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“You gonna eat that?”
All conversation stopped at the table in the back of Der Waffle Haus as all eyes turned to George and Mason. It wasn’t an uncommon question to hear by any means, definitely not enough to be stopping the usual banter playing out. It was just that it was sort of, well, backwards. Normally it was supposed to be Mason begging for food and then just stealing it off whoever’s plate before they barely had a chance to answer, but this time it was George doing the asking and Mason quietly pushing his eggs around before simply sliding his mostly untouched breakfast over to her.
In fact, now that she thought about it, Mason had been quiet all morning. So quiet, in fact, it was almost as if they’d forgotten he was curled sideways in the booth with his knees tucked up to his chest. Not that that was unusual either; Mason too drunk or high to function properly was an all-too-common occurrence for anyone to be concerned about. Mason with a plate full of free food in front of him that he wasn’t eating, that was enough to raise an eyebrow or two.
“What’s the matter with you?” Rube finally asked, breaking the awkward silence, to which Mason just shrugged a shoulder.
“Just not really hungry, I guess.”
“Why’d you ask me to buy you breakfast if you weren’t hungry?” Another shrug from Mason had Rube leaning forward and glaring at him harder. “Don’t waste my money, Mason, or my generosity. It makes me think you don’t want it, and if I think you don’t want it, I’ll stop giving it to you. Cause and effect. It’s a simple concept.”
The tone was sharp as always, but George could tell this time by the look in Rube’s eyes that he thought something was off. He was a hardass and sometimes the asshole that went with it, but deep down she knew Rube cared about all of them in his own way. He knew all their habits and their mannerisms, knew what pissed them off and what went deeper than that straight down into actual hurt. If he was having a bad day he’d throw it in their faces, but usually he’d feely guilty and maybe even sorry about it later, and make up for it with a free breakfast or sometimes even something like a bicycle. On a good day he’d be sagely and maybe a little fatherly, offering comfort in a world of literal death when they needed it most.
Mason didn’t get the good side of Rube very often. There were definite attempts, sure, and they had a certain camaraderie that couldn’t be denied, but Rube didn’t have the patience for Mason’s antics most times. It didn’t mean he didn’t care though; despite all the insults and obvious disapproval in just about all things Mason, Rube would step in to help out their resident fuck-up if he really had to.
Now, as Mason turned his face into the backrest and closed his eyes instead of rising to Rube’s bait, his face pinched in what looked like discomfort, it seemed like it was one of those times when the parental side of Rube was going to kick in. “Here,” the team leader grunted as he handed out post-its around the table. After a moment’s hesitation, he gave a second one to George.
“Can you handle two today, peanut?”
She glanced between him and Mason, noting the silence of the other two women as well. They looked a little worried by this strange exchange too, though just as clueless as George was. It was sort of an unsaid bonding thing with all of them at this point, George realized; if Rube was genuinely worried about one of them, the rest of them probably should be too.
“Sure, no problem,” George smiled and took the extra yellow paper, Mason’s yellow paper. He didn’t say a word about it, and that was a pretty sure sign that Rube might’ve had a right to be concerned. Mason should’ve either been protesting his lost reap or celebrating it depending on his mood, but instead he was just sitting there curled into his Mason-ball, face still mushed into the cushion, brow still creased as if he wasn’t even hearing anything going on around him. Maybe he wasn’t.
Roxy finally leaned over to Rube and nearly whispered in his ear. “He okay?”
“I don’t know.” The senior reaper hadn’t taken his eyes off him. “Why don’t you guys take off, I’ll take care of the check.”
They all knew that meant he'd take care of Mason, but no one was going to point that out. Rube in friendly paternal mode was something too coveted to make fun of. If they did, he might just never do it again for any of them, and nobody wanted that.
One by one they shuffled out of the diner and exchanged worried glances out front. “Did he look sick to you?” George asked, thinking over the look on Mason’s face. She was right next to him so she’d had the full, high definition view.
Daisy waved a hand through the air. “That’s ridiculous, reapers don’t get sick. He probably sampled a new drug or something and it’s not mixing well with his system.”
Her words were dampened though by the way her teeth briefly caught her bottom lip. Could reapers get sick?
“Maybe his last reap went bad and he’s just healing still,” Roxy pointed out. That actually could be the case; Mason was known to be more than a little reckless on his jobs. Off the jobs too, George thought as she mentally tried to count the many ways she’d seen Mason get injured. She’d actually lost track of how many times he’d gotten shot just since she met him. And hit by cars. And electrocuted. And poisoned. One time he’d been gone for three whole days, and just when Rube (who was in full pissed-off, meltdown mode at the time) was about to send out a search party, he wandered into Der Waffle Haus with a story about how he’d fallen down a canyon and woken up to coyotes trying to eat him. Based on the look of his clothes, George was actually inclined to believe him on that one.
That was probably it then. Coming down off a bad reap. Rube would handle it and everything would be fine once Mason healed up. Nothing to worry about.
~~~~~~~
“Yes, I’m sure,” Rube spoke quietly into his phone, though the whispering did nothing to hide the frustration in his tone. He was standing in his hallway with the door slightly cracked so he could peek in on Mason as he talked. “Don’t argue with me on this. I’ve been watching this kid for how long now? I’ve seen him ten ways of fucked up on every kind of drug there is and probably some you’ve never heard of. I know what he’s like high, low, and bouncing off the walls like a goddamn ping pong ball on steroids. This isn’t that.”
He paused as the person on the other line said something he didn’t quite catch because the pained whimper coming from the bed seemed so much louder to Rube’s ears in that moment. He cut off whatever the idiot he was talking to was saying. “Let me make this real clear for you. If you don’t send me a medic team right fucking now , I will personally hop on the next flight out of here and bring one myself. But before I do that, I’ll be sure to stop by your desk and pull your insides out through your nose. How does that sound? Good? Okay. Thank you for your time.”
He hung up the phone with a muttered, “Jackass,” before hurrying over to check on Mason. The kid didn’t look good, all curled up on the bed with his arms wrapped tight around his stomach, his face pale with little beads of sweat dotting his brow.
“How’re you doing there, kiddo?”
A shiver passed through Mason and he honestly couldn’t tell anymore if it was because he was cold or if it was because he bloody hurt. He was aware enough to know something was very, very wrong with him though. It felt like he was detoxing when he wasn’t actually detoxing, and he had a fever. Reapers didn’t get fevers. And Rube was calling him kiddo, which he never did unless he was actually concerned about him. That worried him most of all.
“What’s...wrong with me?” he got out on a shaky breath.
Rube lowered himself to sit on the edge of the bed and sighed. “Not gonna sugarcoat it for you, Mason, you’re sick.”
“But—”
“Reapers don’t get sick, I know.” He sighed again and looked down at his hands in his lap. “I wish to god I didn’t have to tell you this. I’d hoped it would never come up, but here we are.”
Mason swallowed and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment as some invisible lance shot through his insides again. “Rube...what—”
“Don’t talk, kid, it hurts watching you.” The older man tugged the blanket a little higher up Mason’s shoulders. “They call it Reaper Fever. Not the most creative name, I know, but when there’s only one bug that can make the dead sick, I can respect being straight and to the point. It works just like your basic flu, a bad one, except it can’t kill you because you’re already dead.”
Mason let out a small breath of relief, to which Rube shook his head.
“Believe it or not, I don’t actually like to rain on your parade, Mason, but this time I really have to. Not being able to die in this case is not a good thing. Your undead body doesn’t know how to fight this. It can’t heal. Without proper treatment your fever’s going to keep getting higher and you’re going to be miserable until your brain cooks in your skull enough to put you in a coma.”
And now Mason was back to panicking. Dammit, Rube, and his overly blunt honesty! “How long?” he asked.
“In the coma?” Rube shrugged slightly, a sympathetic and helpless motion. “Forever if left untreated. Don’t worry though, I’ve already called someone. They’ll come get you all fixed up in no time. Don’t you worry about a thing.”
Right. That was easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one lying in bed with his stomach trying to turn itself inside out while his brain tried to cook itself into a coma!
“Whoa, kiddo, slow down. Deep breaths.”
Deep breaths? Absolutely not, sir! Mason was going to lay there and enjoy his panic attack because short, quick breaths made him lightheaded and maybe he would just pass out and not have to worry about falling into a coma for the rest of forever, thank you very much! Asphyxiation he understood, even liked five times out of ten as long as he was chasing a high and not, you know, drowning or something equally terrifying, but reapers were not supposed to get sick and suffer a slow, miserable death (or almost death anyway).
“Mason, come on. Breathe for me. You’re gonna be fine, you have to trust me.”
No he would not, because the more he thought on it, the more he realized this wasn’t even going to be a slow almost-death probably. He’d felt perfectly fine last night, and sure, he was a bit off in the morning as he got dressed, a little groggy as he made his way to Der Waffle Haus. He’d been a little nauseous by the time they were ordering but he honest-to-god thought he’d just been really hungry and food would fix it. But then it didn’t, and just over the course of their morning meeting he’d gone downhill so quickly he didn’t even realize how poorly he was feeling until Rube was literally picking him up and carrying him to his fancy little apartment. It was kind of like that time after the airport when he was too drugged to move, only worse because it had happened so damn fast, and Mason hadn’t even been fucked up this time! It wasn’t fair! Why did he have to go and get Reaper Fever? Where did he even get it from anyway?
That thought made his whirling, panicky thoughts stop in their tracks momentarily. His vision was just on the verge of darkening when he made himself take that breath Rube kept asking for, his eyes meeting his mentor’s in a worried way that had nothing to do with himself now.
“Contagious?” he gasped out, not having the breath to get out anything else just yet. He detached one hand from himself to grab at Rube’s arm almost frantically. “You…?”
“Will be fine,” Rube assured him in a soft voice, wrapping his own hand around the frantic man’s wrist gently. “It’s not that kind of bug. Reaper Fever is more like a really rare tornado. Touches down, rips through a house, disappears into the night for a few years, decades even, and then touches down to wreak havoc somewhere else. You pulled the short straw, kiddo, that’s just the fucking luck of it.”
Mason relaxed visibly, fingers uncurling from the death grip on Rube’s arm. “S’good,” he murmured, closing his eyes again, worn out from, well, everything frankly. This was just an awful lot to take in all at once. “Best it’s me.”
Rube, for his part, continued to hold onto the younger man. “That’s a load of bullshit and you know it. No one’s happy about this. I’m not and you shouldn’t be either.”
Mason shook his head against the pillow; he knew no one would be happy about it, but still, if it had to happen to one of them, really he was the best option. He knew he had a place in their odd little group, yes, he wasn’t that self deprecating. A cog in their machine? Rube would probably say something like that. He was the rusted out, half broken cog though, the one that could be sacrificed if absolutely needed. Did he want to suffer horribly and fall into a coma? Fuck no! But if it had to be one of them, the rest of them could function until they replaced him with a shiny, new cog that wasn’t such a fucking mess. He knew deep down they all loved him as a person, but even someone as stupid as him could do the math. He was the most replaceable one. The tornado bug had chosen the right person.
He fell asleep with those thoughts on his mind, and Rube could see them on his face clear as day. The older reaper frowned deeply, not liking that expression one bit, and knowing he was partly responsible for that. Mostly responsible for it, if he was being honest with himself. He vowed then and there if Mason got better, when he got better, he’d try to be more encouraging. Irritating and irresponsible as the man could be, Mason was just as important to their little family as anyone else was, and he didn’t deserve this. The kid took enough beatings as it was—physically and verbally—he didn’t need this on top of everything else. Life just wasn’t fucking fair sometimes. Neither was death. And sometimes it just fucking sucked.
~~~~~~~
Rube and Mason did not meet up at the diner for dinner. Rube and Mason weren’t answering their phones. Mason was not at home and Rube was not answering the door no matter how hard the girls pounded on it.
“Rube, open the fucking door before I shoot out your damn doorknob,” Roxy finally spat out in anger, done with this shit. She hated being kept in the dark about things.
Thankfully that did the trick and finally the door opened to an equally-angry Rube slipping out quickly and shutting it behind him. “Are you proud of yourselves? I finally get him comfortable and you roll in here like stampeding elephants, waking him up again. Shut the fuck up and go home.”
Roxy opened her mouth to fight, but thankfully Daisy stepped in, her softer tones better suited in circumstances like this where things were obviously about to get heated very quickly. “And why, exactly, isn’t he comfortable?”
Rube looked tired, George noted, double noted when he ran a hand down his face. “Look, if I wanted you to know something, I’d tell you, but I don’t so mind your own business and let me take care of this. He’ll be fine in a couple days.”
“Days?” George finally piped up. “Whyyy would it take him days to get better? He wasn’t, like, in pieces or anything.”
“And you wouldn’t be babying him so much if this was a drug thing,” Roxy speculated smartly, eyeballing him. “You’re being too protective. Tell us what’s going on, Rube.”
He must’ve been more tired than George thought given how quickly he gave in; they could see it in the way his shoulders dropped like they were watching a balloon deflating. Without a word he opened the door and let them see, their eyes going immediately to the bed. Daisy’s hand flew up to her mouth, Roxy’s jaw clenched tightly, and George’s eyes went wide as she looked from him to Rube. Mason had gone from looking a little under the weather that morning to being in what looked like the final stages of the black plague or something. Not that George knew what that looked like, but if she had to guess, this was probably it. He was sweating horribly, face flushed with fever, but his whole body was shaking almost violently as if he were freezing. His muscles were all coiled up and tense like he was holding himself together, and his breathing was short and sharp between tiny gasps and whimpers.
“He is sick,” George shot out in surprise, and all eyes turned back to Rube.
“Find a place to sit down,” he sighed. “You’re not going to like this story.”
~~~~~~~
“Where are they?” Daisy hissed, a question that had been asked multiple times over the last two hours since they’d arrived. Rube had told them as much as he knew about Reaper Fever, and after the initial shock and anger and dismay washed over them, they’d been taking turns doing their best to keep Mason comfortable. He was deteriorating so quickly, but the medics still hadn’t arrived. Rube had called at least three times to get an ETA, the last time they couldn’t even eavesdrop on because he went all the way outside just to make sure he didn’t disturb their sick friend with his yelling. Mason had stopped rolling around in that time, which would’ve been good except now he was too still, too quiet, and wasn’t responding to them anymore. He didn’t seem like he was in a full coma yet, but more like he just didn’t have the energy to do anything else but breathe. They could all read the misery all over his face still though, and it ate at them terribly.
It would be another half hour before the medics finally came, and then the Reaper group got the fun experience of realizing with an almost detached horror that the cure for this thing was almost as bad as the illness. It wasn’t just a neat little injection with a magic antiviral or anything like that. The medics came in with their own surgical table, transferred Mason onto it and went to work with IV’s and pumps that were shoved into his front and back, and some sort of coolant that turned his skin a ghastly shade of blue. He looked dead , for real dead like all those many corpses George was getting so used to seeing. But this was worse because this was her friend, and her friend wasn’t dead, or not corpse dead anyway. He was aliveish and hooked up to machines like he was in some weird alien abduction movie, and they were cutting into him and taking things out that shouldn’t be out of a person’s body, cleaning and draining things and putting them back in like refurbishing parts of an entire engine or something.
Daisy went outside at some point to cry. Roxy stoically watched the whole process, looking like she wanted to bite someone’s head off but knowing headless doctors couldn’t help Mason. Rube seemed oddly detached through the whole thing. George...well, she didn’t know what she looked like, but she figured it was probably pretty green considering she’d gone to hide in the bathroom more than once and might’ve thrown up at least one of those times.
And then they were done. Reaper medics, George decided, were scary as fuck. Like weird robot men and women with no emotions. Just as quickly as they’d swept in, they detached Mason from all the pumps and tubes and lines, stitched him all back up, moved him back to the bed, then left without leaving a single thing out of place. They reminded George of Oompa Loompas, only not tiny and not doing cartwheels. And not singing. There was definitely no singing. But they still had that creepy vibe to them that she hoped never to encounter again.
And Mason still looked dead. He was dead, really. No breathing, no heartbeat, all systems down for the moment because he’d just had all of his insides scrubbed out and that shit needed a moment to kick back online, but at least Rube didn’t look worried anymore. He just looked sad and tired as he sat beside the bed with his hand resting on Mason’s forehead. He stayed that way too as everyone crowded back around and took up some spot on the mattress, and only when Mason finally took his first breath did anyone really begin to relax.
He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t dead and his body was healing and he didn’t have a freaky undead fever anymore. He was going to be fine.
~~~~~~~
“He’s going to kill me.”
Mason’s eyes shown with fear as he made his way to Der Waffle Haus, a man heading to the gallows. Daisy merely rolled her eyes and slapped him lightly on the arm.
“Oh stop, he won’t kill you. It’s only been a month. I’m telling you, you have a free ticket for at least another two. Give him those sad puppy eyes and milk the almost dying thing for all it’s worth.”
Mason gulped and shook his head. “It won’t work, not on him. One month is more than enough. It might as well be a century. After this mess he’s going to wish he hadn’t bothered getting me healed.”
He’d really fucked this one up. A whole elevator full of people and he hadn’t gotten to it on time. All those poor souls, mangled for eternity. This was almost as bad as the ab burner incident, but that had been George who Rube loved way more than he loved Mason. He’d only been bedridden for a few days (horribly painful days while all his organs remembered how to function again, but still, only a few days), and had been back to reaping for the rest of the month just fine. Mostly. Rube had given him some very easy jobs the first week out. But that was then and this was now and he had royally fucked up.
Despite Daisy’s insistence he’d be fine, Mason was a nervous wreck by the time he stepped into their diner. Knowing he couldn’t avoid fate forever though, he sucked in a breath and strolled (more like slinked) over to the table. He stayed quiet for all of two seconds before the grovelling began.
“Rube, I fucked up, I know I fucked up, I royally fucking fucked the fuck out of this fuck-up, and I am very very sorry, and as much as I’d love to tell you it won’t happen again, we both know it will but I will try really hard to make sure that it doesn’t, and you can stab me with your fork if you really want to, I won’t even try to pull away.” He placed his hand flat on the table and closed his eyes, turning his head away.
The others watched the exchange with some amusement, Rube simply sitting there quietly until Mason cautiously cracked one eye open again once he realized his hand wasn’t being stabbed.
“Did you apologize to those people?” Rube merely asked.
“Oh I did,” Mason nodded almost frantically as he slid into the booth next to George, Daisy following beside him. “I apologized so much I had to start apologizing for apologizing.”
“And did you learn anything from this screwup?”
Again with more nodding. “Yes. I learned that I’m really out of shape! Trying to outrun an elevator up twenty flights of stairs is hard . I really need to hit the gym.”
Rube closed his eyes for a moment probably praying for patience. “Try again.”
Mason’s mouth opened to probably say something else idiotic, but he kept it in for a few extra seconds while the gears turned in his head. “That I should’ve been at the site earlier so I wouldn’t have to try chasing an elevator up twenty floors?”
“Bingo. Try to remember that next time.”
And that was it. Rube went back to whatever conversation he was having with Roxy, George gave him a small smile and went back to studying her menu, and that was really the end of it. Mason looked incredibly perplexed for a moment until Daisy nudged him with her elbow and mouthed an I told you so in his direction. And then Mason smiled. Was he really invincible for the next two months? If he’d known almost dying was what would get him on Rube’s good side, he might’ve tried that more seriously years ago!
Then again, being on his good side seemed like a lot of pressure. What if it meant expectations? Mason hated people having actual expectations of him! Life was much easier when people didn’t actually expect him to live up to any sort of potential anything. Plus, what about the rest of them? The world would implode if everyone was on Rube’s good side. Or more like Rube would ex plode over someone eventually, and if it wasn’t Mason, who would it be?
In a calculated action of self-sacrifice, he reached across the table and picked at Rube’s eggs. With his grubby, elevator crash-dirtied fingers. Rube blinked at him for a second as he happily and innocently popped the egg into his mouth.
3...2...1
“Why would you do that?”
All eyes were on the byplay now. Mason kept up his innocent look. “I was hungry and you’re being nice to me so I thought you wouldn’t mind sharing.”
Rube closed his eyes and probably counted in his head for a moment. “I might’ve shared if you’d asked and picked up a goddamn fork. Why wouldn’t you ask? Why would you just touch my food with your filthy fingers? I can’t even eat this now. This is disgusting. I’ve lost my appetite.”
“Oh, more for me then, thank you.” Mason reached over and pulled the plate to himself, grinning at Rube as he continued to pick at the breakfast with his hands.
Rube watched for all of three more seconds before he was gesturing for Roxy to move out of the booth. “I can’t do this. I gotta go before I kill him. The rest of you, enjoy your breakfast.”
And just like that, he was off. Roxy leaned over and smacked Mason up the side of his head. “Why are you pushing him, the man is trying to be nice to you!”
“Ow! Roxy! Can’t you see that’s why I’m doing this?” He frowned as he continued to pick at his eggs. “Rube is an angry, bitter man. Who do you think all that anger and bitterness is going to leak all over if he isn’t aiming it at me?”
Three quizzical looks shot Mason’s way before Roxy slouched back in her seat. “Huh,” she hummed, then one side of her lip quirked up in a smile. It was gone almost just as quickly as she stood up and pocketed her post-it. “Use a damn fork, Mason.” And then she was gone.
George couldn’t help but grin over at her friend knowingly. “You’re a really good guy, you know that? I don’t think people tell you that enough.”
He smiled almost shyly and shook his head. “I’m not, Georgie. I happen to know for a fact that I’m actually really bad at being good, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Some people need a bad guy.”
Daisy frowned. “Well I for one don’t care for it. Don’t let yourself play punching bag too much, okay? You can’t take the hits for everybody all the time.”
“I don’t usually do it on purpose!” he argued. “Most of the time. But I think about it sometimes. You know. After. Everyone asks it, right? What’s our purpose here?”
George nodded because she asked herself that question alllll the time.
“I’m not particularly good at anything, but it doesn’t mean I don't have a purpose. I mess up, I get yelled at, shot, driven over, stabbed, I get the fucking Reaper flu of fucking doom, but at the end of the day I feel a little better knowing it’s me and not any of you. I’m used to pain. If my job is to take it so you don’t have to, I can be okay with that.”
“And that’s what makes you a good guy,” George argued softly, then hugged him affectionately. “Don’t ever leave us, okay?”
Daisy leaned in on his other shoulder. “I second that. Don’t ever leave us.”
“Never.” Mason kissed both his favorite girls on the head, the love of his life and his very best friend. And he thought of Roxy who was like a tough older sister to him even though he’d been dead longer, and of Rube was very much the father figure he’d never had in life. He thought about how worried they’d all been about him and how gentle and sweet they were to him as he was recovering, and how devastated they would actually have been if he hadn’t woken up. He didn’t want them to be devastated. “Never ever.”
Broken cog he might’ve been, but he was their broken cog, and he knew they wouldn’t have it any other way.
End