02 ▒ EVENT: STASIS SICKNESS ▒ MEDBAY

[ataraxites]

CHARACTERS: Ensemble production!
LOCATION: Medbay.
WARNINGS: Sickness, body horror, etc.
SUMMARY: Sickness central. Treatments, dying slowly, related events.
NOTES: Divided by days a la medbay organisation log in the comments!

You're not feeling too well. The last couple of days have been - rough. The medbay seems to be a bit more full than usual, but you're sure it's nothing to be worried about; whatever the illness is, it'll go away once you've rested and gotten a check-up. Right?

Comments

[heltersskelter]

It isn't maybe.

[he says it with conviction, because he can see it on her. clinging like a shroud. the vultures circling in the desert because they know their next meal is coming. he pauses, then, lets the silence wrap them up, the only sound the beeping of the monitors and the conversation of doctors and patients beyond the curtains.

Tate steps closer to the bed.]

I can save you.

[entrapments]

[ she wants control of her limbs solely to smash his face in. the tray table beside her is shiny and metallic and inviting. but he comes in closer, a carrion bird, and his words slither into the air. something wet and sticky and insidious.

her gaze flickers too quickly for her to stop it, and locks itself on his face. it takes one moment, then another, for Hayley to draw ample breath into her lungs to reply. ]

In exchange for-?

[heltersskelter]

What you took from me.

[he says, and it's then, like he could press his point home that he leans over her. covers her prone body with the spread of his shadow, as though it could consume her like the sickness. half bracing over the bed, his palms flatten against the bedspread on either side of her shoulders. it brings him close enough that he can smell the stench of death and decay on her.

but he doesn't flinch. instead, his gaze stays locked, wide and fixed, on her own.]

Give me back the mask and I'll give you the cure.

[entrapments]

[ he comes in so close that she swears she can taste his exhale- the little breaths that move through clenched teeth. he's trying to impose, and in a way, it works. the whole of his body comes down over her, and something in the bottom of her stomach- more solid than anything else in Hayley's body, screams it's revolt.

the breath stills in her lungs.
maybe in a few days, it'll still entirely.

her eyes move over his face- search him and come up empty and she doesn't hide the momentary vulnerability, the flicker of want for what he's ready and willing to offer. it's hard, so fucking hard to move, but she takes her time. Hayley moves one elbow behind her, then another- and inch by goddamned inch, she pushes herself up to meet him. he moves with her, some twisted synchronization, and it's only when she's as far as she can go, supported on fragile limbs, precariously balanced, that she speaks. a whisper in the inch that separates their mouths. ]

You're never going to get it Tate.

[ she could die here, but she doubts it. because Hayley holds herself up. because she has friendships she's spent months cultivating and an image a handful have found it necessary to protect and she knows knows that while maybe she can't get the cure herself, she'll get it somehow.

Hayley pulls back with an smile, and doesn't disguise the satisfaction there. because he's given her his vulnerability. because he's tested hers and found nothing. ]

I'm not afraid of anything.

[ even when the seizure takes her, and her waiflike frame is thrown back against the bed, locked up and trembling, she still looks like she's smiling. ]

[heltersskelter]

[whatever he was expecting, it wasn't this. everyone was afraid of their mortality. absolutely everyone would bargain for their own death. the fact that Tate didn't actually have the cure was besides the point. she rises up to meet him like something ghoulish, and his expression darkens only when she defies him what he's asked.

when she spits that she's afraid of nothing.

he'd heard someone else tell him that once; but that someone hadn't taken a lead pipe to him. hadn't run screaming from the house (from him). that someone hadn't looked death in the face and accepted it with shaking, rotting limbs and a feral, unflappable look on their face.

when she seizes, there's no surprise in his face. no sympathy or concern, his mouth only twists into an ugly snarl, and he pushes hard off the bed. he rips the curtain aside when he leaves with more violence than ever necessary, but disappears before anyone can pin him to the scene.]