Who: Andrew and Trystan What: Trystan's Overdose When: June 6 - just backdated a little Where: The hospital Rating/Warnings: Language, talk of drug use
You are only coming through in waves, your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying. When I was a child, I had a fever, My hands felt just like two balloons, Now I've got this feeling once again, I can't explain it, you would not understand,
o6.o6 --
It was familiar.
The sickening sound of an arterial beep and the fade-in to blinding whites&blues -- that slow fade to cognizance and the sluggish steep of that danger that had seeped into his veins for the second -- oh, second time in his short and stilted life. And as the veil lifted and panic set in, there came to realization the differences as well -- those which did not allow for such ease of fear as the figures came into periphery, and the panic pulled hard at restraints that kept him chained close to the bed like a manic --
like the clinically insane.
There was a hollow pain in his chest that blossomed throughout the whole of him -- travelled up his throat to the hardened tubes spilling forth from his lips, and through his addled recollections he felt each thrum and nuance shift back into place -- back into the pain of that smashed head and those assaulted veins and those shattered blood vessels lining his fragile lungs. He breathed dizzy the air that was far too pure, and with those envy eyes fixing wildly on one thing or another his body seized into resistance -- into that everpresent call to arms that refuted his very existence.
Andrew had arrived earlier that evening. He spent the first hour pacing back and forth, watching machines, watching the man for signs that he was awake or at least alert. He thought about trying to sleep in the recliner next to the bed, but he was too awake to bother. The nurses had told him that they would call when Trystan woke, but Andrew wasn’t having that. They had given him coffee instead, and a meal that Trystan wouldn’t have eaten even if he had been well.
He had awoken hours later, machines signaling activity before it happened, alerting the staff on duty to his bedside. His hand reached for the clenched fist, trying to pull at restraints. He hated those, but Andrew understood why they were there. He knew enough about Trystan to know that he would leave if he could, under whatever steam he had left. “Back off,” he hissed at the staff, whose hands came instantly towards the man. “For a minute, get back.”
His role was already chosen the minute he stepped through the door. He was the protector.
Andrew hovered on the other side as they did, getting in the way of whatever they insisted on checking. He couldn’t be too forceful, as they could tell him to leave instead of allowing him to camp there for the duration of whatever was ahead. He had to be the diplomat as well. “Give us a minute, please.” They were words he would utter more often during the course of his stay.
The staff acquiesced, perhaps hoping that the patient could be calmed. They still hovered too close for Andrew’s liking. “Hey, hey, calm down. I don’t like these things either. They were not my choice.” He put his hand on the restraints gently. “I won’t let anything happen to you.” He stayed in Trystan’s line of vision, trying to stop the panic that was obvious in his eyes.
The will to speak was mitigated by tubing and wires that overcame him -- enveloped him entirely in medical bondage. His eyes focused on Andrew with confusion at first -- with the wild rolling fright of an untamed thing that had found itself bound tight by captors. But as shadowed hands withdrew and his breath collapsed in time with the machine forcing metronomic eupnoea, he realized -- vaguely -- that figure beside him and its nonsensical presence.
Confusion tangled his brow -- settled in time with that erratic heart and sinew that tore to be liberated from its confines. And despite protection -- despite a secondary presence -- a doctor pushed forward with a metered insistence and needle in hand, arm beside arm with the Duke.
“Sir --” A steadied hand on that flailing skeletal limb.
“With his heart rate what it is he’s at risk for a heart attack.”
And slowly, the silence bloomed.
Andrew watched Trystan’s eyes close again. He chewed on his lip, allowing everyone to resume working. He tried to pay attention to the monitors, find out how best to deal with the situation.
A nurse broke through his thoughts. “Sir, are you alright? We have some water if you need some.”
Andrew continued to stare at the body, so tiny against all of those machines, yet there was also a strength, and a very strong will. “I need to know what all is wrong with him. I’m not sure how to fix him.”
~~~~~ 6.07 - Day 2
Andrew had managed to get a bite to eat in the middle of the night while Trystan slept, induced by the medications. While in the room, he kept his eyes on the heart monitor, now keenly aware of the consequences of the heavy drug abuse, and possible eating disorder. He couldn’t imagine the ride they were going to take, but the tension was settling in. He had overheard the doctors talking about withdrawals, and he knew they would be extremely hard, but he didn’t have any experience in those sorts of things.
His place was set. He hovered close when Trystan periodically woke, tried to sooth that need to run for the door. The restraints had to stay in place, at least until Trystan was stable. Andrew was disturbed by it, but he understood as well. For now he was the mediator.
The phone rang early, a contact from the UK with whom Andrew had a nice business relationship. Getting Trystan’s paperwork in order was much easier than he thought. The papers would be on the way for William Tristan Percy, at a hefty fee. He smiled at the job well done, and went back to the bedside as the doctors entered to check the breathing tubes. Andrew assured them that the proper paperwork was on the way as they spoke. He stepped back to allow them to work.
There was a sick that settled in his hollowed gut, and an inability to articulate the discomfort that had arrived with a drowsiness that crept through his entire being -- a sluggish refute that bled contrary to his fear and fervor, contrary to the terror that overtook him. In the moments awake he stared ahead with weakened resistance, giving little consideration to the men and women around him, and in the brief spaces allowing anger to take hold and tighten its reins once more it allowed him bruises -- only bruises, brushed clean and quick along that pale and graying flesh so subdued by the toxicities beneath it.
It was afternoon when he woke once more, methadone-sluggish with those bedroom eyes casting curious over to his accomplice who, to Trystan’s curiosity, hadn’t left since -- to the best of the whore’s knowledge -- his admittance to the hospital. He had no recollection of calling him as his head hit the pavement, but with the plastic deterring all questions accumulated, he merely watched like a frightened and feral animal, limbs seized and ready to spring from their confines at the earliest opportunity.
Andrew heard him before looking over to see the blonde’s eyes open. The heartbeat picked up on the monitor. He had never realized how conscious one was of sounds when you listened for them. He tried to stay calm, setting the paper he was reading to the side in the recliner. He stood up and walked the two steps to the side of the bed. “Good morning,” he said, “how are you feeling?” Trystan couldn’t talk, but he supposed that he could nod. He could also see his eyes, curious, trying to figure out what was going on, or at least a quick escape route. It was one reason that Andrew stayed. He knew Trystan well enough to know that if he was able, he’d be gone, and Andrew was determined not to let that happen. He needed to get well first.
“I suppose you are wondering what I am doing here?” He looked for a sign of acknowledgement. “You were late.” He wasn’t sure if Trystan would have remembered where he was supposed to be, but Andrew knew he wouldn’t have been late. “I was worried, and I’m well connected.” He was also lucky, but he wasn’t going to confess that just yet.
The blonde watched cautiously, fingers tight into fists as he listened. There was little he could do to offer any affirmation of understanding, but with a slightly canted head he took those words like salt to his wounds, turning them in his mind with the lethargy of a drunkard and the sleep he’d caught up on from years of insomnia -- both drug and self-induced.
His brows came together in further unanswered questions -- inquiries he was wise enough to mute. But still, he shifted, stared quietly -- so different when diminished by machines and the weight of no words.
Andrew knew there were more questions, and some would be reserved for the tubes coming out. For now, he chose the simple answers. “We were supposed to start buying books for your list. You were late. I knew you wouldn’t have been late, and you wrote a message that didn’t make sense the night before. There was something wrong. I called you, and a nurse answered the phone, hoping for a family member.” He pointed to the phone, sitting neatly on the table. Andrew had left it alone, choosing not to prowl through the contents. “They were very relieved to find out I was your brother, and you have a new alias.”
He watched the blonde closely, proud of the lie that had gotten him every bit of information he needed, and an open door to be here. “You are safe, you know. They won’t remove the restraints, and I have asked, but … you need to get better. I know you would leave if you could.” He looked down at the balled fist, so ready to run and go straight back to life on the street. He wasn’t sure how to address the issue yet, but there was time.
&despite those securities -- despite kind intent and those murmured assurances of safety and still waters, he sobbed -- choked on that machine that forced air in timely measure
that forced him to breathe, only breathe.
Andrew reached down and squeezed the fist that was clenched at the restraint. His hands were soft and gentle. “I’m here for the duration.” He never asked if Trystan wanted him there or not, he had simply made a choice. “I’ll read you what is in the paper if you want, and when that tube comes out, you can tell me what books you want to hear - if you do, and we can go numb on those talk shows.” He didn’t think Trystan would like those, and he didn’t either, but they were good for a laugh, one that was needed.
The response remained those silent sobs, countered by closed eyes and machines expecting far stronger a subject.
o6.1o . day o5 ---
The removal of invasive tubing came as a relief -- one, perhaps, only felt on the receiving end. From the patient who had grown so accustomed to foreign objects forced down his throat elicited -- rather than relief, rather than a rasp rent ragged from disuse -- a string of frantic murmurs, demands not-so-easily subdued by the Duke despite all his efforts. It prompted -- at first -- sedation; with the tubes vacant the whore had free reign to rail against those tightened restraints, tearing with violent screams the trachea which had been occupied so tenuously only moments before. And when the sedation wore enough for what could barely be conceived as anything beyond somnambulism, he turned to the blond who had never left his side, lips cracked and bloody and battered by the aggressions that spilled from them so readily.
“Why are you here?” It was biting -- bred brutal by embarrassment and resignation, stark and fragile in its contrary tenor.
Andrew had watched stoically as Trystan fought against the restraints once the tubes were removed. He ordered the medical staff away. They wouldn’t help to calm him, which was all they were trying to do. No. Trystan was a feral animal. Andrew hadn’t expected some show of affection. He hadn’t been sure what he would find, but it had been something like this. Part of him broke just a little more.
Business first. Business masked everything else. “It’s nice to see you too,” he answered smoothly. Doctors and nurses walked past the glass, looking in. Andrew walked to the other side of the bed and pulled the curtain, obscuring the view. They had asked Andrew several times about Trystan’s sanity as he struggled against the restraints. Andrew had always reassured them that it was a shock to his system, not more than his own fears. He wasn’t so sure about the truthfulness of the statement.
“I want to be here. Like it or not, you need someone who can help you, and don’t tell me you don’t. I didn’t like the looks on their faces while you were screaming. Luckily, that also means your lungs are working.” He half smiled, taking a drink of his fifth cup of coffee today. “How are you feeling?”
“Confined,” he offered simply, aggressively. He pulled against his wrists once more, the heavy fabric biting into his paperlantern flesh. The methadone sick had worn off in a period marked by intubation and inert futility, and instead he remained feeling relatively normal, albeit drowsy and markedly irritable.
“The only way you can assist me is in getting me out. Surely if you bribed them enough to stay in here you can bribe them enough to release me.” An arched eyebrow, his vitriol in full-swing on that violent tongue despite its vacation.
“If we weren’t in the ICU then that would be an option,” he admitted. “However - it can’t be done yet, but my presence also means you will not be sent anywhere else for your own good.” He arched a brow back at Trystan. “You are not making it very easy for me. The way you carry on will make it harder to get you out than it was for me to get in. There is a time and place for bribery.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, looking down at the frail man. “Would you like me to leave you alone to sort this out yourself? I can see so many others coming in to help you. I practically have to beat them back.” He was trying to decide what information was important at the moment, and what would cause further outbursts. “You have a heart condition. No matter what I say, they are not going to release you with that right off the vent.”
Frank discourse left in its wake a silenced creature, one beset by realizations of his own solitude. Trystan stared -- silent, fearful -- betrayal rife in those agonizing bruises he’d bestowed himself in those incessant episodes that left him only worse for wear. The monitors still attached to that hollowed body filled the void, beeping away all those words unspoken, and finally --
with all the weakness of a body wasted away to nothing --
he spoke, voice cracking from more than disuse.
“If that’s the only reason you’re here then leave it to the others you’ve found vacant. I’d rather be abandoned than absolved by acquired debt.” Bangs had fallen carelessly across that fiery gaze, masquing -- to his benefit -- the fury that found itself pooling in those burning blinks away as he stared -- oh, stared.
“Lucky for you, that’s not the only reason I’m here.” Andrew pulled a chair over to the bed and sat heavily. “I actually want to be here. I’m not abandoning you, even if you try to make me. Do you know what it took to find you in the first place? There was no reason to go through getting you a verifiable identity if I was going to just walk away. You’re stuck with me, and you can trust me.” That was the bigger issue still - trust. Theirs was tentative, but he did believe there was a foundation in whatever they had. “I’m not just throwing you away.”
“You don’t owe me anything.” There was more he wanted to say, but he wasn’t sure what good the words would do, at least not right now. He would have to prove he could be trusted, but he already knew that. “I want you to be okay. That’s it. You can also forget the debt. I pay cash.” He smiled again at the lame joke, really all he had past the exhaustion.
He remained silent throughout it all, diminished to nothing but quakes and quivered breaths. Whether they were born of fear or agony, it could not be said, but as that skeletal creature collapsed back into his mattress, the words were simple and clean -- resolute, and so distant from anything the man beside him had said.
“I just want to go home...”
“Soon,” he said, answering in a single word. Andrew wasn’t sure what more he could say at the moment, making him silently question what he was doing there again. “It could be awhile though.” He got up and took his coffee, reclaiming the recliner a few feet away. “If you want me to get you something, let me know.”
He was quiet for a minute, just letting thoughts drift from one thing to another. “I did meet some of your colleagues while I was looking for you down near Ceasars. They offered just about everything they could offer for a hell of a lot less.” He chuckled a little. “If we are going to be stuck here for days, you could at least talk to me. Why do you like to stay hidden?”
The whore remained pensive for what seemed like ages, the silence pregnant between them. When he finally spoke, it was with his head turned to the drawn curtain -- without pretense and that pretty purr that so thoroughly affecting his speech.
“It’s safer.”
It was offered without resistance -- with a candidness often vacant in those lies that sounded so right along his honeyed lips&tongue.
"That's not really helpful when something happens." Andrew watched him briefly before picking up the newspaper, twisting it in his hands. "I was worried when you didn't show up and you didn't text me back." He shook his head, thinking he sounded ridiculous.
"So now what? Do we get to stare at the walls, or watch paint dry? If they let us walk around, we can go to the courtyard and watch the grass grow." His hands continued to twist the paper. "You don't really have to hide."
“What made you worry?” The tenor took on a quiver that was strikingly uncharacteristic -- the reedy tenure of a violin played to its very brink, dangerously thin and hollow.
“Be honest.”
“You wouldn’t have been late,” was the first answer, quick and to the point, but it wasn’t the deeper one. The truest answer scared him, so he settled for one in the middle. “I worry about you. I don’t want to find you beaten or lying in some gutter somewhere. I told you, you matter. You aren’t the easiest man to get to know, but behind all those walls there is something real.”
One thing he knew about Trystan was that he had to look for little things, subtleties of movement or action, vocal inflection, anything that was slightly different from the norm. “Why are you so convinced that you aren’t worth anything? Be honest.”
The question warranted a laugh -- as cold and caustic as the room around them. It fell to the floor below, echoed off of each sterile surface until it enveloped him in a frightful mockery, made him shudder and shake against those restraints once more, fingers picking futilely at the fabric he managed to reach.
“Remind me how many others you had to beat back from coming to help me -- your words.” He rounded on Andrew, stared intently at those features -- waited for any reaction elicited from those cruel words that had bitten back.
“Then tell me what I’m worth, Your Highness.”
“While it’s the truth, it’s also your fault for not letting anyone in. I’m just persistent.” He looked back at him, unphased. He was used to the looks that crossed that brow. “You try to keep people away.” Perhaps Andrew did the same thing himself. He had his own secrets, and his own issues, not nearly as many as those of the man in the bed.
“Why do you do that?”
“There isn’t any other option.” Defeat weighed heavy on the narrow expanse of his shoulders -- pressed deliciously with ill intent along bones already broken and marrow-sick. He turned away, contorting oddly against his confines as he spoke quietly to the Duke who had somehow forced his way into this farce -- this accidental absurdity that had coursed its way through his veins yet again, on the mark of an age that held, to many, such great significance.
Funny, the way it all worked out.
“It isn’t safe. Proximity. It’s just as unsafe as here.”
And he fell into himself, tragically small and divided.
“Sure there is. You have to trust someone.” He moved once more from the recliner to the side of the bed, making sure he didn’t sit on any of the IV lines still connected. “I’ll judge what is safe for me. I’ve made it this far, haven’t I? I haven’t thrown you away, and I haven’t betrayed you.” He reached up and brushed through his hair.
“You are going to get out of here, and I’ll make sure of it.”
“Please--” A plea, earnest and scared and lined with those tears he just wouldn’t let fall.
“Just make it happen soon.”
o6.12 . day o7 ---
Through suffering and stilted measure there grew an ambivalence -- an apathy that had culminated from irreconcilable terror and the stress it was placing on his recovering carcass. The days came&went with struggle -- with protests and violent thrashings, bone-deep bruising and the green&yellow embellishment that spread across that sallow skin. And through apathy -- through fight&flight and the tremors of terror that shook him when those cunning eyes were closed -- there remained the shadow beside his bed, that looming figure that swore protection in the face of all else.
He had grown accustomed to seeking his companion upon waking, had found that -- despite insistence and all manner of urging -- Andrew had remained by his side. And with a start from a dream that had issued forth hands to tear him apart -- oh, apart -- he started forward in fear, eyes intent on where the man usually found himself taking up idle moments when the whore couldn’t be of any use.
“I need to leave--” The panic set in, at its worst upon painful recollection. He begged, hushed tones that escaped the nurses who drew too near. Sedation had been an intermittent solution, one that lingered and laced his veins into submission in those twilight expanses, but as the duration of his stay drew longer, it had been decided that, perhaps, to withstand his anxieties could perhaps -- counterintuitively -- help in some form or fashion, and it was in such an instance he found himself --
all too coherent and compromised.
“Pleasepleaseplease, you need to make it be today.” his voice was frantic, rife with tremors&quakes.
The machines alerted him a moment before Trystan said a word. The beeps increased, as always. Andrew didn’t quite understand the fear, but whatever terrified him was very real. He moved quickly, discarding the morning paper to the table. He went to the bed, dropping the railing on the side. Although the restraints were still there, they were longer, allowing Trystan some motion, although he couldn’t leave the bed. “I can ask,” he said soothingly, stroking his hair.
“I know you hate it here. I swear, we are getting out. They just want to make sure your head and heart are fine.” He had said the words so many times that he could do it in his sleep. “It’s got to be soon.”
Six days they had been in this room. Andrew was a regular at the cafeteria. The nursing staff had given him scrubs, and Blake had brought clothes to drop off. He had stayed, no matter that Trystan had tried to order him out. He had taken his nightmares, tried to calm him when he could, read books that he requested, and had been a rock. He had wondered time and again if that made progress, but he stayed right where he was, holding to a promise he made.
“I’m sorry, baby. I’ll talk to them as soon as they come in.” He brought Trystan’s eyes up to his. “Why are you so afraid of them?”
“Please,” was the only response. It was typical of the exchangeable mania and complacency, complete with a whiteknuckle grasp along metal and flesh. He’d nearly made his escape a day prior, and when those hands had settled ‘round his wrists once more the terror had returned -- replaced all futility with that fevered paranoia so ingrained in those hollow bones.
“Please. Andrew I can’t fucking breatheinhere it’s toxic.”
Andrew held Trystan as best he could trying to cover him and calm him down. “If I can, I will,” he promised. He meant it. He would fight for it, but he wasn’t sure medically that it was a good idea.
“I need to know something though. Where are you going when you get out? Are you going back to where you were?” There was concern in his voice that he couldn’t hold back as well as the days wore on. “You still aren’t that healthy.”
“I have a home,” the whore recanted, falling into those arms with nary a struggle. Trust still withheld, he continued to speak, the tenor strained and reedy.
“Nobody built me a taj mahal, but I’m not so poor that I’m on the streets or anything.”
He stroked the blonde hair softly, still finding it odd to see Trystan sober, without the heroin glaze that he had been in for so long. Trystan was still tough to figure out, and perhaps he always would be, but it didn’t really matter. “Come home with me. You can have a room of your choice, and you can stay until you feel better or longer. You don’t have to worry about money.”
Andrew had been worried about this since coming into the hospital, and it hadn’t changed. Trystan would go back to his life, back to the drugs, no food, be the same addict he was, and down the road they would end up here, or even worse than that. The next time it could be the morgue.
“I don’t need that.” It was provided simply, succinctly and without the lull his words ordinarily possessed. Here, he was resounding clarity born of fear -- nothing more, little less.
“I’m not going to pay rent for nothing.”
“Then don’t pay rent. You can take all the time you need. I don’t need the money,” Andrew said in the same soothing tone. “Your body took one Hell of a beating. You can actually give it a rest, enjoy the pool if you want to, live in a castle.”
“When they brought you in, they knew you were from the streets. It’s obvious. If they know you have somewhere to go, they might be willing to release you, but I won’t try to convince them unless you are going to do it.” He felt a little guilty over using that kind of leverage, but he also felt that it needed to be done. He wasn’t sure if Trystan would agree to it, or if his word would be trustworthy, but he would follow through with it if he did - as promised.
“Just say what you need to--” he pleaded and begged, bought all manner of implied retribution if only there could be sweet escape.
“Please.”
oh,please.
Andrew watched his face, begging and pleading to get out of this place. He didn’t trust it. He had learned a thing or two about Trystan and his hate of hospitals, deepset fear really, was obvious. He could say anything to get out, and most likely would. He also knew that with the right influence, he could pull it off.
“Trystan.” His face didn’t promise anything. His hand brushed through blond hair. “I can make this happen, but I have conditions, and you have to trust me.” That was it’s own condition. “You have to stay clean, and you have to give me 60 days. No tricks either, not even me if that’s not what you want.” He wasn’t sure if Trystan would agree to it, or if he would hold to it. He could be gone the same night, as Andrew would never keep him locked up. “You need to get better, and that probably won’t happen here. You can have the room of your choice, whatever you need, and money isn’t necessary. If you want to pay me, do it by getting well. That is payment enough. You can work on the library and we can shop for your list, or you can do nothing but swim, and write. It’s up to you, but 60 days.”
The whore elicited a singular laugh, sharp and biting. He threw himself -- with a displaced force and contortion -- back against those pillows that were giving his frail figure sores, his responses swelling with renewed frustrations as the fear faded, slow and sure.
“Working on a library doesn’t pay my lease, nor does paying said lease benefit me in any way if you refuse to let me go home.” He watched Andrew intently, eyebrow arched, lips taut.
Andrew’s brow arched, calm on cool. He made no move towards him, nor did he move away. Trystan could say anything he wanted, make a million promises just to get out of the hospital, but he wasn’t. “I’ll cover your rent, just like I’m covering your hospital bills. I want you to get well, nothing more. It’s not the worst offer you have ever had.” He actually laughed at that line himself.
“You know those are easy things to do. Money doesn’t mean a thing to me. Your body has taken a beating, worse than I thought it had, and that’s quite a bit. Why are you so locked into your tricks, shooting heroin to get you through the day? That’s all shit, you know. Why are you in such a hurry to crawl back to the gutter when you don’t have to?” For the life of him, he couldn’t understand why Trystan was so insistent on that life. He could change it. He had talent. He could sell his work, which might be similar to selling his soul, but there were other things out there.
“I may not have to, but in refusing to do so I pay a price.” He watched Andrew cautiously, that keeper of a gilded key. Still, in the briefest instance -- in the periphery of light aflutter, fluorescent and sickly blue -- he considered that cage, its marrow entwined with his own.
“I’ll do whatever you want, just please make them allow me severance. It’s too much to bear in here.” And with that, he turned on his side to the extent of those restraints’ fibres, away from Andrew and the conversation that was calling too much too forward.
And with damnation -- oh, damnation in that concession, he fluttered shut his eyes, praying for dreams of that dragon coursing through fetid veins.
“What is the price really? I won’t keep you locked in. You can come and go, make full use of everything there, and you might be a little stronger afterward.” Andrew brushed his hair as his eyes shut. He knew Trystan hated the deal, but he was honoring it as well. Andrew would have put money on Trystan running off as soon as they got to the manor house, but he might also hold to his word. “I do care what happens to you. That’s why I haven’t left.”
He didn’t say anything further. Instead, he stepped out of the room to find the doctors. If Trystan was holding to his word, Andrew would make it happen. They would soon be home.