Noah Lazarus ✦ David Shepherd (tankslayer) wrote in thereincarnates, @ 2014-05-29 00:23:00 |
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Entry tags: | james shepherd, noah lazarus |
Who: Noah Lazarus and James Shepherd
What: A visit, and a little sharing of secrets.
When: Thursday mornings.
Where: James's room in the VA hospital in Virginia.
Warnings: Probably none.
There was no reason to be nervous about going to see James in the hospital. Maybe Noah had invited himself, but James had agreed to it, and had seemed pretty eager for some company. Nervous was becoming Noah's typical state, though, and the president's speech on Memorial Day had only made it worse. He was jumping at shadows, positive that every time someone spoke to him, they were going to uncover his secret. James, especially, provoked that worry; what if he did have some kind of training that allowed him to pick out reincarnates? Noah didn't think that it existed, but it might be on a need to know sort of basis, and James was definitely one of the guys that would need to know.
James had never seemed to think there was anything different about Noah in the few times that he'd insisted on dragging him out, though, so Noah knew it was just paranoia. If James hadn't unveiled him as the enemy when he was still sharp and Noah let his guard down enough to have a drink, there was no way he'd be able to figure it out when he was probably still fairly fuzzy-headed and Noah was the one stone cold sober. Still, he worried.
To be fair, the worry wasn't all about his situation. He was worried for James, too; the appendicitis and the complications that came after had really knocked him off his feet, and the realization that someone as confident and charismatic as James could be just as weak and human as the rest of them was scary, by itself. To add to that, Noah liked James, more than he had liked anyone else he'd met since he moved away from Milwaukee and everything he'd known. Having someone he was starting to care about sick, and weak, and completely out of his reach and ability to help, that was a situation that Noah hated. It wasn't quite as bad as it would have been if one of his brothers had been in the same situation, but it was worse than he'd expected, given how short a time he'd actually known James.
Thinking about it now, though, wasn't going to help him. Knowing that his nerves were obvious in every movement, in the way his shoulders sat and the tension in his neck, Noah paused outside James's room to take a deep breath, and let it out, forcing himself to relax with it. He put on a smile as he rapped on the door with his knuckles a few times before slipping inside, the small bear and attached 'Get Well Soon' balloon he'd purchased at the gift shop (partially as a joke, and partially because you didn't go into situations like that empty handed) tucked into the crook of his arm. "Hey there, sorry it took me so long. It's like they're prepared for defensive maneuvers, this place is impossible to navigate without a map." Maybe it wasn't quite that bad, but he hoped the combination of a smile and bad attempt at a joke would at least help him, even if it didn't do much for James.