~*~ Well, I was going to wait to post this, but Fluffy52's reviews changed my mind. Seriously, they brightened my whole day. So here's chapter 3. Chapter 4 isn't written yet, but it will be. Soon. Once school stops cracking its whip.
This part, and all the chapters following, will be about Veser's recovery. Being sick sucks, but it sucks less when someone's taking care of you. Especially big brothers. True Fact. My brother once brought home a pail of cookies for me when I was sick. It was awesome.
Musical Muse: None. On an unrelated note it's very hard to write for Worth while listening to Britney Spears.
Warnings: Swear words, because Veser's sick, Connie's mad, and Worth is Worth. Also there's more implied ConWorth because if that was candy I would eat so much I'd lose all my teeth.
Disclaimer: My polyjuice potion isn't working, so I'm still not Tessa Stone.
~*~Ocean of Grief Chapter 3~*~
Veser woke up the next day feeling like he was coming to after being knocked out while surfing. Not that he had any experience in that, of course. But if he had, he would imaging this feeling of aching all over, combined with the feeling that he had gritty salty sand in his eyes, would feel pretty damn close to that.
But the frozen feeling on his cheek probably wasn't usually associated with surfing accidents.
Veser pried his eyes open, surprised to find the light in the room was dim. Looking over to his side, he saw that his right cheek was resting on Conrad's bare forearm. That would explain the cold. But how had he ended up using his sorta-roommate's limb as a pillow?
Like a tidal wave, memories from the night before came flooding back. He closed his eyes as he remembered. In the morgue with Tibenoch, the mad dash through the streets with his mom's pelt, sitting on the beach for hours… that's about when his thoughts got fuzzy again, and the next thing he remembered was hacking his lungs out in Conrad's living room. The time in between…he didn't remember. And was pretty sure he didn't want to.
But after his coughing fit… he remembered, even with his breath back, that it still felt like a dead weight had settled on his lungs. And he had still been crying.
Veser grit his teeth. He was disgusted with himself. He was a guy. Guys don't cry like that, and for so long. Yeah, he had shed a few initial tears for Lee, but he got over that fast. But he must have still been crying when he finally fell asleep. That would explain why his eyes were so gunked up.
And Conrad had apparently spent the night- day- with him afterwards. He was sleeping in an upright position, with his arm on the couch under Veser's cheek. As slowly and carefully as he could, Veser tried to move his head away from his cold pillow. But the movement dislodged something in his chest, and he began to cough again. Loud, harsh, hacking coughs that could wake the dead.
And they did. Conrad jerked awake with a startled snort, blinking at the dim light of the room. Looking over at Veser, who had sat up and was coughing hard into his hand, he pulled himself up using the couch and asked, in a voice muddled by sleep, "How ya doin?"
Veser could hardly answer over the harsh hacks. But the look he sent Conrad must have conveyed his feelings appropriately, because the vampire once again put his cold hand on Veser's back to support him.
Once he regained his breath, Veser realized that those precious moments of strength and lucidity were gone. He collapsed back onto the couch cushions, realizing that he felt like absolute shit. He had never felt this bad in his life, ever. His chest, throat, and head hurt, dull throbbing pains and sharp stabbing pains.
Conrad let Veser fall back, and then placed his hand on the sick boy's forehead. Even with his dead-cold skin, he could tell that Veser had a fever. And a pretty bad one too.
Looking down, he saw that Veser's lantern eyes were staring at him. They weren't the dead eyes that had looked through him earlier. These eyes had life in them, even if they were clouded by sickness.
Seeing Veser shiver from the contact, the vampire removed his hand and pulled the blankets that surrounded the half-selkie closer to him. Standing up, he smiled down at his bedridden companion. "You just relax Veser." he told the recumbent boy "We'll get you fixed up."
Veser watched unhappily as Conrad walked out of the room. Shit. Fuck his life. Here he was sick, being babied by the gayest vampire this side of an Anne Rice novel, and his parent's murderer was still running around somewhere. Great. He rolled over onto his side and sighed. Fine. Let Connie have his moments of fagginess, as Worth liked to call them. If the vampire wanted to play nurse, more power to him. And honestly, Veser realized quickly, he was too sick to even care anymore. He shivered again and huddled under the blankets. What the hell was Connie going to do with him now?
Conrad chewed his lip as he wandered into his room. What the hell was he doing? He didn't know the first thing about taking care of sick selkies. Fuck, he didn't know how to take care of anyone, period! But it was too late to go back now. He was stuck with a sick kid and had no clue what to do.
Well, ok, he did have a clue. He would do what his mother had done whenever he had come down with the slightest hint of sickness: consult the family physician. Unfortunately, the only option that was presented to him was utterly and totally unappealing; possibly the furthest perversion of a family doctor imaginable: Worth.
Conrad groaned into his hand. The man was disgusting. Apathy personified. A walking talking zit on the face of society. An insufferable asshole who apparently decided that Conrad was his new favorite target for his tormentation. Which Hanna and everyone else seemed to interpret as affection, for some sick perverted reason. And, inexorably, he was probably the only person in the city who would know how to treat a sick half-seal boy.
Conrad gingerly picked up his iPhone. The reminder that he had Worth's "office" number stored under Contacts was enough to make him question his sanity. But he found the number, and, gritting his teeth so hard it hurt, he pressed "Talk".
While the phone rang in his hand, Conrad glanced out the window, realizing it was barely past sundown. Worth probably wasn't even awake yet. Conrad grinned evilly. Served that bastard right if he got dragged out of bed to answer the phone. If he answered the phone, Conrad thought restlessly as the phone continued to reach Worth's office. Did that scab of a man have an answering machine?
Finally, just when Conrad was about to hang up, he heard the click as the other end picked up, then an incredibly pissed and gravely "Wha'da fuck doya want?" sounded in his ear. Conrad's grin grew.
"Wow Worth. Do you answer the phone like that for everyone, or is it just me?" Conrad asked gleefully. It was so nice to get an upper hand on the hack doctor. It happened so rarely.
There was a pause from the other end, then a slew of swear words, indiscernible from one another, was forced across the line aimed at the reluctant vampire. Conrad could not help but laugh at the doctor's obvious misery. Served him right.
"Faggie ya better ave a goddamn good reason for callin this early or I swear ta god…" Worth finally got to the end of his rant, but followed up his statement with a few more mumbled curses. Conrad sighed and got right to the point of his call.
"How do you cure a half-selkie with a cold?" he asked. There was a sudden silence from the other end. Conrad wondered if he had actually managed to shock the hack into silence, or if he had simply hung up. "…Worth…?" Conrad asked.
"Shud up. I'm thinkin." Worth snarled. Conrad arched an eyebrow in shock. Worth, actually thinking, actually being a halfway decent doctor? Was the world going to end?
"Awlrigh." Conrad snapped out of his musings of the upcoming apocalypse to listen to the doc. "I'm assumin this is Sharkboy we're talkin bout?" After getting the vampire's agreement, he asked, "What're his symptoms?"
"Umm…" Conrad was stunned that Worth actually seemed to be taking this seriously. "Well, he's got a pretty bad fever, I think." There was a snort from the other end. Conrad chose to ignore the possible reasons behind that snort, and continued. "He's coughing a lot, and-"
"Chest or throat?" Worth interrupted. "Huh?" Conrad asked. "Chest or throat. Are the coughs comin from the chest or throat?"
"Oh." Conrad actually had to stop and think about that one. "Chest, I think." Another snort from the asshole on the other end prompted him to change his answer to "I'm pretty sure."
"Can ya hear water in the lungs? Kinda like a-" Worth actually seemed flailing to come up with a way to express his question over the phone- "-a kinda fluid-y sound? Wet-ish soundin?"
"Oh, yeah. Something like that." Conrad answered. He had noticed that while the boy had been sleeping, and now realized that it probably wasn't a good thing.
Worth made a scarily doctor-sounding "Hmm" into the phone and was silent. Conrad was sure he could hear the disgusting man rifling around in his equally disgusting office. That fact that Worth was actually being a serious doctor still wasn't sitting well with him. Maybe it was too early in the evening for Worth to have accumulated his usual bad attitude. Maybe he was actually worried about Veser. Maybe he got laid.
"Awlright!" Worth's scratchy voice jerked Conrad from the disgusting idea of Worth and sex (disgust, not jealousy, definitely not jealousy). "I've got some shit here that'll fix him up, but it'll take a while for him to get better. You're gonna hafta take care of him, right?"
"Umm…yeah, right, I guess." Conrad stuttered out. This situation was so fucked up he could hardly answer otherwise. And he already knew there was going to be some sort of Veser maintenance involved anyway.
"Fine. Then git yer ass down to my office and get the shit." Then with a sharp –click! -Worth hung up on him. Conrad stared at the phone a moment in surprised shock, then disconnected.
"Ok, great." He muttered to himself. Throwing his phone carefully onto his bed, he then searched through his closet for something decent to wear (but not look like he was trying too hard, just enough to set an example about how decent people were supposed to dress, not to look nice for that nasty man). After going through several outfits, he decided on a simple black button-up. He now had first-hand experience as to why vampires always wore dark clothes. Blood showed up less on them.
Snatching up his phone and his wallet, he finally left his room to find that Veser had completely vanished underneath the blankets on his couch. Conrad had to smile at the sight. The kid sure acted tough, but as soon as he caught a cold he was nothing but a big baby. Walking over to the couch Conrad started prodding the blankets looking for Veser. "Ves, stick your head out here. I need to talk to you."
Veser felt that the only acceptable way to answer Conrad was with a slew of grumbled moans. He felt like even worse shit than he had when he woke up. He nose was clogged, he could barely breathe without hacking up a lung, and now Connie was back to bug him. His misery was complete. He stuck his head out from his nice little blanket cave to blink slowly at Conrad, trying to convey in that one movement how much his life really sucked at that moment.
Conrad must have understood, because he crouched down beside him again and smiled reassuringly at him. "I'm going over to Worth's to get you some medicine." Veser stuck his tongue out through his sharp teeth in disgust. Conrad's smile turned to a frown. "Oh suck it up, buttercup." He said teasingly. "It'll make you feel better. And if you swallow down whatever noxious crap Worth makes for you, I'll bring you sushi. Deal?" Veser didn't answer for a moment, but finally a hoarsely-croaked "Ok" gave him the answer he needed. Conrad nodded, then pulled the blankets back over Veser's head. He straightened up, and threw the TV remote on the floor by Veser's head. "You can watch TV if you feel any better." He told the lump on his couch, and headed out the door.
"Have fun at your boyfriend's!" he heard Veser croak after him. Conrad's smile returned. The kid must really be feeling better if he could tease Conrad again. He now felt more encouraged to leave his apartment, and go visit the hack in the back alley.
But he still wasn't happy about it.
*~* Reviews make me happy!