Russ C/Daniel W: hospitals in Oceans Eleven Who: Russ C and Daniel W What: Visiting sick people. Who don't bite. When: Way backdated. Warnings: Language from the start.
Russ hated hospitals the way most people hated traffic, or the sound of nails on a chalkboard. It was not assumed that it would be a pleasant experience, nor was it especially traumatic. It was just an endurance. He hated the smell of antiseptic and he disliked the clean efficiency of nurses. He had spent far too much time lying on his back or on his chest being stitched up from bar fights to find nurses anything but terrifying and he sloped through the door that led to a Vegas he remembered viscerally from the first decade under its sun with trepidation and a very old iPod crammed into a pocket, trailing earphones.
The hospital didn’t take much navigation. Like all hospitals, it had plastic signage and pictures of what could have been flowers but were probably abstracts. The nurses’ station nearest Daniel’s room had a plastic Santa that ho-ho-ho-ed that Russ found unambiguously offensive and a box of chocolates that he did not. Daniel’s room was relatively easy to find: both because hospital rooms were designed to be found and also because Daniel was the one patient that the nurses were muttering over most.
He didn’t knock at the door, merely shuffled into the room on scuffed boots. Russ had liked Vegas: the simple combination of the heat and the dry and the dust suited him and he looked a little better for being back in a door that had a Vegas to go to. Blond scruff, crawling his jaw and before he did anything, he dropped the iPod on the hospital issued blanket, somewhere in the region of Daniel’s knee.
Daniel wasn’t used to visitors. He’d had two. The two visits had gone very badly, each in their own way. Both had left him feeling wrung out in a way that he had not experienced when he was drunk. Emotions got in, steel wire with barbs, veins of vinegar, blunt knife points. It dug down into his chest, down deep, and then when they left, all the points tore back out again when they came free. Daniel, perforce, did not like visits any more than he did before. Now he was in the equivalent of a dungeon, before a castle on a mountain. At least in the castle, he could choose who came (he liked to think).
He looked at the door with accusation before he was even clear who was coming through it.
But Daniel recognized Russell. He recognized him even without the fraying greatcoat. There were a few things that dulled his automatic irritation. One: the trailing earphones reminded him of Lin, and things that reminded Daniel of Lin generally were good things. Two: Russell hadn’t shown any sign of treating Daniel like an invalid, judging from proximity to the bed. And, most finally, most importantly: Daniel was lonely, and he wanted someone to talk to.
“I did not expect you,” he said, squinting. “What’s happened?” He didn’t actually think anything happened; he would have read distress in Russell’s body language thirty seconds ago if some harm had come to Sam. Daniel also knew about Russell’s ex, since they had sniped at each other on the journals, but there was no significant development in that area that he knew of, or Sam would have mentioned it. He knew a lot about Russell, he thought.
Russ didn’t know about drug-den rescues or about Neil and Cris and Louis. He knew Sam was in a horrific place, the weight of nightmares sinking her like a stone beneath water but he didn’t know how bad it was or that she had taken up residence in a room much like this one. He did, however, immediately look guilty. ‘What’s happened?’ could have meant many things, but he thought of Daniel and Sam as intrinsically linked and the faded clarity of Daniel’s blue eyes did nothing to separate them.
He acknowledged the general scowl that was levied in his direction before he’d made much of an entrance into the room, and he carefully picked up one earphone that had dropped gracelessly over the counterpane and was trailing on the floor. Russ looked as ill-fitting in a hospital as he felt: he was too big for the plasticky chair that was a shade of salmon unsuited to most people, he was too blocky to stand up against a wall to take up space (there was a lot of monitoring equipment that unnerved him, machines that bleeped and hummed in a way that vaguely frightened him) and he had an energy crawling beneath the skin like ants.
Perhaps he was not the best visitor to a hospital in early 2000s, but he had not been the best visitor to Victorian London either. “I know,” he said, of being unexpected. Russ did not think he knew Daniel: he knew only fractured pieces, like broken glass. He knew the man was clever and he knew he was a drunk and an addict, the clawing pain of need still made Russ uneasy in nightmares. He knew Sam loved him as simply and as easily as she loved most people, and he knew the man liked music, because of the strain that had been in the memory. Russ folded himself into the plasticky chair with difficulty, and jerked his chin toward the iPod. “Tell me if it’s right.” The music was as much of the concertos and nocturnes and crap that Russ could find in efforts to find the particular strain.
Daniel watched with amusement hidden entirely beneath the surface as the large man tried to fit in the unstable chair. Daniel was lonely, but he didn’t limit his entertainments. He’d take absurdity, bad puns, and the opportunity for mockery was not to be missed. He surmised, however, that like most big loud men, Russell had a fragile ego, and he wouldn’t drive him out unless better showed itself on the horizon. Also, Daniel was curious about the man’s purpose.
Daniel looked the way all men in hospital beds looked, and he did as much as he could to overcome the general impression of pale sickness by sitting up straight and folding one leg casually so that an ankle was tucked under the opposite knee. Daniel was working on his lounge, which was harder when he was sober, and as the machine bounced on his blankets, he automatically reached out to pluck molded plastic from fabric.
The iPod looked strange to Daniel’s eyes, which were used to a few hundred years of coal-burning kitchen fires and hand-sewn clothing, but he knew what it was just fine, and after a few moments, how to work it. He pushed the button and moved his thumb around the circle, peering down at the screen. He wound the headphones with his free hand, drawing the buds closer to his hip as he tilted his curly head down closer. “Right for what?” The wheel went clickclickclick as Daniel scrolled and read.
Russ thought himself absent a purpose. He had come without any real intention beyond an intention to amend the silence with music, straining to hear something he had heard only once in memory. He didn’t look for absolution in the man in the bed with the wasted limbs and waxy skin: he didn’t think of seeking it. He was used to Lin’s brand of acerbic mockery, the kind that felt like getting tangled and knotted up in caustic language like a cat’s cradle but he didn’t expect wit from the man in the bed. Daniel looked much as he’d expected him to look; limp and dulled in the hospital’s fluorescent light.
He watched Daniel’s fingers pick up the iPod (located in some drivel of a store that exchanged pitiful amounts of money for goods on the very slim hope that money could be acquired to buy them back someday: it was the only place he could think to look for something old enough to suit Vegas of a decade and a half ago) and his focus narrowed as his hips wedged uncomfortably against the sides of the chair.
“Right for you,” he said on an exhale, as he shrugged off the jacket in the cloying heat of the hospital. Hospitals, Russ knew from experience, kept the temperature near tropical to keep the inmates (Russ thought of them as such without even thinking much about it). “Got one of yours, that memory exchange thing,” he explained shortly, and his voice cut off as effectively as slamming a door: Russ did not wish to talk about the memory exchange thing at all. “Music. So tell if it’s wrong or whatever. I can change it.”
Compared to his existence in the last several months, this version of Daniel’s level of wit verged upon dangerous. He was more careful with what he revealed, far less sensitive to people around him, and sometimes bent upon making other people as miserable as he was. He could be acerbic, certainly, but his penchant for manipulation was more worrisome. The corpse-like skin and dull brown curls were all a facade. Daniel, in short, was on the offensive.
Daniel ran his fingers over the corners of the iPod, working the soft ridges of his fingerprints through the nicks and cuts of its former owner, speculating. Russ’ words earned a sharp glance upward with the pale blue eyes, measuring his expression for sincerity, and then dropped back down again. His thumb paused a few times as he let the machine scroll the title fully, inspecting the numbers of sonatas and fugues. They were haphazard at best, but even Daniel could perceive the intent. Lin had done something similar with his little CD-player, handle, speakers, and all, and Daniel had to admit that the music was definitely a highlight of sobriety.
“Thank you.” He put one of the earbuds in his ear, somewhat delicately, flicking over-long curls out of his way. He was going to start looking like an inverted mop soon. He pushed the button. “What other memories did you get?”
Russ’s interaction with Daniel was what he based his assessment of Daniel upon, which was much like assessing a knife couldn’t cut simply because when he encountered it, it was particularly blunt. Daniel coped with Lin, who Russ found bizarre and distinctly difficult to comprehend and he listened to Sam and Russ had an assumption that Daniel had an infinite patience limit. He was not at ease, largely because of the faint blip of machines and the squeak of shoes in the corridor outside which were both reminders he was in a hospital. But his shoulders had slumped a little against the bland plastic of the chair, and he cocked his head, surprised by the question. He was sincere, largely because he had no real intent in being there and Daniel was no perceived threat.
Most people didn’t want to talk the memories shit. Either they’d seen stuff they didn’t want to or they’d seen some other shit they hadn’t expected. Russ’s blue gaze tracked to the iPod and he shrugged un-expansively. The movement rippled the leather jerkily. “Something I remembered from years back. Something from Sam. And yours.” He watched the fiddled-with iPod wheel click around, and leaned forward. The exercise had not been easy largely because Russ didn’t know composers prior to 1970 in the main and 1960 at a push. He hadn’t disliked the music exactly, more the trickle of it had been novel and he had been straining to hear the snatch of music he recalled rather than listening.
“What about you?”
Daniel, as usual, was different. He wanted to be involved. He wanted to live vicariously, and the hotel was happy to enable him on that point, enthusiastically enough. And at this point, he had very few secrets. He suspected that if Russell asked, Lin would probably be happy to tell him all about Daniel’s pathetic mistakes and secret wounds. Daniel was surprised to find that if Lin wanted to talk, even about him, Daniel was not quick to object.
“Very vague,” Daniel said, smiling indulgently. He wanted Russell to stay relaxed, so he didn’t push immediately. Instead, he looked down again at the iPod, fiddling with the wheel as new strains of exaltant violins wound upward into his ears. The indulgent smile eased into something small and private.
He looked up after another long thirty seconds. “I saw Lin with someone else.” Daniel’s eyes narrowed slightly. “He was having as much fun as he could, at the time.” Daniel’s chin moved sideways in the air a few crucial millimeters, and his eyebrows flicked upward against the curls. He was curious to see Russell’s reaction.
Russ expected to be questioned. Gossip, Sam had instructed, back when words had been strung together unstickily, not a scutter of language. Gossip, he’s bored. He had hunched into the chair awaiting the expultorial question and when it didn’t come, his shoulders sagged moderately but he watched the shape of Daniel’s mouth and the strand of the pale cord up past hospital-issued blanket and under the thatch of curls. He didn’t want to please, exactly: he had an air of not giving two shits whether he got the music right or wrong, whether what piped into Daniel’s ears was Tupac or Mozart. But the memory had twisted into his subconscious like barbed wire tearing under skin and he had a vague idea he could dig its spurs back out by aligning the various factors that composed its substance: Daniel, the subsumed desire for substance (care of the hospital) and the music.
He wasn’t prone to being demonstrative. He wore his bulk blockily and emotions struggled through to the surface like a man endeavoring to emote from behind a paper-mache mask. He didn’t know a hell of a lot about Lin beyond the sherbert-crackle of his intelligence but he knew that he and Daniel were tied together and impossible to separate like a frayed piece of rope and he was startled by the admission of Lin’s absence. “After you and him?” he said, clearly seeking clarification of whether this was black, white or some murky shade betwixt the two whereby someone living with someone else went off to have fun with another third party. Russ didn’t think in terms of monogamy: he had disavowed relationships so extensively that he hadn’t given it real thought but he understood relationships as something nebulous that didn’t necessarily preclude other relationships happening. However, his own predisposition tinged his response, and he imagined Daniel to be jealous or something like it.
“He know you saw?” He didn’t ask if Daniel had talked about it. Talking about that kind of thing was terrifying.
Again, Daniel smiled at this strangely naive comment. ‘You and him’ implied the structured relationship agreed upon by the social world, as if he and Lin signed a contract or had a formal discussion. To Daniel’s knowledge, their contracts had involved some shouting and unpredictable sex that (to Daniel’s mind) probably wasn’t all that impressive to the more experienced Lin. (Daniel was slightly concerned about that last point more than he was about the missing relationship agreement. In some ways he thought that perhaps he was fortunate that it was a moot point right now.) For a couple seconds he thought about saying all that out loud, just to see if it made Russ uncomfortable, but he changed his mind when the timpani picked up a crescendo in his left ear.
“You mean after he started coming around more regularly,” Daniel suggested, clarifying with surprising (suspicious) tact. “Oh yeah, it was after that. He was thinking about me at the time.” Daniel showed his teeth in a implication of grin that fell short of the real thing. “Someone else fed it to me to get me in the mood.” A thought occurred to him and his brows crinkled slightly without a trace of his former humor. “Hopefully they aren’t aware of the connection.”
Daniel blinked and shrugged. “No, he doesn’t know. Doesn’t seem much point in bringing it up.” Daniel’s tone and expression made it clear: he was intensely jealous. He was so jealous that a damned legion of sticky, glitter-clad men were practically living on theoretical Lin’s theoretical doorstep.
The binary of how relationships began, were negotiated and came to a murky conclusion was largely beyond Russ’s reach. He thought people who settled into an alternative time-period that required tea-cups and too-tight cutaway jackets, like they were going in on an apartment together were probably together. He understood sex - rather more than he understood the rest of the more nebulous emotional connection and he’d dismissed the boundary of men-and-men and men-and-women with the complete negligence to care that came from being extremely sure of his own sexuality. Maybe Daniel would have made him uncomfortable. Perhaps he wouldn’t. What Daniel said next certainly did.
“That’s why they gave me one of mine,” he offered, in what was a seeming exchange over the hospital blankets. “Some fucking kind of mood. Picked the wrong fucking one. Why was he thinking about you when fucking someone else?” Russ had tried, on a number of occasions, fucking someone who wasn’t Marina when he was snarled firmly up with her in a seemingly endless treadmill of fights, sex and broken windows. Generally, he’d been trying not to think about her at the time.
“Or was it some kind of revenge thing?” He registered Daniel’s jealousy without blinking. His shoulders eased back against the chair, the leather of his jacket creaked. He was interested, even if he wasn’t exactly comfortable. “Why isn’t there a point in bringing it up. You’re mad about it.” It was blunt, incredibly tactless, but Russ thought it was true all the same.
Daniel’s old neighborhood liked to pretend nobody had sex unless it was absolutely biologically necessary, and even then they were pretend-polite about it. Not only did homosexuality not exist, the very concept of it promised hell and damnation, unless you were fond of skirts in different corners of the city. Daniel had despised the veneer, to be honest. It was the kind of thing he used to rip apart in his published life, long gone.
Daniel paused, his thumb roving over the seams of the device once more. He was thinking about how to phrase it. “I’m not sure. Obsession, maybe. Challenge.” Daniel lifted his face and the shallow blue eyes moved over Russell’s peculiar, bar-fight face. “Love, he says.” Daniel tried not to react when he said the word, but it made him nervous. His back molars worked together.
“No, not revenge.” Daniel lowered his voice into a soft, atonal hiss. “It’s a secret.” Then he put his expression up into big and shocked, leaning back on the pillows. “Mad? No.”