#THEY NEED SURGERY EVERY MONTH OR ELSE THEIR FLESH WILL ROT

[jalapenobee]

Hahaha just thinking about how if Oda was alive he could've been the one person who could beat Fukuchi

[impossible-rat-babies]

 not quite people enough

pre-heartbreak | chargestep (m!ortega/nb!sidestep) | angst | 2843 words, most below the cut

[read on a03]

--

“Nanosurge at an end! The Rangers successful once again!”

TV screeching through the hospital waiting room, a few of the residents eyes focused on the rolling images and videos of the catastrophe cascading across the screen. Pollux pauses long enough to witness the few scenes of Rangers, all of them suitably heroic in the face of the dangers.

“With the danger now gone, efforts are being turned towards...”

He sighs and pulls his hoodie around his head tighter, sticking to the side of the hospital wall as he continues on. Keeping his eyes on his feet and ordinarily it’d be easy to keep people at bay, have their eyes slide off him like he’s just another face in the crowd, the memory of an indistinct face. A soft nudge, pushing eyes elsewhere takes care of anything else.

But not today, not when brushing up against any mind is like touching skin rubbed raw and bloodied, an open wound for days now. Now it’s relying on a hoodie pulled tight, surgical mask and sunglasses to make him look like any other sick person. Add a cough for good measure and sometimes its the simple things that keep people away.

He pulls his shields in tighter, a migraine already festering at the base of his skull. It’s been a week and there hasn’t been a day without a migraine where it’s too painful to breathe, the simple act of crawling out of bed like climbing a mountain, light bright enough to make him vomit. He spends hours poised over his toilet with bile dripping from his lips and blood running from his nose; iron and bile tasting the same in his burned raw throat.

There hasn't been a day without a nosebleed since the Nanosurge ended. 

He couldn’t very well keep his distance even if he wanted to. Even though the hospital is crawling with people and an elevator is far too small even when he’s alone, steadily climbing up towards the third floor. Out of all the victims jammed into the hospital there’s one person worth seeing, or one who would give him hell if he didn’t come and see him.

Heard news Ortega had taken the modded skin well, the rest left to heal with time. It would heal, he would heal. Better than any alternative and Pollux takes a deep breath when he finds the room number, door sliding open smoothly.

There are flowers. Of course there are flowers. 

Why wouldn’t there be flowers all over the place? They’re nearly everywhere, a cascade of color all over the room. Simple vases of daisies with little cards still sticking out of them, others large bouquets in a whole riot of colors. Imported exotic flowers from the classiest flower shops in the rich hills above Los Diablos; they come with little gold cards, handwritten notes in golden ink. Expensive, ironic and moronic he thinks.

Pollux shuts the door silently, poking his way around the vases, glancing at cards and picking at loose petals. One of the richest is from the Mayor and what sort of woman would she be if she didn’t spare any expense? 

Ortega is the Marshal, the biggest and the best in charge of keeping her city safe. Easy to click his tongue at the show they make, the veneer of civility and good faith. Pollux knows how often the Rangers butt heads with her office, passive aggressive undertones in meetings, thin patience in any other capacity. He glances over the others and they’re from all manner wealthy elite, the kinds Ortega meets at all the fancy Ranger events Pollux refuses to attend with him. More people grateful for their lives, as if they were at risk to start with.

He finds what he’s looking for on the beside table, a simple ceramic vase with simple flowers and there’s no card--Tia Elena doesn’t need one. A smile behind his mask and he finds a cup, filling it up to refill the vase. He sets the cup aside and pushes his hood off his head, gaze falling to Ortega.

He’s still asleep, head tilted off to the side in a mountain of pillows. Scabbed over nicks and bruises paint his cheeks and forehead, one funny little scrap on his chin, the rest dotted with purple, yellow and green bruises. The hospital gown looks atrocious, hiding away the dressings that cover fresh skin, skin to replace what was eaten away. Pollux has seen his share of wounds, seen what broken bones and cracked skulls look like, the blood a body can spill. He’s seen what the inside of someone’s guts look like, held them in his hands and tried to keep them where they belong, tried to stop the bleeding.

Seeing skin and muscle being eaten alive, bodies devoured into nothing but the vitriolic stench of rotting flesh strong enough to hurt his teeth and burn the inside of his nose was a whole different hell. Hell was watching people eaten alive, a single moment when Ortega reached out and there was no hesitation as they ate though his skinsuit, through to the skin below, eating his flesh alive. 

He hears the screams when his ears ring, in the heart monitor beeps beside him. Back to that day, back to screaming because he wasn’t going to lose Ortega, screaming 

no no no no no NO 

and they listened. Like holding a nest of hornets in bare hands, but he held them. Held them until his jaw cramped, every inch of him shaking from the effort, nose running rivers of blood to soak his teeth, tears of blood chasing down his face. Looking down and Ortega’s hands are wrapped in white dressings, cocooned tight. Easy to slip his hand into his, but he just balls his hand up tight, bruised knuckles against the sheets.

A deep breath in and Pollux looks, Ortega’s eyes squinting open.

“Hey...” Pollux mumbles behind his surgical mask, adjusting his sunglasses. He keeps his sunglasses on even if the blinds are shut--he doesn’t need to lose his guts in Ortega’s hospital room.

“Pollux?” Ortega’s voice is like gravel, a rumble in his chest. Pollux blinks and slides the tray table closer, the cup from earlier still filled with water. He finds the bed adjustment, scooting Ortega up.

“You got it?”

Hands unsteady but Ortega still takes it with a nod, sipping on the water. He winces, Pollux watching his hands slowly flex in the bandages, turning his hand over to look.

“Don’t push it or you’ll rip your new skin.” 

Pollux chides softly, biting his lip, not used to this. He’s not a stranger to hospitals, two years earlier it was much the same. The flowers, half a dozen surgeries to put Ortega’s abdomen back together, sitting in a room not unlike this one, watching him readjust to his body once more. There’s an itch in his feet, the creeping sensation of something amiss, nagging in the back of his skull.

“Why are you here?” Cutting to the chase and Pollux rolls his eyes.

“I’m here to see you, jackass.” He huffs. There’s no real itch and he’s only has piss poor bedside manner. Been too long since the last time he sat here, shouldn’t have this much practice at standing beside a hospital bed. He’s always been the one in the bed instead, the air cold on the open back of a hospital gown. Paper, not cloth.

“Hardly har,” Ortega half smiles, but it slips away quicker then it should. “But why are you here, Pollux? You look like shit.” He mumbles.

“Thanks for the flattery, asshole.”

“Pot calling the kettle black.” Ortega pointedly looks at him and he shrugs. The motion pulls on some bruise across his back and he bites his lip instead of wincing.

“Difference is you’re in the hospital and I’m not.” Pollux fires back.

“You should be. Heard about what happened to you.”

“They can’t do shit about it feeling like my head is going to explode. And I don’t need your sympathy, I’m fine...” Pollux sighs, rubbing his forehead and Ortega certainly isn’t believing that lie, but it’s hardly the point of it. They still have the energy to argue with each other and that's the real miracle of this whole situation; it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

“At least let them look you over. Again.” Ortega sighs and Pollux grumbles.

“Let it go, Ortega for fucks sake.” 

Pollux huffs, yanking his sunglasses off and he rubs the corner of his eyes. Eyes that shed bloody tears and he swears he’s going to find gross in them for ages. He looks up and Ortega is giving him that Look--the look whenever he’s struck a nerve and it didn’t used to turn his guts to mush, make his heart do funny little things, get ideas about apologizing for what he said and all that garbage.

Pollux frowns.

“Don’t look at me like that.” He glares.

“Pollux.” He says it soft, but he’s still chiding, pressuring, and Pollux runs a hand across razor short hair.

“I’m not doing this with you right now.”

“What are we doing?”

“Bickering, arguing, fighting, pestering each other. Whatever the fuck we do, ass.”

“Is that what we’re doing?”

“Fuck it if I know.” 

Pollux heaves a giant sigh, walking around to find the plastic chair. He drags it over to the bed, plopping down in it and god he could use a freaking cigarette. He settles for silently drumming his fingers against his bouncing leg, head leaning against the side of the bed, pointedly not looking at Ortega. He still feels his eyes on him however, examining the mess he’s made of himself. He’s never not a mess, but he’s sure he missed a few spots buzzing his hair and the bags around his eyes are even sharper.

“I’m not sure if you look worse or if you feel worse.” Ortega keeps looking him up and down like it will prove some point and Pollux snorts, glancing up at him out of the corner of his eye. 

“Wanna take a wild fucking guess there, Marshal?” Pollux sighs, lips quirking. “Fucking, I dunno...”

How does he even describe it when he doesn't even rightly know how? There was fear...anger and fear and both are potent. The panic, the frenzy and then just agony, like muscles tearing from bones, pain like needles under the skin, metal an acid on his tongue, filling his head. 

Devour, devour, devour, eat, eat, eat, 

no, stop, stop, stop--STOP!!

Repeating the words over and over again until they lost their meaning, lost all but the feeling behind them, the command of a hive of minds in his own. His head still feels like bursting, the migraine brewing at the base of his skull creeping into his temples, pounding at the crown of his head. He closes his eyes, breathing in and back out.

“The sad hurt look is a good one on you. Could give the press a run for their money.” Ortega points out and Pollux opens his eyes to a half assed grin.

“You mean the eyes full of bursted blood vessels is a good look?”

“You know what I mean, Pebbles.”

His voice is actually soft that time around and Pollux doesn’t have the energy to fight. Not when he’s still here--still alive; not when he braved the great outdoors to reach the hospital. He’s breathing and living well enough to make jokes. 

Damn his ability to make fun even laying half dead in a hospital bed. Smug bastard.

“I know.” 

Pollux tip toes his fingers across the bed, pausing before they make their slow journey across the top of Ortega’s hand, taking their rest before the slope of his forearm. Tenderly turning his hand and they’re palm to palm, finger tip to finger tip splayed out. Grey eyes drift back to the flowers and Ortega coaxes his fingers to slip and lock in his, fitting far too well. 

They fit far too well into the cracks of each other and it always opens a pit in Pollux’s stomach.

Ortega is still here, still breathing, but each second feels like he’s lost him. A glance away and in a flash he’ll disappear. He shuts his eyes at night and it’s too real behind his eyelids. Every night it’s watching it happen all over again like a skipping dvd, waking up with bloodied sheets and too many tears to count, wondering why the fuck he’s crying over him.

“Tired?” Ortega asks and Pollux shakes his head, eyes falling to the ground.

“Thinking...”

“Now that’s dangerous, Pollux.”

Heart skipping a beat and he swallows against the lump forming in his throat. picking at the seam of his pants. He didn’t have a chance to see if Ortega got out safe, if they pulled him out--flesh dripping from his body--and he was still breathing. He collapsed to the ground in a bloodied heap and it wouldn’t be the first time he saw him like that, but goddamn it he couldn’t hold his body together that time, blood soaking through his gloves. Could have died on the way to the hospital, his world ending without knowing it, saving everyone but the one who matters the most.

“Can’t I think in peace?” He teases, forcing a smile and Ortega gives him a look of surrender, softly squeezing their hands still intertwined.

Pollux swallows hard again and he closes his eyes. Is that was Ortega is now? His world? He means enough for his gut to clench hard as he turns to stare death once more in the face and he wants to call him a fool, curse and yell at him each time because one of these times death is going to stare back at him and grin. It’s less waiting on bated breath, but knowing he’s gambling on a bad hand with only a few chips left.

He’s always been a bloody cheat with death, but watching others gamble when he knows how the cards will fall sparks terror he can’t compute. Attachment he can’t compute, understanding how human it is and he’s gasping for air in an ice bath.

“Pollux?” 

He yanks his head up, his name still lingering on Ortega’s lips. Pollux tears his hand away like he’s touched a stove, hiding his hands within his sweatshirt, burying them deep. His heart in his throat and look everywhere but at him, don’t look, don’t look, don’t look. Cheeks burning and his gut twists and twists. 

Can’t have someone mean this much, can’t have this feeling he doesn’t understand. 

Pull back, pull back, pull back, instinct kicking in. Anger burns his face, teeth grinding. Stupid, idiot, ridiculous adrenaline junky playing at hero and look at where it’s always gotten him? Stuck in a hospital or patching wounds in his apartment, cursing him up and down. Or it’s pulling a car off of him and fuck Ortega’s lips were on his and it tasted like blood, but it was all too real and he whispered to him, holding him tight like his life is going to end if he let go and it was so, so close and...is that why he kissed him? Is that why they keep kissing? A relationship built on far too many close calls and it’s a slippery slope, but fuck he’s already on a collision course and he’s not people enough for that. Won’t survive the fall, the break that comes.

“I gotta go...” Pollux forces out from behind his teeth, chair startling him as he roughly stands, quick around the bed, past the flowers in their blurs of colors, the door three strides away.

“Pollux, what’s wrong?”

Ortega’s voice catches him with his hand on the knob, trembling. Eyes burning and he bites his lip enough to be painful and a little more. He can’t cry, not now, not here. He likes his breakdowns in private, not where Ortega can see him--not where anyone can see him.

“Pollux please don’t leave.”

“Why?”

The question that’s been boiling on his tongue, tucked back in his throat because he doesn’t want the answer, doesn’t want to know how this goes.

Doesn’t look back, eyes on the door, starring straight ahead. Can’t look back, can’t face him. He’ll get ideas then--ones he can’t be having at all, no thank you. Silence stretches between them, aching just like how he is now, the exhaustion descending back over him along with regret. Bile boils in his gut and he manages to swallow against the lump in his throat, twisting the knob.

“Pollux, please.” Ortega repeats and he manages his best smile, the only one he can manage when he’s five seconds away from losing his nerve. Letting the tears fall and Ortega would hold him so, so close and he’s not people enough for that.

“I’ll see you later.”

The door clicks shut behind him and its only silence now, only that dearest and oldest friend of his to follow him home.

[for-grado]

@deliciously-foul

Lyon's cough presses him into her side.  It's thick with phlegm; it has been for months now, and she can tell it hurts even if he says he's fine when he unfolds back to his full height in the chair.  He looks sallow in the cold fluorescent lights.  She knows he's thinner than he was weeks ago.

They had been quick to get to this point.  All she needed for the moment was to get him an outfit that wouldn't make him look like a weird cosplayer.

In the emergency room, Lyon describes his own symptoms in the same gentle, educated tone characteristic of him.  She's already briefed him on things he shouldn't say.  Her heart hurt when he told the nurse that on a scale of one to ten, the pain in his stomach was a firm 10, 11 if that's allowed.

They say he shouldn't be alive. They say they don't understand how he'd been living for so long with that much pain.  She's just happy they're here now to help him.

They quickly find a hospital room for him and begin a list of problems.  Her heart sinks to know everything that's wrong with him, but as it's for the sake of him getting help, she keeps it to herself.

Advanced dermal necrosis.  Gangrene. Atypical cystic fibrosis.  He needs a kidney transplant.  He needs skin grafts.  His heart is arrhythmic, which they say isn't rare and shouldn't be a problem, but even that worries her.

He quickly becomes confined to a bed, hooked up to a catheter, a respirator, and whatever other IVs they stick into his arms.

She watches him wither, basically.

He pales, loses weight, loses sleep. His hair falls out from stress, but he never once complains.

Kiran stays with him as long as she can, but he needs several surgeries, and she can't be with him then, only when he wakes up.

Her insecurity catches up to her one night.  It's 4 am, and neither of them had slept more than  five hours between them in the 24 they had.  He's reading a book she picked up for him.  She didn't really know his tastes in fiction, but he says he's enjoying it all the same...  He got it yesterday and he's almost done now.

“I'm sorry,” she says.

He looks up, staring at her curiously, head cocked slightly to one side.  “For what, love?”

“You're hooked up to like, five separate machines, you're in a bunch of pain, and just because...  I wanted you to come here.  You must hate this.”

“I don't,” he replies, and she doesn't believe him.  “I'm kind of used to it anyway...  I spent every winter in bed, basically, from getting sick.”

“This must be worse.”

“Angela...”

It isn't fair when he uses her name. She could be arguing against what she knew was a blatant lie, but her name in his mouth would make her instantly concede.  She can't help but shiver.  He holds out his hand, and she squeezes it tightly. His thumb traces gentle lines across her knuckles.

“All this is dizzying.  It's amazing.”  A sense of wonderment is clear in his voice.  She can't help but hold onto every word.  “That machine that beeps is measuring my heartbeat...  This tube in my arm is...  I-I think one of the books you lent me proved humor theory wrong, but I can't help but imagine it's helping to balance my humors...”

She breathes out in an amused sound.

“The last time they made me unconscious, they told me they cut off flesh from my thighs to mend my stomach...  I never imagined such things were possible!  It's all... spectacular.”

“It hurts...” she murmurs.

“It's hurt for so long,” he agrees.  “But...  If this means I can live a long life with you, I'll take it over anything else...”

She stands and untangles her hands from his.  Carefully, she then climbs into the bed beside him, taking extra care not to disrupt any of the many things he's hooked up to.  She fits into his side perfectly, and lays one arm across his chest – somewhere she knew there wasn't any rot to begin with.

He lays the book open beside him and uses his newly freed hand to stroke her hair gently.

“Please... Keep fighting.  Hang in there, Lyon.  I don't know...  What I'd do if you...”

He presses a chaste kiss to her forehead, and when he speaks, she can feel his lips move against her skin.  “I will.  You know...  I can be determined when I set my mind to something.  ...Recently, I've set it to something very important.”

She almost doesn't want to ask, but does, because she knows he wants her to.  “...What is it?”

“Angela, when I'm completely healed, I want to marry you.”

She forgets how to breathe.  It isn't even a question.  “Yes!  Yes! Yes.”

“Hey...” He chuckles gently.  “I'll propose better, later...  I'll really make it memorable.  But it makes me so happy you said yes.  Consider it my promise...  That I won't die here.”