Work Text:
Content Warnings :
Hospitals, description of injuries, blood, self-blame
“Dark?”
Daisy’s voice stirred Richard from his slumber on the couch in the Marshalls office. He was exhausted, truth be told. Working nonstop trying to catch people, searching all of his files and papers for things that simply didn’t exist. He loved the job, but it killed him at times. He just wanted to go home to his husband, curl up at his side, and stay there until the alarm rang in the morning to stir him awake for another day at the office. Such days had been few and far between as of recent, the only time he’d actually spent with Matt had been when they passed one another by on duty, and he despised it. It made him feel like a horrendous husband, but… work called. He and Matt always had the weekends. That was what he told himself, anyway.
He pushed himself up a little bit and narrowed his eyes at the figure of the woman in front of the couch to get her into focus. His hand felt around him until he found his glasses, and then he placed them onto his face without a second of hesitation. Daisy came into view after that; her hair was disastrous, her face was pale and she was absolutely covered in dirt and… was that blood? Good lord, what happened whilst he was sleeping? Another gang shootout no doubt.
“It’s— the case we’ve been working on. It’s Rhodes.”
“ What ?!” Richard sat up so fast that he went dizzy for a moment, all of the blood rushed from his head and went God knows where. His chest was suddenly tight— had.. had he been right? Was his husband, the man he’d spent every single day of the last ten years loving, corrupt ? “What— what d'you mean? Is he in custody? What’s he done?!”
Did… did he need to find a lawyer, or did he need to file for divorce? Both, if his thoughts were true. Find a lawyer so that Matt would at least be represented, and then serve him the papers when he was charged. He’d pack his things whilst Matt was being processed, find some hotel room or a cheap apartment to rent in the city whilst he tried to figure out what came next. Oh, God , what would Etta think? How would he tell his dad— the man had only just started to warm up to Matt as they left England and made their way back to Los Santos!
Daisy sighed and shook her head. There were tears in her eyes, her body looked like it was shaking but Richard wasn’t sure if that was the case or if he was just dizzy beyond human belief.
“No— no! Why the fuck would he be in custody?! ” She asked, and Richard swore there was a hint of anger in her tone. A few moments passed before she spoke again, after taking a few deep breaths to calm down. “He’s— he’s in the hospital, Richard… You— the doctor wants you there.”
The minutes passed in a blur.
Daisy drove him to the hospital, solely because his own two hands were shaking far too much for him to be trusted with the operation of any kind of vehicle. Even getting out of the office was a chore, he’d nearly collapsed onto the ground twice before Daisy grabbed his arm and walked him out into the car park herself. He hadn’t spoken a single word since Daisy told him that he was wanted at the hospital. He’d been staring at his MDT, reading Matt’s name on the list over and over again, sitting there under the label of high priority .
That was just the problem, wasn’t it? He was high priority for the case, but- rather obviously he wasn’t a high priority in Richard’s life if he’d landed in the hospital without any forewarning. They hadn’t even… they hadn’t had the chance to talk about what was going on, Richard had kept it all under wraps just so that Matt didn’t end up getting any ideas or blaming him for keeping his distance. He’d told himself that it was for the best, spending the weeks away and going home on the weekends, acting as though not a thing was wrong despite the fact that the weight of the world sat atop his shoulders.
If he’d just paid more attention…
The car stopped.
Again, getting out and into the hospital was a near robotic process. He was out before Daisy even took the keys from the ignition, moving in something between a stumble and a run. There were police and marshals everywhere — dogs sitting beside their handlers side, and guns being held in arms with fingers wrapped around triggers, ready to fire at a moment's notice. He showed his badge and they let him pass by.
The way to the ICU was ingrained in his mind. Up the stairs, a left a right, another flight of stairs, another left, another right. It was all so much. Each moment he passed by notices and whiteboards, doors, gurneys, more police, more dogs, more people staring, more blood on the floor. Nurses, physicians, doctors. So many people. He weaved between them, pushing them out of the way. The world was loud and silent at the same time, the ringing in his ears grew louder and louder. It was so much, but not enough. He didn’t believe it. It wasn’t happening. He was dreaming, right? He had to be dreaming.
There was no way it was anywhere else.
He came to a stop at the entrance desk into the ICU ward. A nurse sat there who looked like she truly could not care any less about her surroundings despite the severity of everything happening around her. When she looked up at Richard from her computer, she simply blinked.
“ER’s back downstairs.” She said.
“Matt Rhodes— I’m here to see him.” Richard replied, his voice now laden with every atom of panic that filled his body from top to bottom. His heart felt like it was about to burst from his chest and fall dead on the floor. If he looked closely, he could see marks from the wheels of the gurneys on the floor. “Which room is he in?”
The nurse sighed and looked back at her computer, typing a few words and clicking around before she looked at Richard again. “No visitors are allowed to see him unless they’re immediate family, sir. You’ll have to save your questions until he’s cleared to answer them by the doctor.”
“I’m his husband !” Richard exclaimed, his hand hitting the desk with such a speed that it caused his entire palm to sting. “Which bloody room is he in?!”
The nurse seemed quite shocked at the sudden outburst, but her demeanour didn’t change much. She went back to clicking around the screen for a few moments, though she didn’t bother looking back up at Richard when she spoke again. “Room thirteen. Straight down the corridor, on your left.”
Richard didn’t need another word. He left the desk without thanking the nurse and made his way down the hallway, counting the rooms as he passed by them. Each one had somebody inside; beds lying in rooms that were either filled with flowers and balloons and cards, or completely devoid of anything apart from the machines being used to keep the occupant alive. He noticed a few cops lying in the beds of the rooms he passed, all hooked up to machines and all with at least somebody at their side. He didn’t care to remember their names in the moment. Some of the doors had the curtains drawn over the windows to prevent people seeing inside. The sound of machines beeping and buzzing and humming and hissing filled the corridor to the brim, mixed with shouting and alarms and God knows what else. He felt sick.
Ten, eleven, twelve …
Thirteen .
It was just his luck that Matt was in the room with the unluckiest number on the door. If it was possible, he wouldn’t have put it past the place to put him in room 666 just to fuck with him. Granted, Matt would probably be happy with the room number because of… something to do with Taylor Swift. Richard still had no idea why the man insisted on them having the number on the back of their hands when they went to the damn concert all that time ago, but it had some kind of significance to him. At least that was positive. It didn’t make him feel any better, it wasn’t as though he was going to push open the door and see fucking Taylor Swift standing over the bed, giving Matt a personal performance of… what was the song again? Blank room? Something like that.
The curtain over the little window on the door was closed, stopping him from being able to see in and get a grasp on what kind of state his husband was in before he actually pushed it open and walked into the room to see for himself. There was a little note taped to the door and Richard had to stop himself from just barging through the doors to read it. Even then, his eyes were blurry despite his glasses and reading was a chore, but he still just about managed.
NOTICE :
PATIENT IS UNDER STRICT OBSERVATION AND IS NOT TO BE EXAMINED UNLESS THE ATTENDING DOCTOR IS PRESENT. PATIENT IS NOT TO BE QUESTIONED BY POLICE UNTIL HE IS CLEARED BY DOCTORS. PATIENT IS UNDER 24/7 GUARD BY THE LSPD AND SAN ANDREAS STATE MARSHALS. ANYONE FOUND CROSSING THIS BOUNDARY WITHOUT INFORMING OFFICIALS WILL BE SUBJECT TO PROSECUTION.
With a shake of his head, Richard pushed the door open and damn near collapsed the second that he saw Matt, lying in the bed.
He was pale as anything, despite the fact that Matt enjoyed sitting outside on sunny days so he’d look tanned. His eyes were closed, there was a tube down his throat, oxygen cannula in his nose, wires and needles and God knows what else in his hands and his arms. His breathing was accompanied by the hissing of a ventilator, loud and cruel in every way, a sound that Richard knew all too well from his near endless amount of time spent in various hospitals both in San Andreas and back at home in England. He was covered in bandages, some bloodied and red, some the cleanest white he’d ever seen. A cast was wrapped around his left leg, the outer shell a deep shade of red, despite the fact that Matt’s favourite colour was purple. His heartbeat was normal, though, Richard counted the seconds between the beeps and stared at the monitor as though it was going to explode if he let his gaze drift away.
And… Oh.
Oh .
Richard found himself at Matt’s bedside faster than he could realise where he was going. He gently lifted one of Matt’s hands into his own and found that his husband was ice cold, as though he was dead as opposed to being alive , as he was when they got off the phone with one another that morning. Did Richard say I love you before he hung up? He couldn’t remember. What were the last things that he told Matt before all of this happened to him? What had happened to him?!
One of Matt’s eyes was covered over with a large pad of white gauze, held in place by a bandage that wrapped around his head time and time again. And part of his head had been shaved, and the now bare part of his scalp was now laden with stitches and staples, the wound angry and red and horrible in every sense of the word. His blond hair was dirty, darker than it was the last time that they saw one another, messier than Matt ever let it get. Richard couldn’t bring himself to fix it for him. Instead, he just stared. At the gauze, the staples, the stitches, the dried blood in the strands of his hair. His nose was bruised, and the deep purple spread over both of his cheeks – a thin strip of bandage was over the bridge of it, and there was somehow even more dried blood sitting beneath his nostrils, just barely sitting above his cupid's bow. HIs lips were busted and bruised.
Richard’s thoughts became a car crash. Everything was on fire in his mind, the oil was spilling faster and faster and it was all becoming disastrous. The car was rolling, the truck was flipping, the oil and the petrol were spreading across slick tarmac and the fire was only growing larger and larger with each passing moment. His lungs were filled with thick black smoke that made breathing feel as though it burned. He barely managed to lift a hand to graze over the skin of Matt’s face, the space just above his beard, before he flinched away, terrified to hurt him any further, terrified to touch him in case he crumbled on the spot. He looked at the man he loved as though he was made of porcelain, destined to shatter if so much as a single breath of air hit him the wrong way.
The tears began before he had the chance to stop them. His chest became tight, his vision blurred, his glasses fogged up and seeing became a chore that he didn’t want to complete. Whimpered sounds came from his chest, short sounds of disbelief blended with the struggle to stop himself from outwardly bursting into tears and ending up on the floor as a sobbing mess despite the fact that it seemed as though that was the only way that the day would end. He had to get a chair so his legs didn’t give way beneath him, but he didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to let go of Matt’s hand in case doing so became the reason that Matt died.
“Matt?” Richard choked on the word, and he somehow managed to say it like a prayer at the same time. It was sobbed, choked, desperate. Every ounce of him was in disbelief, because Matt never ended up like this. Matt got stabbed and shot and hit by cars and he was up and about the next day as though nothing had happened– like a damn video game character. He was never put into the ICU, he was never in a cast, never hooked up to a ventilator or a heart monitor unless he was in one of his diabetic checkups. He was never pale, never bruised, never bloody, never battered beyond reasonable belief. There was a reason that Richard joked his husband was like bloody Captain America. “Matt— honey ? Please–”
Matt didn’t answer. Instead, Richard listened to the hiss of the ventilator, the beep of the heart monitor, the sound of the breeze outside of the window.
His line of sight fell to Matt’s hands, and he loosened his hold on the one that he was holding so that he could get a better look. He–
He was missing his wedding ring.
It wasn’t on either of his hands, and his usual chain had been removed from around his neck for one reason or another. That obviously made Richard panic all the more, it sent everything in his system onto high alert, it made the air leave his lungs, it made him feel as though everything in his body was crashing down. As though all of the surgeries that he’d had back in England had been for nothing, as though his lung had been removed and he was in another state of constant breathlessness, as though his eye was missing and his hand was completely gone. How long had it been missing? Had Matt taken it off during the time that they’d been apart from each other? Had… Was Matt falling out of love with him? Oh, God. Not that Richard would have blamed him, given how negligent he’d been with their relationship as of late. For once he was the one doing the ignoring, instead of Matt. He was the one who wasn’t answering texts or calls, he was the one who wasn’t going home, he was the one who was spending more and more time at work than he was with his own husband.
Maybe… Maybe it was the end of their relationship. Maybe that was what the lack of a ring signalled. Maybe Matt had been on his way to ask for a divorce when this happened to him…
The door opened again.
Richard looked up to see Espinoz walking in, a thin smile on his face. His eyes were hidden behind his sunglasses, his sleeves rolled all the way up to his elbows and the top few buttons of his shirt were entirely undone. In his hands, he held a clear evidence bag in his hands, black gloves covering them.
“I, uh… Daisy told me you were in here.” Espinoz started, stepping closer to the bed. “We found a note at the scene. Well– the cops who arrived did, it’s in our hands now. But, I talked it over with Lea and Daisy and we figured you should read it. Kinda… explains the motive behind what happened to him.”
“Just tell me.” Richard said, sniffling. “I don’t want to read it, Espinoz.”
“It’ll be better for the both of us if you read it. If I do it, you’re just gonna associate my voice with the note and that’s gonna fuck the both of us up.” Espinoz shook his head, his lips thinning out even further as he did so. He pulled the chair from the opposite side of the room over to the bed and sat down on the other side of the bed to Richard. “It’s… addressed to you, anyway. I wouldn’t feel right reading it out loud to you.” A pause. “His wedding ring is in evidence. I’ll see if I can get it checked out sooner rather than later, it just needs to go to forensics so we can make sure there’s no DNA on it that shouldn’t be there. Never know these days.”
Richard was handed the bag over Matt, and he stared at it for a few moments before he finally let go of Matt’s hand and practically fell back into the seat that was on his side of the room.
The paper inside of the bag was coated in dirt and blood, the words smudged and joined together in the most disastrous fashion, as though the person behind it had been in a fantastic rush to get it said and done before they left the scene. That was just what Richard was assuming, though. For all he knew, the perpetrator stayed close until the very last goddamn second. He didn’t even know where Matt had been found, or what had happened.
Sniffling again, Richard brought the evidence bag closer to his face and squinted just a little bit to try and read what the note said.
Dear Richard Dark,
I told you not to come after me. I told you to call the Marshals off. I told you people would get hurt if you didn’t.
This is your fault.
You know how to contact me.
The evidence bag fell to the ground with an unfittingly soft sound.
Around him, the world was ending. Planes were falling from the sky, boats were sinking to the bottom of the ocean, cars and trucks and lorries were piling up on the freeways. The sky was falling, the ocean was rising, every part of the ground was cracking beneath the weight of the paper in the plastic bag.
It was his fault.
It was…
It was entirely his fault that Matt was in the hospital. He’d done this. He’d hurt his husband by not acting, by not… Doing something! Everything that had happened thus far was his fault, and– it was right there, in ink on paper. It was his fault.
“We think he was shot in the eye.” Espinoz cleared his throat and leaned forward a little bit. “I’m not a doctor so I can’t… comment on much, or make any diagnosis, but he lost a lot of blood. I have no idea what happened to his leg. Lea told me that they didn’t think he’d make it to the hospital because of the state he was in when he was found. All his PD stuff was missing; his badge, his gun, his tracker… All of it.” He shifted a little bit. “It’s not your fault, Dark. I know what the note says, but you didn’t shoot him, or… do this to him. Nobody could’ve prevented this, okay? Nobody . Not even– I dunno. God.”
Richard stared at Espinoz as though he was insane, but the words didn’t come. It was his fault, that was what the note said. Why wouldn’t he believe something that the person who did this to his husband had written to him? His name was at the top of the goddamned page!
“I’ll… I’ll go get the doctor to come talk to you.” Espinoz stood up ever so slowly, his head dipping in Matt’s direction before he looked back at Richard.
“I want him dead. The person who did this.” Richard said, words still choked and his voice still weak. It felt insane to be saying such a thing. Richard Dark was not the kind of man to wish death upon another. Even the cop who killed his mum– he’d only wanted that man to be put in jail, he never wished death upon him like his dad had. It just wasn’t the type of person that he was. And yet…
There he was. Wishing death on somebody he’d once called a friend.
Espinoz was quiet for a few moments. He slipped his gloved hands into his pockets. “Don’t do anything dumb, okay? It’ll kill him if he loses you.”
“It’ll kill me if I lose him.” Richard took hold of Matt’s hand again, holding so tight, not wanting to let go.
“I know.” Espinoz sighed, the thin smile reappearing on his face. “We’ll get him. One way or another.”
“I’ll ring his neck myself if I get my fucking hands on him.” Richard said. Tears fell down his face at that, and he didn’t have it in himself to move to try and stop them. He didn’t even reach into his pocket for his pack of tissues to try and wipe them away.
“Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.” Espinoz sighed, his shoulders falling slightly. “Please? I really respect you, Dark. Last thing I want is to lose you both.”
Richard looked back at his husband, half dead, half alive. Battered and bloodied and bruised, damaged in a way that was seemingly beyond repair.
God, he wanted to kill the man who did this. But…
“Promise.” He said. And, for the most part, he meant it. Just… If he so happened to come into contact with him during his duties as a Marshal, he wouldn’t stop himself from pulling the trigger more than once. Blame it on some cadet who didn’t know any better. Nobody would believe them over him. He was a Marshal. Why would he lie about something as serious as that? Even then, he wouldn’t shoot with the intent of killing the man. No, no. Just… Putting him in pain. Pain that couldn’t be fixed with medicine or surgery. Pain that would leave him a shell of the man he had apparently become.
“Good.” Espinoz gave him another smile before he started moving back towards the door. “I’ll go get the doctor to talk to you, and I’ll come back to check in on you both once they go. Just… Let us know if you need anything, Richard. Most of us are just a call away. I can get here in a few minutes if you need someone to talk to, or… I dunno, hang out with while you wait for him to wake up.”
Richard didn’t look away from Matt. He held his hand, he rubbed small circles around the plaster that was holding his IV cannula in place. “Thanks, Espinoz.”