Pretty Dead City He didn't expect to wake up in a hospital. Really, what he expected was to wake up in his own bed, with Busta hogging the pillow. Roll over, groan, "Never again. Never mixing liquors again," and that would be it. Puke a couple times, take a shower and feel the nightmare slither back into whatever dark crevice of the soul it came from.
Instead he blinked and blinked and the room was still sterile white and he ached everywhere, like every bone in his body was made of ground glass.
"Oh, fuck," he muttered.
Well, okay. Hospital was doable, too. They gave you drugs. "Thank GOD, it was just a dream," he said out loud.
There was a little sigh next to him. A sigh, a gasp, a muffled sob.
"JC?" he said. It was cold in the room; just a little too cold. He couldn't move his left arm. It was tied to the bed. "JC?"
"I'm sorry," JC whispered. Chris turned his head. JC sat on a chair by the bedside. His face was in shadow; darkness clustered around his eyes like bruises. Chris kept from flinching somehow. No, he thought.
"What?" Chris said. The dream was fading already, just as expected. He suddenly wanted back there. He'd known it was a dream all along, of course he had. Ha ha ha, scary ass dream.
"I'm sorry," JC said again, "I was waiting for you to wake up. Everyone else is. They're not. I just wanted to tell you--"
"WHAT?" All he remembered were scraps of nightmare. What else had happened?
JC rubbed his eyes, turned his head and Chris saw that the shadows were real bruises, merry purple, blue, red, green, yellow. He had a cut on his lip and one of his hands was wrapped in gauze.
"It wasn't your fault," he said, and Chris knew that it was his fault, very much his fault. It was hard to read JC's eyes when they were puffy and bruised, but his voice was brittle.
He bit the inside of his cheek. It hurt more than it should have, and he realised there were stitches in his mouth.
"They took him off life support," JC said, blurted it out like it hurt to hold it in. "Two hours ago."
Chris wanted to say, "what?" again, but he didn't want to know. He couldn't remember anything, just the fucked up dream, just that it was his fault.
JC stood up and came closer.
"Are you okay?"
"Yes," Chris said. JC bent over him and kissed him on the cheek, a little gingerly. Chris grabbed his hand, the gauzed one. JC let him. Chris struggled against the restraint, but in the end, the right hand was enough and he tore off the gauze.
JC met his eyes.
Chris' hand hurt, too. When he flexed his fingers, he felt the edges of the wound in his palm.
"It wasn't your fault," JC said. "I love you. I'm gonna go. Um. They."
"Go," Chris said.
When JC was gone, he whispered, "I love you too," to the empty room just to know what it felt like.
JC had always been a bad liar.
When he took his time to figure it out, he managed to get the cuff opened and his hand freed. Pulling out the IV needle was a minor pain in the midst of all the other pains.
It was dark outside. The room had a balcony.
"You build a pretty dead city in your head and then you go there."
His legs were weak, but he could support himself. He couldn't remember. He thought he was actively not remembering.
"I love you too," he said again, but he didn't remember, so it meant nothing.
He shook his hand and the wound opened. Small drops of blood smattered over white and white and more white.
He opened the balcony door, and the air outside was perfectly still, heavy and thick with hazy light.
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