[PRP] Paging A Doctor (Jack/Chel)

[chiickadee]

Dark arrived and Chel showed up, as promised. She'd stopped by her room to pick up her headphones and ipod, a juice (she'd finished it on the way here) and an extra pillow.

"Doctor Dong~" she called out from behind his door, waiting for his irritable mug to open it for her. He never came, and she tried knocking a few times. Out came her phone and she tweeted at him, once, twice, three times. Even a text.

The door was open as she was impatient and unwilling to wait for his highness. "Jaaack," she said in a quieter whisper, inviting him to respond. The room was dark and Chel looked back and forth a few times before entering the threshold. It was hard to make the trek in the dark, but she was glad for once of his obnoxious tendency to clean everything. She had to use her phone to get into the room, but after that it was actually somewhat well lit by a laptop screen. More poignantly was Jack's outline against the soft blue glow of the Deus screensaver.

"Seriously?" she chided, pocketing her phone and throwing her pillow on his bed for the time being. Something was playing softly from her headphones, but she turned down the volume and paced over to Jack.

Stupid thing didn't even do his ponytail right before going to sleep. She tried looking on his screen to see what he was working on, but in the blur of bright light against darkness, all she saw was a jarring array of lines, dots, squiggles.

She squatted next to the chair, elbows on his knees and hands tugging at his side. "Jackles you gonna make me carry you to the bed? 'Cause even I ain't got that much strength."  

[medigel]

Jack hadn't meant to fall asleep. A growing headache plus a vague thought about taking a nap had culminated in him falling asleep before he bothered to get out of his chair, but thankfully after he had decided to remove his glasses. The logic was out of order, but that tended to happen when his REM cycle had become so messed up that it probably resembled Chel's bracelet beeping in terms of when it was allowed to occur.

It was out of place either way, and when he started to wake he could already tell the extended nap had just screwed him further: Jack felt groggy, unfocused, and most of all grouchy. His back was stiff from the hunched position for one. For another there was something tugging at his—

"Sh—!" He flailed and pushed his chair backwards, drowsy and disoriented as he fell out and searched for a dagger that wasn't there. Beneath where his arms had been was a small nest of notes, some about dyslexia, others his own notes about the minipet breeding, and one being the page where he had tried and failed again to create a lyrical stanza. Jack knocked his SHOE GODDESS mug to the edge of his desk in the recoil but didn't notice; he was busy registering who or what was in his room.

Several hard blinks. "********, god damn, who the ******** said you could come in?"

chiickadee

 

[chiickadee]

After so many nights with either Chel thrashing because of Merlin or Jack thrashing because of the Sahara, it hardly bothered her that he was a mess of limbs. In fact it was why she had chosen to squat on the ground- if he struck out of bleariness, she could easily roll to the side.

She scooted a short distance away from him, hand still reaching up to put the mug bag where it had been before. "You did," she responded as she did so. "C'mon let's at least get ya to the bed." As she spoke her fingers curls around his arm, attempting a gesture that would allow him to lean on her if he wanted to.

"What were you workin' on anyways?" She could see a notebook had been written in, a few printed pieces of paper- not much of anything really. At best she could recognize the shape of words, but not attach them to any particular meaning. It was too dark for anything more than that.

medigel

good morning O 7 O/

 

[medigel]

With a groggy grunt, he let her help him up onto the bed, where he stretched out with a grimace and yawned. "s**t, how long'd I..." Jack glanced at his watch and groaned. "<********>" He rubbed at his face, groaning. "******** me, I'm never gonna sleep right..."

He rolled over and started reaching for the half empty water bottle by the coffee machine. "Stuff," he grumbled, too bleary to be specific yet. "Fell asleep in the middle of it like a ******** noob. Haven't done that since Bio 232..." He unscrewed the cap and drained the rest of the water with a sigh. "So you found your cave?"  

[chiickadee]

"My cave is the best," she said solemnly. She thought about the sad little bandana that was waving out there somewhere on the beach rather fondly. Mostly because of the memories that had been attached to it. She was glad to see that some people on Deus still had fun.

She would have moved to something more risque with Jack, but seeing as he was bleary and cranky she wasn't really sure how fun it would be. Instead she took a seat where he'd been sitting last at the desk. "Y'want me to leave so you can get some shut eye?"  

[medigel]

"I'm fine," he protested as he pushed himself into an upright sitting position. Jack yawned once more. "Well, not fine, but sleeping now would be a horrible idea. So what do you want a cave for again? Did you even secure it with runic daggers or anything?"  

[chiickadee]

"Why the ******** would you not want to live in a cave?" Chel was really confounded that anyone would think this was a bad idea. "I put a flag down. Why would I put daggers, s'not like anyone's gonna steal it." She snorted at the idea of someone serious trying to encroach upon the hole they'd found on the beach.

Out of boredom she began shuffling the papers together, laying them one over the other. It was kind of a nice organization- the more she put into place, the less mess of lines and squiggles there was.

It was then that she glanced at the screen itself more critically. Again it came out a mess of nothingness, but there was one word who's shape she couldn't bring herself to forget. "What's this?"  

[medigel]

"Not to protect from people, dumbass," he said with a verbal eye roll, "to protect from shadowlings and god knows what else swimming near the beach."

Jack bristled as she touched his notes the way he used to when he himself had been touched. Tossing the waterbottle away, he slid off the bed to intercept. "I was reading about dyslexia," he replied. "I hadn't before, so I figured it was about time."  

[chiickadee]

Her cave conversation could wait, because now Chel was on edge.

"Why?"

If he came over to try and take the papers, she held them closer to her body, almost like a hostage for answers.  

[medigel]

Noting her tense posture, he paused. "Because I was trying to see what about it exactly made you 'broken,'" Jack replied. "My understanding this far is that it's manageable with consistent tutoring and medication for some symptoms."  

[chiickadee]

"Why didn't you ask me? I coulda told you this s**t" she questioned, interrogative in nature and clutching to the papers.

Hearing the words tutoring and medication brought back a woman's voice. Sterile desks and blue carpeting. She's sitting in the chair sideways just to use it incorrectly. Nobody seems bothered; that bothers her. Explanations of different drugs they want to put in her. Chel refuses. Her mother gives an exasperated stare. There's talk between her mother and the doctor; she doesn't know what they're saying why won't they include her in a talk about what's going in her body. She doesn't want to be ******** with. She stands up from the chair (somewhere behind her she hears "Chelsea! Chelsea come back here-") but she keeps walking. She'll take a bus home. She'll hitchhike. It doesn't matter because she's not going to be here.

"You think they gonna supply you with that s**t here? They barely got s**t for people who are actually injured." She tried to play it cool. The papers were put back on the desk and she actually attempted to smile. "Just forget it dude."  

[medigel]

"Our schedules haven't exactly been aligning lately," he replied with a shrug. "I had downtime between work. Thought I'd show initiative doing research myself." He couldn't help but feel offended she seemed even a little opposed to that, though, especially after the way she and Abbi had reacted to him trying to help them earlier.

"Look, I carry aspirin around because I get headaches easy now; you're welcome to it if that helps. We can get stuff for nausea too. If you do come with me for the contacts thing, we can go look for a workbook or some s**t."  

[chiickadee]

Her hands are shaking without meaning to. She knows Jack means the best but-

"Jack." She doesn't even know where to begin. She tries to start again. "Jack." It doesn't work the second time either. "Don't make me do more workbooks." That's the best way she can think to frame it.

She has to look at him, because she's realized one of the papers he's printed out was a worksheet, and the idea of Jack replacing her mother is mortifying. Her eyes are wide and something in her chest is hammering too loudly. Somewhere in her mind she had to have known this conversation was coming, she just really wished it wouldn't have been coming from Jack. "It's not a headache, it doesn't just go away with a pill," she tries a different angle, "You don't know what it's like man ... you don't know ... just ... don't make me do this." She scoffs from her nose and it's obvious how uncomfortable the conversation is making her.  

[medigel]

He watched her and wondered if whatever had switched on inside of him would change, yet nothing did. Chel was briefly viewed not as a person but as a series of responses, strain and stiffness and uncomfortable pressuring. It told him only several things: one, that this was more deeply rooted than her casual mentions and messages; two, that this was pushing her close to the edge of her comfort zone. And that was good as far as he was concerned. Resistance meant the possibility of change.

(He still remembered the spectrum of uneasy and stoic faces at the camp fire in China after his story, not just because of the thread of events linking one another but because that had been one of the most entertaining moments on that mission.)

Jack reached for his glasses and slipped them on so he could properly see her. "I know that," he said a little testily. "I know that's only treating symptoms, I know this isn't some disease with a cure. But if you're going to live with it and do s**t like Twitter all the time, at least prep yourself to make it easier. We don't have to do workbooks yet, we can start with something simpler."  

[chiickadee]

"Stop it!" she told him, the same sentence she'd told her a thousand times. "Cut it the ******** out. It's not funny."

She was shaking her head now and standing from the chair. She was going to leave, just like she'd left the clinic, just like she'd left her home for Deus Ex Machina. "I'll get off twitter if that's what matters so goddamn much to you people. I was thinkin' about it anyways."

Her arms were at her sides and she was fully prepared to move. "I'll come talk to you when yer not shovin' this bullshit down my throat." But even she couldn't hide the slight hint of frustrated drops of water in the corner of her eyes as she took a step towards the door. Because all she could remember was Everyone else just thinks you are as annoying as ********> and One of his only good qualities is that you don't have to give yourself a migraine in an effort to read his stupid bullshit.