#permasickfic

[hecticcheer]

Abyss of Possibilities (T/M/A fic)

Finished the platonic Jon&Daisy sickfic thing!! This was based on an emeto prompt,* but I’m posting it here instead of on shiftytracts because. Frankly it comes out a lot better when considered as h/c or whump than as emeto/kink fic. As usual w/ me, I set out to write the latter and instead got? 4.6k of Daisy character study whose external plot happens to be that Jon throws up? Ft. also a little Melanie&Helen friendship. It’s not bad as a story though so I’m posting it anyway.

--

Basira was out on another mysterious errand, which Daisy figured put her and Jon in about the same wretched position. Scratching and baying at the doors of their owners’ empty houses. Commiserating with him seemed a better use of her time. What was more, Jon had spent all day wobbly and coughing—fingertips leaving trails of slime on everything he touched like a snail—and she still couldn’t stand to see that in a person she’d made one of her own. (Monster she’d made one of her own. Whichever.) So after one of his more pathetic fits of coughing she’d decided to make them both tea. It started out as an excuse to leave the room; in fact she’d told him she’d had to pee. But when she’d come to the fork in the hallway her legs had taken her several steps past the turning for the bathroom before she’d noticed her mistake, and, yeah, well. Steps were a limited resource these days. So she’d talked herself into going to the break room for tea instead, and figured if she made Jon some too then.

Well—it was just?—she felt like a hypocrite, alright. She’d told Jon in the coffin that she didn’t want to hobble around like wounded prey any more than she wanted to become a hunter again, but, since he’d pulled her out she’d pretty clearly picked the prey side? Complete with literal hobbling, especially those first few weeks. And he was good to her about it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to despise weak people anymore. It troubled her to know that was her—that she’d still felt it in the coffin where her thoughts were all her own.

Daisy managed to stay upright unsupported while the kettle boiled—hadn’t even had to take a break to sit before turning it on. But while waiting for their teas to steep she leant her palms on the low, cool countertop, even though shifting her weight to them at once made her upper arms ache a little. The muscles of her calves dully throbbed, and her ankles itched. She swore she could feel them swelling. Could picture the mottled pattern of orange and purple her legs must be turning, like the wallpaper at one of those cafés that haven’t been redone since before she was born. They’d told her at PT that the muscle atrophy would take a long time to repair, but that these other issues should go away on their own after a few weeks. It had seemed to improve, at first. Getting worse again now though.

When she got back to his office she found Jon frozen halfway through peeling himself back off his desk, elbows wobbling, like an old dog on a slippery floor. Must’ve Seen her coming back, she figured. He did a little smile, but that didn’t last long. “Here,” she informed him, setting the worse of two novelty mugs in front of him. “Tea.”

“Oh!” Jon’s eyes went wide; he didn’t smile again, but looked almost frightened. Like she’d opened an abyss of possibilities. The mug said #1 Pervert, with the 1 wearing an evil smile and a trench coat held wide open. This seemed to faze Jon not at all.

“It’s just tea. No need to look like that.”

“R-right. Thanks?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, sure. Now drink up, it’ll help with your.”

“Oh,” Jon said again. “Yes.”

He picked up the mug, looked inside, then set it back down without drinking any. Daisy got halfway through a sigh before worrying this counted as despising him, then made herself laugh instead and pat the back of his hand: “That’s the spirit.” Jon flinched, but seemed to want to own that no more than she wanted to own her sigh. He closed his eyes, and his hand relaxed under hers. Breath seemed to whistle and crunch on its way out his nose.

“You ill?”

“Wha—?”

“I said are you ill.”

Another half second of smile. “Maybe.”

“Hm. Good sign, right?” Jon blinked at her. “A point in the still-human column.”

“R…ight,” he said. The way his eyes changed made her suspect he had more to say on that, but for once in his life Jon seemed not to feel like talking.

“Take a break. Archers’ll be on soon.”

Usually when she mentioned The Archers Jon would do a whole big dramatic show of disgust, a long sigh or a snarl or a choking noise or at least an eye-roll. He exhaled, now, but shortly; it flared his nostrils a little, but that seemed all the drama he could muster. “Thought you heard it last night.”

“You didn’t, though,” Daisy grinned. “Get confused if you don’t keep up.”

They’d had this conversation before; he knew his next line. But his voice caught on something about three words in: “You seemed to”—swallow; another deep, crunchy exhale—“you seemed to do alright after eight months under a rock.”

“You’ll have unanswered questions. Can’t compel the radio.”

Another swallow, then a throat clearing. “Fine.”

Daisy stood and waded toward the couch in the opposite corner of his office, where he’d slept since he woke up after the Unknowing. By the time she took her seat and looked back, Jon had stood from his desk chair but not yet moved. Just stood there with his hands on the chair’s back, staring off into nothing. Typical. But she knew he did no better than her with standing still for long periods, lately. She thumped on the arm of the couch to snap him out of his trance. “Come here, Jon.” It worked; he blinked to life, gave her a disorganized smile, and slunk over to join her. When he sat his legs shook the whole couch. He sat down at the far end, as often, but, no more unusually, when she scooted closer so their legs and shoulders touched he leant his head toward hers til his hair crunched against the outside of her ear. Daisy patted his leg with one hand, and reached for his clock radio with the other. (This was one of few non-clothing items he’d bothered to replace when he lost his flat. Apparently its alarm made the only noise he trusted himself to take seriously as a wake-up call; every other one he had tried he would sleep through, either accidentally or out of spite.) She set it on her knee so she could monitor the time, but kept the radio muted for now. Only 1:43.

By 1:49 she noticed Jon starting to nod off; by 1:54 his chin seemed stuck to his chest for good. At 2:02 she turned up the volume dial on his radio, and, sure enough, heard the Archers theme song. Considered just turning it up loud enough to wake Jon, but figured he’d be certain to sleep through that out of spite. So she shook him by the shoulder instead. “Oi! Ceaseless watcher!”

“Mmmnnnwha? Oh,” Jon said, straightening. Then he bent forward to cough again. Daisy channeled her urge to snarl into a laugh, telling herself she felt sorry rather than annoyed.

His cough seemed stuck, just like it had all day but more so. It was almost all voice—none of that other, less personal noise a satisfying cough makes. She wondered if he was trying to keep quiet for her benefit. “Come on, let it out,” she told him, thumping the back of his shoulder—and he did.

Almost as soon as she touched him, he made another noise more like—well, more like the sounds they’d both made underground. Or like when she’d cut him, back before.

Anyway, and then a splash. And then a stench. Daisy yelped and flung her legs out of the way; the radio went silent as the clock’s plug flew out of the wall.

“Oh shit!”

Between dry heaves and gasps for breath Jon croaked, “Not technically.”

She barked a laugh—through her mouth, not her nose—but held back the impulse to elbow him. Learnt that lesson, thanks. Just kept her hand on his shoulder instead, fanning her fingers back and forth in a semi-circle like windshield wipers. Meanwhile she surveyed the damage he’d made. The clock itself seemed miraculously unharmed, dangling by its cord between her knees. Only a little of the cord had fallen into the puddle—unfortunately including the plug. That’d be a bitch to clean up. Should she try to get the smell out or just buy him a new one, she wondered.

Her shoes had fared pretty well, too. Only one fat droplet on the right one’s toe, where it’d come off easy. His might be ruined though—and the socks. Poor bastard picked a hell of a day for white socks. The trousers might survive; vomit washed out easier than blood.

Beside her, Jon seemed to have quit dry heaving. Now he just panted, and said, “Ugh.”

“Done?”

“Think so,” he said in his hoarsest voice; “sorry.”

He set his palm down on the arm of the couch, apparently plotting how to stand without slipping in puke. Daisy moved her hand from his shoulder inward, to the place where his neckbones turned into backbones, and pressed him gently downward. “Never mind; I’ll clean it up. You stay here.”

Jon said nothing, but didn’t move either. Not even a flinch. Daisy slid to the end of the couch farthest from him and his puddle, stood, and crept past it on the balls of her feet, careful to avoid all the puddle’s little splattery fingers.

This was the first Archives mess Daisy’d ever volunteered to clean; only after she’d closed the door of Jon’s office behind her did she realize she should’ve asked him where they kept the mops and buckets. Probably outside the Archives proper, near the boiler and all that crap. Her stomach dropped—settling halfway down her legs, like all her innards did these days when she stood up. Melanie’s desk was empty, but Daisy shouted for her just in case.

The first door Daisy encountered whose destination she didn’t already know led to… a long corridor full of more doors. “Hi, Helen. Melanie in here with you?”

Melanie emerged, not from any of the doors Daisy could see, but from what looked to Daisy like the blank wall in between them. Just the perspective, part of Daisy’s mind rushed in to inform her. She closed her eyes so she could roll them at this part unseen.

“Daisy, hi,” said Melanie. “What’re you doing here, I didn’t think….”

“I invited her in.” Daisy heard the words a full second before she saw Helen emerge from a picture frame in the corridor’s opposite wall. “She was looking for an unfamiliar door. It seemed only polite to offer one of mine.” Helen said this with her head cocked to one side, coiled hands facing the other. Her left elbow disappeared into the wall.

Daisy made herself look into a framed mirror on the opposite wall instead of at Helen herself. Except the mirror didn’t show Daisy or Melanie or Helen—just the floor and other wall of this same corridor. Except also that in what passed here for real life the wall was a dark, 70s yellow, while, in the mirror or picture or whatever, it was more like highlighter yellow. What she saw in the frame still moved like a reflection though, not like a painting.

It was hard for Daisy, still, to be around… beings like the Distortion. Monsters used to be so simple. See someone glitching through the wall? Great; that means they need to die. Not like she’d never cooperated with an enemy before, just. Helen maybe wasn’t an enemy? And Jon was the only non-enemy monster she knew how to interact with. Jon was one of hers, now; he was a friend, the opposite of an enemy. But Helen, God, who knew. Stranded in the middle somewhere. Around Helen Daisy felt like the last person standing in musical chairs.

She shifted on her feet; her ankles still itched, but her toes had gone numb and cold. “I was looking for a mop,” she corrected.

When she looked back over at Melanie and Helen she found them sat on an invisible bench. She glanced back at the mirror. A wooden bench with green velour cushions. Made sense enough. Melanie still had her cane, after Jon and Basira’s whole surgery debacle; she wouldn’t come in here so often if it had nowhere to sit. If Daisy squatted down would another bench appear beneath her?

“Oh,” said Melanie; “yeah, there should be one in the broom cupboard. You remember how to get to Artefact Storage, right?” Daisy nodded. “Well it’s the last door on the left before you get there.”

“Right. Thanks.”

“No problem. What do you need the mop for?—is it—do you need some help?”

Daisy said, too quickly, “No I’ve got it.” Then worried Melanie might think she was hiding something of hers or Jon’s more sinister than dignity. She let out a long breath through her nose, lifted her foot and pointed at the circle of puke on her shoe. “Nothing big. Jon just threw up all over his office.”

“Statements gone moldy?” asked Helen, in that voice of hers like a doorbell.

“Oh, god, yeah—did he finally find that Corruption statement covered in actual mold?”

“Thought Martin burned that one?”

Melanie sighed. “No. Said he didn’t want to stink up Jon’s office.”

“Yeah, well,” Daisy scoffed.

“Probably just didn’t want to burn any that weren’t already on tape,” muttered Melanie. “Got him to burn the first one I ever recorded, though. That one about the stupid blanket.” She scuffed the carpet with her foot, crossed her arms, and leant the back of her head against the wall. “So. What’s wrong with Jon this time.”

“Don’t know,” said Daisy, shrugging; “think he’s just ill.”

“Huh. Wait—human ill or monster ill?”

“Don’t know. Didn’t ask.”

“It can be hard to tell,” allowed Helen. “They look remarkably similar. The first time Michael lost his lunch after he became me he thought his sick would have comic-book stink lines curling up off it. Terrible disappointment.”

Don’t ask what “lunch” means, Daisy told herself, scratching lightly at the pad of her thumb with her middle fingernail. Not your business, not anymore.

Meanwhile Melanie cackled and stamped her foot. “What about Helen?”

“She hoped she could click our fingers and make it disappear.”

Now Daisy smiled too. “Have to try that with Jon’s.”

(“Or turn to gold,” mused Helen, chin resting in the palm of a hand so long she could still click its fingers without their nails poking her face.)

“So you’re cleaning it up for him?”

“Apparently.”

“Typical,” growled Melanie; Daisy could see another I-hate-the-Archives rant on the horizon.

“I chose to do it; it’s not like he made me.”

“That’s what people always say about him!” Melanie squawked, her fingers curled like claws. Her voice had begun to climb not only in volume, but pitch too, the way it did when she hoped to pass off real anger as jokey anger. “He’s a grown man—why can’t he keep his messes to himself?”

“Yeah, well, he’s cleaned up enough of mine,” shrugged Daisy. “You all have,” she added, remembering her first week out of the coffin, when Melanie and Basira had had to follow her and Jon around the Archives with brooms. Every morning Basira had shaken her cot and pillow cases and sleeping bags over a bin to tease out clods of dirt. And Daisy herself had never even learnt where the broom cupboard was. “I don’t mind returning the favor.”

“You don’t owe him anything,” Melanie pleaded. “You’re talking about the coffin, right? But it’s his fault you got trapped in there in the first place!”

Daisy had no reply to this; she remembered asking herself whose fault it was she had died (as she’d thought of it then), while trapped in the Buried, but couldn’t remember what conclusion she had come to. Since she’d got out she’d rather enjoyed not having to think about it. Maybe she could put questions of blame off to one side, in the Hunt pile, and focus her energy on the Daisy pile.

“Last door on the left before you hit Artefact Storage, right?”

“Yup!” she heard Helen chime on her way out.

Of course, the second she stepped out of the corridors she thought of a good comeback: Guess he did clean that one up then.

To revenge herself for that detour she let herself sit on Melanie’s desk a minute before continuing. Good thing, too: carrying even a dry mop and bucket back to Jon’s office took more out of her than she’d remembered to anticipate. When already dizzy and aching she found the smell of his puke overwhelming. If he notices, blame it on the Hunt, she told herself. It took constant effort to remember to breathe through her mouth rather than just holding it.

Jon looked up when she came in, and smiled a glum thank you, but then returned to the position he must have taken up while she was out: head on his knees, arms crossed between torso and legs. So when she’d mopped up everywhere else, she had to tell him, “Shoes.”

He lifted his head and looked up at her through the gap between curtains of hair. “Wh…what do you want me to do with them.”

She pointed upward; his brows crumpled.

“Lift them up so I can clean around them, Jon.”

“Oh.”

Jon looked slowly down at his feet, bared his teeth in disgust. Then he sat up enough to free one arm, whose hand he planted beside him on the couch. Gingerly lifted the opposite foot. Daisy nodded; he was doing his best, she told herself. “Thanks,” she said aloud. He nodded back, but did not smile or speak. His mouth remained a washed-out line of effort.

Daisy’s mop slurped up the part of the mess Jon’s foot had blocked off; then she used it to dab at the sole of his shoe itself. “Put it back down now and I’ll get the top.” He yelped when the mop wet his sock. Daisy tried not to smile. “That feel weird? Sorry. Just figured those socks were done for anyway.”

“No, you’re right. It’s just. Unpleasant,” he concluded, beginning his final sentence at the same time Daisy started her own.

She said, “I’ll help you off with them when I’m done here.”

“I can get it,” Jon said, but did not move.

This time Daisy did smile, before she could think better of it. “Other foot?”

“Right.”

After finishing with that shoe, Daisy told Jon to hang his feet off the arm of the couch while she corralled as much as she could of this vaguely puke-flavored water off the floor and back into the bucket. She expected him to stretch the rest of himself out on the couch, but instead he bent double—as before, but with one side leant against the couch’s back cushion. Chin on bent forearms on bent knees on arm of couch.

“Do you think it’s safe to clean the plug off with the mop?”

His head snapped around to face her. “What?”

Daisy sighed, trying to rearrange her shapeless panting mouth into a smile. “The plug at the end of the cord—not the one in the wall.”

“Oh. Maybe? It’s not plugged in, right.”

“‘Course not.”

“Then I don’t think you’ll be electrocuted.”

“But do you think it’ll ruin the clock?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“Can’t you ask the Eye or something?”

Jon shook his head, which he then set in his hand as though to keep it out of danger. “Maybe it’s like a phone.”

“Come again?”

“Like when you drop your phone in the toilet.”

“Yeah? What happens then.”

“You leave it in rice for 48 hours.”

“In rice?”

“Dry rice. Uncooked rice.”

Again she sighed. “Right.”

“Wait, no”—his eyes went wide—“the rice thing is a myth.”

“What?”

“Silica packets might work though.”

“What are those.”

“Like you get with a new pair of shoes.”

“Huh.”

“They say ‘Do Not Eat’ on them. Usually in inverted commas, for some reason.”

“Oh. Yeah. What happens if you do eat those?”

“No idea. They’re a drying agent, so, they dehydrate you I guess?”

“To death?”

“Possibly.”

“Weird.”

“Nope—scratch that. Turns out they’re just a choking hazard.”

“Oh.”

“A-and we can’t digest them, so if you eat a lot of them they could cause intestinal blockage.”

“Bleugh,” pronounced Daisy.

“Oh, and. Sorry we missed The Archers, by the way.”

“It’s fine, Jon. I heard it last night. I’ll catch you up on it later.”

There was his usual snarl. When Daisy looked smilingly up at him, though, meaning to add, Feeling better, are we? she saw him flinch like he’d been nodding off to sleep again. “So should I mop off the plug or not?”

“Oh. Yeah, seems worth a try.”

By the time Daisy got the floor as un-wet and -soapy as she knew how, she figured neither one of them had the energy to deal with Jon’s shoes. Nor had she the strength to drag the bucket away just yet. Instead she nudged it toward Jon, in case he had to puke again. Then she sat down next to him, so the side of her bum touched the back of his—though from this angle that was a lot less cushy. Mostly tailbone, in fact.

To free her feet from the suffocating heat that made them itch and buzz Daisy yanked off her own shoes (the right one now sick-free but soggy), without untying them, and plopped them down on the couch’s unused other arm. Rested the back of her head on the back of the couch, and closed her eyes. Her whole body throbbed and itched instead of sweating. It was new; maybe a coffin thing, maybe a Hunt-withdrawal thing. Probably the latter. (Oh—I have that too, Jon had said once, when she’d had to explain why her face and hands were red.) Never thought she’d miss feeling slimy.

When she found the strength to speak again she asked, “You comfortable like that?”

“Er,” said Jon. Then, after a pause, in a hoarser voice, “My legs are asleep.”

Daisy smiled, and then, when she remembered he wouldn’t see that, huffed a single syllable of laughter. “No wonder, smooshed up like that. Stretch out, if you like; you won’t be in my way.”

He complied at once, but said, “But then your legs will fall asleep.”

“Probably. I’ll let you know.”

He laid down across her now, or at least his torso did. His head spilled off one side of her lap, legs off the other. Daisy helped him shove the couch’s one throw pillow (now the one he slept with, when he slept) under his head.

“You don’t find this—claustrophobic?” Jon asked, after going to all the trouble to get himself comfortable.

“No.” Daisy blinked, trying not to show how much questions like this irritated her. She wouldn’t break like a china doll if you touched her, Basira. Human weight wasn’t like the Buried. Humans were warm and squishy, and they smelled like life; even vomit smelled better than grave dirt. But at least Basira had a good excuse not to understand that? Coming from Jon it didn’t make any sense. When he’d reached her down there, the first thing he did was take her hand and squeeze. She didn’t know if he’d done that to reassure her or himself or both, but—it shouldn’t matter, right? If he’d known to do that then, why didn’t he know now?

At last she went on, “You said it’s called Too Close I Cannot Breathe. Don’t breathe through my legs, do I?”

“N—?—no. No, I guess not.”

He closed his eyes. Daisy could feel his flesh deflate and ooze outward as the muscles relaxed. This felt like a lot, coming from someone she’d first known as a paranoid little freak. How could he trust her so much, when—? It made her smile, even though she knew only Elias would see. Could muscle atrophy make it hurt to smile?

“Hey Jon?” she waited for his answering Hm. “What’s with the #1 Pervert mug?”

“Oh. Er—Tim.”

“Uh huh…?”

“There was, uh—a statement? Wh-when we first came to the Archives, we looked into a statement given by a man who found a Leitner in a charity shop.”

“Aaand you sent Tim to check out the shop’s records.”

Jon nodded, to the extent that was possible in his position, but his Yeah came out inaudible. “Martin had recently broke one of the mugs that came with—that Gertrude and her assistants left. So, Tim, in a, uh, perhaps a slight overreaction, bought every novelty mug in the establishment.”

“Every mug? I only saw six in there.”

“Or so he told me.”

“Doubt it. That collection looks curated. I didn’t see a single teddy bear, or. Souvenir from a breast-cancer walk.”

“I didn’t press him on it.”

“Right,” Daisy scoffed.

“Sasha used”—a trumpetty nose-laugh interrupted Jon’s sentence—“Sasha used to joke they should be in Artefact Storage.”

“Well she’d know best. Didn’t you say she used to work there?”

“Yes!” Jon squeaked, in a delighted whisper-shout. One hand covered his face; the other fist shook in the air. “She had literal horror stories about that place. The way she talked about those mugs was like—hearing a nun say there should be a circle in hell for people who order the wrong kind of donuts.”

When they’d both quit laughing Daisy said, “You sound like you’re starting to feel better.” She poked him in the stomach, though so lightly for fear he’d throw up on her that she doubted he could even feel it through his cardigan and shirt. “Gonna puke again, you think?”

Jon breathed out through his nose and looked at the ceiling. Apparently she had poked him hard enough to tickle: he batted her hand away like a fly, then left his own where hers had been. “Probably not. Don’t think so. Not sure how much I have left to.”

“Yeah.” After a pause to put the words in a convincing order, Daisy said, “Surprised you had that much—I’ve barely seen you eat today. How long were you feeling sick?”

Guilty smile. “Sorry, Daisy, I uh. Thought I had it under control.”

“Not what I asked.”

“Oh. Uh… few hours, maybe?”

“Why’ve you been coughing and sniffing all day then. Thought you had a cold at first.”

“Yeah—so did I, til.”

“Huh.”

Jon propped the back of his head on his folded elbows. “Maybe it’s a monster thing,” he said, with the cynical sigh of someone pretending to be okay with this.

“Could be,” Daisy agreed. She could feel his eyes on her, but looked at the opposite wall instead of answering his gaze. Meanwhile she patted his knee. When he’d been quiet long enough she was sure he didn’t mean to say more about the monster thing, Daisy said, “Let’s get you out of those wet shoes.”

--

*Whose OP I can’t find, though I know I’ve seen it before, but. It’s the prompt referenced here:

person has been involuntarily letting out nauseously [sic] coughs intermittently all day, and their friend thinks they just have a cold or something, but surprise! they are about to puke everywhere

ETA 6/16 fixed a few Americanisms, whoops! If I’ve missed any more of those please point them out to me

[hecticcheer]

📓!!

(Send a book emoji, get a fic daydream)

...Turns out all my fantasies are about Jarch/ivist. In honor of the anon I held out on for (presumably) two months without noticing, I'll tell you about this one:

While he's living with Georgie, Jon feeds the Admiral one morning before work. His right hand's still too tender to use much, so he opens the tin with his left hand and cuts his finger on the lid. It bleeds... kiiiind of a lot? Not enough to need stitches. Surely not enough to affect most people. But enough that he has to change his shirt--twice, since after he'd changed it the first time and was sure he was done bleeding he washed his hands for a totally innocent, blood-unrelated reason, and forgot that would open the cut back up 'til he caught a glimpse of his sleeve. Whoops. So that's just great. This is the first time he's gone in for a full day of work since the Leitner incident, and he'd meant to come in at the regular time as a show of normality and good will, but no. Now he's going to be late, all because he fed Georgie's cat.

(In his hurry, he also forgets to leave her a note saying the cat's been fed. So the Admiral feeds twice that morning.)

This is a Jon who has POTS, and has had POTS for ages, and is on meds for it and has made the necessary lifestyle changes and overall has just. Internalized that it’s under control now. And he made it through last week's throat-slitting incident with Daisy without any major (public) fallout, so he figures that means he'll be fine? No way this'll be enough blood loss to make POTS flare up. Impossible. Except in reality he only kept his strength up so well last time through adrenaline? Like, apparently even his body knows not to faint in a life-or-death situation. (A year and change later he'll learn about Fiona Law and feel real weird.) And this time, for this unaccustomed but low-stakes exertion, the adrenaline rush only holds him together until he gets to work. Once he’s been calmly sat in his office for an hour or two, his body parses this as meaning it’s safe to let down its guard. So when he goes to the break room for a snack (blood loss, man) or to ask someone a question, that simple act takes all of the currently-remaining spoons and he has to, well, you know. Lie down before he falls down?

And eeeeverybody in the Archives sees him there, including Melanie who later uses the incident as corroborating evidence for her remarks in 189. She's spluttery and wooden, not yet disliking him enough to scoff as she might in season four; Basira, who's friendly with Jon but too awkward to display outright concern, wonders aloud if this is a normal day at the office? Having to step around the little boss on your way to the fridge? Is that just how we do things here, or?; Tim walks by the open door to the break room and just says, "Hey boss. Big mood"; Martin tries to panic, but when Jon assures him everything's fine he listens well enough. Ends up bringing Jon his paperwork and sitting next to him with his back to a cabinet. Brings him tea, and a chocolate bar from the vending machine upstairs. Even turns the light off for him (overhead lights are so obnoxious when you're lying flat on your back on the floor). Does insist on bandaging his finger, though.

[hecticcheer]

This is ~2,000 words of fluff, inspired by late-night brain’s inadvertent mashup of this suggestion by boxofsfic with the ending of this story by sickiepop. (If either of you are seeing this post, hi! I love your work, and I hope you don’t mind what a monster I conceived while reading it…!)

The OCs I made up for the occasion are both around 30; the sick one’s a guy, and the other is nonbinary; they’re housemates; they might be in a QPR, but I don’t think they know that yet either.

I mmmmight write the sequel foreshadowed in the last few lines? Not sure yet; depends on whether I still like what I’ve written by tomorrow. But if you’re reading this and you’d dig that, please let me know!

—

Mr. Bartholomew Fox lay on his classroom’s hard, dusty floor, trying to remember how to pronounce respite. It had been a vocab word this week in some of his tenth graders’ books, but grading their worksheets had not required him to say the word aloud. He could remember that it wasn’t phonetic—it did not rhyme with despite, like its spelling suggested it should. But did one say the word as though it were spelled respeet? Reecepite? Resspit? The remembered voice of a friend from the days of his first smartphone reminded him, You have 3G; he fumbled for his phone, hoping the dictionary app would load this time deecepit the classroom’s shoddy cell service. When he lifted his phone, however, a text from Leverton distracted him.

You ok? At a meeting I forgot about or s/t?

Barty (he was Barty to friends, Mr. F among his less-creative students) hadn’t quite felt like himself all day, though he wasn’t sure what more than that to say about it. His joints and muscles ached, sure; his head throbbed for a bit after every movement, yeah; he’d been shaky and dizzy all day, true—but none of that was weird. He guessed these symptoms must be worse than usual, but no one of them seemed enough that way to justify what an unpleasant day he’d had. Or at least, none had done so until his final class ended, when struck the irresistible urge to lie down on the floor instead of heading home. On the floor, with nothing else to think about, they all seemed urgent. He felt so dizzy it made him hot all over, his upper lip prickling with sweat. If he moved in any way, and whenever he opened his eyes, the feeling grew worse. His left shoulder, right wrist, that mysterious place in his lower back, both knees, the muscles in his neck and thighs and forearms and halfway down his right calf—all traded off shouting for his attention. The throb behind his left eye grew sharper now, more electric, like the start of a migraine (but those usually came on earlier in the day). That side of his nose was clogged. Was he getting a cold? Not unlikely, this early in the school year. Or was it just allergy season.

He’d gone about this far in his musings and then apparently quit thinking at all until something (he could no longer remember what) had made him reach for his phone. Now, having read Leverton’s text, he laid the phone down on his chest and closed his eyes, trying to think how to reply. After he’d typed I’m okay, just and then lay still for a bit pondering how to make must’ve fallen asleep sound less dumb, another text arrived from Leverton:

Just send me an emoji or something so I know you’re not dead? You’re probably just at a meeting and I don’t want to bug you, but, starting to worry a little

I’m okay Barty sent back therefore, deleting the comma and the just. They’d both long-since turned off their phones’ “Read at 4:18 PM” feature—it made Leverton anxious, and incensed Barty on principle. Sending a quick reply took priority, therefore, over explaining himself. The little green progress bar hovered for eons about two thirds of its way across the screen, which it would never have dared at home unless he had tried to send multiple photos. Making sure not to touch the phone’s sides directly, even though he knew that made no difference on this non-dinosaur model, he wrote further, No meeting; fell asleep in classroom. Somehow that one went through at once—so quickly that he’d barely had time to close his eyes and set his head back down before it buzzed again.

Oh my god

Are you ok??? That sounds so unlike you

He didn’t know what to say. The first I’m okay hadn’t felt like a lie, since in that case it was clear he meant okay as opposed to dead. But now neither Yes or No seemed like the right answer. The long pause he elected to respond with instead probably treated Leverton worse than either one:

Are you still in your classroom? Stay there, I’ll come get you

I don’t knw [sic] if I’m comfortable w/ the thought of you driving like this.

On its face Barty found this absurd. Students fell asleep in his class nearly every time he turned on the projector, and that seemed a much greater feat than dozing off while lying alone on the floor. Besides, it hadn’t been real sleep—only stage one or two. If someone had asked whether he was awake he could have honestly said Yes, without startling first. Don’t, he began typing back, but once the initial guilt wore off he thought again about Leverton’s words (Stay there, I’ll come get you). The corners of his eyes grew hot when he pictured them setting out on foot to collect him. Leverton was right, after all—Barty never fell asleep during the day. He deleted the message he’d started and sent instead, Okay.

By the time he heard Leverton’s hand on the doorknob Barty had drifted back into early-stage sleep: close enough to the surface to recognize the sound, but far enough under that it surprised him a little. He’d forgot where he was, his thoughts (now vanished) so vivid they’d seemed realer than the floor under his back. He pulled himself up onto his elbows and his sight went dark blue from the corners inward.

“Hi,” he told Leverton as the latter entered—too quietly, as it turned out, for them to hear over the sound of the closing door. They peered around the room, but it took them a few seconds to spot him; he could tell they were looking for a seated person, rather than one on the floor. Barty cleared his throat and this time said, “Hello.”

“Oh my god—did you fall? Are you alright?”

“No, I’m fine,” Barty insisted, shaking his head, and then, smiling inanely, added, “I meant to do this.”

(Meant to do that was a long-standing meme of theirs, an offshoot from Leverton’s comparisons of Barty to a cat. After a cat does something stupid, it recovers its dignity so quickly you’d think it was trying to look like the stupid thing it did was all part of the plan. Thus whenever either of them made a mistake too large to ignore but too small for a real apology, they’d say to the other some variation on, Meant to do that.)

“You just thought the linoleum seemed like a nice change of pace from the nice couch we have at home,” summarized Leverton, and Barty noticed how they used the word nice twice in a row.

He lowered his head back to the floor, feeling too dizzy and neck-sore to waste his strength on trifles. “It’s vinyl; they just replaced it.”

“What?”

“The floor.”

“Ah. Vinyl. Excuse me.” They sat cross-legged down next to Barty, on the aforesaid vinyl.

“I’m alright,” Barty said again.

“Yeah, but that word doesn’t mean a lot coming from you. Excuse my cold hands,” Leverton warned, and placed the back of their hand to Barty’s forehead and each cheek in turn, brushing some hair out of the way first so it wouldn’t get in his eyes. Barty flinched slightly, having gone from unpleasantly hot to unpleasantly cold in the time since he’d first made contact with the floor. “Feels like you’ve got a fever. Do you think you might be coming down with something?”

“You just said your hands are cold, though,” pointed out Barty.

“Well, yeah,” Leverton conceded with a snarl of laughter—“‘cause compared to a face I figured they would be.”

“Thought you meant ‘cause you’d come from outside.”

“No; I wasn’t cold out there.”

This week had brought their town its first cold snap of the season, but in California an early-fall cold snap parses out to more like absence of heat wave. The last few days it had been cool enough to keep the AC off, but it was still t-shirt weather out from ten to ten. Leverton’s tie dye, sweatpants and flip-flops attested to this—as well as to how quickly they must have hurried to meet him. Though they worked from home, Leverton usually put on jeans to meet the public. And that tie-dye t-shirt, Barty knew, had a small hole in one armpit. It pleased him to remark that he could still keep track of details like this; too bad these examples of lucidity were invisible to Leverton.

“You look pretty sick,” said the latter. “How do you feel?”

Come to think of it, the word lucid itself could also mean translucent. That was about how he felt: diaphanous, vague, barely-there. His mother always said with it instead of lucid; though she’d never said so, he’d deduced the antonym of with it must be out of it.

“Not my best,” Barty admitted.

“But you didn’t faint, or hurt yourself, or anything.”

“No. Worried I might, but figured I’d preempt it.”

“Always thinking ahead,” scoffed Leverton, combing their hand through some more of Barty’s hair. “Your hair’s all sweaty; did you know that?”

“I did not.”

“You don’t usually sweat that bad just from feeling faint, I didn’t think.”

“You’re right.”

“So again I say, You look sick.”

“I’m probably getting sick.”

Leverton sighed through pursed lips, making them billow noisily. “Well, shit, pal, this is a terrible place to be sick.”

“Such language,” mumbled Barty, without conviction. He was so unused to letting swears pass without comment in this room that it would have taken more effort to say nothing. But Leverton, rightly, ignored this comment:

“Can you stand? Maybe I could get you some water—would that help?”

“Yes, and yes. On my desk,” Barty said, pointing without looking up.

“Uhhh… ah! I see it.” Leverton stood up and brought back Barty’s bottle of water. They sat again, uncapped it, and, once Barty had sat back up on his elbows, handed it to him and gripped his shoulder, presumably to help him keep his balance. Barty gulped down several mouthfuls, broke off to catch his breath, and shoved the cold-sweaty bottle back into Leverton’s hand, eager to lie back down. “Ah!—no—wrong way!” squawked Leverton. “Are you sure you can stand.”

“Just need a minute. Can you drag the desk chair over? Seems a pleasanter middle ground than.”

“Oh—good point. Sure.” They rolled it over, apologizing for the squeaky wheel. When he had more energy, among his friends Barty would sneer and hiss at such unpleasant sounds; the chair’s squeak hurt his head now too, of course, but somehow at the moment he found it easier to withstand unpleasant phenomena than resist them.

After a minute, he did indeed pull himself up and slither into the chair. (Leverton evidently knew better than to offer a hand to help him up; such offers would hurt his pride, and possibly also his shoulders.) His hands shook as he gripped the arms of the chair to haul himself up into it; his head spun; he was so weak the exertion hurt his chest and all four limbs. When he subsided to catch his breath his head throbbed raucously. He leant it into his hand—whose support Leverton then seconded with their own hand. Their touch chilled him at first, but he lacked the strength (whether of will or body who knew) to scoot away. He hadn’t realized how much the weight of his head had hurt his wrist until Leverton’s help removed that hurt.

“You’re really not feeling well, are you.”

“Seems that way.”

“Thank god I didn’t let you drive yourself home.”

“Too bad for the kids, they’re all gonna catch it,” Barty muttered, regretfully; “as will you, of course. And I won’t do nearly this good a job of looking after you.”

“I don’t mind. You’ll do your best.”

“Will I?”

“You always seem to. From my limited perspective.”

“I don’t have your patience. Or your empathy.”

Leverton scoffed: “Empathy? Yes you do! You feel other people’s feelings just as well as I do—you’re just shyer about it. You’re just emotionally constipated.”

“Perhaps,” granted Barty. He doubted that first half, but could already feel himself smiling at Leverton’s flatteries, and knew if he tried to argue that they would hold the smile against him as an admission. So he gave his doubts no more explicit form than, “Nice of you to say so.”

“Are you ready to try and walk to the car?”

Barty sighed, sort of phlegmily—almost a hiss. “Might as well be.”

[hecticcheer]

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[hecticcheer]

Still refuse to headcanon it but apparently the EDS Jon fantasies are here to stay, this time because in my earlier post about it I fear I neglected Martin. After the incident described in that post Martin probably gets extra extra hypervigilant and overprotective, even if for Jon’s dignity’s sake he tries not to be. So, just imagine Jon trying to open a jar in his presence. He has trouble doing so without endangering his finger joints; one fun thing about Jon (tbh) is that, because it’s an all-audio medium and we the audience have to know when bad things happen to him, he is absolute garbage at keeping frustration out of his voice! There’s no way Martin wouldn’t notice, and practically beg Jon to let him take the jar off his hands. Jon wold grumble out some half-sarcastic remark about not trusting Martin not to drop it, but when he tried again to open it and still couldn’t (and hurt himself in the attempt), he would have to give up and let Martin try. Aaand after another incident or two like this he starts to like it--being able to open jars without dread, and also the feeling of being taken care of, of his needs mattering to someone for a reason other than that he inconveniences them

...And then (watch me ruin it) in season four Martin’s never around, and Jon’s too shy to ask Melanie or Basira or Daisy to help him, and his regenerative abilities mean subluxing a finger only hurts for a second anyway. So he just struggles and swears, and feels stupid for finding this difficult even after the abortive finger-chopping escapade three weeks before

[hecticcheer]

LMAO I RAN OUT OF TAGS (on this post) uh. The point is. I love the idea that once he finally unpretzels himself the others insist on helping him back to his desk. He says he can walk on his own but most people do not interpret staggering as a successful attempt to walk, so, they do not believe him

[hecticcheer]

Uncharitable rant I will probably regret in the morning

Why do so many people only ever write chronic illness when they want to make the straits more dire in a story about regular old short-term illness! Yes, I know, this is a kink space--ergo most people here like this stuff for reasons at least partly sexual--and many of us (whether chronically ill ourselves or not) feel uncomfortable bringing the horn to bear on long-term suffering, but? That’s fine?? Not kink-writing about chronically ill characters at all is also a viable solution to that problem! I don’t mind that! But if you do choose to write permasickfic then--can’t you let it be mundane sometimes? Stories about the common cold get to be mundane and domestic and silly, after all, so? Why do depictions of chronic illness usually come packaged in an appendicitis or wound-infection sandwich, squeezed between slices of self-sabotage bread? Do y’all know how fucking weird it is to see normal, routine parts of my life used as plot points to make a Dangerous Illness even more dramatic? How disheartening to see these parts of my life represented that way more often than any other?