I Only Dream of Thunder
Title: In which Christian works D block.
Word Count: 1449
Note: Shameless borrowing of n3m3sis43's Devin for this piece. Hopefully she doesn't hate it! <3
"Hey, Cavers."
The noise is a surprise in the quiet lunchroom, and Christian looks up from the creased pages of his crossword book, taps his pen against his teeth. Vic Tranmer is a hulking man, a solid inch on his waist for each of the forty-two harsh years of his life, his voice a husky growl formed of two decades of hopeless marriage and a pack a day habit. He's been working the ward for almost ten years, to the point that the red of the scrubs seems to have bled into his skin, leaving him streaked and ugly and agitated. Most of the younger staff regard him with a mix of amusement and terror, depending on whether he's watching them, and he really has no friends in the building among either his colleagues or the patients, but somehow Christian has forged an uneasy truce with the man. They work together, now, most days. If nothing else, the lack of casual banter and conversation is welcome.
"Good morning," Christian says quietly, looking back to his book. The pen ticks against his teeth a few more times, and then he carefully prints DECEIVE across the small blocks of the row.
"We're on D block today."
"Mmm." He folds the book closed and heads to his locker, aware that the older man is watching him closely. He tolerates it perhaps a moment or two before he meets his eyes, squints a little.
"Something wrong?"
"That's a good one," Vic tells him, gesturing with one beefy hand. Christian reaches up, touches the angry, hot line of still-healing scar that streaks down his neck and across his collarbone, and shrugs as he pulls his red shirt from his locker and tugs it over his head. "What did you do to yourself?"
"Stupid accident," he says nonchalantly, shoving his book onto the top shelf of the locker and nudging the door closed. He brushes past Vic and into the hallway before the older man can question him further, his eyes following the painted lines on the floor as he heads toward D block, humming quietly under his breath to the rhythm of his runners against the tiled floor.
D block is full of mostly fresh faces again, the dazed expressions of those newly abandoned by families, by friends, by professionals and caretakers and anybody else who may have come into contact with them. They shamble around the common room like lost souls, unsure whether to sit or stand, whether to cry or bargain or simply remain quiet. Their eyes are wild contrasts to their slow, cautious movements, rolling and darting in their sockets like frightened animals trying to absorb the space around them and ascertain a place to hide, a place to nurse their puncture wounds and restraint bruises, somewhere that shields them from the unnerving stares of the others. When Christian enters the room, Vic behind them, a quick waves of uneasy hope flickers through the room. They haven't established the color coding of the uniforms yet, thinking that perhaps he's come with medication, with transfer papers, with an appointment to see a resident psychiatrist. Just something, anything, to get them out of the commons. When he takes the seat still warm from the shift before him, though, there is a collective sigh of resignation. They return to their aimless wandering, their frail hope, their furtive glances out the windows.
He flips through the clipboard, mostly ignoring Vic's careful circling of the room, the way the older man stares down the drawn faces until they turn their eyes to the floor. He checks the notes from the previous crew, studies the scrawled handwriting, and is somewhat grateful to find nothing of interest. He's capable of paying attention, he supposes, capable of centering his focus on the large room and the wandering patients, but he's more content to let his thoughts wander, to let the broken skin on his neck burn and sting, let it send buzzing shots of electricity into his veins. So he sits and flips the pages, listens to Vic's shoes squeak around the room, and thinks of storms, of fire, of dark creatures slouching off to be born. And when he looks up, his mind muddled and his skin crawling, his distracted gaze meets the careful stare of amber eyes from across the room.
The face is not familiar, the atypically-beautiful curve of his bones and features, and the young stranger looks away when Christian holds his eyes took long, returning his curious gaze and odd eyes to the magazine in front of him. It's enough, though, to make Christian leave his seat and cross the room, the wandering souls parting to give him space to pass, and when he sits at the table across from the youngster there is no immediate sign that his presence has been noticed.
The magazine is a puzzle book, sudoku, but the grid is blank save the few pre-printed numbers. There are no pens allowed in D block, so a crayon rests at the edge of the page, Tropical Rain Forest printed carefully on the label, the tip carefully tapered and fresh from the box. The young man taps his fingers on the edge of the table, a rhythmic, thoughtful pattern, the flex of the muscles along his thin wrist causing the pale yellow bracelet to rock against his skin. The overhead lights flare against the plastic, the admission date and D. Renton in carefully typed letters. Devin, the clipboard would say, another name with a laundry list of reasons to be sitting at this particular table at this particular moment.
"Have you done one of these before?" Christian asks him, tapping the page. The rattle of Devin's fingers on the table's plastic edge stutter a moment before continuing. Thumb, middle, index, ring, middle, pinkie, ring, thumb, pinkie, index. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. "They're not too hard. You need to -"
"I'm not fucking stupid."
His voice is a cross between a hiss and a growl, a warning sound that rumbles up his throat and leaks between his lips like smoke, like the traces of something heavy and unbearable burning inside him.
"I never said you were," Christian assures quietly, trying to maintain his smile, his friendly tone, trying to remind himself that he has no need for another Adrian. "You just seem stuck."
"I'm not fucking stuck."
"You also haven't -"
"Go the fuck away," Devin snarls. "You're fucking useless."
"That so?"
"That's fucking so."
"You pull this sparkling personality on everyone?" Christian asks, and leans back in his chair with a knowing grin, enjoying the way Devin's shoulders clench, how his jaw tightens, how his eyes darken dangerously. "Or just the people you're supposed to behave around?"
"Don't owe you a fucking thing," Devin says. He's still staring at the book, glaring at the grid of empty spaces and bold black clue-numbers. "Least of all my fucking good behavior." He tilts his head just slightly, narrows his eyes, as if either hearing something in his thoughts or analyzing a particularly interesting piece of data. "You're the one that owes me, really."
"Oh?"
"Just another fucking redshirt." His hand darts onto the table so quickly that Christian flinches back, but he's just snatching the crayon from the surface. He twirls it in his long fingers a moment before he presses the tip to the first blank space and blocks in a 2 in a precise, perfect swirl. "But you work here four fucking hours, then you fuck off somewhere else." 4 and 8 follow in the adjoining squares, then a skip over the clues, then 5 7 1 6. Every number an exact height, exact width. "You go back to your fucking home, come back tomorrow, maybe work a different fucking ward. Haven't figured that out yet." His hand continues in robotic movements, filling in every square, until the grid is full of dark green numbers. "But me? Got nothing fucking better to do, Red. And I'll sure as fuck remember your fucking face."
He shoves himself away from the table and plants his fingers on the book, spins it so that the solved puzzles faces Christian, and leans over to carefully tuck the crayon into the front pocket of Christian's shirt, his fingers nesting it into place while his thumb presses painfully to the sting-heat of the scar beneath. And their eyes meet, then, for the first time since Christian sat down, and when Devin smiles it is the grin of something cold and ominous, the swirl of chemicals that split-second of silence before detonation.
"Check my work, won't you, boss?" he purrs, and turns away.
Word Count: 1449
Note: Shameless borrowing of n3m3sis43's Devin for this piece. Hopefully she doesn't hate it! <3
"Hey, Cavers."
The noise is a surprise in the quiet lunchroom, and Christian looks up from the creased pages of his crossword book, taps his pen against his teeth. Vic Tranmer is a hulking man, a solid inch on his waist for each of the forty-two harsh years of his life, his voice a husky growl formed of two decades of hopeless marriage and a pack a day habit. He's been working the ward for almost ten years, to the point that the red of the scrubs seems to have bled into his skin, leaving him streaked and ugly and agitated. Most of the younger staff regard him with a mix of amusement and terror, depending on whether he's watching them, and he really has no friends in the building among either his colleagues or the patients, but somehow Christian has forged an uneasy truce with the man. They work together, now, most days. If nothing else, the lack of casual banter and conversation is welcome.
"Good morning," Christian says quietly, looking back to his book. The pen ticks against his teeth a few more times, and then he carefully prints DECEIVE across the small blocks of the row.
"We're on D block today."
"Mmm." He folds the book closed and heads to his locker, aware that the older man is watching him closely. He tolerates it perhaps a moment or two before he meets his eyes, squints a little.
"Something wrong?"
"That's a good one," Vic tells him, gesturing with one beefy hand. Christian reaches up, touches the angry, hot line of still-healing scar that streaks down his neck and across his collarbone, and shrugs as he pulls his red shirt from his locker and tugs it over his head. "What did you do to yourself?"
"Stupid accident," he says nonchalantly, shoving his book onto the top shelf of the locker and nudging the door closed. He brushes past Vic and into the hallway before the older man can question him further, his eyes following the painted lines on the floor as he heads toward D block, humming quietly under his breath to the rhythm of his runners against the tiled floor.
D block is full of mostly fresh faces again, the dazed expressions of those newly abandoned by families, by friends, by professionals and caretakers and anybody else who may have come into contact with them. They shamble around the common room like lost souls, unsure whether to sit or stand, whether to cry or bargain or simply remain quiet. Their eyes are wild contrasts to their slow, cautious movements, rolling and darting in their sockets like frightened animals trying to absorb the space around them and ascertain a place to hide, a place to nurse their puncture wounds and restraint bruises, somewhere that shields them from the unnerving stares of the others. When Christian enters the room, Vic behind them, a quick waves of uneasy hope flickers through the room. They haven't established the color coding of the uniforms yet, thinking that perhaps he's come with medication, with transfer papers, with an appointment to see a resident psychiatrist. Just something, anything, to get them out of the commons. When he takes the seat still warm from the shift before him, though, there is a collective sigh of resignation. They return to their aimless wandering, their frail hope, their furtive glances out the windows.
He flips through the clipboard, mostly ignoring Vic's careful circling of the room, the way the older man stares down the drawn faces until they turn their eyes to the floor. He checks the notes from the previous crew, studies the scrawled handwriting, and is somewhat grateful to find nothing of interest. He's capable of paying attention, he supposes, capable of centering his focus on the large room and the wandering patients, but he's more content to let his thoughts wander, to let the broken skin on his neck burn and sting, let it send buzzing shots of electricity into his veins. So he sits and flips the pages, listens to Vic's shoes squeak around the room, and thinks of storms, of fire, of dark creatures slouching off to be born. And when he looks up, his mind muddled and his skin crawling, his distracted gaze meets the careful stare of amber eyes from across the room.
The face is not familiar, the atypically-beautiful curve of his bones and features, and the young stranger looks away when Christian holds his eyes took long, returning his curious gaze and odd eyes to the magazine in front of him. It's enough, though, to make Christian leave his seat and cross the room, the wandering souls parting to give him space to pass, and when he sits at the table across from the youngster there is no immediate sign that his presence has been noticed.
The magazine is a puzzle book, sudoku, but the grid is blank save the few pre-printed numbers. There are no pens allowed in D block, so a crayon rests at the edge of the page, Tropical Rain Forest printed carefully on the label, the tip carefully tapered and fresh from the box. The young man taps his fingers on the edge of the table, a rhythmic, thoughtful pattern, the flex of the muscles along his thin wrist causing the pale yellow bracelet to rock against his skin. The overhead lights flare against the plastic, the admission date and D. Renton in carefully typed letters. Devin, the clipboard would say, another name with a laundry list of reasons to be sitting at this particular table at this particular moment.
"Have you done one of these before?" Christian asks him, tapping the page. The rattle of Devin's fingers on the table's plastic edge stutter a moment before continuing. Thumb, middle, index, ring, middle, pinkie, ring, thumb, pinkie, index. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. "They're not too hard. You need to -"
"I'm not fucking stupid."
His voice is a cross between a hiss and a growl, a warning sound that rumbles up his throat and leaks between his lips like smoke, like the traces of something heavy and unbearable burning inside him.
"I never said you were," Christian assures quietly, trying to maintain his smile, his friendly tone, trying to remind himself that he has no need for another Adrian. "You just seem stuck."
"I'm not fucking stuck."
"You also haven't -"
"Go the fuck away," Devin snarls. "You're fucking useless."
"That so?"
"That's fucking so."
"You pull this sparkling personality on everyone?" Christian asks, and leans back in his chair with a knowing grin, enjoying the way Devin's shoulders clench, how his jaw tightens, how his eyes darken dangerously. "Or just the people you're supposed to behave around?"
"Don't owe you a fucking thing," Devin says. He's still staring at the book, glaring at the grid of empty spaces and bold black clue-numbers. "Least of all my fucking good behavior." He tilts his head just slightly, narrows his eyes, as if either hearing something in his thoughts or analyzing a particularly interesting piece of data. "You're the one that owes me, really."
"Oh?"
"Just another fucking redshirt." His hand darts onto the table so quickly that Christian flinches back, but he's just snatching the crayon from the surface. He twirls it in his long fingers a moment before he presses the tip to the first blank space and blocks in a 2 in a precise, perfect swirl. "But you work here four fucking hours, then you fuck off somewhere else." 4 and 8 follow in the adjoining squares, then a skip over the clues, then 5 7 1 6. Every number an exact height, exact width. "You go back to your fucking home, come back tomorrow, maybe work a different fucking ward. Haven't figured that out yet." His hand continues in robotic movements, filling in every square, until the grid is full of dark green numbers. "But me? Got nothing fucking better to do, Red. And I'll sure as fuck remember your fucking face."
He shoves himself away from the table and plants his fingers on the book, spins it so that the solved puzzles faces Christian, and leans over to carefully tuck the crayon into the front pocket of Christian's shirt, his fingers nesting it into place while his thumb presses painfully to the sting-heat of the scar beneath. And their eyes meet, then, for the first time since Christian sat down, and when Devin smiles it is the grin of something cold and ominous, the swirl of chemicals that split-second of silence before detonation.
"Check my work, won't you, boss?" he purrs, and turns away.