For Wordlet, who wanted to see this and gave great ideas for the words.
"Sabo! Get up! You're already late for-oh shit."
Sabo groans and turns over, dropping his wrist over his eyes. "Oh shit isn't on my schedule for today," he says because he's a brat, and oh, look, his hand agrees with him.
Oh, his hand agrees with him. Huh. "I guess I'm sick," he says.
"You're what?" Koala says, but she doesn't come closer.
"I'm sick," Sabo announces loudly. "So I'm going back to sleep." And then he does.
A cool hand rests on his forehead and he blinks his way into wakefulness. "Wh," he gets out before his tongue decides it's not working.
His throat is dry and painful and his tongue feels about three sizes too big and wooden besides. "G'way," he says instead.
"I think he's sick," comes a voice from far away. It's probably Koala, so he bares his teeth in what's only nominally a grin.
"Sick," he agrees, and waves his hand as proof.
Something grabs his hand. "What's this?" a soothing voice asks from slightly closer. "Have you been playing with markers again?"
"Sick," he emphasizes, then takes his hand back, turns his back on the room and pulls the covers over his head. "Don't wanna."
"Have you been drawing on yourself?" Probably-Koala asks from a lot closer. "Hey, Sabo, this is important. Did you give yourself ink poisoning?"
They're not just gonna let him mope, obviously, so he sighs, long and loud, then rolls back over and sits up. There's a water bottle on the nightstand and he grabs it, because if he's gotta be awake and talking, he can at least get rid of the cottonmouth.
Koala makes some kind of noise while he's drinking and he thinks nothing of it until her hand lands on the hollow of his throat. He freezes, mouth full of water and bottle upturned, and waits.
"What's this?" she asks, finally pulling her hand back a bit.
He lowers the bottle and swallows. "What's what?"
Her finger traces something on his skin. It's a word, he knows, and he can almost tell what it is, because it's the most important one. "I'm sick," he says for a third time, squinting around at them. Why is this a hard concept to grasp?
"Yes, but the words," Koala says and Jun the medic lays a hand on Sabo's forehead. Sabo stares at them, and they stare back. Koala rolls her eyes and says, "Normal people don't get words when they're sick, Sabo! What did you do?"
"What do you mean?" he asks. "Of course they do. It's what happens when you're sick."
"No it's not! Jun, you're the medic, tell him!"
"You must be from East Blue, Sabo."
"Huh?"
"This is actually a common thing over there, and in the East part of Paradise. It's an ink sickness, a kid thing, but if you get it then whenever you're sick, it comes back like this."
"Huh," Sabo says, turning his hand over to trace the rough brat there. "I wasn't surprised."
"Maybe you think it's normal, if you've had it since childhood," Jun says, and digs into his bag. "Looks like just a cold to me."
"I don't get colds," Sabo says.
Koala slaps her hand over his mouth, the promptly removes it before he can retaliate. "I'll make him take the medicine," she says, and holds out her other hand.
Jun drops in a few pills. "Just fever reducer," he says. "It's about all I can offer for now."
Koala hands two pills to Sabo, who sulks and takes them only reluctantly. She stares at him 'til he takes them, though, and folds her arms while waiting for him to swallow.
He doesn't cheek the medicine and instead swallows it like a good boy.
It leaves a sour kind of chalk taste behind and he drains the rest of the water to wash it out. Koala heaves a put-upon sigh, but she also grabs the bottle out of his hand and goes to refill it, so she can't truly be that mad.
Jun leans in, once she's gone. "It really should pass on its own," he says. "Get some rest, drink water, take the pills if you start to ache, and you'll be better in no time."
Sabo nods at him. "And this ink stuff...?"
"Doesn't make any difference, really," Jun says, and picks his bag back up. "It's just an immunoexpressive response, is all."
"Cool," Sabo says, and swings his legs off the bed.
Jun eyes him, sighs, and says, "You know what, good luck. Let me know if it gets worse, I guess."
"Of course I will," Sabo lies, and Jun shakes his head and leaves, closing the door behind him.
The second it clicks shut, Sabo slips his shirt up and off, heading towards the small mirror on the back of the door. There's clues on his skin, and he's not about to let this chance slip by.
It's all mirrored, of course, but his eyes catch on liar, simple and scratched low on his throat. His hand raises on its own, and there's a smile on his lips as he presses fingers over it. There's other words, some even nice, but this one-he knows it's special.
A beautifully calligraphic worthless winds the curve of his ribcage but it's not important. There's brother, though, twice over, nestled just left of center on his chest in wildly different scripts, but they fit together like red and orange, like freckles and smiles.
A solid bold reckless! is stamped big and straight on his right side, about halfway down, in familiar, all-caps writing, and stubborn wraps around his bicep like an armlet. Thief is there, too, small and pretty on the inside of his right wrist, with scoundrel and trouble stacked below it.
He turns to try to see his back, and yeah, there's a swooping swirl of trustworthy that he guesses more from context than reading because it trails off into a patch of scarred skin. There's more under it, but it's too small and blotchy for him to read easily, and he shifts a bit more to try to see farther.
There's supposed to be a big word across small shoulders, he thinks, one single bold one too heavy for the back it's on, but he's only got delicate little flutters of complements on his right shoulderblade, splayed out like a wound.
He cranes his neck around to try to read some, but there's the heavy fall of boots coming back, and he hastily tugs his shirt back on and gets back in bed before the door can swing open.
Koala comes in, eyes suspicious, but that eases a bit on seeing him actually in bed. "Where's Jun?" she asks, and hands him the water back.
He takes a sip to buy a moment. "Left," he shrugs, and his fingers brush his inner right wrist.
She sighs and sits on his bed. "If you're sick, you really should rest."
"I was trying to," he reminds her. "I wanted to go back to sleep right away, but no, someone had to involve the medics."
"Yeah," she says. "I'm not gonna say sorry for that, though."
"I didn't ask you to."
"You're impossible!" she says, and then catches her breath. "Did that-does that hurt?"
Sabo blinks at her. "What?"
She reaches out and runs a soft thumb down his jawline. "It just came up," she says, and he runs the past bit of conversation back, then grins.
"Impossible, am I?"
She's not blushing, but only out of refusal to. "Any other words?" she asks, because of course she knows he'd looked.
"I'm an open book," he says, spreading his arms wide, and she laughs. "It feels familiar, though," he admits, and there's a warm feeling under his collarbones. "I think...they're new, though. Some of these I even remember."
She pauses, meeting his eyes, and then bulls straight through, because that's what he likes best about her. "Anything helpful?" she asks, knowing he won't answer.
But she cares about him and her words are on his skin, and his own in return is the least he can do.
So he tugs at his collar and undoes the top few buttons, pulling the fabric open far enough to frame his heart and the two brothers there.
She hisses in sympathy but doesn't try to touch, and doesn't offer any kind of empty platitude. She only waits him out, and then asks, "Do you remember?"
He tries, honestly. He really does. There's something there, coated in sunshine and bordered in green, but it's hazy and fleeting. "No," he finally says, and adds the only thing he's sure of. "These are new."
"New?"
"Something's missing," he says, and thinks of brothers and liars. "I'm missing something."
And this is why he trusts her-she's sympathetic but not pitying. "You'll find it one day," she says, and he can almost believe her.
Still, she's also a spy, by nature and nurture, and he can tell her eyes are starting to wander and look for more bits on ink, so he coughs, loud and fake. "Hey, I do remember something about this disease," he tells her once he can breathe again.
"Yeah?" she asks. "You're gonna be okay, right?"
"Oh yeah, but the thing is," he says, grinning big and bright, "It's extremely contagious."
She stares at him for the few seconds that takes to process, and he reaches out with the hands he just coughed all over. "No!" she says, recoiling right off the bed. "Ew, no! Don't you dare!"
"I thought you were supposed to make me feel better!" He leans over as far as he can without falling, stretching and reaching for her. "It's only germs, Koala! It's not fatal or dangerous at all! Koala! Come back!"
headcanon says that having a tattoo means you can't catch it because magical ink? but shhhh Koala doesn't know that
