Although the definite context was lost amongst the noise in Johann's head, the tone and the gentle touch were understood. The linguist's blue lips curled into a smile beneath the heavily-lidded eyes. He would never have wanted Balfour to see him in such a state. His cheeks were streaked with salty tears, blue eyes puffy and red. He didn't speak, but tossed and turned every now and then, pulling against his arm restraints less frequently as Balfour's caress to the back of his hand provided a simple but effective comfort. More than enough distraction while Balfour read the log.

The noise of Arc returning eventually brought his eyes open fully, muttering about maps and topography, and mumbling about Dutch politics beneath their conversation. He made to gesture with his hands, frustrated by being held again. He'd forget in between times, not sure where he was or what was going on, like a series of rapid dreams. He had no concept of time, or whether he was asleep or awake. It was terribly disorientating.

As they discussed the charms he let out a pained moan, trying to curl in on himself as his stomach fought the charm, wanting to be sick, but unable to.
"I can't - I can't." He spoke aloud suddenly. "Augh, don't hold me, don't, don't, don't." His face screwed up in pain, and he panted in ragged breaths. "Balfour! Arc!" He called more urgently, and threw his weight in Balfour's direction, despite being pinned down.

This was a bad idea.

Balfour had gone through the log without lingering on pages at first, catching details and hours that he could match with his own recollections. But it was hard not to pause on particular pages, not to consider the dwindling numbers of how little Johann had been sleeping all this time. The potions. He considered more recent days as his fingers laced with the hand he'd been holding, and he suddenly sensed a kind of homesickness for his lover's company.

It was strange to feel out of place at the hospital, considering how much time he usually spent on the first floor.

Arcturus' return broke the tension of building thoughts and Balfour shut the book smoothly as he turned his attention to the matters at hand - it was too much to take in all at once, he couldn't look at the entries anymore. Reading them somehow felt like too great an intrusion of privacy, though at least now he knew that Camille was involved. A comforting factor in the confusion of half lies and morbid truths.

"Twenty-four hours." Balfour repeated in confirmation, glancing away to look at Johann's face - sallower than usual in its exhaustion and tears. The threat of death receded slightly from mind in the light of Arc's informed opinion; it was replaced by more practical concerns. What time was it, even?

Did it matter? He couldn't leave him like this even if he wanted to. "I know the charms. I'll stay," his gaze slid back to the Healer with a soft glimmer of alertness behind the tired expression. "Thanks for taking care of him, Arcturus. Really." Balfour placed the log on the bedside table, indicating thanks for what the other man had been doing over the past few weeks rather than just this night.

Their last meeting was clear in memory and he could still recall pieces of the exchange. He'd mentioned that Arc had meant a lot to Johann - and vice versa. Balfour could see that concretely now: not in mannerisms but the efficiency of action. A distant thought wondered if this evening's troubles would have been any different if Joh had woken up sick next to the Healer instead of him.

Not a persistent thought, however, and Balfour was abruptly hauled away from such suppositions by the tortured moaning of their common link. He turned towards his partner, hand going straight to the back of Johann's long neck to hold him up against the restraints even as he anticipated the shift of weight.

The rest of the ward dissolved from Balfour's concern, and he summoned the bucket before quickly remembering the vomit inducing charm. Everything from stance to countenance was focused on Johann - animated by the knowledge that this wasn't going to be an easy night.


---

It wasn't for another two to three hours before Johann's bout of sick and thrashing calmed down some. In the background throughout the graveyard shift, Healers came and went about their regular business. Balfour only saw them in the periphery - flowing lime green robes moving swiftly in a perplexing dance of patience and impatience. On occasion Arcturus would make an appearance to check on them. Johann wasn't the only victim of glowing vomit, amongst other symptoms of incoming patients.

As he stored the bucket away Balfour spared some attention to looked around for the closest wall clock. They would be encroaching on dawn quite soon. Sunday morning. Not the morning he'd been expecting, lazing decadently in the growing light next to the wizard he lo cared for.

Balfour sat back on the edge of the bed, reassuringly rubbing Johann's chest through the thin hospital gown. Worry and exhaustion creeped in beneath his eyes, and the slant of his shoulders dipped wearily at the weight of unfaced thoughts.

"Thanks for taking care of him, Arcturus. Really."

Not enough. Not good enough. I haven't done enough. But Arcturus smiled, perhaps a little wanly due to how tired he was, despite his heavy heart - at least someone said something. It had been a long day full of worry, dread and despair. Never mind that it was Balfour, a man that he sometimes felt like avoiding even though it had not been his fault for what happened after.

But he had very little time - and reason - to keep smiling. Johann's violent action startled him; Balfour's immediate reaction had him stepping back to watch. He said nothing the entire time otherwise, only nodding when the man proved himself capable of dealing with this. As much as he wanted to stay, he had other things to do on his plate - a teetering pile of things threatening to topple onto him at any given moment.


For the next two hours Arcturus was busy with all the other patients. Timmy Dale he could do nothing else for except administer potions he'd figured could only help the boy. It was the same all around the ward set aside for these patients, and by the time the clock's hands were ticking their way to an hour close to sunrise he was just about ready to admit he knew nothing was going on.

At least they'd found something. The sleeping potion that he'd given the healers-in-training had matched one ingredient found in the hospital sedatives - hellebore. Now it was only trying to find out why this variant of hellebore was the culprit. Arcturus had to help with calculations of Golpalott's Third Law in a light-headed state due to lack of sleep; by the time he was done he felt giddy and possibly banging his head on a wall, though the little voice in his head sternly told him not to do the latter, and drink some water instead.

This was not as easy as he'd hoped. Though he still had his own source of Awakening Potion in the form of a little bottle that he tipped for only 1-2 drops per cup of tea he had with it, he couldn't touch the rest of the hospital supplies. Hellebore was also in his anxiety cure, the Draught of Peace. He wasn't about to go poison himself with it.

Back in his office, Arcturus stared at his desk, where he'd still been writing up notes for patients right up to the moment where the emergency had started. It all seemed so far away now. Where had all his alertness and energy gone to? What exactly was he running on right now? Possibly his own guilt, by this time.

The healer sat down in his chair, burying his face in his hands. His colleagues hadn't been too emotionally composed either, but they were all doing a good job of holding themselves up in this time. They'd made sure to ask each other if everyone was all right. Arcturus had lied. He wasn't. Watching people transport the shrouded bodies down to the mortuary had been more than enough. He'd run back here to hide. This was not his job. He'd sworn to help others. This wasn't helping. It was tearing him apart. He laid his head on the desk and sighed.

Something made him start awake. His face was sticking to the wood; as he pulled himself upright, a few pages fell off his face. He unstuck the last one and looked at the clock on the wall in his office. What had happened? His tongue felt like he'd pickled it in glue. The light filtering in under his door flickered and wavered as shadows of feet went past. Had it all been just a bad dream? No, that was impossible, he remembered the glowing vomit vividly, too vividly to be a dream. What time was it?

He looked up at the clock on the wall. He'd been here an hour. His eyeballs felt like they had been salted, and then boiled in hot sand. Arcturus got to his feet, unsteady from stiffness - he'd been in the same position for too long - and went to wash his face. He still felt uncomfortably sticky and tired. In the mirror, he'd developed dark shadows under sunken eyes. Great.

Stepping outside the office yielded an immediate answer - it was still not over. Arcturus grabbed a passing colleague and got more information. More people had died. His heart dropped into a stone-cold abyss. He ran off to check on Timmy Dale, who somehow was still asleep and not dead much to his relief. But...

Balfour was still watching over Johann. Arcturus was impressed, and at the same time felt a little pang of jealousy. Maybe, oh maybe, if he'd stayed in England, kept his wits about him, communicated...maybe Johann wouldn't have become a victim of this as well.

He approached Balfour, making sure his appearance was known. The floor had not seen the healer for an hour, though his colleagues had known where he was due to someone finding out what he was doing. At least they looked out for each other, made sure that someone hadn't gone to curl up in the basement. "How is he, Mr Spectre?" he said. "You should rest. I can check up on him and make sure he's fine, at least for now, and then we can decide what else to do from there."

It was a small mercy that the delirium meant he had a sketchy hold on what was going on for the next few hours. A good proportion of it was spent with his head behind a floating orange bucket filling steadily with bright blue glowing spew. Throughout it all, there was a steady, comforting pressure from Balfour's hands. His sides ached, his stomach was on fire and every little movement was agony - the reflex action of trying to bring up bile was blinding in pain. When he could gasp breath, pulling at where his hands were held, trying to grasp his sides to roll into a ball, he would cry pitifully. The charms gave him respite for a little between bouts.

Eventually, and of it's own course, the vomiting stopped. His body was exhausted, and his head lolled forward, face creased into an agonised frown. Everything burned, his tongue, his lips, the roof of his mouth and his throat felt like razors. It wasn't sleeping potion but molten rock that had gone through him, burned and blistering. He had run out of tears, mind was somewhere locked in argument with colleagues who were not there, lips moving but no sound audible. Arguing over protocol, or was it the bill? What tiny part of his conscious mind remained was wearily waving a white flag.

Balfour's hand to his chest was enough weight to let him drop back onto the pillows beneath, though they were damp with perspiration, his black curls matted from his erratic movements. His eyelids dropped, not asleep, his breathing far too quick, but for now, quiet enough as conversation began again nearby. The tempest had passed.

At the exchange between Balfour continued, fragments of their conversation were reassembled by Johann's mind, which fired connections in all the wrong directions.
"Bottomless." Johann suddenly spoke, eyes still closed. Despite the ragged edge to the tone, it was spoken like he was about to give a definition, in a volume above the conversational tone of Balfour and Arcturus conferring quietly at his bedside. At once his blue eyes sprang open, wide like he was experiencing some fantastic epiphany.

"Boundless, unending, vast, immeasurable, infinite,

august, resplendent cantaloupe.
THE BROILING - THE BLISTERING - THE SEARING
TOPPLING,
THE FEATHERED CREATURES OF EVENTIDE

It had been a small surprise to notice Arcturus approaching the bed - he hadn't heard from him for over an hour and assumed that the Healer had been called away to more urgent cases. Balfour turned to him, leaving a hand to rest against Johann's collarbone in one of the quieter moments.

"Mr Spectre? You're making me feel old, Arcturus. The glowing sick has stopped for now." He smiled wearily but in good humour as his gaze tracked the other man's formal body language. Neither of them appeared well-rested. "I should go... sort out my hours, if I want to have time to come back when he's coherent."

There were things to be done - minor little details he could turn his focus to, one at a time, comfortable distractions from wondering about what he'd done wrong not to be confided in. Johann would need a change of clothes. And Mrs Lanningham would need to be informed if he was taking a couple of days off to make sure his partner was alright. Was there time to write to Alex and Knox? Tell them to be wary of the potions they took.

"If you could owl me if anything worse happens before then, I'd appreciate it." He was about to rise from the bed, head churning with these notions of activity, when Johann's mumbling rose abruptly in volume.

Balfour looked to him with a furrowed brow, and then with a sense of alarm as the soldered words tumbled out in an upwards dive of greater vehemence. It was like watching a possession. "Johann!" He pressed down on the wizard's chest to pin him down firmly. ""Johann!"

There was no use, he registered, before he could try calling him to his senses for the third time. Balfour gripped his wand anxiously - and he felt a bite of irritation at the back of his mind. The yelling was anathema to the tired confusion of his thoughts, seemed to pull at the anger he knew he'd feel properly if faced.

Hysterical, delirious patients in the other beds began to scream back. A chain of siren dominos, their howling voices setting off even more down the ward. He increased his pressure on Johann and aimed precisely at the head of curls, jaw taut with the disharmony of knocking out someone you cared about...

THE FEATHERED CREATURES OF EVENTIDE

... for their own good, of course. Balfour narrowed his gaze sharply and flicked the wand - red light of the stunning charm catching Johann right in the side of his head, cutting off the loud exclamations. His voiced dropped from the cloud of screams it had inspired. Balfour released him, standing back while he absently ran a hand through the curls.

"That ought to make it easier for you." He said without looking at Arcturus - a wry hint of bitterness in his manner. "I think I shall take my leave now." Balfour leaned down to press a chaste kiss to his lover's forehead, and then turned to offer the other man his hand. It was done as a polite gesture, an afterthought of the tiredness. "I'm sorry we had to meet again like this. You've been very kind."

Catching sight of Balfour laying a hand on Johann, Arcturus firmly positioned his eyes to only focus on Balfour. This was not the time. His cynically characteristic part of himself was still sluggishly stirring, but he wasn't going to have it speak for him, or twist his feelings further. Physically he was at least somewhat functioning after one hour's sleep, but he didn't think his mental faculties could withstand any sort of emotional onslaught right now.

"I'll send you the information you need, not a problem," he replied. "Just need an address--" At that moment Johann's raised volume cut him off; he took a step back in alarm, his mind still assembling some form of coherent response that wasn't about freezing his patient like he'd done before, especially not in front of Balfou--

The rest of the ward's occupants raised their own cacophony in response. Seeing Balfour was fine on his own, Arcturus signalled frantically to his harried colleagues to quiet them down immediately. He was not one for shouting, and had a suspicion that if he'd yelled he'd just be drowned out by the much louder patients. Surprisingly energetic for people sick with delirium and fever. Maybe the comatose patients would awake and there would be no more worrying if they were going to die in their sleep, suggested the sleepy voice in his head, somewhat less cynical and more reflecting his concerns. Arcturus felt...irrationally jumpy, irritated and worried all at the same time, a mix of emotions like slippery eels in his chest swimming in the puddle that was fatigue.

Johann's passing out didn't reduce the noise as much as he'd have liked it to, but if he'd got what he'd wanted he wouldn't be standing here like a gaunt scarecrow. It took a few minutes for the noise to die down; by the time he could at least hear the person next to him, he managed to catch "...sorry we had to meet again like this. You've been very kind." Hesitantly he looked down at Balfour's outstretched hand, and certain memories flitted across his subconscious, sprinkling little flashbacks to his feelings then.

You don't expect him to know how anxiety-ridden you are. Leave it. Not the time. With the voice, a silent but dominant sensation of forced tranquility shoved the eels aside. You didn't notice the kiss either. Work. Now. And you need to go home and rest, that fatigue is biting your own soul. Move.

He took the hand and shook it, though he couldn't really spare a smile to acknowledge Balfour's words proper. Too tired, and focusing on that dominant peace so he wouldn't have to feel the other emotions. But he felt compelled to say something in return, and though he was not as eloquent as the linguist on the bed beside them, he had to try.

"It's what I do," he said. "I'll send that list to you. I hope you rest well."