sortinghat_logs | Pain is a pesky part of being human.

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Pain is a pesky part of being human.

WHO: Arthur & anyone
TONE: General
RATING: G
WHEN: 27th, after the quidditch match
WHERE: Hospital wing
WHAT: Feel like visiting?
STATUS: Ongoing

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How he'd managed to hold onto the quaffle after taking a speeding bludger to the shoulder wasn't something he really wanted to think about right now. It was probably lucky that the game had ended when it did because he'd been close to falling off his broom with the pain shooting up and down his arm and across his chest.

The nurses had seen to it quickly, of course, and how much it had hurt was just a distant memory now but every now and then he'd touch two fingertips to his shoulder and mentally wince. His clavicle had been pointing out at a very unnatural angle, he recalled, though not quite breaking the skin. Bones shouldn't be able to bend like that, he was sure.

He sighed and plucked at the bedsheets. It would be a few hours before the bone was properly knitted together.

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If there was one thing Dave didn't give a rat's ass about, it was what the Gryffindors and the rest of the school thought of how he would willingly interact in as friendly a fashion as Strider Code would allow with the Slytherins. His older brother was in that House, and like hell was he going to badmouth it or anything of the sort.

Arthur he'd seen a few times around the school, but there was a two year difference between them, so it wasn't often that they ever met. Honestly, Dave mostly just heard about the guy from Dirk. Still, it would be good to check up on him after a blow like that.

So, here he was, walking into the Hospital Wing and casually making his way toward Arthur's bed.

"Yo, Kirkland. How's the shoulder?"

Arthur didn't give much of a rat's ass about House rivalries, either, though he often fell into them out of habit. He was, after all, dating a Gryffindor. When the door opened, he didn't expect the person who walked through to be visiting him, and one eyebrow twitched up in surprise. He shifted, pulling himself up to sit a little straighter and wincing as his shoulder twinged.

Maybe not moving would be a better idea.

"Strider," he muttered by way of greeting, giving a small gesture to the seat next to the bed. "I can say it's been better. Breaking my clavicle was never high on the list of things I'd like to do before I die."

Arthur gave a wry smile.

"No permanent harm done, I think."

Dave sat down when he was given permission for it. Well, more like lounged since any other position on those chairs is uncomfortable. The one thing wizards and muggles have in common, he swears.

"Kinda par for the course when it concerns bludgers heading straight for your shoulder at high speeds," he replied with a dry tone. "With the way Graham was going on, you'd think it just gave him great insult."

The older boy would agree to Dave's evaluation of uncomfortable hospital chairs. He smirked, letting out a soft chuckle, leaning his head back against the pillows propped up behind him. It pulled against the muscles in his shoulder and he hissed - he'd never been the best at following medical advice.

"It wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I joined the team, but I should have expected this kind of thing would happen eventually." He laughed shortly. "Graham.. Merlin, I'm paired up against him in that bloody duelling tournament. That's going to be a laugh."

Once Bruce had heard what had happened to Arthur, he'd immediately set off for the Hospital Wing, ignoring his housemates and their celebrations. He wasn't feeling too good since the full moon was due that night, but he couldn't very well ignore his friend getting hurt.

So there he was, arrived in Arthur's part of the infirmary, pale with bruised looking eyes and looking like he should be in one of the beds himself. He managed a small smile for the Slytherin, offering a bar of chocolate. "You look like you went for a round with Thor and a hammer."

"I'll be fine, it's half healed already. The only thing that might kill me while I'm here is the boredom." Forget his shoulder, Bruce looked like he was about to keel over at any moment. Arthur took the chocolate, leaving it on his lap as he used his good arm to push himself up into a better position.

"... You're not looking so good yourself. Are you ill?"

He unwrapped the chocolate with one hand, breaking a piece off and offering it to his friend. "Looks to me like you're the one who should be in here."

Bruce stared at the chocolate for a moment before figuring it'd be best for him to have a bit of energy at least for the oncoming night. He took it with a small smile and nibbled, not all that eager to eat it but knowing he should. "I think my steak and kidney pie last night wasn't quite right and I'm paying for it today. I'll be fine, just need a bit of sleep and to stay close to the bathrooms."

He glanced around the room before asking, "How long until you can go back to your dorms anyway?"

"Huh." He didn't sound convinced, but he didn't question it further. Arthur settled a little more into the bed and closed his eyes for a moment, shifting uncomfortably as his shoulder gave a particularly noticeable, creaking twinge. "They probably have something they can give you for that."

Arthur cracked one eye open then, letting out a snort. "A few hours. They want to make sure it's all healed up before they let me go."

"I'm sure they do, but if I took a potion for every time I got sick I'd be an addict by now," he answered with a shrug.

Bruce smiled at Arthur and patted the Slytherin's knee. "That shouldn't be too bad, I mean, some students end up stuck in here for over several days, you know?"

"Mm, I know. It's a small mercy that I wasn't knocked off my broom." He shifted a bit under the pat to his knee, and smiled weakly.

"I don't think I'd recover from a fall like that so quickly. Sometimes I still wonder what possessed me to go for this."

"Adrenaline rush, acting without considering the dangers of it, you've got plenty of reasons," he snorted. "Lucky you're not a muggle with those injuries, healing takes forever without magic."

"So I've heard," he muttered. He wouldn't ever like to find himself in a muggle hospital, though he found their almost barbaric ways of doing things fascinating in their own rights.

"I suppose it might have been worse. A few inches higher up and the bloody thing would have brained me."

"That could have ended up very... Messy."

A wince.

"I give you Bruce Banner, the king of bloody understatement," he said, gesturing towards his friend with one hand and a half-smile. "I'm not sure 'messy' comes close. I've resisted the urge to research the kinds of fatalities that have been involved in quidditch matches."

"Let's just say there's a reason I avoid going to the matches," he shrugged.

"I'm disappointed. I'd hope you'd be there cheering me on."

He looked about to say more, then grimaced and rolled his shoulder slightly.

"You know, she told me not to move. I'd like to see anyone stay still under this kind of discomfort."

"Leave that to your fangirls."

Smiling, he patted Arthur's knee. "I know, I was in here in my first year with a broken leg after my first flying lesson and she told me the exact same thing. It helps to sleep if you can."

"If I could sleep, I'd certainly be doing it." He slept badly regardless, and the occasional twinging in his shoulder would be more than enough to wake him.

"Besides, I'm finding this conversation far more rewarding than spending a few hours unconscious."

"That's because my word is gospel and you are filled with a sense of great enlightenment when you speak to me," came the sassy response, Bruce even deigning to give Arthur a cheeky wink despite how tired he looked.

"Ah, but of course. How could I forget the importance of the Gospel of Banner."

He smirked, but he hadn't yet dismissed how tired Bruce looked and he sat up a bit, frowning at him. "Are you quite sure you're alright? Sorry to keep harping on, but you do look rather awful."

"Hey, you're supposed to stay still," Bruce chided immediately at Arthur's movement. "And don't worry about me, I just need a bit of rest is all."

The infirmary had actually been the first destination Henry had in mind once the game was over, but the fact that he probably wouldn't be allowed in while he was being treated, plus the fact that there probably would be other people checking on Arthur early on made him decide to go wait a while before visiting him.

Some time later, though, he did make his way to the infirmary, and made his way to Arthur's bed. "Feeling better?"

He was glad of the visit to break the monotony. Until Henry walked in, his only distraction had been the tingling, skin-crawl inducing sensation of his clavicle knitting back together. It didn't make for much of a distraction and he was quite glad to have his attention drawn away from it.

"'Better' might be a slight overstatement, but I'm not feeling terrible," he replied. The end of the game was a bit of a pained blur, but he was pretty sure they'd lost. "I should be out of here in a few hours."

"That's good," he said, sitting at the edge of the end of the bed. "You held out pretty well, though. That was a great throw."

"Was it? I don't really remember." Maybe it would come back to him later, but right now his entire memory of that moment was the pain exploding over his shoulder and the desperate attempts to stay on his broomstick.

"And we still lost, in the end."

"By a snitch, yeah..." he added, not really trying to make that as something to cheer Arthur up because... Well, it really couldn't do something like that. A loss was loss, after all. "Bit of a lucky break for Ravenclaw's seeker, really."

... And apparently talking about the game right after it wasn't as easy as it sounded. "Sorry. You probably don't want a play by play on what happened after you got hit."

It wasn't much of a comfort, but he still smirked a little at the joke. "A lucky break? You're not just saying that to make me feel better, are you?"

He shrugged his uninjured shoulder. "Actually, I wouldn't be opposed to hearing what happened. It's all a bit of a blur."

"There's not much to tell, really," he replied as he fidgeted a little with a bit of the sheet. "But no, I wasn't telling that just to make you feel better. After you scored, Katniss and Coraline started going for the Snitch. Katniss had the advantage, but Coraline caught up after Ravenclaw started cheering for her. Then the snitch suddenly turned to Coraline's direction, and well... She caught it."

He shrugged, smoothing out the part of the sheet he'd been fidgeting with. "I'd call that a bit of a lucky break, at least."

"I suppose so." That did, actually, go a ways to making him feel a little better, though it had made it one hell of a short match. He eyed the fidgeting for a moment then quirked one eyebrow in Henry's direction.

"Something on your mind?"

"Huh?" Henry raised his own in response, confused at the sudden question. It took him a moment before remembering the fidgeting.

"Ah, the fidgeting?" he asked raising his left hand, the one he'd been doing it with, and flexing its fingers. "Sorry about that. I spent a lot of time writing letters and doing my homework last night. I guess I'm just moving my hand without noticing."

He gave the offending hand a somewhat resentful look. "I kinda wish it would, it's still a little sore."

"They can probably give you something for that here," he commented, giving the hand a quick glance then shrugging his uninjured shoulder in a vague attempt to shift to a slightly more comfortable position.

"If you ask, I mean. There's no harm in it, after all."

Alfred was quick to head to the hospital wing after the match. He had mixed feelings on Slytherin losing, sure...but none of those feelings had anything to do with how worried he was about Arthur.

Honestly, he was probably worrying too much, but he didn't care. he was still going to barge right on into the hospital wing with concern bordering on panic written all over his face.

"Arthur! Hey, are you okay?!"

Arthur's mixed feelings were less on the loss and more on the fact that he seemed to have scored the only goal of the match. With a broken shoulder. That didn't bode well for the team, and he was of the mind that he was going to have to kick things into shape for the next if they had a hope of winning the House Cup this year.

Getting a visit from Alfred was something he'd expected and his expression was a somewhat flat response to the other boy's panic as he barged in. He waved one hand dismissively and nodded, letting out a huffing sigh.

"I'm fine, I'll be out of here soon. Was there any need for all of that?" He sounded annoyed, but he was admittedly touched.. had it really looked that bad?

"Well you looked really hurt, okay?? I swear I could hear somethin' break and I was all the way in the stands!" Alfred insisted. And maybe that was a bit overdramatic, but he was worried, and he was allowed. He moved closer, taking a good look at Arthur's shoulder. Downright glaring at it, but it's all worry.

"I'm glad you're going to be okay. I mean duh, with the awesome nurses, of course. But still. Aah, I brought you something though. Because I don't know about here, but I sure don't like Muggle hospital food, so..~"

He pulled a small bag of cheap gummy worms from his pocket. Never doubt this American, he always has some awesome candy stored away for every occasion. Gummy worms...they could work. Because candy.

"...And dude, I know you're all laid up here for a bit, but...can we just appreciate how awesome you are for scoring with a busted shoulder? I hope that's not insensitive to say, but damn~"

"The 'something' you heard break happened to be my shoulder," he replied, and it happened to still hurt even if it was more than half way to being healed. Hopefully, he's not going to be here long enough to have to taste the food and he takes the offered sweets with a slight roll of his eyes, leaving the packet on his lap.

"And dropping the quaffle was the last thing on my mind." He paused, and smirked wryly. "I suppose that soothes the sting of losing, just a little."

Only silence was emitted from James, even as he perched himself at the very end of the bed, a book was in his hand, one of the ones Herbert had suggested no doubt. This wasn't sentiment, it was making sure his things were okay and in working order, not for Arthur's sake, no, it was for his own. Dark brown eyes lingered on the pages a moment longer before flickering over to Arthur.

His gaze was calculative, he was surveying the left over damage and how Arthur was taking things. It had been a broken clavicle, he saw what had happened, he'd been at the game to observe.

The silence was fine by him. James didn't make him uncomfortable, at least not anymore, and he was under no illusions as to why the other boy was there. Still, it showed he cared in his own strange way, so no question was brought to it. Arthur may have even nodded off for a while, only to wake up to find his friend still there.

Finally, he cleared his throat and shifted, the noise and movement too loud and sudden, even to him, in the quiet hospital wing, and he nudged his foot under the sheet against James' leg, tilting his head to one side.

"Surely there are more entertaining things that you might be doing right now, Jim."

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Pain is a pesky part of being human.

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