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

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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.

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Oh that face was telling. "What is it? If it's nothing then why not tell me?"

Pushy girl, considering he'd met her exactly once. "Hey, I don't even know your name," he said defensively.

She got that a lot. "It's Loren." She raised her eyebrows as if to say 'now will you tell me?'

"Loren," he repeated. "Well, good to meet you, Loren." And then he showed no intention of going on. Pretend he just hadn't seen her hinting at him.

And Loren was going to stand right there until she had her question answered. "Good to meet you too, Steve. So you gonna tell me?"

That was the sound of a whine creeping into his voice. "Come on. It's none of your business," he insisted. "It's not a big deal. I'm just sick."

"I think it might be. I did burn my hands trying to save you." It didn't sound like she was bothered that she'd done that. It didn't look it either, judging by the smirk on her face.

Ouch, Loren. Steve's expression dropped into one of horror. "What?" he murmured. "Oh god, I- I'm so, so sorry..."

"Don't worry about it. It's not going to scar or anything. Not even a second degree burn. But if you feel bad then you can answer my question and we'll call it even."

"What do you mean, 'don't worry about it?'" he replied sourly. "You were just trying to help me, and..." As if he needed anything else to stew about after the near-disaster in the Vatican. He'd tried so desperately hard not to lose control or hurt anybody, and he ended up hurting people anyway thanks to his stupid blood. Loren was probably lucky she wasn't infected too, now.

Steve let out a heavy breath and sounded more than a little bitter. "I told you. I'm sick."

"Hey, I didn't mean to make you feel bad. Really, don't worry about it. Like I said, you saved my life." She paused and looked around. "Am I going to have to pull up a chair?"

That made him feel embarrassed instead of regretful. Oh well. At least he was used to it. It also made him feel like he owed her. He wasn't going to budge otherwise-- but this girl had been injured in his near-rampage. He had to make it up to her somehow.

Steve stared down at his lap, bangs hanging in his face and covering up his eye and the bandage over the other one. "If I tell you, you have to swear you won't tell anybody else. Not the command staff and not your friends and not anybody else.

"No one?" Not even Elfangor? "Do they know? If it's that serious..." Just how bad was this?

"Some people know," Steve replied, pretending there was something very interesting to be found past his feet at the end of the bed. "And they're the only ones who need to know. So if you can't keep it to yourself, I'm not gonna say anything."

He wasn't meaning to sound so pissy about it. But dammit, he figured he had a right to be pissy if he wanted to in this situation.

"Steve, if it's that serious you don't want anyone else to know, you have to promise me that if it's really that important you'll talk to one of the command staff about it or let them know somehow. Does one of them know now?"

"Yes," he answered instantly, his tone still a little sour. "Two of them do." Luis knew because he was the Chief Science Officer and a medical researcher, and he was trying to figure out a cure. And Leon knew because he was Chief of Security and he was probably having daydreams about sticking a bullet in the back of Steve's head.

Loren let out a sigh of relief. "O.K., O.K., good. So long as they know then I promise I won't tell anyone."

Steve closed his eyes and took a moment to respond after that. If Loren didn't know better he might have just fallen asleep where he was sitting. But then he went on.

"I'm sick," he said again. "But I'm always sick. I have a virus."

"Are you going to be O.K.? Was that why your blood was on fire? Elfangor said it might be because you were alien but your human, aren't you?"

"I'm human," Steve confirmed. "Or. Or I was, anyway. I don't know what I am now. The virus I have makes people mutate. It changes them into something else and then it usually kills them." Well, he didn't know that was true. Maybe he was just "lucky."

"I don't know a lot about it. But it's really dangerous. Back there in the Vatican, I almost..." he hesitated. "I almost turned into something."

"Oh. Oh my God. There's no cure or medicine they can give you? Is it something where you need to avoid getting hurt because-" Well he was probably shit out of luck if that was the case.

He was starting to regret telling her this. The last thing he wanted was for her to be gushing and falling all over herself feeling sorry for him. Steve couldn't stand it when people felt sorry for him.

"They're trying to find a cure. Dr. Sera is," Steve answered, pointedly refusing to look her in the eye. "There's nothing right now though. And the virus spreads through blood, so I... I'm really supposed to be careful. When the Tyrant cut my arm open, I saw the blood and I sort of freaked out because I thought it might be dangerous."

He shrugged his shoulders sheepishly. "I don't know why it lights on fire though. I had no idea it did. It's pretty damn stupid, isn't it?"

Before she could stop herself Loren looked at her hands. They were fine though. There hadn't been any blood. So she was fine. "Yeah. But they're going to find a cure and then you won't have to worry about it."

Steve noticed anyway.

"Yeah. Maybe," he muttered, shrugging his shoulders a bit. It wasn't as though he didn't believe in Dr. Sera or Scarlet or Jean or any of the other people around here. He'd just decided not to lay all his hopes on them. He was going to beat this virus by himself if he had to-- any help the med bay could offer would just be extra benefit.

"You will." Loren said firmly, completely sure of herself.

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

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