Work Text:
“Tell her not to come.” Fez avoided Rue’s eyes, his gaze drifting hazily towards his hands, cuffed to the cold steel bedrails. “She shouldn’t be here.”
Rue’s brow furrowed, the corners of her mouth downturned and confused. “I thought you guys were like friends now or something? She said you’ve been talking- why don’t you want her to visit?”
Fez sat, silent.
Rue hesitated. “I mean if you’re sure,” she busied herself with her phone, “I’ll text her not to come.” The dull tapping of her fingers on the screen filled the sterile air for a long moment, oddly loud amongst the harsh beeping and distant murmur of the hospital. She tapped one final time, the soft swooping sound of a message sent swiftly following.
Fez nodded, whether to himself or her Rue wasn’t sure. He had a look of terrible distance on his beaten face, a strange detachment that seemed unnatural on a man who even at his most stoic had a softness, a kindness, to him.
Rue’s phone chimed. And chimed. And chimed.
What do you mean don’t come??
I don’t understand.
What’s going on Rue
Rue’s eyebrows twitched upwards. She stared at the screen, and then up at Fezco, who seemed to have become even more determined to stare down at his restrained hands and nothing else. But his gaze had sharpened slightly, as if he was honing in on something other than the same hospital bed he’d been looking at for hours. Rue squinted and awkwardly started, “Um, so, I think she really wants to come- maybe just keep it a quick visit or-“
“I don’t want her to see this.” He ground out through his teeth.
Rue stopped. Stared. Before she could verbalize any of the questions spinning through her painfully clear head, her phone rang out.
Both her gaze and his snapped towards it. Fez’s hand twitched barely in the direction of the vibrating device, the crude clank of his handcuff hitting the beam giving away the otherwise subtle tell. Rue’s mind began to form a strange, hazy idea, one she turned over and over as she lifted the phone and slid her finger to accept the call.
“Rue?! What’s going on? Why didn’t you answer me? Is he ok? Did something happen?”
Fezco’s eyes were the clearest and bluest they’d been since Rue had walked into his hospital room, and they were trained on Rue’s phone. Desperate, like somehow if he stared hard enough he could see through the radio waves and cell towers and satellites straight into Lexi Howard’s eyes. The mist surrounding Rue’s idea began to clear, solidifying into a theory.
“Hey Lex- yeah, no, he’s doin’ alright. He just, uh…” She locked eyes with Fez, who looked equally hopeful and terrified as he waited to hear her response, “He’s not really feeling up to visitors.”
There was silence on the other end. Fez exhaled a resigned sigh, his eyes closed. Rue waited.
“Oh.”
“Yep.”
Lexi said nothing, but Rue could hear shuddering breaths from the other end of the line. She waited.
“But- But you’re there with him. Right now.”
Fez began to shake his head, she could almost hear him thinking Rue, don’t.
“Yep.”
Lexi shattered.
“ Please, Rue, I don’t know what I can say to him but please, tell him I just want to see him- to see that he’s alive- I know him, I know how he must be hurting- please, I understand if he doesn’t want to see me, I don’t have to stay but just for a minute-“
Fez’s head hung low, his eyes glassy and his mouth trembling. Rue made a decision.
“Uh. You should come, actually.”
Fez’s head snapped up. There was silence from the other end of the line. His hands shook and he stared at her, imploring and terrified. Rue shrugged and committed.
“Room 310.”
“I’m in the parking lot, I’ll be there in 5.”
The line clicked off.
Fez seethed, “Rue, that ain’t your call.”
She scoffed, “Please. I don’t really know what the fuck it is that you two have going on, clearly.” She snorted a laugh, and then quieted, “And I won’t pretend I know exactly what you’re feeling right now. I’ve never- I’ve never lost a brother.” She steeled herself. “But you know that I know grief, Fez. And I’ve had to- to think about that a lot recently. Reflect.”
“Hey,” he said ruefully, “I gotchu, I know you’ve had it bad, Rue, but-“
“Let me finish.” She interrupted, then took a breath. “I’ve had to reflect. And- And I hurt a lot of people with my grief. I pushed away people that I loved, that just wanted to be there for me, because I was sad and I was angry and because- because I hated myself a little bit. Or a lot, I guess.” She blinked furiously. “Don’t do that. Please don’t do that, Fez. You’re my family. I can’t watch you drown like I did.”
His dull gaze returned to his cuffed hands. “Rue, I- I respect that, for real. And I’m glad you’re doing better, because you ain’t had anything to do with your dad’s death in the first place. But I’m not a good person to be around. Not a good person, period, I think.” He shook his head. “I supplied you, I supplied so many people, I got Ash fuckin’ killed , he’s gone, he’s gone and he ain’t ever gonna grow up, and- I ain’t ever done anything worthwhile in my fuckin’ life. And she-“ His voice shook, “She’s the best thing I ever known, she’s good. She’s gonna do some insane genius shit with her life and I can’t- I can’t ruin her like that, I can’t watch her get fucked up just from being around me-“
He sucked in a sharp, scraping breath, his eyes bright with tears, clenching his fists and fighting for control, for air, for any possible relief from horror he was spiraling into. Rue floundered, Fez shook, and then a voice from the door.
“Fezco.”
Lexi almost sounded as though she was begging. Fez’s shaking chest expanded, he drew in his first real breath and his eyes met hers. Rue watched, spellbound and a little baffled, as her two closest friends stilled. The once hazy idea she had conceived was now made flesh, and though they stared at one another from across a long white room, it almost seemed as though her two friends were of one body.
Lexi stood on unsteady legs in the doorway, staring at the sterile tableau of Fez’s hospital bed. She took it all in, her warm brown eyes sharpening over the handcuffs and the bandages and the IV’s, all damning evidence of the way their worlds had fractured since they last spoke. Their flimsy bubble, their place for only them, where they had carefully placed their delicate dreams and softest, quietest hopes, had popped. Everything they shared was now raw, exposed like a nerve to the rest of the world.
Lexi took a step towards him. And another. Her feet carried her blindly to his side. He couldn’t drag his eyes away from her face, starving for the chance to just look at her. She stopped next to his bed and reached out, slowly, carefully, for his hand. He flinched away, the cruel clatter of the handcuffs breaking the silence. She withdrew her hand, he bowed his head in resignation, in acknowledgement of his fall from grace. His eyes shut- he couldn’t watch her realize once and for all what he was: A criminal, a murderer. A man who got his own brother killed.
Her hand wavered, and then Fez felt soft fingers brush his jaw. His tears welled over as she pulled his face gently in her direction. His eyes opened and he stared up at her in terror, in awe. The word salvation floated on the tip of his tongue.
Fez had never spent much time in church growing up. He was a believer more than a practitioner. But now, looking up at her face, lovely and warm even in the stark, cold lights of the hospital, old prayers and recitations flew to his lips.
His hands instinctively came up to wipe at his eyes, catching painfully as they yanked against the cuffs. For a moment it felt wrong, unfair that he couldn’t even brush his own tears away. And then Lexi’s hand slid up from his jaw to his cheek, and she swept away the salt and sadness with one touch. At this small touch, fearless and already more intimate than any they had shared before, he broke. The tears came faster, a sob tore its way through his chest for the first time since he woke up in the hospital and realized his brother was dead. He swayed towards her as much as he could, tubes and wires and cuffs and pain holding him in place, but she met him halfway.
Lexi folded herself around him, slipping into crevices and winding her way into his body. He sobbed into her chest, letting the smell of her hair and feel of her shirt tether him to the earth as he let go of himself. The hand that he had previously withdrawn from her made its way to her hip, the only part of her situated close enough to the handcuff for him to grasp. He held on for dear life, fingers biting in hard enough to bruise as though he thought she would fly away if not for his grip. She didn’t mind. She held onto him with the same fervor, the same greed. She wanted him to burrow into her skin and make a home there. To stay safe and hidden and never leave her lonely.
Fez emptied out his tears in her arms as she murmured sweet nothings in his ear. For a moment she remembered all of the times she had sat in a hospital room and comforted someone. All of the times she had been a shoulder to cry on, a pillar for the people around her to lean on. For some reason, this felt nothing like those times. Maybe it was because she loved him (and she did) or because she understood him in a way neither of them could articulate, or maybe it was because she knew he loved her. Maybe it was something else entirely. But whatever the reason, Lexi knew there was not a single thing in the world that could tear her from his side. Not even him.