fever dream
May. 1st, 2014 03:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sidewaysTitle: Fever Dream
Rating: PG
Series: Fallout: New Vegas (original characters)
Wordcount: 1,940
Summary: “Hush,” she said, and then, “You really didn’t bring any water up here with you, did you? I’d kick your ass if you weren’t so good at doing it to yourself.”
Remarks: Entirely self-indulgent sappy sogginess. Wyn belongs toweirderwest!
The harsh jangle of the bell rattled up the ladder to his loft, and Avery flinched deeper into the sweat-soaked nest of pillows that had been his world of late, resentful of the reminder there was still a world beyond. He’d protested the installation of that damn bell from the very beginning—had been in the middle of pointing out that the layout meant he was facing the door most of the time when Wyn triumphantly drove the last nail into her workshop contribution. He could have - should have - taken it down afterwards.
Sentimentality was biting back at him now; had been all along, really, in the shape of a gratingly cheery sound that made him jump right when his fingers were pressed parallel along a sharp edge of metal, a signal that couldn’t penetrate a motor roaring aside his head but still made him pause and turn on the grounds that he’d thought he might have heard it, and every casting of his eyes across an innocently empty shop would draw a quick spit of curses and yet another unforgiving promise to throw the wretched thing to the Strip’s second precinct.
Marksmen and workmen alike might be prone to ringing in the ears, but not like this—
Cool fingers swept along under his hairline, further unravelling the trailing thread of his thoughts, and a second later Avery remembered to startle.
It was no better a recoil than his burrowing of earlier, but it pulled him up out of the limp fogginess enough to patch the necessary memories together. The bell, he recalled belatedly, he had heard the bell this time, only to forget its meaning, and he pried an eye open to stare at his overlooked intruder in consternation.
Green eyes behind black frames; scattered speckling across sun-reddened skin; a knot of sandy hair that bobbed as she tilted her head to meet his hazy gaze. Familiar and somehow not unexpected, though he wasn’t sure he would have guessed correctly.
“Hi, Mun,” Wyn said, casually hooking her other arm around the loft railing. She was sitting alongside him, and it was disconcerting to realize he had no idea how long that had been the case. “Still got some brain cells left to fry, then?”
“When d’you learn to tread quietly?” he accused her, or tried to; only about half the syllables seemed to make it to his ears, and from the amused smile slanting across Wyn’s face, it wasn’t his hearing at fault.
“Or not,” she said. The fingers combed through his hair again before switching to a firmer, assessing press against first the part of his head not mashed into the pillowing, then the back of his neck. A half-hearted shiver worked its way down his spine, his body making a less than valiant attempt to respond to the cold touch.
The sudden tugging and shifting of his sheets stirred him, eye flicking back open—he hadn’t even noticed he’d closed it, goddammit—and he growled something inarticulate until the ruffle of her hand atop his head settled him into an aggravated silence.
“Hush,” she said, and then, “You really didn’t bring any water up here with you, did you? I’d kick your ass if you weren’t so good at doing it to yourself.”
In the time it took for him to match her words to her meaning, she was gone, or just about, slipping down the ladder with nimble ease he hadn’t mastered despite sleeping here more nights than not, and he managed to get his arms beneath him enough to push his face out of the pillow. This time his tongue worked, more or less, though his croak would not have sounded amiss had a circling crow uttered it instead. “Wyn-”
Her head reappeared briefly to give him a look over the rim of her glasses. “Lie down before you land on your face, Av, I’m not letting that nose get flattened on my watch.”
The flash of his glare skimmed harmlessly over the top of her re-descending head, but he locked shaky elbows in place regardless, not needing her eye-rolling permission to be stupidly stubborn. It hurt: every tremor working its way to his shoulders and back brought back the reality of aching joints and skull, the muggy pressure inside his head, the twinge of cracked lips. It hurt enough that flopping forward onto his face again seemed both appealing and a jarringly terrible idea, so he chose a third option and flopped sideways instead, moving by pained degrees out of his nest so that he could twist, gravity a grudging ally, and pull himself into something approximating a seated position, propped up helpfully by the wall.
The shivers that struck with immediate vengeance and the rolling turn of nausea in his stomach sapped some of his triumph, but not all of it.
From this slightly higher perch he could see about a third of the ground floor. At first glance it was sparse, nothing else alive down there but an experimental sprig he’d potted a month back and a grease-streaked old shirt balled up in a corner, but before doubt could set in about just who was here and alive at all, Wyn tromped back into view, a cloth slung over one shoulder, headed for his sink. She knew where everything was, had helped place some of it and had wormed her way into the rest, going through the drawers in his private home as shamelessly as she had rifled through NCR files. His things, she assured him, were much more interesting.
She’d marked it all, and now she fit within his house and routine and life so thoroughly that it took him a moment to realise he didn’t know why she was here today. He had been thinking about her—no, about the bell—
“Did I call you?” he said muzzily.
She lifted her head at the sound of his voice, and when she saw him peering back over the railing she graced him with that anticipated roll of her eyes. “You called me two days ago to tell me you thought you were coming down with something, and that you’d call again later to let me know whether it was worth the trip or you’d gone into quarantine. Guess that memory sizzled out of existence early on, huh?”
It sounded right, he had to admit. Something he would do. He could barely keep the last few minutes in order, let alone the days, but…it sounded about right. Late night radio conversations, weariness sitting heavily somewhere behind his eyes, Maybe all those immunizations will come in use for once.
“Maybe,” he said, and then wasn’t sure which Wyn he was answering, past or present. Christ. His hands were still shaking, turning an attempt at rubbing his eyes into more of a loose swipe of his sweaty palm across his face, and something in his chest caught painfully on every breath, reminding him just why the face-down slump had been his position of choice.
He caught the movement from down below and dropped his hand into his lap, this time ready for the sound of solid steps up the ladder as Wyn climbed back up to the loft one-handed, carefully balancing a glass of water in the other. She took one look at his half-lidded watchfulness and made a discontented noise. “By all rights I should have you strapped to an IV, but since you’ve done such a good job of sitting up by yourself we might as well give this a try first.”
He wanted to shoot back a counter, but his mind was running blank reels and the narrow window for witty response was closing, so he just snorted irritably and regretted it the next instant. Only the groping press of his fingers assured him his eyeballs were still in place.
“Well, don’t ruin it by knocking yourself over again.” Her grin wasn’t unsympathetic, and she turned her head to look around the loft, apparently not having surveyed it in full on her first visit. “I really don’t know whether to be glad there’s no bucket in the corner, considering that would at least mean some liquid went through you.”
“I’m thirty-two,” he muttered past his hand. “I’m thirty-two, I’ve been sick before—“
“Sick on your own before?”
That brought him up short. He wasn’t convinced his memory hadn’t just turned pliable with the heat, taking every suggestion and building fuzzy pictures to match, but he could think up no counter to Wyn’s words. Had he a chance to be his own caretaker before? He could recall mattresses, bunks, couches, the uncomfortable stretcher-beds of the infirmary; a dozen miserable nests spread from childhood home to army, with little to no gap in between.
“What a face,” Wyn said, leaning over to press her lips against her temple as she pushed the glass of water into his hands. “Don’t take it so hard, Av. With a temperature like this you shouldn’t be by yourself anyway.”
“I would be,” he said. “Since I didn’t call—“
“You did call.”
“I didn’t ask for help.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Is that a complaint?”
“No, it’s…” He made a half-gesture, aimless frustration, water slopping over his fingers. “I don’t know anybody here.”
“You moved in six weeks ago.”
“I don’t know anybody anywhere.” Her responses might have been missing the point, except he wasn’t too fixed on the point himself, save that his world had spent the last few days compressed down to bed-ridden misery and he hadn’t invited anyone into it, there hadn’t been anyone to invite into it, and he was thirty-two and a thousand miles from California and hadn’t even managed to keep himself hydrated.
“You know me,” Wyn said firmly, cutting through as surely as the bell she’d hammered above his door, “and I know all the coolest cats, so you don’t have to worry about not immediately networking with all of Freeside.”
“Coolest cats,” he echoed.
“Still too proud for the local lingo?” Something in his expression made her laugh, and then she was stepping onto his bed, over his blanket-tangled legs, dropping down in the thin space between him and the wall and making the mattress bounce, splashing more of the precious water over the rim of the glass. He half-mouthed a protest, but the warmth she pressed into his side kept the words silent.
“I’m sorry,” she said, dropping her head down onto his shoulder. “I shouldn’t have teased when you’re clearly not tracking very well. You let me know you were feeling off and that gave me reason to be concerned when you missed your call-back, so that was a good move. Holing up where you couldn’t easily get to a sink wasn’t as good a move, but you wouldn’t be the first to be surprised by how hard and fast your body drops.” He squinted a look down at her and she squinted a smile back. “Do you think you can hold off on the existential crises until you’re feeling better? Unless there’s one last thing you desperately need to confess before your higher brain functions kick back in and decide it’s a bad idea.”
He thought about it for a moment, watching the ripples bounce back and forth across each other in his glass. “I feel like shit.”
“You look worse,” she said mercilessly. “You look grey, and that’s not my favourite colour on you. Drink your water.”
When his hand shook hard enough that the glass threatened to slip free of his fingers, she reached over and put a steadying hand of her own against the bottom, without him asking.
Rating: PG
Series: Fallout: New Vegas (original characters)
Wordcount: 1,940
Summary: “Hush,” she said, and then, “You really didn’t bring any water up here with you, did you? I’d kick your ass if you weren’t so good at doing it to yourself.”
Remarks: Entirely self-indulgent sappy sogginess. Wyn belongs to
weirderwest!The harsh jangle of the bell rattled up the ladder to his loft, and Avery flinched deeper into the sweat-soaked nest of pillows that had been his world of late, resentful of the reminder there was still a world beyond. He’d protested the installation of that damn bell from the very beginning—had been in the middle of pointing out that the layout meant he was facing the door most of the time when Wyn triumphantly drove the last nail into her workshop contribution. He could have - should have - taken it down afterwards.
Sentimentality was biting back at him now; had been all along, really, in the shape of a gratingly cheery sound that made him jump right when his fingers were pressed parallel along a sharp edge of metal, a signal that couldn’t penetrate a motor roaring aside his head but still made him pause and turn on the grounds that he’d thought he might have heard it, and every casting of his eyes across an innocently empty shop would draw a quick spit of curses and yet another unforgiving promise to throw the wretched thing to the Strip’s second precinct.
Marksmen and workmen alike might be prone to ringing in the ears, but not like this—
Cool fingers swept along under his hairline, further unravelling the trailing thread of his thoughts, and a second later Avery remembered to startle.
It was no better a recoil than his burrowing of earlier, but it pulled him up out of the limp fogginess enough to patch the necessary memories together. The bell, he recalled belatedly, he had heard the bell this time, only to forget its meaning, and he pried an eye open to stare at his overlooked intruder in consternation.
Green eyes behind black frames; scattered speckling across sun-reddened skin; a knot of sandy hair that bobbed as she tilted her head to meet his hazy gaze. Familiar and somehow not unexpected, though he wasn’t sure he would have guessed correctly.
“Hi, Mun,” Wyn said, casually hooking her other arm around the loft railing. She was sitting alongside him, and it was disconcerting to realize he had no idea how long that had been the case. “Still got some brain cells left to fry, then?”
“When d’you learn to tread quietly?” he accused her, or tried to; only about half the syllables seemed to make it to his ears, and from the amused smile slanting across Wyn’s face, it wasn’t his hearing at fault.
“Or not,” she said. The fingers combed through his hair again before switching to a firmer, assessing press against first the part of his head not mashed into the pillowing, then the back of his neck. A half-hearted shiver worked its way down his spine, his body making a less than valiant attempt to respond to the cold touch.
The sudden tugging and shifting of his sheets stirred him, eye flicking back open—he hadn’t even noticed he’d closed it, goddammit—and he growled something inarticulate until the ruffle of her hand atop his head settled him into an aggravated silence.
“Hush,” she said, and then, “You really didn’t bring any water up here with you, did you? I’d kick your ass if you weren’t so good at doing it to yourself.”
In the time it took for him to match her words to her meaning, she was gone, or just about, slipping down the ladder with nimble ease he hadn’t mastered despite sleeping here more nights than not, and he managed to get his arms beneath him enough to push his face out of the pillow. This time his tongue worked, more or less, though his croak would not have sounded amiss had a circling crow uttered it instead. “Wyn-”
Her head reappeared briefly to give him a look over the rim of her glasses. “Lie down before you land on your face, Av, I’m not letting that nose get flattened on my watch.”
The flash of his glare skimmed harmlessly over the top of her re-descending head, but he locked shaky elbows in place regardless, not needing her eye-rolling permission to be stupidly stubborn. It hurt: every tremor working its way to his shoulders and back brought back the reality of aching joints and skull, the muggy pressure inside his head, the twinge of cracked lips. It hurt enough that flopping forward onto his face again seemed both appealing and a jarringly terrible idea, so he chose a third option and flopped sideways instead, moving by pained degrees out of his nest so that he could twist, gravity a grudging ally, and pull himself into something approximating a seated position, propped up helpfully by the wall.
The shivers that struck with immediate vengeance and the rolling turn of nausea in his stomach sapped some of his triumph, but not all of it.
From this slightly higher perch he could see about a third of the ground floor. At first glance it was sparse, nothing else alive down there but an experimental sprig he’d potted a month back and a grease-streaked old shirt balled up in a corner, but before doubt could set in about just who was here and alive at all, Wyn tromped back into view, a cloth slung over one shoulder, headed for his sink. She knew where everything was, had helped place some of it and had wormed her way into the rest, going through the drawers in his private home as shamelessly as she had rifled through NCR files. His things, she assured him, were much more interesting.
She’d marked it all, and now she fit within his house and routine and life so thoroughly that it took him a moment to realise he didn’t know why she was here today. He had been thinking about her—no, about the bell—
“Did I call you?” he said muzzily.
She lifted her head at the sound of his voice, and when she saw him peering back over the railing she graced him with that anticipated roll of her eyes. “You called me two days ago to tell me you thought you were coming down with something, and that you’d call again later to let me know whether it was worth the trip or you’d gone into quarantine. Guess that memory sizzled out of existence early on, huh?”
It sounded right, he had to admit. Something he would do. He could barely keep the last few minutes in order, let alone the days, but…it sounded about right. Late night radio conversations, weariness sitting heavily somewhere behind his eyes, Maybe all those immunizations will come in use for once.
“Maybe,” he said, and then wasn’t sure which Wyn he was answering, past or present. Christ. His hands were still shaking, turning an attempt at rubbing his eyes into more of a loose swipe of his sweaty palm across his face, and something in his chest caught painfully on every breath, reminding him just why the face-down slump had been his position of choice.
He caught the movement from down below and dropped his hand into his lap, this time ready for the sound of solid steps up the ladder as Wyn climbed back up to the loft one-handed, carefully balancing a glass of water in the other. She took one look at his half-lidded watchfulness and made a discontented noise. “By all rights I should have you strapped to an IV, but since you’ve done such a good job of sitting up by yourself we might as well give this a try first.”
He wanted to shoot back a counter, but his mind was running blank reels and the narrow window for witty response was closing, so he just snorted irritably and regretted it the next instant. Only the groping press of his fingers assured him his eyeballs were still in place.
“Well, don’t ruin it by knocking yourself over again.” Her grin wasn’t unsympathetic, and she turned her head to look around the loft, apparently not having surveyed it in full on her first visit. “I really don’t know whether to be glad there’s no bucket in the corner, considering that would at least mean some liquid went through you.”
“I’m thirty-two,” he muttered past his hand. “I’m thirty-two, I’ve been sick before—“
“Sick on your own before?”
That brought him up short. He wasn’t convinced his memory hadn’t just turned pliable with the heat, taking every suggestion and building fuzzy pictures to match, but he could think up no counter to Wyn’s words. Had he a chance to be his own caretaker before? He could recall mattresses, bunks, couches, the uncomfortable stretcher-beds of the infirmary; a dozen miserable nests spread from childhood home to army, with little to no gap in between.
“What a face,” Wyn said, leaning over to press her lips against her temple as she pushed the glass of water into his hands. “Don’t take it so hard, Av. With a temperature like this you shouldn’t be by yourself anyway.”
“I would be,” he said. “Since I didn’t call—“
“You did call.”
“I didn’t ask for help.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Is that a complaint?”
“No, it’s…” He made a half-gesture, aimless frustration, water slopping over his fingers. “I don’t know anybody here.”
“You moved in six weeks ago.”
“I don’t know anybody anywhere.” Her responses might have been missing the point, except he wasn’t too fixed on the point himself, save that his world had spent the last few days compressed down to bed-ridden misery and he hadn’t invited anyone into it, there hadn’t been anyone to invite into it, and he was thirty-two and a thousand miles from California and hadn’t even managed to keep himself hydrated.
“You know me,” Wyn said firmly, cutting through as surely as the bell she’d hammered above his door, “and I know all the coolest cats, so you don’t have to worry about not immediately networking with all of Freeside.”
“Coolest cats,” he echoed.
“Still too proud for the local lingo?” Something in his expression made her laugh, and then she was stepping onto his bed, over his blanket-tangled legs, dropping down in the thin space between him and the wall and making the mattress bounce, splashing more of the precious water over the rim of the glass. He half-mouthed a protest, but the warmth she pressed into his side kept the words silent.
“I’m sorry,” she said, dropping her head down onto his shoulder. “I shouldn’t have teased when you’re clearly not tracking very well. You let me know you were feeling off and that gave me reason to be concerned when you missed your call-back, so that was a good move. Holing up where you couldn’t easily get to a sink wasn’t as good a move, but you wouldn’t be the first to be surprised by how hard and fast your body drops.” He squinted a look down at her and she squinted a smile back. “Do you think you can hold off on the existential crises until you’re feeling better? Unless there’s one last thing you desperately need to confess before your higher brain functions kick back in and decide it’s a bad idea.”
He thought about it for a moment, watching the ripples bounce back and forth across each other in his glass. “I feel like shit.”
“You look worse,” she said mercilessly. “You look grey, and that’s not my favourite colour on you. Drink your water.”
When his hand shook hard enough that the glass threatened to slip free of his fingers, she reached over and put a steadying hand of her own against the bottom, without him asking.
