behold the power of god and 48 mental illnesses

There’s a moment in the book where March is struggling to get his hostler on, the kind that places the gun under the arms, there’s straps there too but his arm cast gets in the way. He has a random girl at the shattuck party help him.

Thinking about the future, what if after the Amelia case where March and Healy are working together, he still has the cast, and Healy’s watching him struggle to put on his holster. Lots of huffing and shimmying and cursing under breath before Healy finally takes pity and says “alright—just lemme do it, you’re taking forever”. To which March bitches back something sassy, something along the lines of ‘well I wouldn’t be if SOMEONE hadn’t broke my arm!’

But he holds still with his arm out so Healy can do up the straps near his underarms. Healy’s fingers though accidentally poke and stoke at Marches underarm while he tries to finagle the finicky straps, and it makes March jump and twitch, and do silly little wiggles in place.

Healy of course just thinks March is just being his erratic and annoying self, and tells him to “knock it off, your making me loose grip over here”. But instead of a snarky retort from March he only gets a uncharacteristically bashful ducking of the head, catching glimpses of a face starting to turn ruby red, and a breathless “just—please hurry up”. March never says please, and he never acts shy of all things

And that’s when it clicks for Healy, finally turning his detective brain on. He hesitates for just a second more while giving his partner a half disbelieving/half amused once over, before gripping the other man’s tricep and holding his arm firmly away from his body so he can plunge his fingers right into the hollow.

And March looses it. Letting out a surprised squawk of laughter that gets choked up trying to suppress more, and then fails and fully cracks into loud screech laughs, curses, high pitch screams/whines.

It’s honestly so ridiculous and dramatic that it only encourages Healy to continue, essentially holding March up on his feet while he tries desperately to drop to the ground to squirm away. And when that doesn’t work and he starts doing the most uncoordinated moves to yank his arm away or shove at Healy, it only makes Healy smile, a real eye-crinkling, genuinely amused smile, and dig in harder

activates like a sleeper cell