Time frame: After rescue
Rating: M for language and hints of sex
Established relationships: Nellis, mentions of Frochelle
Description: Visits to the Zone 15 clinic
(*Note: Pardon all the damn scene jumps. This chapter was all over the place)
"Pick up the pace, buddy. You're draggin ass." Keith complained while the two were at work, cleaning up on a slow day.
"Sorry." Ellis replied but didn't quicken his pace at all.
"You need to tell that man of yours to take it easy."
"It aint that. Me and Nick haven't... been intimate in a couple days, on account of me not feelin so hot lately." Ellis answered, not letting on that he was a little disturbed at his best friend openly discussing the sexual nature of his relationship with Nick.
"How do ya mean?" The redhead asked, concerned.
"Just a bug or somethin. My muscles are sore and I feel hot and tired. Throat is a little scratchy, my eyes are watery. Sucks."
Keith propped his broom up against the wall and approached his friend, placing the palm of his hand over the other man's forehead. He paused for a moment before trailing the same hand down to the side of his neck and paused again before going a few inches down the front of his shirt, pressing just under Ellis' right collarbone.
"You got a pretty hefty fever, man. You need to take your ass to the clinic. I'll finish up here."
"Nah, Keith. I'm fine, I been like this for three days. I think I can handle it a bit longer." Ellis argued.
"El, you're goin if I have to knock you out and drag your sorry carcass all the way there. You're sick and you shoulda gone to get checked out when this started."
"You sound like my mom." The younger of the two fussed.
"You're damn right I do and at least someone do. Scuse me for givin a shit, but I do and you're goin. And I'm gonna go with ya to make sure you don't wuss out."
The two men sat in one of the back examination offices, waiting. This wasn't like the days before zombies, when people could spend up to an hour in the back office and two hours in the waiting room. Ellis told the check-in his symptoms and they got him right in. He and Keith were only in the back for 15 minutes before the door opened and a woman in pale green scrubs entered.
"Ellis?" She asked, surprised.
"Hey Zoey." Ellis replied excitedly, waving goofily even though she was 10 feet away.
"Hey. Good to see a familiar face. Did your whole group make it? I saw that one guy earlier." Zoey seemed to be in a good mood.
"Yeah, we all made it. It was a close one for Nick, but we all got pretty lucky. How's your group?"
"Good, real good. Francis and that Rochelle girl have been hanging out, which leaves me with Louis but that's fine. We always got along pretty well." She smiled.
"I didn't know you were a doctor. You're young to be that educated."
"I'm not a doctor. Please, I'm not even a med student. I just recently got my CNA. I was doing medical classes before the world fell apart and I guess this zone just took what they could get." She replied, pulling on some latex gloves.
"Now, let's get to it. Whoa, you look like Hell, buddy." She noted, stepping toward Keith.
"Oh, I'm not sick. I look like this all the time. The appointment is for Ellis." Keith replied politely, looking embarrassed and discreetly rolling down the sleeves of his coveralls over his heavily scarred arms.
"How embarrassing, sorry." Zoey replied, starting to examine the correct patient.
She asked several questions, mostly about his symptoms and marked things down on a clipboard when he answered.
"There's one more thing. It sounds like you have a standard flu, but Zone 15 requires a blood test with all visits in relation to complaints of illness. The phlebotomist will be in shortly." Zoey added, leaving.
"Hey El," Keith whispered when he was sure that Zoey was down the hallway.
"Yep?"
"Do I really look like Hell?" He asked.
"Like Hell on wheels, maybe. You look fine, buddy. Just fine." Ellis smiled, trying to reassure his friend. He wasn't lying. Even with all the scars, he never thought there was anything wrong with the way his best friend looked.
"You're not just sayin that?"
"No. I'm not one for lyin." Ellis was telling the truth on that, too. He never lied unless it was 100% necessary to avoid hurting another person's reputation or causing further damage.
"Like fine enough to where you'd go out with me if ya weren't with Nick?"
The younger man's eyebrows pushed together at this, puzzled. That was a weird question for Keith to ask. The two of them had been through a lot together, knew each other since they were little ones. They played on the same sports teams, and were as close as a non-sexual relationship could be. As best friends, they'd seen each other naked enough times to where it wasn't shocking anymore. Even when the two got drunk and Keith kissed Ellis, there was never any talk of romance between them.
Nick was the first man he'd ever had romantic longing for, but not wanting to be involved with Keith didn't have anything to do with the way that he looked. They were practically brothers. He tried to put perspective on his thoughts. If the world was flipped and Nick was covered in the same scars Keith had been, it wouldn't have slowed Ellis' love for him.
"Yeah." He answered as simply as he could.
The phlebotomist came in shortly and started tying the rubber around Ellis' bicep.
"Don't flex." The woman in the white lab coat warned.
"Mkay."
"Hold up, I'm gonna go outside and smoke. This room is getting real small." Keith stood, starting to head toward the door.
"In case you haven't read the PSA, that crap is bad for you." The phlebotomist warned.
"Yeah, so is getting shot with a flare gun, getting shot with a pellet gun, getting shot with a real gun, getting shot with an arrow, being stabbed in the back, getting a fishing hook caught in your face, being poisoned with methane gas, getting poisoned by chicken, being exposed to rabies, being tear-gassed, being infected by a parasite, having frostbite, driving off a cliff, flying through a windshield, breaking both legs, getting ran over by a lawn mower, getting hit by a car, having a bus break your foot, knocking your tooth out by trying to fire a gun drunk, catching on fire twice, being kicked by a horse, getting bit by a dog, getting bit my a human, getting bit by a possum, getting bit by a snake, being tortured in the woods, getting a drill bit caught in your ear cartilage, driving your truck into a river, having more head injuries than any living person should-" Keith was using his fingers to count his injuries, running out quickly and starting over on another hand.
"Okay buddy, take it easy, we could be here all day." Ellis said, trying to be soothing as the needle penetrated the inside of his elbow and started to fill a vial with blood.
The rest of the exam was brief, except the time it took to find one of Keith's veins through burn scars when the Zone 15 clinic required a blood test from him as well. Someone back there didn't believe he wasn't currently sick. They were both informed that anyone they lived with would need to report for a blood test as well, and if anything was abnormal, Zone officials would contact them.
The two walked to Ellis and Nick's afterward.
"Hey, where you been?" Nick asked when Ellis came in.
"I had to go to the clinic. I got the flu, so there aint much I can do aside from stupid rest." Ellis was sour about the fact that he was probably not going to go to work tomorrow.
"Well at least they know what it is. If it's just the flu you'll be better in no time." Nick made a perfectly good point.
"I had to take a blood test to make sure that I didn't have anything else. The zone is being extra careful and they want you to take one too." Ellis added, sitting down in the living room.
"Blood test? Nah, no. That's not gonna happen." Nick shrugged it off.
"They'll just come to yer work. Made me do it, on account of lookin like Hell, accordin to the girl doin the exam." Keith insisted.
"You look the same way you look all the time." Nick's eyebrow raised.
"That's what I told her."
"Zoey was our examiner." Ellis noted.
"Oh, well in that case, don't even worry about her, Keith. She's a bitch." Nick smirked a half smirk, the way he always did when he was thinking/doing something evil.
"Be nice." Ellis warned weakly.
Nick held off as long as he could, trying to avoid even walking down the same street that the clinic was on just in case someone happened to recognize him and let him know that he was due for a blood test. Ellis offered several times to go with him but he openly refused. Not only was Ellis sick and needed to rest, he also did not want to show any kind of weakness in front of his friend and lover.
Two days after Ellis got his test done, a nurse showed up at Nick's job, explaining herself to his boss. She then took him into a back room and told him that they were going to do the examination there for convenience.
He didn't argue when she checked his vitals, but when the vials and rubber tie came out, he started to panic.
"Lady, I have this thing with needles." He explained, starting to sweat, breathing getting a lot faster than what was comfortable.
"A lot of people do, believe it or not. I'll try to make this as pleasant as I can." She was trying her best to be helpful rather than official.
"It isn't the pain I'm worried about. Needles, no matter how sanitary they are, they open a damn hole in the skin, perfect breeding ground for bacteria."
"You don't happen to have OCD do you?" She asked, still prepping him for the needle, tying the rubber around his bicep.
"Yeah. I was diagnosed when I was in...when I was in my early 20s."
"And you don't take any medication for it?" She was trying to keep him talking, "You're gonna feel a pinch, don't look down."
"No, I never did. I didn't think it was all that bad. I mean I was prescribed something and I took a couple, but that shit made me act like a psychopath."
"Whoa." The nurse said, eyeing her vial. "That's full already. You have pretty high blood pressure."
Later that night, the couple was lying in bed. Nick just finished showering and getting dressed and Ellis took some Tylonol cold pills so that he would be relaxed enough to sleep. He snuggled up close against Nick's side when it was explained that the time the flu was usually spread before the symptoms were ever present.
"Are you worried about your blood test?" Ellis asked, making himself comfortable.
"Why? Do I seem like I am?"
"Well, yeah. I thought it was because of your thing with needles, but that part is over and you're still all edgy like you get." The southerner noticed.
"They said my blood pressure was pretty high." Nick answered, choosing his words carefully.
"You were scared. People tend to have a spike in vitals when they're scared."
"Goddamn it, Ellis. I wasn't scared. I just don't like needles. And the doctor didn't seem to think my blood pressure was because of me being scared. They want me to come back in to have my vitals checked again." Nick explained, pushing strain out of his voice.
"Hopefully it's all good if you calm down."
"Hopefully. There are heart problems in my family. Heart attacks have happened with my immediate relatives. So that is something to worry about." Nick added.
"Really?"
"Really. My dad died of a heart attack when I was younger." Nick recalled, not happy at all with this memory cropping up. He shouldn't have said anything. Ellis was they sort to ask questions.
"I'm sorry, Nick. Did you get to go to the hospital and say goodbye to him?"
"He died in the living room." The older man clarified, eyes becoming glassy as the memory played back in his mind like it had several times before.
"Were you there?"
"Yes. This is gonna be another one of those things you can't go around telling people. But it happened when I was 17. I just came home from school and a lot of the day was a blur. I don't remember what I did, but he was pissed off at me again. We were standing there in the living room and he was yelling like he always did. Suddenly though, he stops yelling. His eyes get real flipped out and he kind of reaches around his back like his shoulder blade hurts and he just went down. He was on the floor trying to tell me to call 911 and he was having a hard time breathing... I didn't call 911. I sat down on the recliner, smoked a cigarette and finished up my episode of Happy Days, I think it was Happy Days. When my dad managed to drag himself over to me and grab onto my pant leg, I pulled away, got up and left. My mom came home from work almost two hours later and found him. The hospital and morgue people said he had a massive heart attack and died *almost* instantly. El, before you think I'm a horrible person, my dad was a really bad man. He put me through Hell so often and since I was only 17, I still would have had one more year with him until I could leave. I chose to cash that year in early."
"I'm not blaming you." Ellis said after what felt like a year. "I mean, I don't know if it's really my place to deem that right or wrong. I don't know if it counts as either. You were just a kid."
"I wanted him to die. I was pretty sure that would happen if I didn't get help. I still didn't escape, though. I mean, all the time my mom would say to me, "You're just like your father" and that was really one of the worst things she could say to me. I couldn't help that she shacked up with him and had five kids with him. I know part of him is in me, and that might be one of the reasons why I never really succeeded in anything except for being a piece of shit. Being married never worked out, and I never had kids for fear that maybe I would somehow become my dad to them." Nick explained.
It was true, he felt nothing on the day his dad died. The whole time he waited, he was a wreck just hoping that nature would take its course. When his dad was finally gone, the relief faded away so fast. Everything felt the same again.
"You're not a piece of shit. When we first met, sure you were a bit of a dick and I thought you were gonna bail as soon as you could. But there was so many times you risked your life to save mine or Ro's or Coach's. I choose to see the good man in you and there isn't a thing anyone can tell me to make me change my mind." Ellis smiled, arms wrapping weakly around Nick's waist.
"I'll hold ya to it."
Two more days went by and Ellis was back to his chipper self. He'd gone back to work and helped Keith catch up on all of the tasks that got held back in his absence. Nick was avoiding staying at work any later than he needed to and went straight home afterward. It didn't make sense to run from the clinic personnel. They knew where he lived and they seemed to have an infinite supply of rights over citizens. If they wanted him to come back for more testing, he would have to go eventually.
When he arrived home, Ellis was already standing in the kitchen and looking through the fridge for something to munch on.
"Hey El." Nick approached the younger man, took him about the waist and pressed him against the kitchen counter. He took advantage of his partner's surprise by connecting their mouths in a long kiss. It didn't take the mechanic long to regain his bearings and respond, pulling Nick closer.
"I missed this." He whispered as Nick's fingertips slid down the waistband of Ellis' pants.
"Mm hmm, you've needed a good dicking for almost a week now." The gambler sighed, hand pushing all the way into the southerner's underwear, gripping his cock.
"Nick…wait."
"Hey El, how the hell do you work your TV remote-aww shit!" Keith walked into the kitchen, quickly averting his gaze to the floor to avoid the further awkwardness of viewing his best friend getting into foreplay with his possibly evil boyfriend.
"Goddamn it." Nick groaned.
"I was gonna tell you we had company." Ellis started to explain.
"You. You need to take your ass around the block for an hour…or you can stay and watch. At this point I don't give a shit." He directed at Keith, giving Ellis' crotch a squeeze to make his point, drawing a gasp from him.
"Wait…" the younger southerner sighed, noticing the way his best friend's eyes widened and his cheeks reddened.
"Sorry, man. I'm gonna- I'm gonna go. I'll see you- see you tomorrow." Keith stammered, heading out the door.
"Bye buddy."