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Bad Choices

"...thanks, Cee." Because the idea was funny enough to be something, at least, to make Ever shake his head and smile and melt back into the pillows, cigarette held away from the blankets. He couldn't imagine looking good any time soon, but he wasn't that worried about it. Usually he could make up for it with personality. Or other things.

"I think I'll pass, though."

Zac did make time to come back, this time he was treated to the fact that Ever was, actually awake for the visit. He had a little treat for Ever too but he figured he’d better be DAMN discrete about it, and it was limited in quantity, at least till Ever wasn’t so likely to well… leak the treat out if you wanted to be a bit teasing about it.

“Hey… you’re up this time.” He offered a grin.

“Didn’t they cover in the initiation meeting that you’re only supposed to let them run you –half- way through? I mean, they should at least try and have you for dinner before you let them get that far on the bases.”

He ducked his head slightly, sheepish.

“Probably not super funny, but… you’ll probably enjoy what I brought.”

Hello Again

Ever knew every inch of the ceiling, now: was studying it further when Zac came into the room, book open across his chest. He was genuinely surprised by how tired this all left him, considering he had barely left the bed since he came in here.

His shift of focus onto Zac, instead, was a slow process.

"Uhm?" None of his usual teasing, and that said something about Ever's current state.

I know I have to eat

It was a quiet, terse little argument -- on her side, at least. She was the nurse in charge of giving him a lecture and Ever looked surprisingly indifferent to it, his head cocked to one side as she went on and on. At the end of the rant, his reply was the same easy, even tone as it had always been.

"Look, I'm just waiting to make sure it's all healed up so everything stops tasting like blood." He sounded too neutral, and it made her grumpy again, he knew.

"That's just in your head --"

"It doesn't make it not real." It was resigned. And final.

I know I have to eat

Final for her, anyway.

Word got around. There wasn't so much doctor/patient confidentiality on Deus as off it, and given his particular reputation it wasn't especially surprising that when the frustrated gossip got loose it was finally caught by one Obadiah Thompson, who considered it for a while, a long shower after his shift, before getting dressed again and walking right back to the infirmary.

America'd brought Ever liquid meal replacement. Taym did the same, wordlessly inviting himself into Ever's room and gently pushing aside a few origami animals so he could put the can down on the bedside table, then folding himself up into a chair the same way he had in the car: knees to his chest, childish, making himself as small as possible.

"Do you know what my biggest fear was when I got back from the Sahara and was stuck in this ******** place?" he asked, without preamble.

Hello Again

Zac's timing was good: Ever onto liquids, at least, though he avoided water. There was something mineral about water, something that brought up his gag reflex. Vodka would probably be better, even if mixing it with the lingering pain medications wasn't a good idea.

Still. It made him smile, slowly, and distractedly. He'd save it for later instead of tipping ti back now.

"...nah. I'll be fine." Eventually. Ever shrugged, and tucked the stash in under his giant plush p***s. Seemed as good a place as any. "Unless you want to smuggle in more."

Eat

"There was some of that, asleep," he said drily. "More centipedes and moths, but some locusts. But what I was afraid of," he said, because he'd half-prepared this in his head already and wasn't going to be derailed, dammit,--

--maybe. It wasn't anything he'd ever told anyone. He'd skirted around the idea of it with America but he hadn't been able to find the words. It had been harder to think of telling her than it was to think of telling Ever, but it was hard enough, and he paused. For a long time.

"--I was afraid they were gonna put a tube down my nose. That's what they do in Guantanamo, you know? Hunger strikes. They hold you down and force a tube down your nose. I had nightmares about it. They didn't," he said. "But they put me on a drip. Which was worse, sort of." He didn't need to say why. Ever'd been there with him underground. It had been the nightmarish hybrid of two traumas. "But maybe they would have. I don't know. Possibly they'd have just let me die instead, but maybe not. What I know for damn sure is they wouldn't have let me out if I hadn't choked down a bowl of oatmeal to show willing."