"Come on in Dave," a feminine voice says from the room. You get up slowly; you're poker face firmly in place. The only one to have broken through that facade here is John.
You walk into a bland office, which of course has a big desk with a few chairs in front of it. You take your place and sit back on the chair to your left. Behind the desk is an older looking lady. Her face shows signs of age and she has oval glasses that glint the light back at you slightly. Her brunette hair is in a tight braid and her brown eyes glance up at your shades and then back to her report.
She lays the papers she was holding down and takes her glasses off her face. After she lays those down beside the report, she laces her fingers together and looks at you.
"Well Dave, your results just came in from the scan you had several days ago," she states. You don't say anything; just simply stare blankly like you did with the doctor from your first day here, waiting for her to get to the point.
It looks as if she is waiting for you to display some kind of reaction, but after a moment she looks back at the paper she was holding. "So as we stated when you were first started staying with us, the cancer you have was caught in good time.
Of course, we've followed its progress after chemo treatments just in case the tumor did anything unusual. But thankfully, nothing unusual has happened and it has gone down significantly in size," she smiles at you warmly but your expression really doesn't change. Oddly, this doesn't seem to bother her. She just looks down at her paper and rambles more off the paper.
"So, you should be out of here soon. I doubt you'll even be in here another month. Though, when you do get out of the hospital we will want you to come for checkups and the like. I guess that concludes that, so have a great day Dave," she smiles, her eyes closing anime-like. She kind of raises her hand up in a goodbye and turns her attention back to her papers.
You just nod and mutter "thanks," before slouching out of the room.
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The room is quiet when you enter. John must also be getting his report. Somehow, both of the reports winded up being on the same day even though you don't have chemo on the same day as John. You sigh loudly and go flop on your bed.
Your stomach twists painfully with the news you're almost certain John will bring with him. He's been getting slightly weaker. You can tell that much, even though you've never been anything but gentle with him. He's, unbelievably, getting paler. Also, he's getting thinner. He isn't handling the chemo well at all. He hasn't said anything to you personally but you can just tell.
You sit cross legged for a bit, twiddling your thumbs while you're zoned out. You shake your head a bit, running your sword calloused hand across your scalp. You reach to your nightstand and draw up an envelope. Inside are copies of the pictures you and John took together on your walk a while back. His head still had its raven locks. You smiled sadly thinking of how time had progressed.
What if John did come back with the worst news possible?
This wasn't just some story where some editor or author can throw 'and they lived happily ever after' at the end. Real life was hard. It was hard and no one understood.
You heard a slight scuttling and you turn you head a minuscule amount. Casey is looking at you with her tiny lizard eyes, just staring. You stare back for a second, your shades glinting from sunlight, and then finally move. Placing the envelope back on your nightstand, you shift over John's side to the cage. You remove the cover and then dip your hand inside, gently lifting Casey. She stares at you a bit, flicking her tongue in and out.
Holding her, you lean back on your pillow and then place her on your chest. She sits for a second, just tasting the air. Finally, she starts scuttling around, moving forward quickly and then abruptly stopping.
You watch her lazily, your eyes half lidded. Sitting here watching her is making you feel drowsy, and after you think about it, you really didn't sleep well last night.
You look around. The walls are still as sickly white to you as when you first started staying here. But John has distracted you from the negative side of this place. He's been worth staying here.
Putting your hand down in front of Casey, she eventually climbs on it and flicks her tongue out. You pull her up close to your face, "time to go to back up little Casey," you coo to her as you lean over and dip your hand into the cage. You hold your hand there until you heave out a big sigh and lean over you other hand and gently push her off. You close the cage and lean back on your pillow.
The bed is messy from being pushed against John's. You lean over a bit and breath in, smelling the sweet scent of John.
He had told you that his father loved cooking for him when he was still alive; even though John seemed to hate many baked goods. It's like the scent permeated everything he owned, as if it would be there forever.
You smile a little while you nuzzle into John's pillow. You decide you'll let some time slip by as you close your ruby eyes.
Your dreams consist of John.
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You hear the almost inaudible creak of the door as someone enters from the hallway, which successfully jars you out of your resting state. It clicks shut and you hear light footsteps; John's gait.
Keeping your eyes closed, he walks over to his side of the room, and you hear rummaging. You have no clue but he stops and you hear him sit on one of the chairs that are dispersed throughout the room. Then you can hear the sound of pages being flipped. After a second you hear a light sniffle.
"John?" You ask, letting your eyes slide open. All you see of course is your nightstand and part of your pillow but you want to make sure you aren't hearing things.
The sniffling and page turning makes an abrupt stop; you shift until you're in an upright position to look at John. He has a blue beanie that you had gotten for him on his head, one side of it nearly covering his eye while the other is hiked up. His teeth are poking out and you can see his eyes shining a brilliant blue in contrast from the red ringing them.
You're out of the bed in a second and by his side. "What's wrong babe?" you ask, your brow furrowing in concern. He shakes his head a bit and just closes his eyes. You lean down in front of him and kiss his forehead. When he doesn't move, you swing him into your arms, successfully getting a yelp out of him. You dump him on the bed gently before walking to your own side to crawl on.
When you get situated sitting Indian style you ask again, "What's wrong?" He looks up at you sniffling again. "I'm sorry I woke you up," John mutters, and he wouldn't make complete eye contact with you. You lift your hand up slowly and cup his face; he closes his eyes and leans into the motion. "I wasn't really that well asleep, I'm too alert when I can hear people moving outside. You know, from Bro and all," you shrug a little and John cracks a small smile at that.
"What were you looking at?" you ask, deciding to distract him. Because you have a bad feeling you know why he was upset.
His teeth are covered again from his smile fading as he looks at the little book. "They're pictures," he whispers, running his hand along the cover before opening it to a random page. "I know I haven't shown you before, it's painful though, you know?" He asks, looking up into your shades. You nod your acknowledgement even though you've never lost someone before. You really don't want to learn what that's like either.
"This is my dad," he says pointing to a picture. The man was quite a bit taller in the picture than John was, his eyes matching the blue of John's. He had a coat draped over his shoulder and his tie was askew but he was smiling like an idiot, while looking down at John who had an equally dorky grin on his face. John has a too big white fedora on his head and it looks like it's about to cover his whole face.
He flips the page and points to another picture, "That was my nana," he states, smiling. "I didn't really know her well but she loved baking too and she always made me sweets as a kid, even though I protested.
The elderly lady is standing by John's dad, smiling the same buck-toothed grin that John displays. Her eyes were a slightly lighter blue but they were just as vibrant. She held her hand behind her son's back, holding bunny ears over the top of his fedora, while dad assumingly unknowing just smiled at the camera.
"I don't really have any other family," John says suddenly staring down at the picture. You look over at him and start talking again. "I had a mom of course, I mean it's not like I showed up randomly on a meteor. But she left before I could even remember and we never talked about her.
So I don't know anything about that side of my family and the other side was all kind of older so I don't have any close family. Just probably some distant cousins."
You slither your arm around him and scoot closer to him to wrap your arm behind him entirely. You pull him gently until he's leaning against your shoulder.
"Would you like to have some fine Strider cuddles?" you ask and he chuckles lightly and nods. You pull him back and you both fall onto the bed. He nuzzles up against you and even though the sun hasn't yet set, you feel as though you could go to sleep like this.
After a while of cuddling, when you're not sure if John is asleep or not he finally speaks, "They got my results in today," he mutters and you almost miss it since you were zoned out. You turn your head toward him slightly and he continues, "It's not looking good. The way it's going I…I won't last long. There's this surgery that has a low chance of working and they may take that option if they have to," he whispers.
You turn your full body to him now and embrace him entirely. He gets as close to you as possible and you can feel how tense he is.
You wish you could say something. But what are you supposed to say?
'You'll be fine'? 'Everything will be ok'? Because that was a lie and both of you knew it.
So you opt for the second best thing. You dip your head down and give him a passionate kiss, enough to make him forget his worries for a split second.
When you finally release his lips he smiles up at you, blue eyes glistening and you just kiss the tip of his nose.
"Would you like to watch a movie Egbert?" you ask, wanting to distract him as long as you could. He smiles, and you're pretty sure you know that he knows what you're doing but he nods anyway, letting you slip out of his arms.
You go and get Con-Air because you know John loves that movie.
You enjoy the sound of his voice as he quotes nearly every word, trying to capture the exact emotion of the actor. Smiling against his scalp, you place a small kiss on top and let him do his thing.