for brothers - 2.5
angel reyes x oc: tatiana ‘pidge’ clarke (& bonus EZ), 1476 words
previous part here <3
for day 4 of whumpril: Needle & Ache
mention of injuries, needles
a/n: i didnt really feel like this was part 3 title worthy cause it sort of feels like an extended extra scene from the last part so, here we are !
tagging: @drabbles-mc @cositapreciosa @darqchilddaydreamz
The nurse is back again, no, it’s a different one, with a deep soothing voice that doesn’t disturb Tati’s dozing half as much as the last did. She’s muttering by EZ’s bedside, complaining about the IV, or something, the position of the drip line into his skin. Not that an untrained person would notice.
Tati should rouse herself, really, to inquire, to be polite, but the glue of her eyelids is impenetrable. It’d taken almost an hour to even get to this point. Slouched in a chair—PVC seat covers, backboard like a plank of wood—with her eyes shut, her mind wavering somewhere between sleep and consciousness. She’d been awake for hours: by the time they’d got EZ to the hospital, and then waited, waited, and waited and—
‘Sorry to do this, darling,’ the nurse whispers, for both sleepers’ sakes. ‘Only a pinch.’
But a needle is never a pinch when it’s into the vein.
EZ stirs once she breaks the skin, jolting hard enough to make the nurse hush him, and rattle the shit they’ve got him hooked up to, which is what finally forces Tati to wake herself. She can’t be any real comfort to him while she’s asleep, like the dead weight of a dog on the rug.
Her back cracks as she stretches it, unable to meet the straight position of her seat again afterwards. Back into the slouch she goes, tired, but eyes open now. EZ can’t boast the same; she’s missed the window where his eyes inched open, startled, can only see them closed again, as they have been this entire time.
‘Everything okay?’ she asks the nurse, clearing the lost sleep from her throat.
‘Mhm.’ She fiddles with the IV, only glancing at Tati long enough to shoot her a sympathetic look. ‘You should go home, honey, get some rest. We’ll look after him well enough while you’re gone.’
‘No, it’s okay. I’ve only been here for a little bit.’ On her own, that is, so it’s not entirely a lie. She’d had Angel for company before then, bouncing his knees in the seat beside hers.
‘Hm, sure,’ the nurse replies, more sarcastic than should really be allowed, but genial still. Like they’re friends already. ‘Well, he’s gonna be here a long time.’
Without improvement, she means. Long enough, but stable enough, to warrant breaks from the watch.
Still. She can wait. ‘I know, it’s okay.’
‘I asked her to stay,’ EZ croaks, more present than both women had expected him to be. ‘I know,’ he tries to smile, ‘selfish of me.’
And not true in the slightest. That’s the first time he’s spoken since they’d found him, the first time he’s been conscious enough to bother with the effort of it. He might be out for a while, the doctor had said, could sleep until his body’s recovered. But there he is, now, eyes closed but talking still, moving, if only minutely. A twitch of his lip, a chanced deep breath.
‘As long as you’re eating and drinking well, darling,’ the nurse instructs, with the weight of a mother, before patting EZ’s legs in farewell. ‘I’ll be around if you need me.’
‘Of course, thank-you.’ Tati nods, standing as the nurse passes, and waits until the door’s closed again to approach the bed herself.
Hey, feels absurd, now she’s standing at the foot of it, her hands on the rails. How d’you feel, seems all together insane. She can see how he feels. It’s printed in his face, in the stiffness of his body under the sheets, in the fucking beeping of the machines that he’s connected to. He shouldn’t be alive, wouldn’t be, if they didn’t get to him when they did. From the injuries he already had, or whatever else was to come.
It was the lungs that would’ve got him. Not that she understands the ins and outs of it all, but when a doctor says something like that, it sticks. It was the lungs.
‘How bad is it?’ EZ asks, saving her from having to start it herself. He isn’t looking still, but he must feel her there, hovering.
‘God.’ She rubs her eyes, palms twisting in the sockets. ‘I don’t even know, honestly. Concussion,’ she lists, ‘broken ribs, fluid on the lungs…Angel’s got it all memorised.’ Every detail, every risk and every good chance he has, too.
‘Is he here?’
No, but he should be, and he hasn’t been long gone. ‘Bishop wanted to see him,’ she answers, careful with it. Bishop wanted to throttle him, would’ve been a truer turn of phrase. The threat of his own life is the only thing that pulled Angel away in the first place. ‘I don’t think he’ll be long.’
EZ’s eyes open again—or eye, rather, just the one—half-lidded and set upon her. He’s waiting for an explanation. She won’t make him waste the sparse energy he has on asking it of her, as reluctant as she is.
‘We didn’t exactly go about this the way Bish wanted us to,’ she says. Lay the words carefully and the foundation will hold. ‘There’s some loose-ends to tie up, I think.’
He attempts to sit, wincing at the slightest movement. Failing. ‘What’s that mean?’
‘Don’t worry about it now.’
‘You two got me out alone?’
She almost preferred when he was sleeping. He couldn’t plant accusation in his tone, then, but maybe he’s earned the honesty. Things can hardly get worse than they already are.
‘Yeah.’ She sighs, and moves to the right of his bed to help with the pillows. If she lifts one of them higher, behind his back, that’s it, like that, he can sit up easier. ‘Angel took out one of Canche’s guys. Which is the issue, probably.’
‘He what?’ He coughs, which costs him as much as it scares her. They pause to let him recover, her breath held, his wheezing. ‘Fucking idiot, man,’ he forces, through the bite of his teeth.
‘I don’t know,’ she says, lingering by the head of the bed now. ‘It all seems like bullshit after seeing how they left you.’
He doesn’t agree, somehow, even while he’s lying in the hospital bed, half dead himself.
‘It was life or death, EZ. We chose life.’
‘And death,’ he corrects, triggering an eye roll from Tati that he definitely deserves, injuries or no injuries.
Before she can tell him he’s being pedantic, ungrateful, even, the door opens again. Far too brusk to be a nurse, or anyone with real care. Angel, back and panting like he’d run from the lot. He looks at EZ, stares even, his mouth flopping open with words he can’t form, before setting a mean scowl in her direction.
‘I told you to text me when he wakes up.’
Tati stutters, head shaking. ‘It’s been like three minutes, dude.’
‘Hey, Angel,’ EZ says, and if his face was less bruised, he’d probably be smiling with it.
‘Hey.’ He’s frozen at the foot, where she was earlier, a catch in his throat that he has to force back down. ‘You had me nervous, little bro. Thought you were heading into a fucking coma.’
EZ tries and fails at a shrug. ‘Had to come back and beat your ass for killing people you shouldn’t,’ he says. He wants it to be a joke, cocky, but it comes out sad instead. Limp. He can’t put enough energy into the words to make it sound light.
‘Yeah, in three to six months,’ Angel replies, over compensating, really. ‘You’re busted, bro.’
Tati smiles, but really, it’s as sad as EZ’s joke was. ‘I’ll let you two catch up.’
‘You sure?’
The question comes twice, parroted by the both of them.
‘Yeah, I need to sleep,’ she laughs, ‘like, vertically. Feels like I’m gonna collapse.’
EZ nods, a fraction of the way, with a thank-you waiting behind his lips, no-doubt. The shake of her head is what stops him, the squeeze of his hand lets him know that she hears it anyway.
‘Wait.’ Angel catches her by the door. ‘Water, food, sleep. In that order.’
On another day, she’d clown him for that. For acting like it’s his job to look after her still. On today, she just nods, and pulls him into a hug he doesn’t expect, but needs. She holds it a moment, until she feels the touch of his lips to her cheek, then pulls away again.
‘I’ll text you when I’m human,’ she says. ‘So you can fill me in on what Bish said.’
He snorts. ‘Wasn’t much. Just telling me how much of a damn fool I am, how much mess I’ve made.’
‘The usual, then?’
He smiles, soft and forgiving. The first relief of the whole experience. ‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘same old shit.’
Same old Angel that she can’t shake and never would.
‘I’ll see you later,’ she says, final, before slipping out of the room.
>>> part three
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