Nothing wants to stay the same. [CLOSED]

[futilecycle]

Who | Sigma and Howard
What | Sigma gives Howard medicine, bad advice, and Howard gives Sigma the flu.
Where | District 10 Suite, Sigma's room.
When | Before the Aliens plot.
Warnings/Notes | Flu stuff, unhappy cats, probably references to violence.


Sigma's apartment was, as usual, impeccably organized, not so much a living space as storage. It was almost certainly the antithesis of Howard's room: the Doctor's notebooks were sorted and stored, his clothes folded and put away, his bed made without the assistance of an Avox and without a wrinkle. The only evidence that the room was in use at all were the cat toys strewn across the floor, and a single framed headshot of Kyle Sigma kept on the nightstand: a memorial complete with an offering of a single vased flower, lest he let his failure as a parent go unrecognized.

A package of decongestant in hand, Sigma waited for Howard as calmly as he could. From behind the bathroom door Nye howled indignantly, furious to have been locked away from his master and guests - Sigma had easily decided he was more concerned with Nye catching the virus than Howard taking the cat's confinement the wrong way. There was also the matter of Howard's actions in the previous Arena: the boy had killed Neffa, one of the only adult Tributes Sigma had come to trust, and the magician had failed to return. Internally, Sigma was livid, and hoped to keep his temper down so that his anger would not slip through his lips and damage their relationship further. With a battle on the horizon and an illness to contend with, nothing could come of fighting over it now. Perhaps when Howard was better and the date of their next Arena was set, Sigma would consider scolding him.

Comments

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

We can go. Howard clutches onto the pronoun there, and it's what drives him to agree, more so than the promise of a deeper sleep. He nods, rubbing one hand over his lymph nodes in his neck and wincing. He takes Sigma by the wrist and starts back to the elevators, feeling how cold Sigma's skin is against his palm.

He all but needs to be carried by the time they get to District One, which is, thankfully, devoid again of serial killers. Alpha and Hyperion's absence is like a pleasant musical note sounding out whenever Howard goes through the common room, but it's barely audible to Howard over the waves of lightheadedness and tremors and aches. His expression bleary when they reach his room, only half-conscious.

The room itself can be smelled slightly from the hallway, and more so once the door is open. Aside from a little cavity at the doorway carved out so that the door can be shut again, the floor is completely covered in hoarded things, in stacked boxes labeled 'flashlights' and 'batteries' and 'wires' and piles of magazines and folded clothing in a hodgepodge of sizes. One corner of the room has a desk covered in broken electronics, and the closet door won't close, jammed as it is by oversized jackets and spare curtain rods and, oddly enough, a toddler's bicycle. The clothing on the floor has stains on it, and there's something crusted and pungent over the side of the trash can, but the clearest source of the smell comes from a large green plastic storage box with 'TO SORT' written on the side in marker - the insides look like the contents of a dumpster.

There's a clear human-sized patch on the bed which Howard stumbles to, and he crawls underneath the sheets, pulling them up over his head. After a moment he gropes around under the bed and retrieves a tattered, disgusting stuffed rabbit he rescued from some Capitol garbage and his Tribble from Wyatt, and starts rummaging around in the nightstand (past Exacto knives and rolls of tape and flattened, smoothed candy wrappers and jewelry he never got around to giving to Eponine) for the pills to help him sleep.

He wants to ask Sigma if he'll stay until he's sleeping, but he can't muster the words, so he just looks at the old doctor, with a little too much uncertainty and vulnerability to be properly po-faced.

[futilecycle]

Sigma continues to gently push Howard towards his room, ready to carry him should he fall asleep where he stood. Though he, too, is exhausted, he does not drift off on their way as Howard does, long accustomed to years of sleepless nights. With cautious optimism he assumes the rotting smell that pervaded District 1's hall merely belonged to leftovers neglected by the Avoxes, or the day's trash left behind - and is wholly horrified when he discovers the source of the stench. Sigma is in a state of shock and disbelief as they pass through the door, but does his best to mask it as concern for the boy's condition. The state of Howard's room makes every hair on the back of the Doctor's neck stand on end, makes every fibre of his being scream for him to leave. How had anyone let it come to this?

When Howard digs beneath the bed, he wonders if he might pull out a midnight snack that had been salvaged from the dumpster weeks ago, and Sigma finally cringes. But as the stuffed rabbit slides past the threshold of the mattress and onto the bed, Sigma's heart tears like an open wound (and in the darkness, Sigma almost mistakes the Tribble for a kitten). He takes a deep breath in, releasing it slowly, resolving to concentrate only on Howard for now.

Battling against his acquired mysophobia tooth and nail, his fear of catching Howard's flu and dying a slow death, Sigma sits down on the remaining space on the bed. He does not need to hear Howard speak to understand what he needs. With one last hand on Howard's shoulder, Sigma tucks in a loose edge of the sheet under Howard's skin, and then places his hand gently on the rabbit as if to coax it to sleep as well. He thought it might help, for some reason.

"Goodnight."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

A memory Howard thought he'd been able to bury comes to surface. Him, sick with the stomach flu, and his dad carrying him up the stairs and tucking him in. Promising to call in sick to work tomorrow so Howard wouldn't have to stay home from school all alone. Taking his temperature and reading from Watership Down to him. Saying goodnight to him and a different stuffed rabbit, one that was yellow instead of blue and had a round, fluffy body and face.

And another memory, from the FAYZ. Waking up from fainting on the back porch of the house he and Orc share, riddled with infections in his nose and ears and eyes. Not even having water to clean himself up, just smearing the germs and sweat around when he wipes his face on a towel, when he feels the cut on his forehead from falling down. Hearing Orc snoring and crawling onto the edge of the huge mattress that Orc takes up the majority of, balancing precariously on the side, shivering, not daring to wake his friend. In the morning, only some spots of dried blood from his head wound betray he was there.

He doesn't want to remember either of these things. He groans a little and finds a comfortable pose. The neck around the stuffed rabbit is worn and greyed by being clutched with sweaty palms every night since his second Arena. He shakes out four pills from the medication bottle - the proper dosage is half that - but makes it look like it's merely two with the sleight of hand that's served him well the last few years. He swallows them down dry, although he coughs a bit more.

"Goodnight," he mumbles, breathing deep through his nose. He shivers again, and his free hand closes over Sigma's atop the rabbit's head. His thumb rubs over the veins there, the knuckles. He stares up at the ceiling and almost expects glow-in-the-dark stars. "Thank you."

And he closes his eyes.