p. crumb has strong feelings re: mandatory pudding (godofnofun) wrote in dissentwo, @ 2013-03-09 16:39:00 |
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It was a bit of a curious fact, perhaps, that Pollo had never entered a pub out of any personal desire to. He’d been in plenty of pubs, over the last several years, by virtue of most people his age (and many not his age) enjoying a pint or five on a regular basis. It was a matter of fact that Pollo lived in a country in which drinking was a national pastime, and even if he didn’t approve of it, he couldn’t really evade the truth of it, either. Tonight, as with most every night he’d ended up in a pub, it had been suggested after two long hours of planning a protest at the office that the meeting would be better continued in the pub (a suggestion to which Richard, hanging on the edges of the meeting to provide his entirely unwanted commentary, seemed all too amenable). He’d conceded, and for the last couple of hours, he’d sat with his friends as they’d downed pints, nursing a few bad cups of coffee and a few better glasses of water while they did. He’d hardly noticed when Richard left, stumbling a bit as he tried to gather his drunken dignity after Pollo had snapped at him for the umpteenth time over some needlessly cynical comment he’d made over their plans. Whether Richard left out of anger or sheer boredom was, for the most part, irrelevant to Pollo, save in the most drastic incidents. He’d returned his attention to the discussion at hand and, after some time more, they’d wrapped up the meeting for the evening; his friends had homes to get to, work to do, and Pollo had letters to write and, the next morning, a shift at the MLES. He strolled from the pub alone, hands in his pockets, head bent against the drizzling spring rain and the chill of the night. Home was only some blocks away, and when he got there, he could have a hot shower, a decent cup of coffee, and finish up for the night. It took him a few moments to register the sounds coming from up ahead as troubling, male voices, dull sounds of impact, and another voice, incoherent, making noise rather than words. Still, he’d been a hitwizard for four years and around rowdy crowds longer; it didn’t take too long to recognize the sound of a fight. Brow furrowing, hands emerging from his pockets, he began to run to the noises. It took no one by surprise that the second the meeting had moved to the local pub, that Richard would be unabashedly drunk within an hour of getting there. It wasn’t even a probability, so much as it was an absolute, and most of them honestly had no problem with it. Some still laughed at his comments and antics, and overall, though Pollo may have sent glares and harsh looked throughout the evening his way, many of the others enjoyed having Richard around. They had told him as much. But when Pollo and Richard went at it, they always stepped back. Richard had stormed out of the pub, the alcohol fueling his frustration, and made his way over to one of the other, grimier pubs down the street. All the owners knew him by name and reputation, and though he didn’t always cause a problem, there had been more than a handful of times that Richard had been thrown out of these pubs. Still, he was good business, and most of the bartenders liked him well enough. Tonight, however, Richard had gone into the pub looking for trouble, Pollo’s words still invading his thoughts, running around this alcohol-addled mind, taunting him. He knew this run-down bar was not friendly toward homosexuals, and he had always made sure to keep any and all of his advances saved for other bars that he knew would be more receptive to it. Tonight, however, Richard needed the trouble. He had openly hit on the biggest, toughest looking man in the bar, running a hand gently down his arm, and after being swatted away, going in for the kiss. The man didn’t take that too well, as Richard had hoped for, and out the door he was thrown, the man and his friends following behind. Richard fought back at first, as they called every insult in the book, from faggot to queer to everything in between. But then, somewhere between him feeling a rib snap and his nose crunch, he had given up the fight, a small part of him hoping that this time, this fight, this group of men, would just finish him off. It wasn’t a thought Richard was unfamiliar with, but it took a particular mood and day to bring it out of him. So by the time the men had run off, Richard wasn’t entirely there, not sure if the beating had stopped, or if the lack of new hits meant that he had finally gotten his wish. His entire body still screamed in pain, so the latter didn’t seem likely. He tried to sit up, a groan and stifled yell caught in his throat as he spit out a bit of blood on the street, before his arms gave out and he hit the cobblestone with a thud. Pollo had very nearly ran after the couple of men who’d poured out the alley, but the thought that someone might bleed to death while he did so stopped him. Despite the dark, it was easy enough to hear the sound of flesh hitting the ground, and to pick out a silhouette near a wall, more lump-shaped than person-shaped, but moving a little. Pollo ran to the shape, bending down immediately with an automatic question — “Are you okay?” — followed by a sharp intake of breath as his eyes adjusted to the dark and he thought he recognized that shirt, bloodied as it was, that mop of black curls, the slope of his shoulders — “Richard?” ’Really?’ Richard thought to himself upon hearing Pollo’s voice. Of course, of everyone in London, the one to find Richard in a bloody heap on the floor would be the last person Richard would have ever wanted be the one to find him in this position. He held an arm out, trying to signal for Pollo to just go away, but the pain was too much and he brought his arm back down. “Go away,” he said defiantly, though much more weakly than he would have hoped. It was amazing how difficult it was to be aggressive when you were in that much pain. “Richard, Jesus Christ,” Pollo said, dropping to his knees and reaching a tentative hand to the other man’s shoulder, terrified he’d make his injuries worse. With a glance to assure himself no Muggles were in sight, he took out his wand, muttering “Lumos” and gasping at the sight of his friend. “Richard, what happened?” God, he hoped Richard wasn’t so far gone that he’d start fighting Pollo when he tried taking the man to Mungo’s. Jesus Christ, how could the idiot manage to get in trouble this deep in such a short amount of time? Richard jerked away from Pollo’s touch, a move he regretted straight away. He shook his head and let out a humorless laugh at the question. “A group of nuns hit the bottle a little too hard and let it out on the first poor, defenseless bloke they saw. Woe is me, those sisters had a mean right hook.” “Richard, this isn’t funny. Where does it hurt?” Pollo asked, all too aware that from the looks of things, the answer was probably ‘everywhere.’ He knew basic first aid, but it was a bit difficult deciding where to start, considering the extent of Richard’s injuries. Worse, by the look on his friend’s face it seemed as though he was in quite a lot of pain, and if Pollo knew Richard, the man had probably ingested more than enough alcohol that he was barely feeling half the pain he should be. “It’s nothing a little brandy couldn’t fix,” Richard slurred, turning his head as far as it would go without the pain becoming too unbearable, searching for a bottle somewhere. Somewhere between the blows to the head and the bottles ingested before, it just seemed logical that there would be a bottle just lying around out here. “That’s not how brandy works,” Pollo said curtly, moving to wipe some of Richard’s blood from his face with his own sleeve, wincing at how much there was. “Can you stand?” “If I fucking wanted to I could, but I don’t, so fucking leave me here,” he mumbled, half the words lost or incoherent as he tried to breathe through the pain in his chest and head. “Richard, you’re badly hurt, and we’d all be upset if you died in an alley,” Pollo said, his patience extended thanks to his fear at seeing Richard this badly beat up. “What happened?” “Big fucking guys,” he said, his head spinning, and even just those words were hard to put together. Even if he were more stable, there was no way Richard was going to recount the entire story. Pollo had always fought for gay rights, or at least for as long as Richard could remember, but this wasn’t about that. Not really. He instigated this fight, and he knew it was his own fault, and he would be damned if he would let Pollo in on that bit. “I saw that much.” Pollo’s voice was dry but his brow was still furrowed, the distress clearly writ across his face at the state of the other man. It was probably fortunate for Richard that the lighting charm lit more of him than Pollo’s expression, and that he was likely too drunk and too injured to focus much on Pollo’s features in the first place. “Did they do anything to your back? We need to get you to Mungo’s.” “I already told you that I could bloody stand,” Richard hissed, once again trying to swat Pollo away to try and stand on his own, just to prove to the boy that he wasn’t lying (even though he was). As he tried supporting himself against the wall to stand, he let out a howl of pain that he couldn’t keep hidden, not with this level of discomfort and agony. “Richard.” There was a desperate edge to Pollo’s voice as he rushed to help keep the other man more or less upright, the lighting charm on his wand going out as he moved to put his arms under Richard’s. He didn’t know what to do, for once. He was too out of his depth, and altogether too familiar with how difficult Richard could be when he’d decided he didn’t need help. Pulling Richard close and hoping he wasn’t making any of Richard’s injuries worse, he squeezed his eyes shut, focusing all his energy on disapparating them both to A&E at St Mungo’s. It wasn’t too much of a distance, but it was enough of one to take considerable concentration. And, a moment later, the darkness of the alleyway was replaced by bright hospital lights and, without a wall to help him support Richard, suddenly in front of reception, he staggered with Richard, going to his knees as he tried to let his friend down as gently as he could. There weren’t enough words in the English language to express how much Richard hated Mungo’s. He had been there countless times, between the alcohol poisonings, the malnutrition, the illnesses brought on by his crap immune system, the fights, and the drunken tumbles. Each time, he found more absurd reasons and excuses not to come, and a few times he had even gotten away with it. And now, with the familiar bright lights and the stench of hospital around him, as soon as Richard hit the ground in the lobby, he leaned over, away from Pollo, and emptied the contents of his stomach right there in the middle of the room ...well, at least they were in the hospital now. Nothing Mungo’s staff hadn’t cleaned up before. Pollo rushed to reception, and shortly after, the staff was taking Richard into one of the A&E beds to be looked over. Pollo followed them, brow furrowed in concern as the hospital air gradually dried his hair and clothes out from the rain. It wasn’t a hot shower, not by a long shot, but all his thoughts of what he’d wanted to do before going to sleep for work tomorrow had evaporated at the sight of Richard’s battered body. When the staff had cleaned him up enough to wait for one of the A&E Healers in safety, Pollo stood by Richard’s bed, filling the space the vacated staff had left, frowning. “What happened?” he asked again, quietly. Richard was feeling loopy. From the alcohol that still coursed through his veins to the newly administered preliminary pain potions that they gave him as he waited for the Healer, he looked up to see both Pollos standing there. “Not all men like other men.” Pollo grit his teeth tight, pressing his lips together as his brow furrowed deeper, catching Richard’s meaning all too quickly. It was hard to decide what to say — he knew Richard didn’t like talking much about anything that made him vulnerable, and ‘I’m sorry’ seemed far too weak — but he did his best. “Homophobes did this to you?” “I did this to me,” he muttered to himself, before reaching out to see which of the two Pollos before him was real. “Yeah. But I kicked some arse. You should have seen. Pow pow. Pow pow!” “I’m sure,” Pollo said, too drained by the sight of Richard’s injuries to put much humour into the statement. There was nothing funny about this. “Did you get a good look at any of them?” Richard shook his head. Of course he had gotten a good look at them. He had tried to kiss one of them, for crying out loud, but he wasn’t about let Pollo know that. Luckily, being a full-blown alcoholic had one or two perks, and one of them was that he could claim that he didn’t remember a thing whenever he pleased. This would be one of those cases. “There were more than one?” Pollo grimaced, all too willing to believe Richard. After all, even if he had far more belief in the man’s faculties than most, he was also far too close to Richard’s alcoholism to doubt that Richard would have been absolutely sloshed, too sloshed to know which way was up, let alone note features. “You know you don’t deserve this,” he said, voice still quiet as he looked at Richard, too aware that his statement was likely untrue. “You suck the cock, you hit the rock, bam bam bam,” Richard laughed as he continued a string of bams. Pollo really had no idea what Richard was talking about (save cock-sucking, which he was familiar with, if only as a recipient), and while he lifted an eyebrow at Richard’s behaviour, he didn’t say much besides. “You don’t deserve this,” he repeated. “You’re better than them.” “But not better than you,” he teased, knowing that while perhaps Pollo thought him better than the thugs at the pub, he probably still thought him less than his friends at the meeting. He would have to be an idiot to think otherwise. Richard wasn’t at their level, something he had known for years now. He was selfish and just not good. He laughed as he went over these thoughts in his head. “I just kind of flop around in the middle. Better than a thug, less than a God.” Pollo stared at him for a long moment, the line between his brows growing deeper, arms crossed, before mustering up all the patience he had (not always an easy task for Pollo, who was by nature easily annoyed and almost always under extraordinary stress) to answer. “Firstly, I’m not a God. Secondly, if you’re any worse than me, it’s because of the things you let cloud your mind, not any inherent problem of worth.” Other people might have coddled Richard under these circumstances, but Pollo wasn’t about to say Richard was better than him when honestly, most of the time he didn’t believe it. He did love his friend, but part of that was loving all of Richard’s potential, most of which Richard sadly declined to share with the rest of the world, Pollo included. A pause and then, “The people who did this deserve to have their spines ripped out. And if you quote me on that in public and the Prophet runs a headline about how an activist is looking to de-spine people, I won’t speak to you for a month.” “You mean I would get a break from you for a whole month?” Richard asked, his words slurred and slow. He shut one eye tightly, trying to focus in on Pollo. “How exactly does one de-spine a person?” Pollo shook his head, feeling uncharacteristically tired. It was one thing, to rage against the world day after day, to use a thousand anecdotes to illustrate the evils of purism, classism, sexism, racism, homophobia, and a thousand other ills to a crowd. It was entirely another to see one’s best friend living out the reality, bloody and bruised and out of his mind on alcohol and what pain potions they could safely give someone who was that drunk. “I would imagine it involves reaching in and pulling out with tremendous force,” he said, trying to ignore the beginnings of an epic headache and failing, the fingers of one hand going to rest at his temple as he shut his eyes against the fluorescent lighting and the situation. “It’s possible I’d have to make an incision first,” he conceded. For some reason, this was hysterical to Richard, and he let out a loud laugh, causing every muscle in his body to ache with its movement. It hurt, but for the life of him, he couldn’t stop. He wasn’t even sure why he found this so funny, but he did, and it hurt, and he couldn’t stop as tears streamed down his cheeks from the laughter. It took awhile to die down, but once he finally calmed himself down, he wiped the tears away and looked up at Pollo. “Can you get that lovely Healer over to give me more potion, please? And maybe a drink. Yes, go to the hospital bar and grab me a drink, please.” “Potion, not drink,” Pollo chided. It wasn’t as if he was entirely stupid — he knew that with the extent of Richard’s injuries, he’d be in here for a while, and that unless he still had a bottle somewhere on him (and one charmed to be unbreakable; Pollo winced at the alternative), he wasn’t going to have a drink for... a while. He knew damn well how terrifying the prospect would be for Richard, if he had any conception of it yet; he didn’t know quite as well just how unpleasant withdrawal would be for his friend, if only thanks to sheer inexperience, but he’d read up on the subject more than once. When he returned and the Healer had done what she could for Richard without totally overwhelming his body with substances, Pollo glanced at his watch before studying his friend again, memorizing the livid bruising on his face, the expression on his face. Yes, it was very probable Pollo would be making furious speeches about homophobia for the next two or three weeks. “You should try and get some rest,” he said, his voice far more gentle than it normally was. Richard’s body felt like it was floating. It was nice, but not what he was used to. He felt wonderful and uncomfortable and horrible all at once. “I don’t want to rest. I want to leave. Get me out of here.” “Richard, they need to heal you.” Pollo’s voice stayed patient, the sadness in it plain. “I can’t do that. You definitely can’t. You need to stay.” Richard groaned and try to sit up in his bed. “I’m leaving,” he said, his face showing the distress he felt, the panic. “Richard.” Just like that, Pollo was at his friend’s bedside, a hand each resting gently on Richard’s chest and his arm to guide him back down to the bed, ready to apply heavier pressure if he absolutely had to. “Please.” He studied the other man’s face for a moment before, with a sigh, drawing the chair by the bed closer, nodding at it. “I’ll stay with you until I have to go to work, okay?” Another pause. “And I’ll come back after, if I’m still here.” “I just want to go now,” he whined, much like a child would being told he couldn’t have dessert until later. “I have the potions, I’ll be fine. I just want to go now.” “You have pain potions,” Pollo pointed out. “They’ve barely done anything to heal you.” His hands stayed lightly on Richard, ready to restrain him if he had to. “Richard, please.” Richard didn’t pay attention to Pollo. Normally, he would at least hear him out, but he was quickly remembering his past experiences in the hospital. He knew what the next 48 hours would feel like, and he wanted no part of it. He would rather lick his own wounds at home. He glared up at Pollo #1 and snapped. “I said, let me go!” Where the hell was a Healer with a nice, strong sedative when you needed one? Glancing back to see if help was coming (it wasn’t, not yet), Pollo turned his attention back to Richard, annoyance starting to enter his eyes again. “And I said they’ve barely done anything to heal you. I’m not letting you skulk off to die because you don’t like the sodding hospital.” “I’m not going to fucking die,” Richard argued back as fiercely as he could under the potions’ influence and the pain that was still there. Truth be told, before the pain potions, the pain felt closer to death than he had felt in a solid two years. Or maybe one. “I didn’t fucking ask to be taken here.” “Well I’m very sorry I had the indecency to be concerned when I found my friend bleeding to death in an alleyway,” Pollo hissed. “Until this moment I’d assumed the logical thing to do under the circumstances was take them to someone who could fix it, but now I see the error of my ways. Truly, Richard, I don’t know what I was thinking.” Richard used all of his energy to sit up straight in his bed, the pain almost unbearable, and he spoke through gritted teeth. “You don’t understand, I need to leave. Please?” “Why?” Pollo demanded. “Because,” he pleaded, sounding more desperate and frantic by the second. “Please, Apollo. Don’t make me do this again.” “Richard, you haven’t seen yourself,” Pollo said, most of the fire gone from his voice as he pleaded right back. “It’s scary, okay? I’m scared. I need you to stay and let them fix you up. I can’t let you be hurt, okay? I can’t.” Richard looked up at Pollo, staring at the man, but settling back down in the bed, eyes still panicked. He shook his head, but made no move to get back up. “I can’t.” “Why not? Richard.” Pollo’s lips drew into their typical thin line, though the concern and distress at the look in his friend’s eyes was clearly visible. “It’s really bad, okay? You need to let them heal you. You could puncture a lung. You could die of internal bleeding. You could have a head injury.” “I don’t care,” Richard cried out, shaking his head more furiously. “You don’t know, Pollo. Every time I’m here. Every time. I don’t care anymore. Please, take me home. Please?” With the volume and tone of their exchange in the past few minutes, it wasn’t much of a surprise when a Healer arrived and Pollo looked between the uniformed man and his friend, uncharacteristically unsure. The fact of the matter was, there really was no way he could let Richard leave the hospital without being healed; too much could be wrong with him. Too much looked wrong with him. But that didn’t make ignoring his friend’s pleas — Richard, who almost never said anything earnestly, begging — any easier. “I can’t let you risk this,” he said quietly, ignoring the Healer’s initial inquiry as to whether everything was alright. “Get me out,” he now screamed as loud as he possibly could, sitting back up and freaking out the second he saw the Healer. He knew what this meant, and knew that within the next few hours, the symptoms would start kicking in. He would have dealt with the broken ribs, that pain being nothing compared the Hell he knew was coming. As another Healer came to assist the one already in the room to try and keep Richard calm, Richard who was now flailing, only worsening his injuries he had already sustained, he started screaming more profanities, some directed at the Healers, most at Pollo. “Fuck you,” he screamed over and over again. “Fuck you, fuck you!” He continued fighting back and screaming until slowly the sedative they had just administered began taking effect, and the once fighting and crying Richard, was put down into a heavy sleep in his bed. Pollo took the abuse silently, peripherally aware of the fact that everyone even remotely in sight was trying to catch a peek, and accordingly, he drew the curtains around the bed closed, lips tight. He kept his eyes, by and large, on Richard, his arms crossed, breathing carefully through his nose and accepting the curses as his due. He’d seen Richard in similar states before, but he’d never seemed quite this agitated. Pollo had more or less surmised what his friend was afraid of; he couldn’t blame Richard, but he hoped once Richard was on the other side of this he wouldn’t blame Pollo for long for not being willing to risk Richard’s life. He trusted the Healers to get Richard through withdrawal safely; maybe this time, at least, it would stick (but it had become harder and harder to believe that little voice of hope, over the years). Thanking the Healers and ignoring how heavy the silence felt now that Richard’s cries had stopped ringing through the ward, Pollo sighed, shrugging off his jacket and sitting in the chair beside the bed. Richard would be out for a long while, hopefully, and most likely he’d be incoherent or worse when he woke, but Pollo had said he’d stay there, and he did his best to keep his word, most of the time. Even after the Healers had tidied him up, there was still livid bruising on Richard’s face, belying the illusion of peaceful sleep. He glanced at his watch again, feeling at once tired and entirely too awake — the chair, like most chairs in most hospitals, was not especially comfortable — at the thought of how few hours he had between now and the start of his shift later in the morning. Still, he would keep his word; he would stay until the last possible moment before changing into his work clothing, do his shift, and come back. He had a sneaking suspicion that if Richard was even remotely coherent he’d only end up telling Pollo to fuck off, but on the off-chance he was too battered to curse Pollo’s name, he’d be there, to play witness to Richard’s latest detox, and pay his dues. |