what the holy hell? Who: Lochlan & Pat (later Eily) When: Morning (just before discharge) Where: Hospital Warnings: violence/language
Lochlan had slept fitfully, tossing off the sheets a nurse or a family member had pulled up on him as he slept. He was hot and his dreams were blood-soaked. He’d been awake several times through the night walking out of the room, trying to cool off somehow. It had been futile and so when he heard the morning sounds of the hospital waking up, he groaned and sat up in his bed. He was grumpy, something he almost never felt, but right now he sort of wanted to bite something and chew. Maybe he could order a steak for breakfast. He was just getting up to find out when his eyes caught on his cousin in the next bed. He’d known the man was there but just now it was annoying to see him. Not to mention smell him so strongly. “When are they coming to finally bathe you, stinky?” he grumbled.
That was not what he wanted to hear this morning. Patrick, half because of Lochlan's noisiness and half because his dreams were nearly as bad, hadn't slept either. He'd fought snapping at Lochlan and every so often would let out a passive-aggressive grumble in the middle of the night for the other man to shut up, but now? Now Lochlan was just asking for it. "Don't you fucking start with me, you smell like a dumpster." Lochlan had never felt so irritable with his cousin before being bitten by that wolf and cooped up in the same room with him. Before he had found his cousin's demeanor sort of funny though he understood where it came from and why. He'd never felt like getting under the other man's skin before but right now? He raised a brow at Pat, his expression amusedly incredulous. "Take a midol why don't you, crankyass? And find some deodorant."
"Real cute, Lochlan. What are you, thirteen years old?" Patrick rolled his eyes and looked back toward the door as that fucking rusty cartwheel passed by again. He cringed and eyes snapped back at Lochlan. "Maybe I wouldn't be so cranky if your ass had just sucked it up and tried to sleep. You're the worst fucking roommate ever."
"Oh pull up your big girl panties and get over it. Next time we're both attacked by wild animals, I'll make sure to mention to Eily that we need separate rooms. You need that beauty sleep and I need not to be smelling wet dog." He grumbled a few choice words at the food crew and then hollered into the hall, "Hello? Has anyone heard of WD-40?"
"What the fuck has gotten into you, Lochlan?" Patrick asked, pushing himself up on his elbows until he was sitting on the bed instead of lying down. "You need to shut your goddamn mouth or I'll come over there and shut it for you." That fucking cart. It was going to be the end of him, he knew it. He cringed again when it passed, and with it came an image of him grabbing Lochlan by the shoulders and throwing his cousin right into that cart.
Lochlan's brows furrowed in further annoyance and his gaze flicked back to his cousin. The hairs on his arms raised and his fists balled unconsciously at his sides. "Seriously? You're telling me what to do again? I'd love to see you try and make me shut up, ya pansy." Was he really saying this shit? Part of his mind registered the strangeness of all of this but the rest of him really didn't care. Pat needed to be taught a lesson. Nobody told Lochlan O'Reilly what to do. Especially not Pat.
Ok, that was it. That was it! Patrick wasn't going to sit here and let his loudmouth, stupid cousin threaten him. He pulled himself off the bed, hating the stupid house-gown they had him in but not enough to let it bother him right now. "Get your ass out of bed…" He could hear the growl in his voice, his hair standing on the back of his neck, and his own hands forming into fists at his side.
Lochlan had already been half out of bed as it was so it wasn’t difficult to hop out, his IV ripping out of his hand. He didn’t even feel it. He was bumping chest to chest with Patrick, crowding his cousin, so fast even he had to admit he wasn’t sure how he’d done it. No time for wondering though, he was practically touching noses with Pat. “What are you going to do about it, old man?” he growled. “Hm? You’ll be down in that bed before you can blink. You want to start?”
The last thing Eily expected when she arrived was to hear Patrick and Lochlan's voices echoing down the hallways. And they were clearly pissed off. She wound up dashing to their room, and seeing them toe to toe. She took about .2 seconds to assess, and then she was right there with them, doing her best to squish herself between them. "And that's about enough of that, children!" she snapped, completely thrown by the fact that this was happening at all, but she didn't show it. She'd kicked into survival mode the second she'd seen Patrick's blood all over the place and she was still running on that. Which meant even if she was thrown for a loop, she didn't give herself time to deal with it, she moved on and took action instead. Which apparently involved breaking up a fight about to start. "What the fuck are you playing at?! Nevermind! I don’t care! You aren’t throwing down in goddamn hospital!"
It was strange how physically different this felt. It was like the walls were closing in, the pressure in the air felt static, electric, and Patrick could feel it all the way though his form. He was seconds away from hauling off and attempting to clock Lochlan right upside his stupid face, but something was different. And he could smell it before he could see it, which would have freaked him out if there had been time to freak out. Eily was in between the two of them and it was all he could do not to just launch over her anyway. He certainly wasn't paying attention to her, not even when she was yelling, because his whole body was poised still to take Lochlan on. And when he did speak, it was aimed at Eily but he didn't personally look her way. "Get him the fuck away from me…"
Lochlan smelled Eily long before she started trying to get between him and Pat. She was in the corner of his mind but his focus was intensely settled on the other man. He raised his fists in spite of Eily's hollering. His temper had been on low simmer for the past 24 hours and now it was boiling over. He was furious, veins in his temples raised and pulsing, his face red. He gritted his teeth, his tone low and menacing. "No, you and me, right now, Patrick O'Reilly. You think you get to go around telling me and everyone else what to do? That ends here and now. Let's go." He leaned in closer to Pat, having been slightly backed up by Eily. He wanted right in the other man’s face though, let him see Lochlan was not even remotely about to back down.
So it was safe to say that Eily had no clue how to deal with this. Not even a little. With both men still practically at each others throats, her squished inbetween them she felt, for the first time ever, in danger from her family. And they were a danger to each other.
Making a split second decision she turned to Lochlan. Putting her hands on his cheeks to force eye contact, she spoke, tone quiet but firm. "Lochlan, this is not the time. And I won't get out of the way for you two to fight. You'll have to go through me. Please don't."
Whatever was in his veins that was making him think it was absolutely necessary to beat the shit out of his hotheaded cousin only diminished a small bit when Eily spoke. It wasn't even to him, but Patrick could hear it and it was harder to want to beat up Lochlan at the expense of his sister. Of course, he still wanted to, but just a teeny bit less. "I am never fucking sharing a room with this asshole again. And I swear to god I'll hit him the next time he says something stupid…Shouldn't be too long now, actually."
Eily's hands on his face caught his attention and some of the adrenaline that had been pumping through him turned cold in the pit of his stomach. It took way too long for his eyes to leave Pat and focus on her face but when they did, he took in a deep breath. "Eily," he said, his tone still low though less menacing. "Get out of the way, please. The man needs to be taught a lesson and now is the time for that. I don't want you hurt. So please move." The part of him that still had rational thought beyond the animal instinct to rip his cousin apart, pled within his eyes for her to understand. To move. Though the longer he looked at her, less need he felt to hurt Pat. Until Pat spoke. Lochlan's eyes blazed and he fairly trembled with rage. "You're dead, you sonofabitch. Eily, go."
She almost had him. She could feel it, see it in his eyes. He was almost there, where he was going to back down, at least for the moment. She wasn't sure what to do about his tone there, but she had confidence that at the very least the crisis could be averted for the here and now.
And then Patrick had to get another shot in. There was a spike of anger in her, bright and sharp, and she would have snapped at him but Lochlan was right back where he had been, maybe even farther up the 'let's rumble' chain.
"Both of you--stop!" Eily shouted. "And no! I'm not going, and I'm not moving if you want to beat the shit out of each other, then you're doing it through me!" And good lord was she desperate for that to not happen, but it was too important for her to back down. This was her family, and she didn't want it tearing itself apart. Apparently literally, tonight.
"Get out of the way, Eily!" Patrick snarled, voice dripping in something darker, angrier than before. He was dead. Lochlan was dead and Patrick was going to make sure of that. He just needed Eily to get out of the way. "Move or I will move you myself…" His eyes were still on Lochlan when he spoke, even though he was aiming his words at Eily. He didn't want to hurt his sister, he didn't even want her in the room right now, but it was getting harder to even really think about her being there, especially when all he wanted to do was pummel Lochlan's stupid face.
Lochlan had finally had enough. He was seeing red, seething with the need to rip out Pat's throat. He couldn't be bothered to be stopped by Eily now. So he sidestepped her, rounding her on his way toward Patrick's flank. He was fairly growling, his fingernails biting into the palms of his hands as he clenched his fists, getting ready to attack the other man. He was moving fast, about to knock into Patrick but found himself tangled on something Eily was wearing or maybe she had hold of his clothes because he whipped around back toward her seemingly without choice. He'd been moving so fast that it amounted to him body checking her and knocking her to the floor. Unbalanced, he fell alongside her with a loud grunt of frustration.
In Eily Land, neither one of them would ever hurt her. Even if she was currently absolutely afraid of that. But still, somewhere deep down, she still believed that despite the mounting evidence that things were whole worlds of not right. When Lochlan moved to go around her, she automatically reached out to grab hold of his clothes. Then she was hit and falling down, and the next thing she knew she was on the floor, her head hurting as it bounced off the tiles. She made a pained sound, reaching for the back of her head, and she still had a grip on Lochlan's shirt. She might have said something, but she was a little too stunned currently to say anything. She just hoped that the guys weren't immediately going for each other now that she was down.
Something snapped in Patrick and he lunged forward. He'd already wanted to beat the shit out of Lochlan but after seeing him throw his sister to the ground, because he was pretty sure that was what that flimsy kid had done, Patrick had no time to think about his actions. He launched, rushing at Lochlan and taken the opportunity to pin his cousin to the ground with one knee in his side. His hands were flying, fists going straight for Lochlan's face in an effort to turn it purple and black and blue.
Lochlan had smacked his head on the floor and felt slightly dazed. When he saw Eily on the floor nearby panic surged through him. He attempted to get to his knees, get to her and be sure she was okay, but suddenly Pat was on him. He was off guard and could only put up his hands to fend off the blows for the first few that landed with sharp cracks against his bones. The pain snapped him to reality and instinct took over. He snarled loudly and rolled against Pat's legs to knock him over or at least off of him. He threw a punch at the side of the other man's knee as he rolled, lifting his shoulders to catch Patrick in the thighs and throw him over.
Eily looked over and...that was a really violent fight. She rolled and was up, and without thinking about it at all, she was pushing at whoever wound up on top first, still trying in vain to get them to stop fighting.
Patrick didn't like this new position. He preferred to be the one above Lochlan, punching him, and not defensively trying to get back above Lochlan from now being on the floor. He could just barely see Eily join in, doing something and he still wasn't sure what it was yet because between the hits from Lochlan and his own throws back at him, Patrick was still a little preoccupied. He kept up trying to hit his cousin, trying to land a punch anywhere he could whether that be his side or his arm or his neck, just anywhere as long as it took.
Lochlan shouldered Patrick's blows, gaining traction to get to his knees finally. Surprisingly, the faster his heart seemed to beat, the less he felt the punches smacking against him in a whirlwind of limbs. Somehow he managed to get one hand on Pat's throat, the other still fending off the other man. He had the upper hand for a moment, beginning to squeeze, before Eily was suddenly in the middle of them again. Lochlan wanted to bodily remove her and was about to manhandle her out of the situation when one of Pat's fists caught his nose so hard a spray of blood spattered all three of them. As his head snapped back, his hand released and he fell back again with a furious growl.
It was like she wasn't even in the room. Like she wasn't there at all, with the way they were fighting. Then she was getting hit with a blood spray, and she saw Lochlan fall back. She scrambled to sit on Patrick's chest, and was pulling her legs up to kick at Lochlan if he tried to come in again himself. Part of her wanted to scream for help, but this was family business. Terrifying, insane family business she didn't even remotely understand, but family none-the-less. "STOP!"
Now he had Lochlan’s blood on him and he was halfway between thinking that was a pretty cool trophy and thinking that it was also pretty gross to have his cousin’s noseblood on him. He didn’t get much further with his thoughts, though, because Eily was fucking screaming at them both and it finally hit him. With Lochlan over there, sporting blood, Patrick internally felt victorious enough to be aware of the rest of his surroundings, that plus his sister’s scream brought his attention right to her. He fought to catch his breath, to keep his eyes on her and not let them tick back over at Lochlan, but it was all sort of failing still. “Eily, get off me...”
Lochlan's eyes had closed when his nose had been struck so Eily's scream rattled through him. Panic surged through him once again and he was on his feet before he'd fully opened his eyes, sure Patrick had hurt her or worse. When he finally realized she was actually pinning his cousin by sitting on his chest, Lochlan couldn't help but bust out laughing. Both at the absurdity of this situation and the fact that Pat was immobilized by his sister. "Bested by a girl, huh, Patrick?" He swiped at his nose with the edge of his shirt, trying to stem the bleeding. His nose was beginning to throb and he wondered if it was busted. There was no way of continuing fight with Eily that firmly in the middle. Not without hurting her. So Lochlan was done. He sighed with frustration. "Better stay on your guard, cousin. Next time Eily might not be there to save your ass."
And there was that little hint of an Irish accent in her voice when Eily shouted at the both of them this time. "Both of you, shut it!" she snapped. "This shite stops right this second, do you hear? You can both quit antagonizing each other with cheap damn shots, or I'm going to start swinging at the both of you, understand?!" she said, looking between the two.
She then pointed at Lochlan. "You back the fuck off to that corner and stay there." she said, then she looked down at Patrick, who she was still sitting on. "And you, I'll move when you've fucking convinced me that you're not going to do any more insane bloody things right now!"
Patrick was going to end Lochlan. That was it. He was just going to end his cousin. He could feel the anger rising in him again, but EIly was threatening now to not move and he needed to get himself together. He needed to quell the anger despite the fact that he just wanted to rip the skin off of Lochlan's face. Closing his eyes, he took as deep a breath as he could, trying not to feel the dull ache from the fight combined with Eily pinning him to the ground. "Don't even want to waste my time with him right now. Get off me, Eily."
Lochlan's nose had already stopped bleeding but he wouldn't soon forget what had happened to cause it. But, for him, the situation was diffused of its intensity. He was over it now. And if he wasn't taking orders from Patrick, he sure as hell wasn't taking them from Eily. So he squared his shoulders defiantly, lifted his chin, and made no move to back into a corner. "It's over, Eily. I'm done. For now."
His tone was almost bored though a corner of his mind was spinning. What the hell was going on with him? He didn't hate Pat or really want to hurt him. He mostly thought his cousin was stuffy and miserable and he felt sympathetic. Pat was family and family was the most important thing these days.
He shook his head, trying to shake off the haze of adrenaline and rage that had seemingly built up from nowhere. It was almost like a switch flipped. "I-I don't know what is wrong with me. I'm sorry, Pat." He frowned deeply, full of confusion and a bit of fear over the fact he seemed to have no control when those desires started to take him over. "I'm sorry, Eily." He sat on his bed simply looking dazedly away from both of his cousins.
Eily was taken aback by Lochlan's response to her, why she didn't know. She probably shouldn't be, it fit in with the rest of the crazy permeating the room. Still, there was a little flash of confused hurt on her features, right before she nodded and slid off of her brother. She reached up to put her hand on the back of her head, which hurt like a bitch--something she realized only after the situation was seemingly defused. She watched as Lochlan seemed to click back to the person she knew, and she looked to her brother to see if the same would happen there.
That change in Lochlan sparked a change in Patrick as he, too, realized that they'd been putting a lot of effort into hurting each other and that wasn't something he'd ever felt the need to do before. "I'm sorry too," He said, looking back at Lochlan and slowly starting to let that panic seep into him. What the fuck had just happened? Why in the world would he have wanted to fight Lochlan so bad, why in the world had he let that happen? And why wasn't he up there with EIly right now? Pushing himself up quickly, he reached for her, ignoring his own aches in favor of making sure she was all right. "Sit your ass down on the bed and let me look at your head…Lochlan, we should get a nurse for her..."
It took a beat before Lochlan responded, still frowning, to Patrick's request. "Right, right." He slowly stood, and when his eyes caught on Eily again he snapped further to attention. "Right! Shit." He ran into the hall to call for a nurse. Somewhere in the distance he heard the hubub of activity. It sounded like someone was in crisis, crashing. People were running in the other direction but he grabbed a nurse's sleeve. "My cousin, she hit her head, can you come take a look?"
The nurse looked harried, breathless from her sprint. "Is she bleeding?"
Lochlan hadn't even stopped to look or ask. His eyes widened. "I don't know."
She tried to be patient with him but she had to keep going. "Keep her awake. If she’s bleeding, try to stop it. I will come back as soon as I can," she called, running off down the hall again.
He hurried back to Eily and relayed the message. "No naps, okay?"
Eily was trying to get away from people and didn't properly respond til Lochlan was back. "I'm fine," she insisted. "I'm more worried about you two--did anyone pop stitches, or anything else stupid?" she asked. She was going to have to figure out the rest of it in a bit, but right now, she wanted to work out the basics. Were either of them now more injured than they'd started out as this morning.
Patrick stared at Lochlan when he came back and then past his cousin, at the door. "What the hell could they be doing that's more important than Eily?" He asked, not really caring that there might be a crisis happening because his sister was more important. "Eily, we're fine. Are you sure you're not bleeding?"
The further away from the rush of fury and need to fight, the more he felt the pain of his previous injuries and the fresher pangs of the more recent attack by his cousin. He groaned. He paused to give his body an assessment, feeling achy and bruised but he didn't seem to be bleeding anywhere. He turned his back toward Eily and Pat and tried to glance down at his other side but couldn't see it as well as his front. He wasn't sure but there might have been a dark spot on his hospital gown near the stitches he'd had on his ribs toward the back. "I think I'm okay... Physically. I’m more worried about you, Eils." He shook his head at Pat. "I think someone's dying, man." Or something worse, he thought. He hoped like hell a wolf wasn't attacking the hospital.
"I'm sure I'd like to thump you both." Eily muttered. "But yeah, I'm fine." she pulled her hand away to check that she wasn't bleeding because she couldn't tell, exactly. "...doesn't look like it." She looked between the guys and drew in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "Are we ready to go home, boys?" she asked. She scrubbed her hands over her face, and made the conscious decision to grab an ice pack from somewhere while the guys were officially discharging, then they'd all go home and...she didn't know. Something.
With the hospital was still up in arms, he was definitely ready to go. He wanted out of this place, back home in his clothes where he could monitor his own progress and not have to deal with horrible smells or sounds or these crazy ass moodswings. At least, he hoped not. Nodding, he started toward Eily after glancing at Lochlan. "Here, lean on me and we'll start on our way home." His injuries could wait. He'd assess himself at home, see if he popped anything, see if the bruises he was sure he'd be getting were coming in at all. He'd check everything once they were at home, safe and sound again.
Lochlan nodded as well, feeling somewhat like a kicked puppy. It was his own fault but he didn't understand why. But Eily was hurt and he'd nearly killed Pat. He was very ready to get out of this place and maybe get some air, some space, and try to figure out what the hell was happening with him. Right now he was too achy for a run but he craved it. "Yeah, thump me later, okay? Let's just make sure they'll let us leave because I've had enough of this place." He wasn't sure he wanted to go back to Eily's though. He wondered if there would be a way for him to slip away on his own. He'd look for his chance and take it if he could.
"Jesus, I’m good! Quit overcompensating. I’m fine. I don't need to lean on anyone, I knocked my head, it's not like I've never had worse." she said. She also glanced down and saw there were blood splatters on her clothes, which had her sighing. "And we've all got blood on us. I'm going to clean up a little bit so I look less like a horror movie extra, and meet you in the lobby, okay?" she asked, unwittingly giving Lochlan the chance he wanted.
Patrick backed off, but only slightly. He looked back at Eily before starting toward the door. "I'm gonna get you some clean towels or something, so you can get cleaned up." It was the least he could do, since it was half his fault Eily was hurt. Sure, it was chaos in the hospital, but he'd be able to find something for her, right? Really he wanted to just carry her out of here, but even if he'd been capable of it, he doubted he'd have gotten the ok for it. "Meet you in the lobby," He said to Lochlan before opening the door.
Lochlan nodded to both Eily and Pat, but completely ignored the request to meet them in the lobby. This was too much to process yet. In the light of day or sanity or whatever, he was just not okay with all of what had happened. Especially Eily being hurt. Her vehement rejection of any kind of care had sealed his need to get away. They both expected him to meet them in the lobby but he wouldn't be there. As both his cousins were going their own ways, he took the opportunity to go his. He found his clothes, donned them quickly and skipped the lobby. Instead, he found his way outside. The sunlight bolstered his need to move, his muscles finding their strength in a sprint. He was off into the park, at a run that hurt, before anyone could suggest to him it was a bad idea. He'd hurt later but he was alone.