Mush hated hospitals. The fluorescent lights burned his eyes and the smell made him want to vomit. The sick people cycling in and out reminded him too much of when he had to spend hours upon hours in the hospital, awaiting for the news that his father was dead. Cancer was what they had said. But Mush had always thought that he had done it to him somehow. Wished it there in his cells. His father wasn't his father when he lay in that bed. Not the man who would spin him like a helicopter or make up stories to tell him in Spanish.
Mush remembered the nights in the bed. The nights where his mother wasn't home. How he would lie into his father like a good boy and once almost felt tiny pulses of pleasure. It was sick and wrong and he knew it. That was why he could never come anymore. Why he couldn't cum either. Why no matter how many guys he lay with, he'd just sigh and sit there and have to explain it without really explaining it.
"This is taking too long," Jack's voice brought him from his thoughts and painfully reminded him of where he was.
"Um…what is? David, Blink or the fact that we have to sit here?" Skittery asked sourly. "I want to get some sleep tonight."
"You're in a chair, so sleep!" Jack snapped at him. "I'm sorry that David's near death is making you uncomfortable!"
Mush sighed. "Guys, let's not let fight."
Jack ignored him and went back to pacing. Mush figured that he loved David more than he had loved Sarah. It was a fairytale almost. He nearly snorted with laughter. Some fairytale. Three people involved in sex and one dies, leaving the two with each other. The one who died being related to one of the remaining two as well. That wasn't a fairytale, that was a V.C. Andrews novel. But, then, who was he to talk?
"Hey," a tired voice rang like music into his ears.
Blink stepped into the waiting room, looking tired and fucked.
"Where have you been?" Jack snapped. "Our friend is dying in there and you sashay in like you're on a fucking runway!"
Blink smiled. "I was getting raped, Jack. Sorry that I couldn't tell the guy who was fucking me without permission to stop so that I could rush to the hospital."
There was an uneasy silence. Mush wanted to stand up and hug him but he just seemed so calm, speaking about being raped as if he were talking about the weather. Either way, it shut Jack up.
"Are you okay?" Snitch asked in a small voice.
"Oh, sure," Blink responded breezily. "I mean, there isn't much that can make me not okay these days. I'm naked on a weekly basis and bound to other men and am masturbation fodder. Oh, and I also looove shooting a needle-ful of junk into my arms!"
He seemed so giddy that Mush questioned his sobriety. He rose and put his arms around Blink's narrow shoulders.
"Thanks," he whispered into his ear so only the two of them could hear it.
Later on, the doctor called Jack into the room to talk to and about David. He was allowed to bring one other person and he chose Mush since he was, apparently, the least offensive. David looked tiny lying on the bed, propped up by pillows. There were dark circles encasing his blue eyes which were shut. He was bone-thing and as pale as the hospital sheets. Jack immediately knelt next to him, grasping his hand as the doctor rambling on about how much danger David had put himself in. The doctor looked a lot like Mush's dad: the caramel skin, the curly hair, the broad shoulders and the narrow hips. In fact, he looked a lot like Mush himself too.
"Young man?" the doctor looked at him as though he were on drugs.
Hell, maybe he should be.