"How does it feel?! How the hell do you think it feels?!" Nnoitra was suddenly sitting up, despite being suddenly dizzy from the quick movement. He stood from the bed, throwing the covers off, and drew himself up to his full height. Ignoring the aches in his joints and the horrible dry burning in his throat, Nnoitra backed Halibel to the door of his room and stood there, leaning on the frame. She was just beyond the threshold, staring up at him with a deceptively neutral expression. Nnoitra was enraged. How dare she?!
"I feel fine!" he shouted. "Now get out! And don't you dare ever set foot in my domain again, Halibel! If you do, I'll put you in so much pain, you'll forget all about being turned into an Arrancar! I'll tear your arms off! I'll whip you bloody! You ever come back here again and—!" suddenly, Nnoitra's legs buckled underneath him, and he dropped to the ground. However, on his knees, he was only three inches shorter than Halibel.
"And?" she asked, smirking.
"And you'll wish you were dead! I swear it! I'll yank every joint out of socket, I'll gouge out your eyes bit by bit! Don't you ever cross me again, Ha—"
Nnoitra's threats died in his throat and were replaced by dry, wracking coughs that wouldn't stop. He felt his lungs tearing themselves to shreds—he'd purposely avoided sparring all week to prevent what he knew was inevitable, but this spell of pent-up coughing could not have come at a worse time. He tried to stop, but couldn't.
Before he could do anything to keep himself from looking weak, Nnoitra was in the floor, his hands over his mouth, coughing out whatever air he was trying to gasp in. Blood spotted across his hands as he choked on his own breath. Weak, his mind shouted at him, but he couldn't do anything. It was out of his control.
By the time it was over, he'd been returned to his bed. Whimpering involuntarily, he wiped what he knew was blood from his hands and let the tears fill his eyes and run over. Who cared who was watching? He couldn't breathe. He hurt all over and he was sick again, dry-heaving into his pillow because he'd coughed so much, his head pounding and his face absolutely on fire, his hands and the rest of him cold as ice. This was agony unbounded, pain he'd never felt the equal of, and he was unable to control his own reaction. However embarrassing, humiliating and weak, this was first and foremost terrifying.
His throat only closed further as he realized that the only person he really despised for being stronger—and a woman, no less—was the one who'd picked him up and brought him back to bed. Nel had been pretty bad, he mused, but she'd never had this golden opportunity to lord her strength over him. As the pain gradually subsided, he began to plot the murder of both of them, only to be distracted when he felt something cold dragging along his hairline.
Nnoitra glanced upward, feeling himself being carefully turned over and repositioned a little. He blinked as a cool, wet cloth lathed across his eyelids, cleaning the blood from his lips and placing itself on his forehead. Halibel stared down at him, her eyes a little softer if he looked really hard, or maybe that was just the angle and the light. Definitely just the angle and the light.
"I get it. You're weak. Now stop trying to prove it." She pulled the cloth back, rewet it with a glass of water she'd drawn and placed it across his eyes. He sat up and reached for the glass, sipped from it and handed it back, the cloth pressed over his face to hide its color. "It's three in the morning, Nnoitra. Go to sleep."
He felt his eyes getting heavy now that he was sitting still. Trying to protest, Nnoitra reasoned, was useless with his throat in such bad shape. He sighed, relaxing a little and slowly lying back down, face turned away from Halibel as she went back to her own futon. He'd do as she said, just this once.