I don't want to be like someone waiting

[psituational]

Characters: X and Zephyr
Date: Let's say December 1st
Location: The clinic where X has been in a coma all of November
Situation: X wakes up! And proceeds to panic badly for a good few minutes. Fun for all.
Warnings/Rating: None yet, will edit as necessary.

It's a great deal longer than X usually spends sleeping.

It's also not how he usually falls asleep. One minute, he was cooking, albeit haltingly, with some fresh food he'd picked up just down the street from the new place he and Zephyr were renting together; the next, he collapsed, dead to the world, some fruit rolling from his hands across the floor and under the table.

In the month since, he didn't move a muscle, and barely even twitched when he was touched or moved.

That changed one cold morning when, with very little warning, X woke up. His awareness snapped into place first, hard and fast enough that for several seconds he just lay there, blinking, staring up at the unfamiliar ceiling above him and wondering idly what new place he'd found himself in now. Then he realised he'd been sleeping, and he shot upright instantly, his heart hammering in his ears, staring around wildly. "Who --!?"

Comments

[psituational]

X has seen emotional choke-holds before. He's felt emotional choke-holds before. He knows generally what causes them, if not necessarily how to unblock them, and he definitely knows what they look like when he sees them.

Zephyr has it worse than Szandor did, and that's saying something. Szandor would vanish into the surrounding air the moment someone brought up anything resembling friendship. Zephyr would do exactly the same thing, X suspects, if he were able to. What a pair they would make.

Szandor acted like this because he didn't see himself as worthy of friendship, after betraying his friends.

Zephyr's mentioned having close friends, but was otherwise reluctant to talk about them.

Hm.

"Thank you," X says gratefully when Zephyr returns with the water. He finishes half the cup without trying, gulping it down quickly, and then peers at Zephyr, trying to decide if it's something to talk about now.

It probably isn't. "What's been happening in Aifaran?" he asks instead, and his voice already sounds better than it did before. "What have I missed?"

[spiralpatterns]

Zephyr opts, when he returns, to settle on the bed again, right where he was. He's not going to say anything about the chair if X doesn't. "Yeah, no problem." Getting the guy a glass of water is basically the least he can do.

He pauses, thinks back over the last month, and shrugs. "Not a whole lot, honestly. The weather's gotten worse, so congratulations on waking up to hit the worst of it, I guess. A bunch of people missed you-- Devin stopped by at least once to be an asshole."

He means that Devin came by to be an asshole to Zephyr, specifically.

[psituational]

X laughs. It's less an audible sound and more of a sharp exhale, but it's unmistakably laughter. Devin, an asshole. Well -- to some people, certainly, a select group to which Zephyr apparently belongs. To X, though, he's been nothing but a friend. This is possibly due to the bias of knowing Devin so well, but whatever the cause, there's evidence now in the form of Devin stopping by to make sure X was alright.

He needs to send Devin a message, to let him know he's alright. Ilda, too. Valdis. The Fool. He has a lot he needs to catch up on.

"Does that mean he wasn't an asshole all the other times he visited?" X asks, amused.