This is an alarmingly swift response to the Halloween comic, isn't it? In my defense, this was requested.
Merasmus glares at the salad set before him, grinding his teeth together. High blood pressure, indeed, he thinks. As if high blood pressure could be a problem for a magician! As if his heart could ever stop beating, when magic flows through it at every second, as surely as the air through his lungs! As if something so trifling as mortality clings to him the way it clings to other humans!
"I can see your veins getting ready to burst from here, Merasmus," Jane says from behind his newspaper. His voice is too rough for his insults to have any elegance.
"Silence," Merasmus snaps, stabbing at a tomato slice viciously. It splits beneath his fork, spilling water and seeds onto the lettuce around it. "I, Merasmus, do not require your health advice!"
Jane glares at him from beneath his helmet, and Merasmus wonders, not for the first time, why his roommate insists on wearing the thing everywhere. If it was as glorious as Merasmus' skull headpiece, then perhaps he could understand, but a dingy helmet that shadows his eyes like a shy schoolgirl's bangs? He curls his lip in disgust, forked tongue pressing against the back of his teeth as he waits for another chance to insult Jane.
"If you die, I'm going to have to find a new roommate," Jane says, laying the newspaper on the table. "You're a terrible one, but if you think I'm going to put out ads for another month and a half, you can think again, buster!" He stands, his chair skidding on the tile behind him, and stomps to the fridge. "You are going to relax, and you are going to take care of your heart, or so help me I will take care of it for you!"
Merasmus shoots up from his seat as well, his chair teetering precariously for a moment before it rights itself with a thunk. "I'll care for your heart, you insufferable prick—"
"I'm not the one with high blood pressure," Jane shouts, "so maybe you ought to just keep your concern to your own damn self!" He grabs the carton of heart healthy orange juice and tears off the cap. "You're shaking like a leaf in a storm; now sit down, you irresponsible conman, or I will shove this carton so far down your throat you will not even have a heart to care for because it will get decimated by my fist!"
Merasmus draws himself up to full height, his ram skull drawing over his face and giving him strength that doesn't seem to extend to his left arm, inexplicably. He stalks to the fridge, ignoring Jane's threatening stance, pokes his finger into the man's chest, and—
chokes on his own breath, pain shooting up his arm and around his chest like sparks, his throat seizing up and making him cough and wheeze pitifully as his prodding turns into clutching at Jane's coat.
The carton of orange juice falls to the ground, and Jane drags him over to the wall, where he phones for an ambulance.
"Your bedside manner leaves much to be desired," Merasmus sniffs, looking up at Jane with as much dignity as he can muster. It's not a lot, honestly; something about being dressed in hospital scrubs and propped up on pillows that feel like cinder blocks takes an awful lot of fight out of a man. The nurses won't even allow him to wear his ram skull.
"Eat your goddamn salad," Jane says. His helmet is off—the nurses really are sticklers for dress code—and his coat is hung over the back of his chair, with only his white shirt stretching over his muscles, which are intimidating and not at all fascinating. He pushes the bowl closer to Merasmus, and thrusts the fork dangerously close to his eyes.
"After I get my blood pressure medication, and I get home, I am going to put a curse on you," Merasmus says around a mouthful of carrots. "You are going to eat so much cabbage that you are going to die, and then you will know how I feel."
Jane rolls his eyes, and pats Merasmus on the arm. His touch most certainly does not send a thrill up Merasmus' spine.
"Whatever you say, magic man."
Merasmus closes his lips around his fork and decides not to kill Jane Doe.
Jane leans back, propping his dirty boots up on the hospital bed, and Merasmus sneers in disgust. Maybe he will kill him, after all.