that suddenly rattled his chest.
“Joseph!” Sebastian steadied him again, patiently rubbed his back, and the coughing quickly eased up.
Joseph got back to his feet with more success. “I’ve still got a little fight left in me,” he remarked, and he wasn’t sure if it was out of surprise, or to assure Sebastian that he was ok. He started coughing again, but it was much lighter.
“Let’s get out of here fast,” Sebastian said, striding purposefully towards the door.
Joseph followed, trying not to stagger. He squelched as he moved after Sebastian, dripping goo onto the floor. Thankfully the substance was quickly evaporating and he was mostly dry by the time he stumbled through the door after Sebastian.
Joseph tried to put the horrible dream of him shooting his partner out of his mind as they heard the sounds of garbled moaning up ahead.