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“Oh… my god…”
“What’ve you found now, Rek?”
Branzy was trying to sound so encouraging. Rek appreciated it, in something of a spacey way, because it was sign of how much Branzy loved him, that he was still willing to be nice after the shit-show that had been today.
Rek knew he’d been off his game. Really, Branzy was near a saint for not yelling at him the first time he’d fallen over the pinboard he’d been working on instead of sleeping. Maybe that had been more out of a desire for Clown not to find out that little self-destruction of his, but Rek was sure Branzy could work out a different way to express his rage that wouldn’t attract attention to himself.
He’d fallen over a few more things. He’d been so tired today, and it had been making his chest feel tight and unhappy, as Clown told him to go sit down and not to bother them. That was Clown. Caring, in a way, but he didn’t want Rek around if Rek wasn’t going to be useful. This was an important case they were working on. And Rek had already cost them some time, when he’d utterly failed to slip into and out of the crime scene unnoticed.
That had been a low point. It was why everyone was a little annoyed, even if Branzy was far too nice about it, and Clown far too blunt to have been allowed to say anything head-on to Rek for the past week since he’d eaten shit and set their case back a month.
Rek should be avoiding them, too, out of decency. It had been entirely his own idiocy, that had got him this far, and he should the decent thing and continue to stare in horror at his arm in private, because Branzy shouldn’t have to get up off the floor where he was pouring over their map.
He could get out of here. Hopefully avoid Clown, too, who was training, even as Rek’s head spun as he tried to map the route back. It shouldn’t be that hard to think about. He was just a little worried, a little over-stressed, because he’d had nothing but adrenaline in his blood every day that had gone past with his teammate’s resentment against him hanging in the air.
“Nothing.” Rek pulled his arm down, tucking it behind his back to wipe it gingerly. Then he realised that just moved his problems to his back, and he didn’t want to walk away from Branzy while facing him. “Nothing! Sorry, I just… remembered something that… I had forgotten.”
He was such a smooth liar.
He backed away from Branzy, wary to do so much as move any part of his body above his knees, in case it attracted an ounce more attention. Right now, Branzy’s purple eyes were focused on the map, tracing a route from where his finger was planted to where his other palm had spread across with utmost concentration.
“Uh-huh.”
Branzy’s eyes were nearly at their destination. Rek wasn’t sure he’d cope with disturbing them more. Better to make himself scarce now.
Trying to be quick enough to evade detection, Rek turned and bolted in what, in hindsight, was not his wisest move.
He misjudged the turn, first of all, and collided with the wall, grabbing the previous-idle tendrils of Branzy’s interest as a small yelp escaped him.
Pushing off, he tried again, and swayed vaguely back towards the wall, his legs shaking as he tried to start running again, and promptly gave up, sliding down the wall a little with his hand pressed flat against it, panting like everything inside him would rather be outside.
Just a second. Branzy wouldn’t be looking yet. He’d start running against in a second, he just needed to clear the phlegm in his throat, so he coughed, and his mind only caught up to the idea of covering his mouth a moment after he’d hacked sticky blood onto his front and the floor.
Rek stared. Bile rose, up past the blood, and his insides lurched, because something was wrong.
Next he retched, there was more blood, but he held himself just short of throwing up, even as tears joined the crusade of things that were meant to be kept inside his body trying to exit it.
“R- Rek- oh, holy-“ Branzy sounded like he tripped, even if Rek wasn’t really too worried about that, as his priorities shrunk from getting away unnoticed to merely escaping at all. “Clown!”
No. Nope. Worst option. They were going to be so pissed. Rek had been useless all week, and now- oh, no, there was blood on the wall, and the floor, and his shoes, and his chest contracted, trying to expel air to clear his body, but pushing more blood out past his tongue.
He managed to get a few more steps down the corridor—he wasn’t sure how, wasn’t going to ask—and turned away from Branzy, hiding where he’d smeared the blood he’d coughed into his arm onto the back of his hoodie.
“I-“
He coughed again, and his legs gave out, neatly as Branzy swam into focus in his disturbingly blurry vision. Rek hit the floor, collapsing with another hacking noise, and tried to breathe in, if breathing out was going to come with more blood in the wrong place.
It helped. A little.
“Clown! Oh, shit, Rek, you’re- you’re good, you’re ok, holy what…”
Branzy’s panicked hands pushed his hair out of his face as Rek tried to curl into a ball, his chest contracting like a cramp and his whole body shaking. Hair in his eye was the least of his worries. Everything inside him was collapsing, the sudden movements making it feel like every barrier between his internal organs had broken down.
“Branzy?”
“It- it’s Rek, I- I don’t know, he-“
Clown hadn’t been that far away after all. Had he even been training? Rek had been being so stupid recently, maybe they’d poisoned him, and this was just a nice way of letting him die thinking he was cared about.
Another cough tore itself out of him, and Branzy flinched away, as blood spilled out of his mouth. Rek felt his head spin, hating everything about this, enough he’d rather pass out. Escape wasn’t an option, when his body wouldn’t cooperate.
“B- Blood, Clown! Lot of blood!”
“I can hear you, Branzy.” Clown appeared next, getting down on one knee in Rek’s hazy vision and manhandling him mostly upright against the wall he’d collapsed against. “Oh. Fuck.”
“Oh, it- it’s internal-“
“Lungs. Breathe in, Rek.”
Rek obeyed, his throat working to try to get air past the sticky liquid clogging his throat, his eyes stinging as he wondered exactly how disgusted his teammates were right now. This wasn’t a fight. He had no excuse to be coughing blood onto the floor.
The pain stung, somewhere below the end of his windpipe, and it turned into fresh coughing, which Clown covered with one hand.
“Branzy. Ambulance, please.”
There was so much blood. Rek couldn’t quite breathe in enough to clear the blur from his eyes, but he could feel it. Every exhale he forced out, only to suck in a few shallow gasps in return, pushed more of the stickiness down his chin, where it was sticking at his skin and his clothes.
“Mhm. M- mhm, yep…”
“Go.”
“Going!”
Rek could feel Branzy’s footsteps through the floor, could feel his own heartbeat, sluggish under where Clown’s palm pressed against it. He’d moved too much. That must have been it, he’d been so clumsy recently, he must just have… done something wrong.
“Breathe in again, Rekrap.”
It hurt. Rek would have communicated as much, if his airways weren’t currently drowning in his own blood, and he felt like he might be drowning himself. This was a horrible, horrible way for his teammates to watch him die.
Oh, god, he’d better not be dying.
“I’m sure it hurts. You need to keep breathing.”
“S- sorry-“
Rek coughed up a little more of his own blood, and it was running down his front, and just a minute ago he’d been fine. So much had gone wrong, in such a short amount of time, and he could swear he could hear sirens already, or maybe that was just the warning bell inside his own head to signal his imminent demise.
“You aren’t a problem, Parker.”
But he clearly was. He fell apart so easily, when Branzy knew better than to do dangerously stupid things, and Clown knew better than to do them badly. Rek felt like his insides were disintegrating, and all he’d done was fall over.
“This... does explain the… clumsiness.” Clown’s voice got lower, and Rek couldn’t quite see him, through his own tears, but there was a sense of withdrawn irritation. “You could have said you’d gotten injured.”
He hadn’t known. Injured... on the crime scene, presumably. But that had just been his pride, mostly, or that had all he’d been able to think about, and…
And Rek should have been more careful.
“Head up.” Clown forced him back upright, as Rek began to feel his body giving out, his voice quiet and clipped. “Do not fall asleep. Do not think you’re going to die. Just a little internal bleeding, Parker, you’ve survived worse.”
Had he? Clown certainly had. Clown knew better than to be this stupid.
“Not stupid.” Clown’s hand was supporting his head, now, keeping him just about upright enough to allow the faintest clear passage through his airways. “Not stupid, Parker, what you are right now is alive, and you’re going to stay like that. Who blames who is for later.”
That was definitely sirens. Rek’s awareness was hazy, shifting back and forth, and there was stickiness, now, down his front, like what had been in his throat, and it was the same stuff, he felt like he was being turned inside out and the only thing inside him was a mess.
“Branzy?”
“Getting it!”