trans_9 | I've got a disease, deep inside me [totally open]

Entry tags:

I've got a disease, deep inside me [totally open]

[ooc: Rather than spam the boards with posts for my characters, this thread takes place a few days after everything quiets down in the medbay. If your character wants to speak to either Luis or Steve, this is the place. I won't have the two of them respond to each other (I'm not quite that tasteless), so let me know who you've come a-callin' for. Alternate thread title: I Can't Believe It's Not Muncest.]

In an isolated bed near the back of the medbay, a teenage boy lay restrained. Anyone who'd caught a glimpse of Steve on the day of the incident would have said he looked much better, but he still looked like hell-- bloodless, clammy skin misted with a thin sheen of sweat, veins standing out dark and purple, a facial expression that read he had been sleeping for quite a while and could stand to sleep for quite a while longer. His right shoulder was tightly bandaged, as was his left hand, and a loose bandage had been wrapped around his head to cover his left eye. His hands were still strapped down to the bed and an IV was feeding into his arm, but it looked like the energy and the color were slowly returning to the skinny redhead.

Now if only it wasn't so goddamn boring in here.

There wasn't even the comfort of constant conversation. Dr. Sera kept busy looking out for the injured all over the medbay, and didn't seem much for talk anyway. Any time he didn't spend hunched over the laboratory equipment in the back of the room he spent sort of muttering to himself, staring at charts, or making thinly veiled passes at the female visitors to the medbay. He did have the decency not to hit on the injured.

Still, his brain was fully entrenched in Science Mode and anybody who needed to speak to him would need to flag him down.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Steve would wish, as he had for years and as he would for some time to come, that he had more control over the way his face betrayed his emotions. He made kind of an odd expression at the mention of other injuries. Rather, Leon's injuries. Rather, mention of Leon.

"Jeez. Hat trick," he murmured, a little stilted. Whatever that meant. The idea was probably something like three people who Claire knew had all gotten hurt, but it was a little jumbled between Steve's head and his mouth. Jesus. What the hell does that mean? Thank god she can assume you're drugged up... you sound like an idiot. Steve paused, took a little breath, then closed his visible eye. "I guess we all three had close calls, I mean."

Claire noticed the little expression change at the mention of Leon, and managed to keep a poker face, looking down at her hand still on the bed. She really wished there were some way for her to get Leon and Steve to get along, but she didn't exactly have high hopes. Steve seemed to have a mixture of fear and loathing of Leon, and she knew that Leon pretty much swept Steve off his radar except for the biohazard possibilities.

She smiled a little while he tried to clarify himself, nodding her head and looking up at him again.

"Yeah. All my boys, proving you can't keep yourselves out of trouble without me around to keep an eye on you."

His cheeks turned slightly pink and he smiled awkwardly at being referred to as one of Claire's "boys." Maybe one of these days he would learn to keep his body and especially his face from ratting out his emotions like that.

"Hey, come on. I don't know about the other two but I can take care of myself," he pointed out. "I proved it, remember?"

She smiled a little more at that, patting his arm again.

"Yeah, you did pretty good." She still felt like she needed to protect him from things, the fact that he was laying here injured and partially mutated proving that in her mind, but she didn't vocalize that. He needed to recover, so she shouldn't be reminding him of the fact that he did still need looking after.

Steve shifted a bit, moving his shoulders so he could lay back about as comfortably as was possible in this spot. His visible eye watched Claire for a moment, then looked up at the ceiling.

"Hey, is Sherry okay?" he asked. "I think I scared her. I don't think she really liked me all that much to begin with, so I hope she's not..." Steve winced at the very thought. "I hope she's not having nightmares about me or anything. She's too little to have to see zombies and that kind of bullshit."

"She's fine. And I'm sure she was a lot more scared of the Tyrant than you," she sighed, running a hand back over her hair. "Truthfully, zombies aren't anything new for Sherry. I wish I could say that Leon and I were able to keep her safe and sheltered from the things that were wrong with our world..." she shook her head slowly. It was kind of difficult sometimes, attempting to dance around the straight truth that Sherry was not her daughter, and she'd met the little girl in a situation similar to what had just transpired.

"She's a tough kid, though. I'm very proud of how strong she is."

He wasn't quite sure about that. He hadn't gotten any more than fleeting glimpses at himself since he'd been brought to med bay, but the dark veins standing out on pale skin was kind of creepy, if you asked him. Not to mention the bleeding fire and the screaming and what happened to his eyes. Even thinking about it made him make a face, squinting the eye that was bandaged over. He certainly scared himself.

"That's not fair," he said quietly, thinking back to the 12-year-old with a background in zombies. "For somebody her age." He went silent and looked deep in thought for a moment. Finally, a tiny, wistful smile appeared on the corner of his mouth.

"Heh. I guess... she really is your kid."

Claire nodded slowly, leaning forward a little and shifting so she could rest her chin in her hand, elbow braced on the edge of his bed. There were so many kids whose nightmares would never end thanks to Umbrella, WilPharma, and all those other companies that decided playing God was a doable thing with the right chemicals.

She was shaken out of her quiet reflection by his comment, and she laughed a little, turning her head to look at him.

"Yeah, she is." She faintly remembered Leon saying something along the same lines, several weeks back, but kept quiet about that. She knew Steve probably wouldn't like her drawing parallels between them.

Steve was starved for conversation and for something that wasn't sitting around and stewing in his own head or sleeping. That probably explained the somewhat loose trains of thought he kept coming up with, or his willingness to make off-handed comments that he'd kept to himself so far.

"I guess she looks a lot like her dad," he murmured. "I don't think he likes me too much either, come to think of it."

Well that was an uncomfortable observation. Claire shifted a little awkwardly in her chair, sitting back again and frowning a little.

"It isn't that he doesn't like you." Of course she still wasn't entirely sure what the problem was, there. "He's just worried about the possibility of what might happen if you... you know." She sighed again, reaching up to rub the back of her neck.

"Like that's my fault," Steve said a bit sourly. He paused and thought better of the comment, though-- or at least, he paused and thought better of his tone.

He shrugged his shoulders. "It's not a big deal. I mean, he's your friend, after all." Or whatever he was. Her friend. "I don't even know him." Or like him. "So I don't really care what he thinks about me." Because he's an asshole. "It is what it is."

Steve had wondered if he'd be hearing from Leon about the incident with his daughter and the Tyrant. He didn't actually care if he did or not, since he'd rather not talk to Leon anyway. But he wasn't going to be very surprised if he didn't.

Claire opened her mouth a few times to say something, but each time managed to think better of it and shut herself up again. She was irritated by this back and forth Steve and Leon seemed to have while barely having anything to do with one-another, but she realized there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. She knew it was likely mostly her fault, since Steve happened to be harboring a huge crush on her, and Leon was... well.

She mentally sighed, before physically shrugging her shoulders, trying not to roll her eyes.

"Mmhm."

Her lack of a response made him nervous. Really nervous. Steve could feel a knot tying up in his chest that felt like he'd swallowed a package of lead weights and they'd gotten stuck there. He was starting to recognize the chest pains that were a symptom of the virus, so he was sure these were just plain old regular nerves.

But why? You know why. God, you're an idiot. Just change the subject. Don't say anything else! "Hey, Claire," he said quietly, for the sake of breaking the awkward silence. "You guys have a kid together, but are you two-" No! Not that! Anything but that!

"I'm just..." he said almost mechanically. "I'm just wondering."

She was leaning back in her chair a little further when he started down that path of conversation, and it was lucky she wasn't pushing the legs up because she probably would've fallen over backwards. As it was, she frowned a little, looking vaguely uncomfortable.

The last time they'd had this conversation, she'd given him a very (according to Leon) overzealous "no." Now, of course... She could lie about it, of course, but sooner or later she was going to have to make Steve realize she was never going to feel the way he did for her.

"That's... really complicated, Steve." She finally replied. It felt cheap, but it was true.

"Oh." Smooth answer. Steve was watching her out of the corner of his unbandaged eye, carefully tracking every expression she made. What in the hell was he doing? He was going to regret asking that. Claire would wonder why he cared so much. And well... she might not wonder, because if the blurry memories Steve had of the moment he died told him anything, Claire already knew he--

Time to change the subject.

He actually did a fairly admirable job of trying to recover from that, trying to veer conversation away towards something else. It wasn't a big deal. "Sorry," he said softly, forcing an awkward, sheepish smile (it was the smile that was forced... definitely not the awkward.) "I guess it's none of my business."

"I can understand your curiosity," she answered automatically, before mentally hitting herself. She cleared her throat, looking off to the side. "It's just kind of something even I'm not really clear on, right now." It was on her list of things to do, of course, but she was kind of waiting out all the aftermath stuff, before she went confronting Leon. Part of her would just rather avoid the whole thing as long as possible, too.

It was almost a smooth recovery. The only thing that might have given him away was the brief and unmistakable expression of abject shock and borderline horror that crossed Steve's face when Claire said she "understood his curiosity."

It was stuck there for a few telltale seconds before Steve turned away himself, pretending there was something interesting off to his left and away from her. "I hate it when things get complicated," he said. And that was true. This right here was complicated as hell.

Claire was mentally slapping herself so hard right now. She managed to keep it all internal, however, and sat up a little, clearing her throat.

"Um yeah," she agreed, trying not to look uneasy. She pushed herself to the edge of her chair, exhaling almost silently.

"I should probably get going and give you a chance to rest. You're still looking a little pale."

Steve was still refusing to look at her, scanning the same old walls and instruments and machines off to the left that he'd been looking at for two straight days now. God, this was so awkward. He wanted to say something to fix it, but there was no way he'd let himself dig the hole even deeper. What could he say to fix it, anyway? "Well, if he's so much trouble, you could always give me another shot?" "Good luck with Leon, Claire, you know I'm always here if you need to talk about it?" "I'm glad I met you, I love you, Claire?" What kind of an idiot says shit like that?

And then she gave him a line to use. Thank god. "Heh... Claire, I'm a redhead. I'm always pale," Steve said, smiling. The smile gave him the courage to look back at her.

She looked a little surprised at the crack, but smiled, before chuckling a little and standing, reaching out to ruffle his hair up.

"Point taken. You still need your rest, though."

He flinched a bit when she ruffled his hair, though not out of any nerves regarding her touching him. He was worried she was going to loosen up the bandage that was covering up his eye.

The bandage stayed on and Steve relaxed a little more, looking up at her with that awkward smile again. "I think I'm just about rested out. But I guess you're right," he admitted.

There was a brief pause. "Will you come back again later? It's lonely in here."

Claire looked at Steve curiously for a moment before nodding her head.

"Yeah, 'course I will." There wasn't any doubt in her mind that she'd visit again, so she was kind of surprised he thought she might not. "I've got some stuff I've gotta take care of, but I'll be back when I can, all right?"

Steve felt dumb for even asking but hey, then again, he always felt dumb when he was talking to Claire. She had a way of making his brain shut off and his mouth move in overdrive. He sighed a little bit (in relief?) when she answered, then nodded his head in response. "Good," he said simply. "Thanks."

That seemed like he was finished, but he looked like he had more to say, or like he was trying to decide something. "... I'm sorry, Claire," he added a moment later. "For all this."

She looked at him for a moment with a soft look on her face, before smiling and reaching to gently squeeze one of his hands in hers, again.

"It's okay."

He shook his head that no, it wasn't, but didn't say anything, just squeezing her hand back and refusing to look her in the eye.

I've got a disease, deep inside me [totally open]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)