Tumgik
#injury and recovery
Text
Lance isn’t good at asking for help. Really, he never has been. He doesn’t like it. It makes him uncomfortable, having to look lesser than he already does. And, like, he’s not trying to say that in a macho, I’m-too-manly-to-be-vulnerable, bullshit way. Nor does he think that asking for help is, inherently, an admission of weakness. He’s always very happy when people come to him for help, and he would never in a million years think less of them for it.
But the rules are different for Lance, and that’s a fact.
For whatever reason, one he’s been unable to discern, people tend to immediately think the worst of him. Always. He’s always the slacker, the guy who can’t take anything seriously, the guy who fucks things up and needs instructions explained to him twice because he’s too stupid to understand the first time. He doesn’t fucking know why so many people think this of him. He’s a goofy guy, sure, but, like… so is Hunk. So is Coran. So is Marco, so is Lance’s abuela, so are dozens of people in his life. But for whatever reason, those people are allowed to be goofy and smart. Goofy and wise. Goofy and talented. Goofy and kind.
Not Lance. Lance is, for whatever reason, one-dimensional in everyone’s head.
And he knows he’s right. He fucking knows it. He remembers complaining about homework in the Garrison, and hearing Pidge make a comment about helping him in math because “that must be what you’re struggling with, right, dude?” Lance was top of his fucking math class. He was higher up than her. Lance is really fucking good at math. He didn’t and doesn’t need her fucking tutelage, and it pissed him off that she asked. That she assumed he did.
But he swallowed it down, and laughed, because he knew she wasn’t being malicious.
And, like, if that was it? Then this wouldn’t be a problem. Lance would be able to shrug it off and move on.
But that’s not it.
Take the Nyma incident, for example. The team brings that up, no word of a lie, every single day. Somehow someone finds a way to squeeze in a joke. And it’s not even just the jokes — there’s the underlying tension that everyone truly believes, in the back of their minds, that Lance can’t be fully trusted with his lion. Which is fucking ridiculous, because each and every person on the goddamn team has made a mistake that nearly cost them the goddamn war. Pidge trying to run away from Voltron in the first few days. Allura and Keith when they decided to run away, leaving the rest of the team defenseless. Hunk succumbing to the mind control and nearly fucking killing Lance on the mermaid planet. Every time Shiro has a PTSD episode, even though of course it’s not his fault. Of course Lance has fucked up. Drastically. But so has everyone else. How come it’s only him who’s the butt of the joke? How come he’s the reckless one, who can’t stay out of the pods? (Even though he won’t touch those fucking death traps unless he’s unconscious, so that’s not even true.) How come he’s the dumbest team member? How come he’s not allowed to help in strategy meetings? How come he gets singled out when Shiro and Allura are asking them to behave, even though Pidge and Hunk — and he’s counted — have caused three times as many diplomatic crises as he has?
How come he’s not allowed the same forgiveness as anyone else?
It frustrates him. But it’s been like this most of his life. In school he was the class clown, even though he really didn’t make jokes during lectures. (Not intentionally, at least. He asked a lot of questions that made people laugh, for whatever reason, but that was almost never his goal! People just weren’t very clear when they spoke!) He can remember having teachers offhandedly mention to his mother that he had ‘behavioural issues’, but were unable to provide examples when she pressed. They just assumed he did. He can remember getting singled out by every fucking officer at the Garrison as the reason the sims failed, even though it really wasn’t always true.
He’s not sure what it is about him that makes people think he’s so pathetic. But he’s sure as shit not going to make it worse for himself, so unless he’s completely, physically incapable of handling a problem on his own, he’s going to keep his mouth shut and head down.
He’s pretty good at that, too, even though no one would believe him. Take the pods, for example.
Lance fucking hates them.
He’s terrified of them. Like, actual, palm-sweat panic-attack terrified. Unfortunately, getting stuck in one fucked him up more than he realised. He can’t think of them without shuddering. So he did what he always does when he’s afraid: learnt every possible thing there is to know about them. He did it as a kid, when he was afraid of drowning. (His best friend, when he was five, got caught in a riptide and drowned right in front of him. He’d been terrified of the ocean, after. Made himself walk closer to it every day while learning every possible thing there was to know about it until he could live with the terror. Until he could even turn the terror into exhilaration, swimming as far out as he dared and staying under as long as his lungs could bare, just to feel his heart pound in his ears and his hind brain go haywire.)
He did it in space, after the pods tried to bury him alive.
He learned — from Coran and from the castle’s library — that the pods are not miracle workers. They cannot make something out of nothing anymore than they can reanimate the dead. The pods, really, are a sort of advanced coma. They can accelerate what healing the body can already do. They can even take cells and other parts of the body and make skin grafts, kill tumours, all sorts of things — but they can’t repair what no longer exists.
Lance, after the Rover explosion, lost two things.
First was almost the entirety of the skin of his back. Ripped to shreds, it was. His head, by some miracle, had remained largely unscathed — except for the concussion that went untreated for too long, that affected his brain in more ways than he was willing to admit, that made memory recall a lot harder than it used to be — and his jeans had done a pretty good job of protecting the backs of his legs.
But his thin t-shirt did nothing to protect his back. And there was only so much the pod could do.
Most of his back was one giant mess of scar tissue and skin grafts. And as scar tissues and skin grafts tend to do — they hurt.
They hurt a lot.
Nerve damage is a strange thing. Sometimes it makes entire parts of your body go numb. Unfortunately for Lance, it’s the opposite: regularly, and unpredictability, his back feels like it’s burning. Like he never left the explosion. Like he’s in a constant state of purgatory.
And for the first few weeks, Lance handled it. He grit his teeth and waved off the concerns of his teammates, assuring them with a wink and a grin that he’d healed up just as handsome as before. (Which, of course, was a lie for several reasons. Every time Lance caught a glance of himself in the mirror — of the writhing mass of revulsion that makes up the skin of his back — he wants to wipe his memory. Restart. Pretend it never happened, pretend he’s still pretty, still untouched by twistedness. But that’s nobody’s business but his own, so he holds his tongue.)
Day after day of the skin of his back feeling the constant, never-ending excruciating pain of cooking flesh, he gave in. Hunched in on himself, dragged himself to Coran’s room, and asked if there was something to be done.
Coran was horrified, of course. Baffled that Lance didn’t come to him sooner, that he swallowed down the agony and tried to deal with it himself. And he of course had a solution; a balm that would provide instant, long-lasting relief. But there was no permanent fix. No pill he could take, either. Every couple of weeks, he had no choice but to slump his way to Coran and have the man rub to ointment into his back, because he couldn’t reach himself.
It was humiliating, being so reliant on another person. Being so totally incapable of handling things himself, of being his own goddamn person. At least Coran was kind, was discreet — he knew without saying that this was not something to be shared with anyone else. He knew to help Lance as quickly as possible, so Lance could retreat to nurse his wounded pride in peace.
It was because of his wounded pride that made the second thing so difficult: along with the skin of his back, the explosion had stolen his hearing.
Not completely. He wasn’t completely deaf. But he was no Altean superhuman, and the delicate hairs in his ears that allowed his brain to pick up sound waves have shattered so close to the explosion. Broken. He’d taken some sort of magnifying device himself to assess the damage, the night he fell out of the healing pod, panicked because his fucking ears weren’t working and dreading what he would find: hundreds of little hairs, much smaller than they were supposed to be. Too small to hear words, to hear people speak.
He could of course still hear them speak. He could hear when people were speaking, still hear the tone and pitch of their voices and the way they crafted their sentences. But it felt like he was dozens of feet underwater, far away from everyone else, completely incapable of picking out individual words and phrases and lost on their meanings.
Luckily, he adapted.
He’s always been pretty good at reading lips. Since it’s always been hard for him to make any kind of eye contact, he tended to focus on people’s mouths when they spoke, and inadvertently picked up some skills as he grew up.
But lip reading isn’t very reliable. You can be the best in the world, and you’re still going to miss half of what people are saying.
Especially if, say, people are speaking your second language. Or an alien language you don’t even know, at least not fluently.
Luckily for Lance, he lives on a magical space castle that has magical space translators. He doesn’t know how they work — and, honestly, aside from Coran, doubts anyone else does either — but he knows that they translate the words of whomever’s speaking into the language easiest to understand for you. Before, he was hearing everyone else’s words in Spanglish — now, he was seeing them. Little close captions appeared above the heads of whomever was speaking. He looked a little odd, sure, constantly looking just above everyone, but holy shit, he did not care. So long as he could communicate, it did not fucking matter. (It was even easier when he was in his armour, and everyone’s words flashed along his visor, colour-coded and in order. He’s been remarkably more fond of training and missions since that explosion, fancy that.)
The biggest flaw to this system is that everyone else still has a communicative advantage over Lance, and they do not know it. They speak as they always have, often excitably and all over each other, and Lance can’t quite keep up. He’s never been a particularly fast reader, but even if he was, there’d always be a delay, a millisecond of processing that stretched just long enough that people looked at him strangely. And, of course, Lance could only read one thing at once. If two people were talking at the same time, or if they were trying to talk to him without looking at him, it was inevitable that Lance misses. Chunks of the conversation, inside jokes, and worst of all, instructions. He’s taken to asking people to write important things down for him, which does not help his reputation as resident dumbass.
All in all, it’s not a perfect solution. But it’s a solution, at least, and that’s something.
Except when magical space castles break down.
It turns out, you see, that space magic is not in fact space magic, but instead ridiculously advanced space technology. And if there’s one thing that technology can be universally relied upon to do, it’s break down.
Which does not bode well for Lance, currently.
He walks onto the bridge — late, of course, because the alarms are barely fucking alarms for him, they do not wake him up, so of course he shows up in his pajamas and for sure everyone thinks he’s a lazy piece of shit who can’t be assed to take anything seriously — to a lot of thinly veiled panic.
And to a lack of closed captions that he’s been heavily relying on for the better part of a year.
Based on the general air of panic, expressions of frustrated confusion between the Alteans and humans, and the lack of fucking captions, Lance can wary a guess as to what’s going on.
The translators are down.
And, obviously, that bodes a bit of a problem. Especially because they have a mission today, one they can’t afford to fuck up. (Not that they can ever afford to fuck up. No, Voltron needs to be perfect every time, because there are lives at stake, except Voltron is made of humans, so they fuck up all the time. It weighs on each of them. When Lance is feeling particularly masochistic, he wonders what’s going to happen when they snap under the pressure. When he snaps under the pressure.)
Lance stands to the sidelines, carefully watching what everyone else is saying and doing. Shiro and Allura attempt to converse for a while, with words and gestures, but it goes nowhere and they both give up. Pidge and Hunk are talking just fine, but they both look nervous, and they’re curled inwards towards each other enough that Lance can’t see what they’re saying. Coran is nowhere to be found, likely attempting to fix this mess, and Keith is — Keith is watching him.
Lance looks away. He cannot be under scrutiny. Not right now. Because… well.
You see, deaf people can’t be fighter pilots.
Period.
Commercial airlines are one thing, but fighter pilots require a lot of split-second decisions to be made after audio information, be they orders or the sound of your fucking aircraft going up in flames. If you can’t hear those sounds, can’t make those calls, you’re a liability to those around you.
Lance knows he’s being selfish. He knows it in every part of him, from the meat of his brain to the marrow of his bones. He know he is putting everyone at risk — putting himself at risk — by keeping quiet about his condition.
But he’s terrified.
Of course he’s replaceable. He’s a butt in a seat, basically. But unlike everyone else on the team, he is only a butt on a seat. He doesn’t bring anything else to the table, perhaps other than someone who can pick up the slack in the chore schedule when everyone else gets busy. He can’t hack through any computer known to man, can’t MacGuyver his way out of any situation with a screwdriver and sheer force of will, can’t offer piloting skills better than anyone else in the universe, can’t use his quintessence to open up wormholes. If he’s not a paladin, he’s useless.
And they don’t have enough resources to support useless people.
What are they going to do when they replace him? Keep him on the castle as a deadweight? Unlikely. Unbearable, too. Drop him off on a random planet and promise to pick him up when it’s all over? Too callous, even though it would be the best option. No one on the team would ever do that.
Drop him back on Earth? Alone? Knowing what’s out there, the danger Earth is in?
No. He couldn’t bear it.
Besides — he’s lasted this long. With captions, sure, and without them he can’t communicate at all or hear orders or get instructions or be a fucking paladin, but he’ll… manage.
They’ve already received their instructions for today’s mission. Lance already knows what he has to do, and it’s what he always does — provide support from a distance. Keep an eye on the team. Make sure no shots slip through.
(Sometimes, when he’s feeling grateful instead of masochistic, he thanks any higher power to every exist that he lost his hearing instead of his eyesight.)
Lance is startled from his thoughts by a heavy hand on his shoulder. He turns wide eyes to Shiro, looking at him carefully, assessing.
“You okay?”
Lance is used to those words. He gets them a lot. So that’s not hard to read.
“I’m fine,” he says, and he knows he’s too loud even before Shiro winces, because even his own broken ears heard that. “Um, just a little stressed. ‘Cause the translators are down, and all.”
Truly Lance does not need to read Shiro’s lips to guess what he is saying — we’re gonna be fine, we’ll get through this together, this is rough but we’re strong, et cetera, et cetera.
Fuck, Lance thinks, dread piling up his chest, if only you knew.
Shiro voices a few more short instructions to the team, Pidge haltingly trying to translate for Allura with her limited Altean — which, judging by their expressions, is going not so great — before clapping his hands and sending them to their hangars.
Lance squeezes his fists to hold back tears as he runs.
Fine. Fine. This is going to be fine. Magically, this time, things are going to go exactly to plan, and he’ll support as he always done and somehow there will be no issues, this time, and everything will be fine and the translators will get fixed and Lance will continue delaying the inevitable. It’s fine.
God, Lance is so fucking scared.
He settles into Blue, greeting her softly and getting her gentle affection in return. (It’s something, at least, that Blue knows who he is and loves him still, believes in him still. It gives him hope, even though he knows it’s foolish.)
And, shockingly, the first part of the mission goes…okay. It’s not great, obviously, because they’ve basically got no castle support, but Blue manages to make her own kind of captions on her dash so Lance gets a refresher of the plan and stays on the same page as everyone else.
It’s the infiltration part that’s so much harder.
He doesn’t have Blue’s captions on his helmet, so he’s going in completely blind — or, deaf, rather. The only thing he can really hear is his own laboured breathing, and he doesn’t know if it’s because he’s really that loud or because he knows he’s panicking, but it doesn’t really matter. He slinks through the shadows, carefully avoiding patrolling Galran soldiers. (Which, actually, is really fucking hard since he can’t hear them coming. In the first few weeks post-explosion, it was literally impossible. He was caught every time, and regularly blew stealth missions as he tried to cover himself and keep himself alive. He also didn’t know when he was being loud, back then, so regularly led himself straight into ambushes, which didn’t help the team’s trust in him to be able to handle his goddamn self. It took him months of secret training in the dead of night to learn to trust his intuition, to memorize patrolling schedules and anticipate when he has to make himself invisible. He is pretty good at it now, though, so at least something good has come from this mess.)
Finally he reaches boiler room tucked into a corner of a hallway, which he knows from experience and from memorizing layouts to Galran ships has an air vent that leads to the tiniest of alcoves near the ceiling of the bridge. He’s not sure what purpose this alcove is supposed to serve, but he knows it’s excellent for his purposes — remaining hidden and invisible so he can provide support while the rest of the team goes ham.
Even without the captions that tell him what everyone’s saying on the comms — and dear God, he hopes no one is talking to him, but that usually doesn’t happen because of his position anyway — he thinks he’s doing okay. This ship they’re infiltration is pretty run-of-the-mill: no fancy info or prisoners or even soldiers. Just regular. All he has to do is keep his eyes trained on the battle scene in front of him, muffled sounds of violence fading into the background, as he picks off soldier after soldier, drone after drone, to keep his friends safe.
And then a hand wraps around his mouth, and panic fills him up so quickly his vision actually whites out.
Lance has a lot of nightmares. It’s a rare night that he doesn’t. And most of them are reoccurring — a select few scenarios that he sees again and again, night after night, that wake him up sobbing, in a cold sweat. The worst is watching as Earth — as his family — is destroyed by the Galra. Next is any dream where one of his team members doesn’t make it. After that, though, is a dream that always scares him so bad he can never get back to sleep after. The thing about being a sniper is that Lance can’t pay attention to himself. At all. All of his attention needs to be on the people he’s protecting, so he can shoot straight and keep shooting. This means that he is not, in any way, shape, or form, watching his own six. And since he lost his hearing, he’s completely defenseless, up in his little alcove. He can’t hear if someone’s coming, can’t even hear if someone’s spotted him. He’s pretty confident in his little alcove, but there’s always a risk. Always that fear. Always that nightmare, reoccurring night after night.
And now that nightmare is coming true. The hand around his eyes slides down his face until it’s wrapped around his throat, squeezing tightly. Lance doesn’t have even half a second to react, staring in mute horror as the Galran soldier — a commander, judging by the symbol on his chest plate — sneers at him, saying something that Lance can’t even hear, lips moving around words that he doesn’t know.
Finally, he recognises three: “Vrepit Sa, Paladin.”
And then he’s dropping to the floor, three stories down, limbs crumpling on impact and vision doing dark.
———
Right before the door of the pod opens, there’s a second of clarity. A millisecond in between when you regain consciousness and the glass clears.
That second always makes Lance panic.
But then he’s tipping forward into strong arms, familiar arms, and a familiar face and headband, and Hunk is saying, “Can you hear me, buddy?” because that’s the first thing anyone says when you come out of a pod and there are still no captions and Lance bursts into tears.
The whole team is gathered. Everyone sees. Everyone watches as he pushes Hunk away, ashamed, and covers his face in his hands and sobs.
“No,” he whispers, in between great heaving breaths so sharp they hurt his lungs. “No, I can’t hear anything.”
He’s not sure how long he stands there, shoulders hunched in on himself, tears and snot streaming down his face and dropping down his chin, arms wrapped tightly around his torso in a desperate attempt to keep himself from falling apart.
He’s not sure how long he stands there, falling to pieces in front of his team. He’s not sure into how many fragments he shatters, falling to the MedBay floor.
Eventually, though, his sobs peter out, because no matter how miserable you are and how stressed and how much you hate yourself there’s only so long you can cry. Only so long your rational brain can take a break and let your emotions run free before it says ‘alright, okay, that’s enough, dry up’.
By then, he realizes there’s a gloved hand on his shoulder, two warm bodies pressed on either side of him, one big and strong, one small and sharp. He feels the presence of three more people staring at him, sitting somewhere in front of him.
He takes a great shuddering breath and drops his hands from his face, forcing his eyes open.
Coran kneels in front of him, hand on his shoulders, eyebrows drawn in and expression deeply concerned. Pidge and Hunk sit on either side of him, pressed close, and Keith, Allura, and Shiro sit just behind Coran, looking at him with wide, confused eyes.
“What do mean, dear?” says Coran, or at least Lance thinks.
“I can’t hear. I’ve been deaf since the explosion.” His voice cracks as he says it, he feels the raspiness of his throat. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
He feels Pidge and Hunk exhale sharply next to him, and watches as Coran’s expression breaks.
“Oh, Lance,” he says, and apparently Lance can cry more.
But before he can cover his face, this time, Coran tugs him forward, tucking his face into his neck. He mutters something comforting, Lance is sure, even though he can’t hear it, but the vibrations from Coran’s chest are soothing enough that this round of tears doesn’t hurt so much.
This round doesn’t feel like he’s shattering into millions of tiny little glass shards. This round, someone — lots of someones — is holding him together.
———
Lance, it turns out, is a lot more damaged than he thought.
Apparently his head didn’t emerge as unscathed from the explosion as he thought. Apparently there was a lot more brain damage than expected, and apparently a lot of the parts of Lance’s brain that are supposed to secrete chemicals — namely, happy chemicals, chemicals that identify love and keep one’s mood and self-esteem from plummeting into the fucking dirt and refusing to come back up — don’t work right anymore.
Apparently, there’s a reason Lance feels like he’s unloveable, and that he’s useless, and that he’s disposable.
So. That would’ve been nice to know a year ago.
But that doesn’t matter. He didn’t know a year ago, but he knows now (after a long overdue MRI and brain scan that makes everyone on the castle so fucking guilty Lance can taste it, which should be uncomfortable but Lance is so desperately happy that his friends actually care about him enough to feel guilty that all he really feels is relief).
Now things are better. A lot better, in fact. He still needs to ask someone for help every couple weeks with his back — which has gotten a lot less shameful and humiliating, go figure — but Hunk and Pidge made him some truly groundbreaking hearing aids.
Yeah. He can hear again. It’s not perfect, and nowhere near what his ears used to be, but the first time he turned them on and heard actual words, in a sentence he could hear and understand, he went pretty hysterical.
It felt like when the flu finally breaks and you can breathe properly again, only magnified by a million.
The last thing to change is kind of a mix of several things. For starters, he has meds, now, that he takes every day to keep his brain working right. It was startling, a few weeks after taking his medication, to look in the mirror and for the first time in a year not wish he had died in that explosion. (He mentioned that offhandedly to Coran when the man was asking him how the medication was working, and was shocked to watch the Altean break down into sobs, apologising to Lance for not noticing.
Like, holy crow.)
Secondly, after everyone stopped walking on eggshells around him, they started being more careful with their words. Lance hasn’t heard a Nyma joke in months. He’s regularly asked for his input when they’re planning missions, hell, he’s asked for help all the time for things that aren’t chores! It’s amazing. He’s not sure if the team has always had faith in him and his brain just couldn’t see it, or if it’s new, but honestly? He doesn’t care.
He didn’t realise how fucking long he had been treading water until he was finally allowed to put his feet on the ground, and it’s relieving.
There’s nothing like discovering you were loved the whole time.
197 notes · View notes
maggie8317 · 4 months
Text
And so begins my quest to fill the multichap-InuKog void.
2 notes · View notes
whumpacabra · 3 months
Text
Sometimes you look something up for medical accuracy, understand the topic entirely, and then choose to ignore everything you just learned.
For the ✨drama ✨
2K notes · View notes
sofiaruelle · 7 months
Text
Tumblr media
You look sporty today! 🏀🏈⚽️
2K notes · View notes
blmpff · 2 months
Text
📢 LOVE UPON A TIME UPDATE: James withdraws from the show, Net stays on
Tumblr media
29.02.24
ETA: James' message
Tumblr media
29.02.24
270 notes · View notes
steddieas-shegoes · 3 months
Text
someday soon
for @steddielovemonth prompt 'love is having hope for the future'
rated t | 1,237 words | cw: ptsd, injury recovery, negative view of self (Steve) | tags: angst with a happy ending, getting together, hurt/comfort, falling in love
💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖
Steve ignored his bat bites for too long.
That's what all the doctors and nurses said when he'd been rushed into the ER by Robin, panicked when he passed out and woke up with very little memory of what they'd done that day.
She assumed it was the concussions catching up to him, but it turned out to be a hell of an infection. The infection had spread from the worst bite on his side to his hip and down his leg. They caught it in time to save the leg, but it would be weak for months, if not years, and he'd need to do physical therapy to keep the muscle dense enough to walk.
Everyone was pissed at him, but mostly just happy he was finally getting taken care of. That was a difficult thing for him.
Eddie joked that it was his turn to keep him company in the hospital now, but Steve wasn't up for jokes. Not when he'd become such a burden. Not when he was pulling attention from things and people that actually needed it. He was using up resources that were already barely available for people much worse off than him.
When he was finally fever-free, showing signs of improvement, and promising to keep taking the antibiotics for two more weeks, he was set free. Eddie and Robin brought him to Eddie's trailer to ensure he would actually take care of himself, and he didn't have the heart to argue with either of them.
He felt ridiculous, every single time he got stuck on the couch because his leg was too numb to stand, every time Wayne would grab whatever thing he couldn't quite reach from the top shelf of the cabinet because he couldn't stand on both of his tip toes, whenever Eddie would half-carry him to the shower and wait by the door in case he fell on his bad days. It was all so stupid. He was stupid.
He spent his days doing what he was supposed to, but only the bare minimum. He did the exercises, but only alone in Eddie's room while he was busy at work or picking up Steve's slack. He took the meds when he was in pain instead of "suffering in silence" like Robin told him to. He packed Wayne's lunches for work as a thank you for letting him stay even though Wayne always insisted he didn't need to do anything to deserve a roof over his head and people to care.
He ignored the stupid churning in his stomach that started when he thought about what would happen when Eddie brought him back to his empty house. He ignored the butterflies every time Eddie got home while he was faking sleep on the couch and covered him with the blanket that was by his feet. He ignored the way his heart fluttered every time Eddie would make him the tea he secretly liked instead of the coffee he normally forced himself to drink.
He pretended that the love that grew in his chest was made up, that Eddie was only doing what any friend would do.
Steve only let his imagination run away with him on the nights when Eddie was at Hellfire late, when he was curled up in Eddie's bed at Eddie's insistence that he sleep there. He let himself picture a future like this: waiting up for Eddie to get home from work or a show, curled up with a pillow that smelled like him against his chest, wearing a t-shirt that had holes from being worn too much, and the mixtape Eddie made for Steve playing low in the background.
It was a perfect future.
He fell asleep to the thought of Eddie's arms around him, holding him because he wanted to, not because he had to.
He woke up to Eddie's arms around him, the dark and silent room around him making him panic until Eddie's grip tightened and he pulled him closer.
"You awake?" Eddie whispered against the top of his head.
"Yeah." Steve didn't pull away, couldn't make himself even though the alarms were going off in his brain telling him to put space between them before Eddie realized what this meant to him. "When'd you get back?"
"Hour ago maybe. Didn't mean to run so late, sorry," Eddie's fingers were tracing patterns up and down his spine.
"It's okay. You can do whatever you want," Steve let himself have this moment. He nudged his face further into Eddie's shirt, smiling at the warmth of his chest. "You sleep at all yet?"
"No, I was busy."
Steve's brows furrowed in confusion. "Doing what?"
"Watching you."
Steve turned his head so he was looking up at him. "Watching me sleep? Why the hell were you doing that?"
He should probably sound more upset, maybe more concerned about being watched while he was unconscious. But a pretty big part of him was fine with it, wanted it, hoped it meant more to Eddie too.
"The corner of your mouth twitches a lot in your sleep, did you know that? And when you're in pain or having a nightmare, it stops. Sometimes I just watch to make sure you're sleeping okay," he answered simply. "Been at least a few nights since you've had any nightmares right?"
Steve nodded, speechless at the fact that Eddie had noticed something like that.
"You curl the blanket in your hand when you sleep, too. Or my shirt. Sometimes your own shirt if you can't find anything else," Eddie continued.
Steve felt his fingers loosen in Eddie's shirt, not having noticed the way they'd been holding on for dear life this entire time.
Eddie's hand covered his, squeezing something that felt like reassurance and love right into his skin.
"You're not the same Steve you used to be, but you still worry about what people think. You can just be you. Just be Steve. I promise the Steve you are is the Steve we love," Eddie smiled down at him.
"I-" Steve took a breath. "I just don't wanna ruin it all."
"Stevie, sweetheart." Eddie shook his head. "You couldn't ruin it. When are you gonna get it through that thick head of yours that we're all stickin' this out with you?"
"But you don't have to."
"No, we don't." Eddie squeezed his hand again. "But we do. And we will."
"Even if I'm always like this?"
"Like what?"
"Recovering. Having nightmares. Scared. Robin says I might be depressed? I'm probably gonna limp forever."
"Stevie, look at me," Eddie said, tilting his face back towards him. Steve hadn't even realized he'd turned away so much. "I love you. Okay?"
"You do?"
"Do you think I notice what other people's lips do when they're sleeping?"
Steve snorted. "No, I guess not."
"I love you and sometimes that might mean I have to deal with your shit, but I want to, okay? It won't always be this much shit. I can hold your hand through it," Eddie smiled. "Now, you should go back to sleep."
"You didn't kiss me yet," Steve said around a yawn.
"We've got plenty of time for it, sweetheart. Go to sleep."
Steve believed him.
He knew it would still be shit. He knew he wouldn't always believe what Eddie said. He knew he'd still feel like a burden.
But they had time to wade through it together.
246 notes · View notes
echoingalaxies · 8 months
Text
"Close your eyes."
Said Caretaker to dying whumpee, caressing their hair, trying to make their last moments as peaceful and comfortable as possible.
Said Caretaker to scared Whumpee, holding a knife to Whumper's throat, about to make sure they never lay their hand on Whumpee again but wanting to spare Whumpee from witnessing any more violence.
Said Caretaker to injured Whumpee, cupping their chin and guiding their head up, not letting Whumpee look at the wounds covering their body.
Said Caretaker to sleepy Whumpee, who fears falling asleep because of all the traumatic nightmares they know they'll have, but with Caretaker by their side, whispering all kinds of reassurements, they might be okay.
510 notes · View notes
jordanstrophe · 9 months
Text
Whumpee hasn’t realized they’ve been rescued. They fight the hands trying to stop the bleeding, wich resulted in them also having to hold them down.
Then there’s a voice. A familiar voice that could never be mistaken. Caretaker speaks just loud enough over the shouts saying “Eyes on me, nothing else matters, don’t look at them. Eyes on me.”
They would never see the blood; or how gruesome and horrific their wound actually was. They never saw the faces of the strangers who had no other goal other than keeping them alive. 
They only saw caretaker.  
988 notes · View notes
whump-about-it · 3 months
Text
Constant Pain
@febuwhump Day 5: Rope Burns.
CW: angst, description of injuries, dissociation.
"Whumpee, those are never going to heal if you don't stop touching them."
Whumpee startled out of their mindless stupor to find Caretaker leaning on the door frame watching them with an expression of concern. Their eyes were flickering between Whumpee's sallow face and their hands, which they had in their lap, each picking absently at the scabbed rope burns on the opposite wrists.
"Sorry," Whumpee murmured and moved their hands to either side of their legs. This wasn't the first time Caretaker had caught them picking at the scabs, or the first time they had cautioned them about re-opening the wounds. "They just..."
Whumpee let their voice trail off. They couldn't tell Caretaker the rope burns still hurt. They couldn't explain why they hurt so much. Whumpee had so many other injuries that reasonably should have bothered them more. They couldn't put weight on one of their legs. There was a six inch gash in the back of their head that had required being stapled. Their were bruises around their neck had made breathing so uncomfortable that they had developed a chest infection by the time they were rescued. The welts on their back hadn't healed yet, and they couldn't move to much for fear of ripping the multitude of stitches all over their body. Yet, despite all of that, the rope burns, the most innocuous of their injuries, hurt the most.
Actually, that all made sense to Whumpee. When they had been rescued, Caretaker had told them Whumper had held them for a little over month. But it had felt like a year. Every day had been different. New pain. New torture. New fear. Nothing had remained the same day to day. Nothing Whumpee could look forward to or dreed. Not even food or water. In that whole time the only constant had been the rope. Their hands had been tied the whole time.
The rope burns had been Whumpee's first injuries. Their oldest and deepest. And the ones that they had cried over the most, hopelessly trying to wriggle their way out of their bonds and watching blood trickle into their useless hands. Of course those wounds hurt the most. But how were they supposed to say that? How were they supposed to explain in?
Whumpee nearly jumped out of their skin when Caretaker brushed their uninjured knee. They were now kneeling in front of Whumpee, looking even more concerned than they had before. Whumpee hadn't noticed they were dissociating again.
"Is everything okay?" Caretaker asked gently.
"Yes." Whumpee lied. "They itch. My wrists. They itch and I keep forgetting not to touch them."
"I know."
They both knew Caretaker was lying too.
171 notes · View notes
aceofwhump · 4 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Miss Scarlet and the Duke 4x04
162 notes · View notes
whump-or-whatever · 7 months
Text
One whump trope I love is when a whumpee comes back to work too soon following an injury.
The whumpee walks in the door and everyone is just like woah woah woah what are you doing back here? The constant side eye and concerned glances from all of their co-workers. The whumpee struggling to hide winces and cringes, their stiff movements betraying just how much pain they’re in, taking any chance they can get to support their weight on a counter or wall or what have you. They end up absolutely exhausted by the end of the day.
Such a lovely trope.
292 notes · View notes
gardenofnoah · 2 years
Text
In This Life We'll Stay
Chapter 1: Waking Up
I refuse to live in a world where Obanai and Mitsuri can't love each other in graphic detail after the battle with Muzan, so this is a gift from me to me, and to you.
______________________________________________________________
There they lay, waiting for death. Dizzy with blood loss and not feeling much of anything else, except a deep longing for the person next to one another. Longing for more time, in another life—one in which they could love one another freely, where tomorrow was more certain. 
But death never came. 
Obanai woke up first, a month after the decisive battle. At least he thought he did— he was definitely conscious, but his vision was dark. It felt like a bad dream, like sleep paralysis—he could hear and feel everything, but he could do nothing else. He attempted to open his eyes and found he couldn’t. Slowly, he began to remember the events that had unfolded—how in an instant his sight was taken from him. The last thing he remembered seeing was the woman he adored in a bloody heap on the concrete. He’d have done anything to scrape that image from the center of his mind. 
He was sure she was dead. There could be no coming back from that kind of injury—really, there was no reason why he should be alive either. He resented it. There was nothing here for him anymore. But he conceded that he deserved this—forced to live in his grief, not spared by the quick end to suffering that death would’ve provided. Yes, someone like him— a mockery of existence, punctuated by shame and failure at every turn—he knew he deserved this. He resigned himself to this fate and lay there in what he assumed to be an infirmary bed for what felt like weeks. Devastated by the weight of this loss. Unmoving, never saying a word. If anyone noticed he was awake, they didn’t make it known to others. He considered ripping the IV out of his arm, and allowing himself to fade away as he so badly wanted to, but he could not muster the strength to move even a finger. To breathe in and out was just about the only thing his body could handle. 
Three weeks passed and he knew that the others knew he was awake. He’d only known the date through muffled whispers between voices he vaguely recognized outside his room. Lower ranking members of the corps would stop by his bed and leave him gifts—he heard the quiet sentiments of appreciation and the crinkle of paper wrappings as they were set down near him. Tanjiro visited often, despite their history—he’d listen to the boy’s updates on how everyone who remained was doing. He wanted to feel relief, but all he felt was numbness and a twinge of resentment. He was well aware of the reality of his position as a Hashira, and knew that Mitsuri had accepted the same potential fate. But he was sure that he would be gone by the time she met her end. As far as he was concerned, she was always more physically capable than he, and he just expected to be taken out first. He’d felt some comfort in that—he knew that she would go on without him. There was nothing that could dim the light that radiated from her. But for him—without her, every day was dark. Eyesight be damned.
Eventually he’d lost track of time. He could tell day from night most of the time—he could see, or more so sense, under his eyelids, a tiny bit of light when the sun would shine through the infirmary window. However, it was raining now, and there was no light to give him any indication of what time it was. He focused in on the pang of the raindrops against the roof. He thought about what it would feel like to lay on that roof and let the downpour hit him— he longed for an opportunity to wash the awful things he’d done off of him. To be wiped clean of all of the death and the memories it always left behind. To feel the images of his 50 family members, and the pink-haired woman whose death felt like another 50, drip down the walls of his consciousness into nothingness. To forget. He’d focused so intently on the sound of the water that he missed the tiny gasp coming from a bed to his left. But he heard the hoarse, gentle voice that followed more clearly than he’d ever heard anything in his life. 
“Oba—n...i,”
His mind went silent and his entire body tensed. There was no way. He watched her die. He could still clearly see flashes of her mangled corpse. He heard her draw in a deep breath, and heard it hitch on the second. She was in pain, and normally he would not hesitate to cut down whatever had caused that pain, but he found that he could only feel something akin to elation because pain meant she was alive. He tried again to open his eyes, completely forgetting about any ailment his body was currently experiencing, because he had to see her. To see her face and know she was real. To know that this was not some cruel illusion, a consequence of the life he had suffered through. To know that this wasn’t what his hell would be– blind and confined to an infirmary bed, a foot away from his love who called out for him.
He opened his mouth and felt the sting of healing wounds stretch along his jaw. It was minimal– inconsequential, really– he knew his wounds were severe but the adrenaline running through his veins quieted the protests from the nerve endings on his face. To move his mouth felt foreign– he’d not said a word to anyone since he woke up, and suddenly he was worried he would not be able to talk. He let his mouth close, fear snaking its way up his spine. Would it be better if he was silent? He could not remember the location of her injuries–he hadn’t had a second to look past all of the blood to find the source. What if she was blind, too? If he remained silent, she may not know he was there. She could heal, and move on without the burden of his life wrapped around her ankles, dragging her down. She could be happy. She could be loved by someone who was whole and unafraid. Who did not live with the hands of ghosts reaching out for them with every step they took.
But it was him that she called out for.
Can I be your bride?
That was right. She’d asked him, in their next life, one with no demons–where there was no meaningless death and the smell of burning flesh hadn’t seared itself into the backs of their throats–if, when they came back, he would allow her to be his wife. He’d felt incredulous at that–the way she’d asked, as if she ever needed to. As if he wouldn’t go to the ends of the earth to give her anything she wanted. He’d told her so. And even as he held her there, even as they both waited to die, he’d felt his own insecurities bubble up his throat and escape before he could stop it. If you’ll agree to have me, he’d told her, grateful he did not have to look at her face, grateful he didn’t have to see the rejection he still believed was coming. She’d only held on to him tighter. He listened to her cries and his heart broke with every shaky, pained breath she took in. 
I’m so happy…I really, really love you.
He’d thought he had made it up. Thought that in his dying moments he hallucinated the words that came out of the woman before him. But now as he remembered them, he knew, somehow, that they had been real. They were real, and he didn’t have to wait to come back to tell her the same. He was broken and scarred, and he didn’t know how to go on. But he would try. He’d promised her that he would make her happy. As long as he was still breathing, he would do whatever he could to fulfill that promise. Even if she was as blind and broken as he was, she called out for him. He would let her know that he was still here.
“--’tsuri,” was all he could get out, and he hated how rough it sounded coming out of him. Hated himself for butchering her beautiful name. 
“Oh,” she whispered, so quietly he had to strain to hear it, and he struggled to cope with how unnatural it felt to hear her speak so softly, “you’re alive. Obanai, you’re–” she cut herself off and he didn’t have to see the tears to hear them in her voice. He listened to her quiet sobs and found he could breathe a little easier.
Ch. 2 >>
this fic belongs to me (@b-writes-things). i do not allow anyone to repost, edit, or reproduce this work.
8 notes · View notes
sickficideas · 4 months
Text
NYC sherliam recovery headcanons :) manga spoilers below!
- poor William is sick all the time. his body has gotten so much weaker after the coma that he can't fight off much of anything and Sherlock extra careful to not bring anything home to him
- quiet "i don't feel well, sherly" with red cheeks and glassy eyes when he's really struggling and feeling awful and weak and wants someone to help him 💔 it breaks Sherlock's heart
- Sherlock has to keep windows open when he cooks because William gets very easily nauseous with smells that he's no longer used to. the smell of meat cooking makes him feel miserable
- in general his stomach is super sensitive now and he can't handle too much food...in the beginning Sherlock insisted he try to eat more to gain some weight back, and William didn't want to tell him he couldn't eat too much it because he didn't want Sherlock to worry...cue a few sporadic nights of Sherlock waking up to hearing William throwing up in the bathroom because his stomach couldn't handle dinner, Sherlock realizing the pattern after a few times of it happening 💔
- Sherlock staying with him in the bathroom and rubbing his back and trying to convince him to go back to bed so he can be more comfortable 💔
- Sherlock learning how to make tea for him too, ginger tea when his stomach is bothering him...William crying the first time he does it, Sherlock thinking it's because he's horrible at it, but it's because it reminds him of Louis and he misses his brothers💔💔
- the fainting spells have gotten worse and Sherlock is always secretly terrified that he's slipped back into a coma, especially after witnessing the first time it happened 💔 he definitely cried when William finally woke up and William was like ????
- Losing vision in one eye has destroyed his depth perception and he struggles getting used to it. Stairs take him quite a long time to figure out but he's embarassed by it and doesn't let Sherlock help him. He gets bad headaches when he focuses too long or pushes through it 💔
- William is dizzy all the time and clings to Sherlock's arm to steady himself most of the time
- Sherlock dealing with chronic pain from the arm/shoulder he injured and not having the heart to tell William it hurts when he holds on too long 💔 one day when they're laying together and William is laying over his arm and a shift makes Sherlock wince...William suddenly "did I hurt you? what's wrong?", Sherlock insisting it's nothing but William quickly figures it out. "you're still in pain there, aren't you?"
- William playing with Sherlock's hair while he's sleeping 😭😭😭
82 notes · View notes
aftgficrec · 3 months
Note
hi besties! can i be a bit weird and ask for sick fics here? old/new/favorites, any will do! just some big ol’ hurt/ comfort, especially if combined with some emotional hurt/comfort 🥰
There’s nothing weird about this at all!  Apart from the fics below, there’s also our sickfic tag as well as our hurt/comfort tag for more (see our tag page under the heading ‘themes - injuries/illnesses/conditions’). - S
Previous recs:
cool andreil sick fics here
sick fics here
foxes with headaches/sick fics here
10k+ sick fics here
Andreil in hospital here
Neil with major injury here
Neil gets injured (post canon) here
Neil & car accidents here
accident-prone Neil here
Andreil with amnesia here
medical Andreil/Aaron & Neil here
Neil getting roofied here
Also see… 
‘we're one (there's nothing to be done)’ here
‘Just like that day’ here
‘head case (what to do with you)’ here
‘Such Stuff as Dreams are Made’ here
‘Neil Josten Is a Lucky Man’ here
‘Broken’ here
‘If Only I Were Enough’ (completed) here
‘I'll Come Back To You’ here
‘glass in the trees (objects in the rearview)’ here
‘Running Ragged’ here
‘To Love and Be Loved’ here
‘all that looking down’ here
‘next best thing’, keep telling me that it gets better (does it ever?)’ and ‘no matter when and where, we’ll be alright’ here
‘Can Nobody Hear Me (I cannot breathe)’, ‘I remeber tears streaming down your face (for me to wipe them away)’, ‘you crawled inside my head’, ‘living leaves so many holes in us’, ‘Ciggarette Smoke Cure’, ‘Breathless’, ‘i've done my time’ and ‘cats and close calls’ here
‘The Highs and Lows of Pre-med Majors' here (Aaron)
‘Hold My Hand?’ here
‘Echo’ here 
I’m More Than This Body of Mine by yall_send_help [Rated M, 88811 words, incomplete, last updated Jan 2024]
The doctor took a pause, which Nathaniel was able to use to ask, “what about my leg?” The two pigs had the audacity to look surprised. The doctor looked over at them with a hint of confusion. “You didn’t tell him?” Towns shook his head as Browning said, “you told us not to.” Dr. Byrd nodded her head in approval and turned back to the bed. “Nathaniel…” she trailed off, reevaluating her words. “Would you mind if I sit?” and only after his own nod did she. “The damage done to your leg… it was unlike what most of the staff at this hospital had ever seen. The surgeons tried to save it, but…” She looked down at where his legs were and Nathaniel did too, only to feel himself pale at what he found. “The surgery took about three hours,” Dr. Byrd continued. “The only reason why it took so long was because the surgeons really did try to save your leg. They did. Amputations usually take only half that time. Eventually, Dr. McCoy called it. Because of the damage done to your leg, we couldn’t wake you up to ask. It had to go. I’m sorry.” or - the one where neil goes to baltimore and comes back missing a leg
tw: torture, tw: amputation, tw: implied/referenced child abuse, tw: panic attacks, tw: blood, tw: animal cruelty, tw: implied/referenced drug overdose
fireproof by mostly_maudlin [Rated T, 2097 words, complete, 2024]
Andrew gets his flu shot.
Things Always Gets Worse Before They Gets Better series by Renee_Walker_09 [Rated G, 40141 words, incomplete, 3 complete works, 2024]
Part 1: Beginnings & Endings (G, 1083 words)
It's 1:30 in the morning. The Foxes are celebrating their championship win against the Ravens the only way they know how to: booze, partying, and a little bit more booze. Nothing could possibly ruin this?
tw: car accident, tw: major character injury
Part 2: You Mean Everything To Me (G, 12767 words)
There are two crashed cars. There’s blood on the floor. Lights are flashing all around. Andrew is standing in the middle of the crash site with a blanket draped across his shoulders as he stares straight at Neil, lying on the floor.
tw: car accident, tw: major character injury, tw: (temporary) major character death, tw: suicide attempt, tw: drug overdose, tw: blood, tw: self harm
Part 3: Hours, Days, Weeks (G, 26299 words)
Andrew is lying in a coma following the accident. His condition is critical. And Neil and Aaron have to find a way to cope.  Neil and Aaron’s POVs of the crash and the past 6 weeks
tw: car accident, tw: blood, tw: major character injury, tw: (temporary) major character death, tw: self harm, tw: panic attacks, tw: seizures
NB: find art for the fics by the author here as well as embedded in the fics
Even goalkeepers can’t block sickness by BlowingYourMind [Rated G, 12768 words, complete, 2024]
“Rabbit,” Andrew peered up at him with half lidded eyes, “Yes or no?” “Yes ‘Drew,” Neil clasped his hands at Andrew’s elbows, “it’s always a yes, you know that.” “No ‘s not,” Andrew weakly argued as he took hold of Neil’s chest pad, using it to leverage himself upwards. It was awkward work of walking half-delirious Andrew back to the locker room, shielding him from the crowd while keeping him on his feet, but they managed. Or Andrew becomes very sick at an away game, and Neil and the foxes take care of him.
tw: vomit
the upswing by missgivings [Not Rated, 45569 words, incomplete, last updated Jan 2024]
The next universe over, life has gone a bit easier on Andrew. He’s gainfully employed as a nurse of all things, working beside his best friend Renee, and living in relative harmony with his brother, the recently graduated Dr. Aaron Minyard. Everything’s fine. It’s fine that he hasn’t spoken to Kevin in person for three years. It’s fine if Aaron’s leaving him to marry his stupid doctor girlfriend. It’s fine until the boy with the box-dyed hair stumbles into the ER and passes out at his feet, bringing a world of secrets and trouble with him. And Neil? Neil’s looking for any port in a storm.
tw: major character injury, tw: violence, tw: implied/referenced self harm
please (don't bite) by Major_816 [Rated M, 5478 words, complete, 2024]
Genioglossus. It’s a fan-shaped muscle and forms the bulk of the inferior part of the tongue. It stretches to the hyoid bone too. ~ Neil wakes up to a bad day and it just gets worse.
tw: blood, tw: self harm, tw: implied/referenced child abuse, tw: nightmares, tw: flashbacks, tw: vomit
Will you love me for who I am, not for who I was? by something_boring [Rated T, 1580 words, complete, 2024]
Neil is sick on New Year's eve, wakes up to the fireworks, and continues to have a panic attack about his time on the run.
tw: nightmares, tw: panic attacks, tw: implied/referenced child abuse
Your Needs, My Needs by TogeMythia [Rated T, 1073 words, complete, 2023]
‘Neil.’ He whined, his face still buried under the blankets. ‘Hrmph?’ Neil responded with a confused noise from somewhere across the bed. ‘Do you feel as shit as you sound?’ - Or Neil and Andrew wake up sick on Christmas day.
tw: vomit
To be safe by HushedStars [Rated G, 2116 words, complete, 2023]
Neil is feeling unwell. He seeks comfort from Matt. It was late at night. Neil stood in the kitchen, deep in thought but still with one ear alert for any movement of his roommates. He shifted from foot to foot, hands digging into his sore neck
tw: implied/referenced child abuse, tw: panic attacks
Safe with him by 1mNot4Hum4n [Not Rated, 2434 words, complete, 2023]
Neil is sick but doesn't want to admit it. He can't be sick. He can't be weak. Luckily Andrew is there to make sure his junkie is okay, and remind him that he has people around him who are willing to do anything to protect him.
'tis the season by moonix [Rated T, 5579 words, complete, 2023]
Five holidays Andrew had to let Kevin take care of him and one time he got to return the favour.
i called your name ‘til the fever broke by cyanica [Rated T, 5632 words, incomplete, last updated Nov 2023]
Neil’s breath is hot and awful against Andrew’s thigh. “I can’t be sick on your birthday,” he says, like it’s that simple. “I can’t be sick on you on your birthday.” “How considerate,” Andrew’s voice is a bland murmur, and he is left watching Neil’s bloodless, wet lips, as he curls into Andrew’s lap. Neil gently pulls away after a moment, leaning back into Andrew’s hand on his neck. “Is me being sick still making you anxious?” he asks. Fever-stricken with dizzied-eyes and delirious thoughts, he knows Andrew without more than a moment beside him, a look into his eyes that makes Andrew feel undone, found. Or Neil is sick and Andrew isn’t coping well.
tw: vomit, tw: panic attacks, tw: dissociation, tw: anxiety
You Know I'm Good On My Own by sambutwithbooks [Rated G, 4568 words, complete, Aftg Then And Now 2023]
Andrew breaks his arm two games into the season and it feels a little bit like Neil’s world snaps with it. (A snapshot of Neil and Andrew between Andrew coming home from the hospital and going back home to Palmetto State.)
tw: major character injury
that's my line by sillyunicorn6154 [Rated G, 1291 words, complete, 2023]
Andrew is definitely not sick. But he is a little stubborn.
You're not fine, but you will be by karmenvi [Not Rated, 616 words, complete, 2023]
Neil is sick, so Andrew takes care of him. So it was supposed to be a sickfic, but it turned into 'Andrew stares at Neil and thinks his boyfriend is the prettiest boy in the world.' Anyway, enjoy some fluff.
I'll be okay if he's here by obsessivereader156 [Not Rated, 1673 words, complete, 2023]
“Thank you, Drew,” Neil says for the twentieth time, feeling so lucky to have someone take care of him. “Say it again and I will kill you.” “You’re just so nice to me,” Neil says a bit deliriously, “I’ve never had someone take care of me when I’m sick.”
If it means losing you, then no by LostMess_24 [Rated T, 6712 words, complete, 2023]
There was something against his hand, a pressure he knew too well, a hand that fit so perfectly against his, making Andrew’s presence known, making Neil’s entire body relax, slowing his breathing a bit. But before Neil could see the man at his side, it hit him. He was starting to feel it, all around him. Those white walls, the mattress he was in, the soft yet old sheets, the pressure on his arm. And finally, unmistakably, the regular and aggressive beeps, signs of a life that was his own. He was in a hospital bed. There’s an accident. Those idiots would do anything and everything to protect each other.
tw: major character injury, tw: car accidents
cause and effect by mistyrie [Rated M, 13107 words, complete, 2023]
"Andrew realized what he was seeing but he couldn’t comprehend it. He didn’t know how to help. There was no enemy to deal with – there was just Neil seizing on the floor and Andrew didn’t know what to do." Neil starts having seizures and Andrew tries to help.
tw: seizures (epilepsy)
how the foxes act when they're sick by @detectivebambam [tumblr, 2024]
headcanons on the foxes and illness
headcanons on Neil getting sick by @24-0z [tumblr, 2022]
Neil doesn't get sick very often, so when he finally catches the bug that had been going around campus, he's suddenly 8 years old again, sweating and trembling with fever
SICK!Neil for my soul. by @satan-in-a-v-neck [tumblr, 2021]
Neil is acting strange. Ask every fox and they'll tell you that for the past three days Neil Josten wasn't acting very Neil Josteny.
tw: vomit
illness/injuries as background event:
The Songs Around Us by doodlingstuff [Rated M, 80075 words, complete, 2022]
The mission was simple: Nathaniel would join Astral Foxes as Neil Josten and make them part of Moriyama Music. In reality, Neil became real, found a home, and fell in love despite his lies. When the Moriyamas send the Butcher to remind Neil of his mission and Andrew's life ends on the line, Neil will have to find a way to escape his fate and bring Andrew back. As he gets closer to losing the man he loves the most, Neil will realize that sometimes, music is the only answer, and others, truth is the only weapon he can use. Another Band!AU. This time extra angsty.
tw: torture, tw: car accident, tw: major character injury, tw: implied/referenced child abuse, tw: panic attacks, tw: violence
NB: find art for this fic by @doodlingstuff here
84 notes · View notes
wangxianficrecs · 19 hours
Text
The Hate and Love of family by Moonlit_dewdrops
Tumblr media
The Hate and Love of family
by Moonlit_dewdrops
T, WIP, 20k, Wangxian & Sangcheng
Summary: Wei Wuxian gets sent home after the fight with Jin Zixuan. Jiang Cheng is right to have worried. Kay's comments: Sometimes. You just read Wei Wuxian getting put through a meat grinder named Yu Ziyuan, because he's your beloved blorbo. In this story, he gets punished by Madam Yu after he punched Jin Zixuan, luckily the Jiang siblings are there for him and get him to safety. Featuring some minor Sangcheng, the Nie brothers being awesome, the Cloud Recesses being a safe haven for Wei Wuxian and the most tender hurt/comfort post-study arc Wangxian interactions. Excerpt: Jiang Cheng knows he has to leave for Cloud Recesses. He has no idea when his mother will be returning but he knows he has to get himself and his brother out before then. Wei Wuxian’s condition hasn’t gotten better though it has not gotten significantly worse either. He had yet to regain consciousness. During the past few nights, Wei Wuxian tosses and turns restlessly from nightmares on top of the fever, crying out names in his sleep. Most of the time, it’s their sister’s, sometimes it’s Jiang Cheng’s, and other times even Lan Wangji’s name. During the day, he continues to plan how to get to Cloud Recesses, despite his exhaustion from the restless nights he had looking after his brother. Jiang Cheng, being fearful of something terrible happening hadn’t returned to his own bedroom to sleep. In fact, he had barely been sleeping at all, jerking awake every time he no longer heard his brother’s breathing. He only manages to get some rest after Jiang Xing and his assistants assured him that they will wake him up if anything happened.
pov alternating, canon divergence, cloud recesses study arc, wei wuxian whump, hurt wei wuxian, major character injury, good sibling jiang cheng, good sibling jiang yanli, jiang cheng/nie huaisang, sangcheng, good uncle lan qiren, bad parent yu ziyuan, protective lan wangji, soft lan wangji/wei wuxian, developing relationship, hurt/comfort, recovery
Tumblr media
~*~
(Please REBLOG as a signal boost for this hard-working author if you like – or think others might like – this story.)
41 notes · View notes
cold1dead1eyes · 11 months
Text
touch-starved
tw // self-harm
imagine a whumpee that had to hurt themself to get any physical affection from whumper.
caretaker doesn’t understand why they flinch away from their touch, or why they flee the room after any accidental brush. they come to the conclusion whumper must’ve done something to them that made them averse to all touch.
this is until caretaker finds them huddled up in a dark room one day, sobbing into their knees. they’re shaking all over. caretaker slips in and asks what’s wrong, and whumpee breaks apart.
“i’m sorry, i’m sorry, i’m sorry.” they gasp between cries. they’re rocking back and forth.
“it’s okay, what’s wrong?” caretaker asks, and whumpee starts crying harder.
“i— i need you t-to touch me.” they whisper, ashamed, and caretaker’s heart breaks. the poor thing is touch-starved. so horribly touch-starved that they’re rocking back and forth in agony, from desperation, from how much they need comfort. their body is shutting down after dealing with so much by themself.
“whumpee, that’s okay. come here.” caretaker tries to be reassuring. they spread their arms out in an invitation of a hug but it only makes whumpee sway and cry harder.
“no— no, no! no, i can’t.” they’re gasping for air now. caretaker is so confused.
“can’t what?” whumpee doesn’t look at them when they speak.
“i can’t pay for it. please. i tried, but i—i’m, i’m too scared. my hands shake, i c-can’t do it, i’m sorry. please. please, just…” whumpee unfurls their arms from their knees and caretaker’s breath catches. there’s light scratch marks all over their forearms.
and suddenly it makes sense. those strange scars on whumpee’s body weren’t from whumper. they were from whumpee. they were the price whumpee paid for safety and comfort. they were the price for whumper’s love.
311 notes · View notes