Work Text:
Watson is hot and tired and sick of the dust that seems to get into everything, the perpetual sand in his boots, the reek of disinfectant and the metallic tang of blood beneath that that he's sure he can still smell even though the source has long been washed away, and when he closes his eyes he can still see the face of that young private, ashen and terrified. He can still hear him calling for his mother even though his mother is more than three thousand miles away. The kid will make it back to her, Watson is sure – once he's stabilised further he's being flown out of the country, back to his homeland. But pieces of the poor kid will remain in Afghanistan, blood seeped into its soil, fragments of bone scattered into the dirt from his shattered legs, and Watson isn't even really sure what this is all for. Is any of this really going to make a difference, is it really going to help anyone in the long run? But he must do his duty regardless, keep trying to put people back together as best he can, or at least, he has to give them a fighting chance to get taken home where someone with more specialised skills than he possesses can try to piece them back together, like Humpty Dumpty. This thought causes him to emit a short, sharp, rather bitter laugh, just before there's a knock on the door.
It's his downtime but he's in no mood to be sociable and it can't be anything urgent, surely, given the lack of forcefulness in the knock. He is determined to ignore it, until it comes again, followed by a voice.
“I know you're in there, Doc.”
Moran. Damn him.
He stands up and goes to open the door, finding Moran standing there, one hand tucked behind his back and looking insouciant as always, blue eyes glittering with amusement.
“Well?” Moran says. “Ain't you gonna invite me in?”
“What do you want?” Watson asks, rubbing his face, wincing slightly at the stubble he feels on his chin. It's probably fairly obvious what the younger man is after though. Moran's promiscuity and seeming indifference towards the gender of his partners is about the biggest open secret on the base, and he, damned fool that he must be, seems to be just one of the most recent in a long line of conquests.
“Came to wish you a happy birthday, didn't I.” Moran grins at him as he somehow gently but very firmly insinuates himself into Watson's quarters, and that is... unexpected, the reason he gives.
“I... what?” Watson says, closing the door behind Moran. He had assumed everyone had forgotten, even what little family he has left in the world, and he doesn't even remember telling Moran when his birthday is. He wasn't convinced that Moran even likes him very much, despite the times he has come to Watson to get himself patched up after engaging in one form or another of behaviour not really becoming of an officer. Or, well, despite the sex.
“Happy birthday.” Moran draws his left arm out from behind his back, holding up... a cupcake, covered in a tall spiral of pink frosting and sugar sprinkles, with a single striped birthday candle stuck in its top. With his right hand he produces a battered silver cigarette lighter and lights the candle. “Make a wish, Doctor,” he says, grinning as he holds the cake out to Watson.
Watson laughs, amused, even a little delighted despite his weariness. He leans forward and blows out the candle, his eyes fixed on Moran's.
“What did you wish for?” Moran asks.
“If I tell you it won't come true.” Watson's gaze drops slightly to rest on Moran's lips.
“Yeah, well.” Moran is still grinning as he holds the cake out to Watson. “That's for you.”
“Thank you.”
-
“Do you ever think about the future?” he'd made the mistake of once asking the man who is the epitome of living in the moment, while idly tracing patterns over the back of Moran's hand with his fingertips. Perhaps that air of post-coital almost-peace had got to him. Or maybe it was just the heat, making him lazy and incautious and burning away the filter between his brain and his mouth.
“Don't know about you but I really need to take a shower,” Moran had responded, glancing back at Watson over his shoulder.
“I don't mean in the next few minutes, I mean... the future after the army.” Watson rolled off him to lie beside him.
Moran had just shrugged and said, “What future?” He truly seemed unable to imagine any life beyond the army, despite constantly giving off the impression he didn't really want to be there. A moment later he'd added, in a manner which did nothing to reveal whether he was joking or not, “They'll probably just ship me home in a box draped in a flag.”
This somewhat pessimistic view of things might have shocked others, but not Watson, who knew all too well how abruptly life could be cut short.
“Which flag?” he couldn't help but ask. Sebastian Moran did not seem to be a man prone to any feelings of patriotism.
“The bisexual one probably,” Moran had answered, and laughed.
-
“How'd you know it's my birthday?” Watson asks now, accepting the cake.
“Looked it up.” Moran wanders over to the window and peers out before turning back to face Watson. “Got you a present too. Nothing much.” He slips his hand into his pocket and pulls out a small, square package, wrapped in tissue paper.
“You didn't need to get me a present.”
“Told you, it's nothing much.”
Watson puts his cupcake down on the table and takes the proffered gift. “Thank you,” he says. He sits down to unwrap it, pulling open the paper. Nestled within he finds a circular amulet, blue glass with a pale blue eye design on it, on a braided cord.
“Cheshm nazar,” Moran says.
Watson holds the amulet up on its cord, the light shining through the translucent blue glass of the background. He chuckles. “Protection against the evil eye? You don't believe in that, surely?”
Moran grins. “Maybe you can't trust some of those people with blue eyes.” He winks before he slips over to sit beside Watson. “You could hang it up in here.”
“Would that keep you away?”
“Nah.”
“Well.” Watson smiles and looks at the amulet again, dangling it from his finger. “That's good.”
-
“What about you then?” Moran had asked, later.
“What about me?”
“You already planning your future post-army?” This asked through a haze of cigarette smoke, softening the intensity of Moran's pale eyes even as he sat watching Watson.
“Not exactly. Just... thinking about it.”
Moran took another draw on his cigarette and Watson stared at its glowing end in the settling gloom. “You're not wanting to stick around in the army?” Moran asked.
“Not forever. Maybe I'll want to...” Watson paused and pulled his gaze away from Moran's cigarette, his long fingers holding it, his lips closed around it. “Settle down, with someone.”
Moran held the cigarette aloft momentarily, tilting his head slightly, doglike. “A wife?”
“Not necessarily a wife, just...” Watson shrugged. “Someone.” His gaze had come back unwittingly to rest on Moran's face again – the face of a man who Watson knew the week before was having sex with one of the female medics and only two days earlier was rumoured to be screwing a Danish soldier. Moran slept around – this was the simple truth of the matter, and he was adept at charming people, seducing them, not even behaving unkindly ever, but always there seemed something remote about him, something distant, something that seemed a little like looking out into the desert and seeing nothing but the stars above, where trying to achieve any real closeness to him felt like trying to grasp at those stars with his bare hands. The man had barricades within him that Watson had no real idea how to tear down but then, deployment in Afghanistan is no place to form deep, profound attachments to anyone, is it. Is it?
And now here Moran is in Watson's quarters, mere inches away, with a birthday cupcake and an amulet – superstitious nonsense, Watson thinks, but a pretty thing and an oddly apt gift.
“You always manage to surprise me,” he says.
“Yeah?” Moran leans forward and presses his mouth to Watson's.
“Mm,” Watson says in agreement, kissing him back. “You do.”
“Is that a good thing?” There's something oddly earnest about the way Moran says this, almost desperate for affirmation that he's done right.
Watson lays the amulet down on the table and puts his hand to Moran's face, cupping his jaw, then running his thumb along the younger man's cheekbone. “Yeah,” he says, closing his eyes and moving to kiss Moran again. “That's a good thing.”
He couldn't tell him what he wished for, not really at all because of superstition, more because he's sure Moran would only scoff at him for thinking such things. Because the thing he immediately thought of when Moran told him to make a wish, when he blew out the candle was I wish for you to be safe.