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Title: Quality of Life
Series: Life
Fandoms: Castle
Rating: NC-17
Genre: Horror, Angst, Romance (and Hurt/Comfort...I guess?)
Warnings: Jesus, where do I even begin with this fic? Slash, AU, genre!crack, unbetad (all par, for me). OCs. Dark-ish. Horror elements that may squick some people. Themes allegorical of disability, prejudice, terminal illness, and mental illness.
Also, porn lives here when it very probably shouldn't given the subject matter. It's probably more disturbing than it is hot... Some vore in there. Kinda. A little bit. Okay, a lot. If you know what that is good for you, if not I direct you back to the warnings about horror and squick. Very mild BDSM (totally on accident, but it happened).
Characters/Pairings: Javier Esposito/Kevin Ryan, Kevin/Jenny, Richard Castle, Kate Beckett.
Wordcount: 14,592
Summary: He didn't always sleep, but that night he did. He even managed to dream. He dreamt sick, guilty dreams about his partner's horrified face, and how Jenny's long blonde hair would be the most perfect handhold to keep her still as he tore the flesh from her pretty cheek.
Details: There's...really no excusing this fic. I really shouldn't be allowed to write fanfiction when this is what I do with it. I'm aware I have issues. This fic displays most of them. So, here's a screwed up little AU fic for you...
This time, though, it was his partner's voice. He couldn't have ignored it if he'd wanted to.
"Wait, Jenny, what do you mean we're not going to move back the wedding?" Kevin sounded genuinely confused, though his voice was a little wary, as though he suspected an answer he was hoping not to hear.
"I mean exactly what those words mean, Kevin," Jenny answered, her tone sharp, "Don't argue with me."
"But...we can't." Kevin argued firmly. "Javier's not going to be able to leave this place for at least a month. He's the best man, Jenn, we can't do it without him."
Javier heard their footsteps come to a halt. In the brief silence he could imagine how the tension between them might be rendered.
"Kevin..." She spoke cautiously, but she couldn't keep an faint, offended note from creeping into her tone. "He's not coming to the wedding."
"What?" Kevin sounded stunned. "Why?"
"You know why, Kevin. I can't—" He couldn't hear the breath she took to compose herself, but from the fear threaded into her voice, he could imagine it. "Please. Please don't make me."
When Kevin said nothing, she spoke up again.
"You come to visit him. Isn't that enough?"
"Enough? How could that be enough?" Javier could hear the edge of anger creeping into his partner's voice. "He's my best friend, Jenny. We can't just shut him out because of this."
"No, he's not." Jenny's voice was softer, full of sympathy. Javier couldn't help but feel a little sick from it. "Kevin, I know you feel bad for him, for what he's going through, but you have to know that's not him in there anymore."
Javier felt a twist in his gut. Not for the first time since this messed up ordeal began, he found himself wishing he had gambled harder. Even if the odds had been stacked firmly against him, death might have been preferable to this...
---
The official scientific term for the disease is "idiopathic haemolytic necrosis with complex cardiovascular atrophy", commonly abbreviated as IHN. The root cause of the disease is still unknown, all attempts to detect a contagion or contaminant to explain its spread have left scientists baffled. The five decades since the first outbreaks in the United States and Central America have seen the development of several theories. Most of the medical community maintains the culprit is likely to be an as yet unidentified pathogen or parasite, harbored in the blood of those affected. Unable to detect a method of transmission, they can only observe it by effect.
The infection spreads through the body very rapidly, altering the host in ways experts speculate help maximize its spread. These alterations occur throughout the body, though the tissues most chiefly altered are, by all appearances, the blood, bone marrow, and nerve tissues. The former are quickly destroyed by the disease, leaving the victim anemic and unable to replace lost blood cells. Those infected rarely live more than a week before suffering heart-failure. The effects of the disease on the nervous system are little understood, but it is believed by many to be the key which will some day reveal the means by which the majority of victims somehow manage to continue living for an indefinite period after their hearts have stopped.
The condition is transmissible only in the first month to two months after infection. As post-vital patients display an impressive resistance to other diseases, it is suspected that after this initial "onset-stage" the body becomes a hostile environment to the IHN contagion itself. Others theorize it merely enters a state of dormancy. Toward the end of this period the aberrant behaviors which manifest early in the onset-stage of the disease commonly decrease. After this time has passed, patients normally stabilize, though they are left irreversibly changed, caught in a state somewhere between "dead" and "alive" as the words were historically defined.
Many argue that science has failed to answer too many questions about the condition, however, and there are still those who refuse to believe that its unknown cause is anything natural...
(From http://www.ihnfacts.org/faqs/introduction.html)
---
During the initial outbreak the disease failed to respond to the antibiotics and antiviral medications available at the time. Fortunately, a few varieties of silver-based antiseptics normally used to treat burns proved to be surprisingly effective. The suggested course for suspected IHN exposure was quickly developed, beginning with the application of silver sulfadizine at the site of the wound, followed by a dose of colloidal silver administered through a nebulizer as a prophylactic precaution. Blood tests over the following two days were the only way to detect the swiftly dropping cell count that is the earliest measurable sign of the disease. Patients believed to have been infected with IHN were then prescribed a course of oral or inhaled colloidal silver that would continue to be taken for several months.
If caught within the first four days of infection, this treatment proved to be about 96% effective.
This treatment is now considered routine, and is often taken voluntarily by patients showing no signs of a diminishing blood count. In most of the developed world, the number of IHN cases have dropped significantly over the past twenty years. Nowadays, most hospitals are also equipped to house onset-stage IHN patients for whom treatment has proved ineffective or who failed to seek treatment in time. As a result, the rates of exposure have dropped as well. Though there are individuals subject to a heightened risk of exposure, IHN is no longer a threat the average person need worry about.
(From "A 2010 report on rates of IHN exposure and infection in North America")
---
Javier had been exposed to IHN five times over the course of his career: three times when he was still a beat cop, and twice after he made detective. Ask anyone in the NYPD and they'd tell you that wasn't even that many. Especially the older officers who had served in the '70s and '80s when rates of exposure had been much higher. Some of them you could pick out of a crowd. Back then, the silver-content of the treatments was often unregulated, and repeated or preventative administration of anti-IHN treatments had often resulted in argyria. Predictably, many jokingly called them "the thin bluer line", a nickname some of them bore with pride.
The first time, Javier had been scared out of his mind. The second time he'd still been nervous. By the third, however, it hadn't felt like a big deal—he had been shot on duty only months before, and by comparison sitting around puffing mist through a tube wasn't even close to being that scary.
He hadn't worried about it that fifth time, either. After he and Ryan had finished tangling with their suspect, he'd let the paramedics apply the SSD dressing to the bite on his arm. He'd declined their offer to take him to the hospital, however, opting to drive himself after they got their scumbag booked. The guy had broken the skin, sure, and it was already starting to bruise, but it wasn't like he'd need stitches. He knew he was going to wind up waiting in the ER for hours, first to be processed and then to have the treatment set up, and then probably spend the rest of another hour breathing through a hose. Everything was fine. Everything was cool. He had time. The treatment could wait, but post-vital perps always meant more paperwork and he'd rather have that done sooner than later.
As far as that scenario went, he hadn't been wrong. Everything had been fine until the treatment began.
When Javier had first woken up in the hospital bed, he hadn't remembered how he'd gotten there. The doctors had needed to remind him of the case, of his injury and the suspected exposure he had come to have treated. That was when the nervousness had begun to return. They told him that he'd suffered severe respiratory distress in response to the nebulizer treatment. After they'd gotten him stabilized, a simple skin test had diagnosed the cause: a severe, atypical allergy to silver, probably acquired in response to past treatments. The situation was impressively rare, but not unheard of. They had informed him that he had been unconscious for two days, and that blood tests were beginning to show a definite decrease in his red cell count.
Now, they were nearing the end of the window in which the treatments would still be effective, and he had to make a choice.
If they made a second attempt to administer the treatment, there was a high probability he would suffer respiratory failure. And that was just the first dose. The usual course for IHN treatment suggested daily doses for at least four months. While there was a possibility that antihistamines or immune-suppressive medications might improve his chances, due to the severity of his reaction and risk of secondary infection they estimated his odds of survival at less than 40%. Even if he beat those odds, the damage to his lungs would almost surely put an end to his career. Whereas, if they allowed the infection to proceed, his chances were closer to 80% that he would survive.
If you wanted to call it that.
He'd called his mother that night. Explaining the situation had been difficult, but it had to be done—though he kept the choice to himself, afraid she might ask him to change his mind. They'd wound up talking for over an hour. As she promised to break the news to his sister and her husband, it had sounded like she was already mourning him. The conversation with his sister when she called a little later had followed the same basic formula.
Knowing what was going to happen to him, the last thing Javier had expected was that anyone would want to come see him. So he was understandably surprised when, the following morning, his first visitor wasn't his mother or his sister, but his partner Kevin Ryan. When the nurse led him in, Javier had been thrown by how distressed his partner had looked. Not that he'd expected proud stoicism, not from Ryan, but it had surprised him to see the pain lying so close to the surface. Kevin had looked uncomfortable standing there, and Javier could tell he wasn't sure whether he should say something. Though, really, what was there that could be said?
"So yeah," Javier had finally said, helping him out. He had muted the TV he hadn't really been watching, but didn't look at his partner as he spoke. "I'm dying. Sucks."
"Hey, there's still a chance, though," Kevin had said, his tone almost making a question. Looking up, Javier had seen his eyes ridiculously hopeful.
"Yeah." He'd answered, looking away.
A chance at what, though, he hadn't wanted to think about.
Kevin had dragged a chair from beside the wall to the side of his bed.
"I think there's a game on right now." Kevin had told him, casually.
Javier had cast an uncertain glance at his partner. Kevin hadn't seemed to notice. Taking the hint, he had changed the channel. Apart from a few idle comments about the game, there hadn't been any conversation after that. Javier remembered thinking maybe that was for the best. Still, while it had been impossible to keep his mind on the scores or the plays, for a few hours he hadn't felt the fear as sharply.
---
In the United States and Canada, IHN survivors no longer lack for any rights under the law, though there are groups still challenging the progress that has been made. In particular, there has always been a vocal contingent who argue that when the heart stops, life stops. Fortunately in the US, since the early '70s, a person cannot be declared dead while there is still measurable brain activity. As post-vital brain activity is the only discernible distinction between a IHN survivor and an IHN fatality, by definition the word "alive" applies to them in a strictly legal sense. There is nothing preventing them from owning property, holding a job, or voting, so long as they are ruled mentally competent.
However, while theoretically the standards for competence are more or less the same standards applied to anyone else, post-onset evaluations commonly stress certain points that are considered to be of particular concern...
(From Dead Voices: IHN and the Civil Rights Movement, by Mark R. Rowland; 1999)
---
There were moments when he thought he'd made the wrong decision. Most of them, if he was completely honest.
Physically, the fever had been the worst part, burning so hot and intense he'd wondered if he might die anyway, when he wasn't shivering so hard he thought his bones would break. It had lasted for three days, the last two of which were spent only half-lucid. After that had cooled off, it had been easier to endure. By the fourth day, he had experienced all the wonderful flu-like flavors—headaches, joint aches, nausea—but by the sixth day, even that had been starting to fall away. More than anything, after that, he had just felt tired. And even as he had continued to grow weaker, the doctors had assured him that the worst had passed.
Physically. The shit going on in his head had been a whole other mess entirely.
They had wanted him to pay close attention to any emotional changes. Anger, they had said, was normal under the circumstances, but that he should report any other "unusual or alarming thoughts". Javier wasn't stupid, he knew what they were talking about. Though, if asked, he would have been hard pressed to decide whether he would have preferred they just say it outright. And when they had explained, as soon as the fever had broken, that the restraints were simply hospital policy, he had tried not to be a dick about it. He understood the need, but that didn't make it any less humiliating.
Or the reasons any less terrifying.
---
Blood is the preferred vector for the hypothetical pathogen behind IHN. All recorded cases follow some form of blood-to-blood contact, normally through a bite. One of the earliest onset-stage behaviors to manifest is usually some variety of self-injury, and in the vast majority of cases this takes the form of cheilophagia: compulsive biting of the lips and tongue. Many scientists believe that the wounds caused by these behaviors increase the chances of spreading the infection.
Normally within a day, this development is followed by the more extreme behaviors for which IHN is notorious.
(From http://www.ihnfacts.org/faqs/onset.html)
---
Kevin had visited him several times over the following week, though a few of those visits had been eaten up by the delirium of his fever. And afterward Ryan had kicked up more of a fuss about the restraints than he had. It had taken one nurse's threat to ban him from the floor to make Kevin back down. Javier had a feeling his partner was in denial that they were necessary. He understood that. He'd had plenty of time for denial himself. Because it was impossible to imagine that he could ever... That he would ever be... Sometimes it was difficult to even think it, and part of him had been convinced it just wouldn't happen. Not to him.
But on day five it had, and there were no words to describe the sick horror he'd felt at himself.
He had been experiencing the minor behavioral signs of onset-stage ever since he'd broken from his fever two days earlier. So far he had managed to catch himself each time, lip sucked in between teeth that worried it gently. So far, he had managed to stop himself short of breaking the skin. It was getting harder to do. There was something almost soothing about it, the scrape of flesh against his teeth, and sometimes he'd find himself running the tip of his tongue along the ridges of his molars with enough pressure that it hurt. The nurse had offered a mouth-guard if he thought he needed it, but with his arms tied he would have had to have the nurse put it in, and he wasn't about to gag himself if he didn't have to.
It was late afternoon. Ryan had just left when the nurse returned to do her hourly check. Part of that was checking his restraints. Her fingertips had felt white-hot against his skin, and he was unable to hold in a gasp. He had known that his body temperature had been dropping gradually ever since the fever broke; it was currently hovering around 88.3. Still, he had found himself staring at her fingers, wondering how they could possibly hold that kind of heat. His eyes had roamed, almost on their own. The nurse was very fair skinned—fair enough that the veins stood out a faint blue through the skin of her wrists, and Javier had found his gaze climbing upward, following until they disappeared beneath the surface of the soft-looking skin below the elbow.
Blood mixed with saliva in his mouth before Javier even realized his incisors had met through his lower lip.
As the pain registered itself, Javier had recoiled violently from his thoughts, dragging his eyes away. He'd had to take deep, slow breaths to push down the nausea that threatened to overcome him. The nurse had noticed his distress and begun asking him something, but the words had disappeared behind the ringing in his ears. Right then he had wanted more than anything to be alone. He couldn't stand the thought of her looking at him—of having anyone look at him—but his mind was too messed up just then to even think of trying to speak. Eyes squeezed shut, he had turned away as far as he could.
Though he never did manage to ask her to leave, she had eventually gotten the message, leaving the room as his panicked breathing dissolved into ragged, uncontrollable sobs.
After that, he had asked the nurses to let Ryan know that he didn't want his visits anymore. Either they'd failed to deliver it, or his partner was determined to be difficult, because the next morning he'd come anyway. If he had been told, and if Kevin suspected the reason behind the message, he never showed it. He never asked Javier about his lip, either. He had just come in, wearing that same stupid, hateful look of hope on his face. He'd talked about things at the station, and how Castle was driving Beckett up the wall, and that everyone at the 12th was praying for him.
Javier had never felt less deserving of prayer in his life, but somehow it just hadn't been in him to ask Kevin to leave, not once he was there. So Javier had listened, though he hadn't had much to say. In fact, beyond a few short responses he hadn't said anything. Not about the doctor's projections and how he really didn't have a lot of time left. Not about the thin, sharp pains he'd begun feeling in his chest. And definitely not about the twisted thoughts that had begun to haunt his mind... Like what it would feel like to draw his partner's tie loose, open the collar of his shirt and bury his teeth in the pale flesh of his throat.
He had ground his teeth against those words, those thoughts, until his jaw ached. Ground them until all that was left was the optimistic smile that he knew Kevin needed to see.
His mother had visited more than once during the beginning of his illness, but she only came once after he had pulled through the fever. That last visit had been short and difficult, the presence of the straps anchoring his arms to the bed a source of pain left unacknowledged between them. Having her see him like that—tied down like a dangerous animal—had been painful, but it was nothing next to the thought of what it implied. The idea of her thinking of him in the context of all the things she must have heard... He didn't know how to handle that.
When the onset behaviors started, he had called her, asking her not to come. He'd heard hesitation over the line, and for a moment he thought she might argue. If she had, he didn't think he would have had the strength to beg. Her voice had been thick when she finally agreed, and he could tell she was crying. It had gutted him, and for a few seconds he had wanted to change his mind. He couldn't, though, he just couldn't, not after Ryan's visit. The nurse had been bad enough, but that— No. He couldn't see his family now. If he did, and he started thinking those things about them...
He knew he would never be able to handle that.
---
Javier's heart gave out on the eighth day.
Or possibly the night of the seventh day, it was difficult to tell. If asked, most people would say they'd prefer to die in their sleep. If given a second chance, Javier thought he would have asked for almost anything else, because when it happened he had almost failed to noticed. Not that he hadn't felt something was wrong, he simply hadn't known what it was. He hated to think of how long he might have gone on not knowing if he hadn't realized that the the EKG had been turned off while he slept. Everything was almost as it had been yesterday, the other devices doing the jobs they were meant to, only now one humming machine was silent, still. Tears had stung his eyes once he'd processed what that meant.
Post-vital, the word rang uneasily in his mind. Painfully, it was echoed by the older, crueler term. Undead.
It was difficult getting used to the stillness inside—to accept the idea that what had once made him alive was now just a useless chunk of meat in his chest. It felt so final, so definite. As though the last thread anchoring him to his old life had suddenly been severed.
Well. Every thread but one.
When Kevin arrived it hadn't taken him long to make the same deduction about the EKG that Javier had. He never mentioned it, but Javier had seen the exact moment, Kevin's sudden blink of surprise. Their conversation had been sparse that day, their interactions awkward, and the visit had ended much sooner than the others before it.
That afternoon, as he'd watched his partner leave, Javier though he could imagine what dying might have felt like.
---
He hadn't been sure Kevin would return after that. Two days later, however, Ryan had shown up, only to stop in the hallway to argue with his fiance.
"You're out of line, Jenn," Kevin was saying now, voice tight with unvoiced anger. "That was so out of line. I don't even—"
"Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about, Kevin Ryan." Jenny told him, hotly, "Don't pretend you haven't been reading everything you could find on this...disease ever since it started. You know what it does to them. You know what it's doing to him. To his head. How can you know that and still believe that thing in there is Javier?"
Knowing Ryan as he did, he had suspected that his partner knew more about what was happening than he let on. Javier didn't think her question would have stung him anywhere near as much if he hadn't occasionally wondered the same thing himself. Kevin didn't answer that question for either one of them, however, choosing instead to ask one of his own.
"And if it was me, Jenny?" He asked her, voice dropping low. "What if this had happened to me, would you have just dumped my ass and moved on?"
There was a short silence before Kevin pushed on.
"You know what, don't answer that. Here. Take the keys. I'll grab a taxi, later, I just— I can't even look at you right now."
After a moment, Javier heard her footsteps disappearing down the hall. Ryan loitered in the hallway, and for a minute Javier didn't know if he was hesitating or just letting himself cool off. Apparently it was the latter, because soon the footsteps continued their approach. When Kevin entered he wore the same smile he had every time before, though Javier thought it seemed a little less desperate than it used to. Despite the awkwardness of his last visit, that make a twisted kind of sense. Paradoxically, once Javier's heart had stopped he was out of the woods—at least as far as "survival" was concerned.
Now it was just a matter of getting through the next two months of hospitalization with his mind intact.
---
After the initial drop in cell count the first noticeable symptom of IHN is hyperpyrexia, an extremely high fever that has been recorded reaching temperatures as high as 109 degrees. Studies indicate that patients whose fevers are allowed to progress untreated display higher rates of survival than those whose fever's are reduced. They also tend to have a higher rate of successful recovery from onset behaviors and better overall quality of life. This seems to support the belief that the febrile phase of the illness is tied to whatever changes occur in the brain that allow post-vital life to continue.
It is after this phase of the disease ends that the characteristic symptoms and behaviors first begin to develop. These can vary greatly from individual to individual, though many appear to be universal. Self-harm, while not always presented, is still common enough to bear mention, as when it does manifest is it almost always the first sign to appear. Intrusive violent thoughts and increased aggression are always seen, and their inevitable, rapid escalation require measures be taken to prevent the patient from harming themselves or others. Patients who are post-vital all display a measurable increase in the acuity of all five senses, as well as sharing similar changes in regards to appetite. Many also report a decreased desire or need for sleep.
Delirium, paranoia, mania, delusions, and hallucinations have all been observed in patients entering the difficult middle phase of onset-stage IHN. Individuals who are restrained may be more easily enraged than those who are simply kept isolated from others, but while many advocates argue that restraint is cruel, most doctors, nurses, and even many patients maintain its necessity during both onset and recovery.
Invariably all of these behaviors, both common and idiosyncratic, share the same central focus in every recorded instance of the disease: the development in effected individuals of an abnormal impulse mimicking the prey drive observed naturally in most predators. Understandably, in a survey of IHN survivors, 97% considered the at times overwhelming urge to attack and devour those around them the single most distressing element of their condition.
(From An Introduction to Post-Vital Medicine, 2009 edition)
---
Though Ryan never mentioned the fight with Jenny it became sort of a mental landmark for Javier, because things intensified swiftly after that.
More than once he tried to convince Kevin to stop coming, but his partner wouldn't hear it, even after Javier told him that he'd asked his family not to visit either. Perhaps predictably, that revelation had only made him more stubborn. He always came, always talked about what Javier was missing out there—what was waiting for him, once he got out—even if half the time he knew Javier wasn't listening. He wasn't ungrateful, but as the second week slid past, the thoughts became harder and harder to push away. Often Javier lost track of their conversations completely, forced to shut his eyes and try his best to drown out the images plaguing him. Gradually, the thoughts began to evolve into impulses, and Javier spent most of their time together with fists clenched so tightly his knuckles ached for hours after Kevin had left. When his control was the thinnest, Javier often wound up yelling at him. Sometimes it was intentional; if he was going to lose it he preferred to have his best friend leave pissed at him than see him at his worst.
Worst. Looking back, Javier could almost laugh that he'd ever thought those moments the lowest he could possibly sink.
By the middle of the third week, Javier's forearms were raw where the restraints chafed against his skin. It had long since passed the point where the impulses could be ignored. Whenever someone entered the room, now, there was this fight or flight moment that demanded reaction. So far that reaction was to try and escape them, despite the impossibility the restraints presented. Normally the nurses and doctors simply went about their routine, despite his useless struggles and the embarrassing, terrified sounds he made. When it was Kevin, sometimes he could still manage to calm down for a few moments, though often Javier wasted them apologizing for himself.
Eventually it became difficult for him to keep track of how much time was passing. Sometimes he thought that was a blessing.
He thought it was about that same time that he first lost his grip on everything he'd been holding onto. He remembered the sharp click his teeth had made closing on empty air far more vividly than the act itself, and it took him a few seconds to process that he'd tried to take a bite out of the nurse who was tending the seeping wounds on his lips. The idea that he'd snapped at the man like an injured dog produced a bubble of sick laughter before he subsided for a while into a shaken depression.
It was toward the end of his first month, maybe, that things started getting fuzzy around the edges.
He had good days, days when he was almost half-sane. On one of these, he'd asked one of the nurses for the date. Realizing that the day of Ryan's wedding had passed, Javier had felt something bitter twist inside him. On Kevin's next visit—for while they'd grown shorter as Javier lost more of himself, the man had never ceased coming entirely—Javier had offered caustic congratulations to his ex-partner. He'd been almost proud to do so, as it was possibly the tidiest thought process he'd managed to string together in days. He'd been unable to take much satisfaction in Kevin's stricken look, however. And, as the guilt he felt was quickly consumed by his ever present rage, he'd bitten in on the middle of Kevin's protest.
"Shut up, Kev," Javier had growled out to the man who had been his best friend, "Shut the fuck up and leave. If I see you again I swear to God I'll open your throat with my teeth."
He didn't always sleep, but that night he did. He even managed to dream. He dreamt sick, guilty dreams about his partner's horrified face, and how Jenny's long blonde hair would be the most perfect handhold to keep her still as he tore the flesh from her pretty cheek.
---
Most of the next month was a blur of sick hunger and bloody thoughts. Kevin's face, that final expression of hurt and shock, haunted him through most of it.
The waking dreams were an atypical development in his case. If he'd been anywhere near lucid by then, he probably would have thought that was unfair. As it was his real life, delusions, and dreams—waking or otherwise—were all so interchangeably horrific it almost failed to matter. Almost. Most of the time he could tell he'd been dreaming once it was over, but often he couldn't. Not right away. They were incredibly intense, and often preyed on his current circumstances, further loosening his grasp of reality. More than once, he dreamed he'd managed to slip his restraints. With the doctors or nurses there was always their eventual reappearance to assure him that the events were only dreams. Sometimes, though, in the dreams, Kevin was there. In one incredibly brutal scenario, the memory of his partner's blood on his hands and in his throat had been so vivid that for the better part of a day Javier had genuinely believed he'd killed him.
It had taken several hours for the nurses to convince him otherwise, offering the bitter reassurance that Ryan hadn't been in to see him in almost a week.
Series: Life
Fandoms: Castle
Rating: NC-17
Genre: Horror, Angst, Romance (and Hurt/Comfort...I guess?)
Warnings: Jesus, where do I even begin with this fic? Slash, AU, genre!crack, unbetad (all par, for me). OCs. Dark-ish. Horror elements that may squick some people. Themes allegorical of disability, prejudice, terminal illness, and mental illness.
Also, porn lives here when it very probably shouldn't given the subject matter. It's probably more disturbing than it is hot... Some vore in there. Kinda. A little bit. Okay, a lot. If you know what that is good for you, if not I direct you back to the warnings about horror and squick. Very mild BDSM (totally on accident, but it happened).
Characters/Pairings: Javier Esposito/Kevin Ryan, Kevin/Jenny, Richard Castle, Kate Beckett.
Wordcount: 14,592
Summary: He didn't always sleep, but that night he did. He even managed to dream. He dreamt sick, guilty dreams about his partner's horrified face, and how Jenny's long blonde hair would be the most perfect handhold to keep her still as he tore the flesh from her pretty cheek.
Details: There's...really no excusing this fic. I really shouldn't be allowed to write fanfiction when this is what I do with it. I'm aware I have issues. This fic displays most of them. So, here's a screwed up little AU fic for you...
Part One / Part Two
The voices in the hall were barely audible. Javier knew he shouldn't have been able to hear them at all. Not through a door, or over the sounds of the machines humming and clicking nearby. He was only post-vital three days and already he had an expanding awareness of the building around him, mapped out by the footsteps of nurses and security moving through the hospital. He had still been unconscious when they'd moved him to this wing, and he hadn't left the room since he'd first awoken. Still, he thought he could find the elevator just fine if he had to. He hated the reminder of what was happening to him, the slow sharpening of his senses, like the dials were being turned up. Most of the time he tried to ignore it, let the voices and footsteps fade into the background behind the whirring machinery and buzzing fluorescence.This time, though, it was his partner's voice. He couldn't have ignored it if he'd wanted to.
"Wait, Jenny, what do you mean we're not going to move back the wedding?" Kevin sounded genuinely confused, though his voice was a little wary, as though he suspected an answer he was hoping not to hear.
"I mean exactly what those words mean, Kevin," Jenny answered, her tone sharp, "Don't argue with me."
"But...we can't." Kevin argued firmly. "Javier's not going to be able to leave this place for at least a month. He's the best man, Jenn, we can't do it without him."
Javier heard their footsteps come to a halt. In the brief silence he could imagine how the tension between them might be rendered.
"Kevin..." She spoke cautiously, but she couldn't keep an faint, offended note from creeping into her tone. "He's not coming to the wedding."
"What?" Kevin sounded stunned. "Why?"
"You know why, Kevin. I can't—" He couldn't hear the breath she took to compose herself, but from the fear threaded into her voice, he could imagine it. "Please. Please don't make me."
When Kevin said nothing, she spoke up again.
"You come to visit him. Isn't that enough?"
"Enough? How could that be enough?" Javier could hear the edge of anger creeping into his partner's voice. "He's my best friend, Jenny. We can't just shut him out because of this."
"No, he's not." Jenny's voice was softer, full of sympathy. Javier couldn't help but feel a little sick from it. "Kevin, I know you feel bad for him, for what he's going through, but you have to know that's not him in there anymore."
Javier felt a twist in his gut. Not for the first time since this messed up ordeal began, he found himself wishing he had gambled harder. Even if the odds had been stacked firmly against him, death might have been preferable to this...
---
The official scientific term for the disease is "idiopathic haemolytic necrosis with complex cardiovascular atrophy", commonly abbreviated as IHN. The root cause of the disease is still unknown, all attempts to detect a contagion or contaminant to explain its spread have left scientists baffled. The five decades since the first outbreaks in the United States and Central America have seen the development of several theories. Most of the medical community maintains the culprit is likely to be an as yet unidentified pathogen or parasite, harbored in the blood of those affected. Unable to detect a method of transmission, they can only observe it by effect.
The infection spreads through the body very rapidly, altering the host in ways experts speculate help maximize its spread. These alterations occur throughout the body, though the tissues most chiefly altered are, by all appearances, the blood, bone marrow, and nerve tissues. The former are quickly destroyed by the disease, leaving the victim anemic and unable to replace lost blood cells. Those infected rarely live more than a week before suffering heart-failure. The effects of the disease on the nervous system are little understood, but it is believed by many to be the key which will some day reveal the means by which the majority of victims somehow manage to continue living for an indefinite period after their hearts have stopped.
The condition is transmissible only in the first month to two months after infection. As post-vital patients display an impressive resistance to other diseases, it is suspected that after this initial "onset-stage" the body becomes a hostile environment to the IHN contagion itself. Others theorize it merely enters a state of dormancy. Toward the end of this period the aberrant behaviors which manifest early in the onset-stage of the disease commonly decrease. After this time has passed, patients normally stabilize, though they are left irreversibly changed, caught in a state somewhere between "dead" and "alive" as the words were historically defined.
Many argue that science has failed to answer too many questions about the condition, however, and there are still those who refuse to believe that its unknown cause is anything natural...
(From http://www.ihnfacts.org/faqs/introduction.html)
---
During the initial outbreak the disease failed to respond to the antibiotics and antiviral medications available at the time. Fortunately, a few varieties of silver-based antiseptics normally used to treat burns proved to be surprisingly effective. The suggested course for suspected IHN exposure was quickly developed, beginning with the application of silver sulfadizine at the site of the wound, followed by a dose of colloidal silver administered through a nebulizer as a prophylactic precaution. Blood tests over the following two days were the only way to detect the swiftly dropping cell count that is the earliest measurable sign of the disease. Patients believed to have been infected with IHN were then prescribed a course of oral or inhaled colloidal silver that would continue to be taken for several months.
If caught within the first four days of infection, this treatment proved to be about 96% effective.
This treatment is now considered routine, and is often taken voluntarily by patients showing no signs of a diminishing blood count. In most of the developed world, the number of IHN cases have dropped significantly over the past twenty years. Nowadays, most hospitals are also equipped to house onset-stage IHN patients for whom treatment has proved ineffective or who failed to seek treatment in time. As a result, the rates of exposure have dropped as well. Though there are individuals subject to a heightened risk of exposure, IHN is no longer a threat the average person need worry about.
(From "A 2010 report on rates of IHN exposure and infection in North America")
---
Javier had been exposed to IHN five times over the course of his career: three times when he was still a beat cop, and twice after he made detective. Ask anyone in the NYPD and they'd tell you that wasn't even that many. Especially the older officers who had served in the '70s and '80s when rates of exposure had been much higher. Some of them you could pick out of a crowd. Back then, the silver-content of the treatments was often unregulated, and repeated or preventative administration of anti-IHN treatments had often resulted in argyria. Predictably, many jokingly called them "the thin bluer line", a nickname some of them bore with pride.
The first time, Javier had been scared out of his mind. The second time he'd still been nervous. By the third, however, it hadn't felt like a big deal—he had been shot on duty only months before, and by comparison sitting around puffing mist through a tube wasn't even close to being that scary.
He hadn't worried about it that fifth time, either. After he and Ryan had finished tangling with their suspect, he'd let the paramedics apply the SSD dressing to the bite on his arm. He'd declined their offer to take him to the hospital, however, opting to drive himself after they got their scumbag booked. The guy had broken the skin, sure, and it was already starting to bruise, but it wasn't like he'd need stitches. He knew he was going to wind up waiting in the ER for hours, first to be processed and then to have the treatment set up, and then probably spend the rest of another hour breathing through a hose. Everything was fine. Everything was cool. He had time. The treatment could wait, but post-vital perps always meant more paperwork and he'd rather have that done sooner than later.
As far as that scenario went, he hadn't been wrong. Everything had been fine until the treatment began.
When Javier had first woken up in the hospital bed, he hadn't remembered how he'd gotten there. The doctors had needed to remind him of the case, of his injury and the suspected exposure he had come to have treated. That was when the nervousness had begun to return. They told him that he'd suffered severe respiratory distress in response to the nebulizer treatment. After they'd gotten him stabilized, a simple skin test had diagnosed the cause: a severe, atypical allergy to silver, probably acquired in response to past treatments. The situation was impressively rare, but not unheard of. They had informed him that he had been unconscious for two days, and that blood tests were beginning to show a definite decrease in his red cell count.
Now, they were nearing the end of the window in which the treatments would still be effective, and he had to make a choice.
If they made a second attempt to administer the treatment, there was a high probability he would suffer respiratory failure. And that was just the first dose. The usual course for IHN treatment suggested daily doses for at least four months. While there was a possibility that antihistamines or immune-suppressive medications might improve his chances, due to the severity of his reaction and risk of secondary infection they estimated his odds of survival at less than 40%. Even if he beat those odds, the damage to his lungs would almost surely put an end to his career. Whereas, if they allowed the infection to proceed, his chances were closer to 80% that he would survive.
If you wanted to call it that.
He'd called his mother that night. Explaining the situation had been difficult, but it had to be done—though he kept the choice to himself, afraid she might ask him to change his mind. They'd wound up talking for over an hour. As she promised to break the news to his sister and her husband, it had sounded like she was already mourning him. The conversation with his sister when she called a little later had followed the same basic formula.
Knowing what was going to happen to him, the last thing Javier had expected was that anyone would want to come see him. So he was understandably surprised when, the following morning, his first visitor wasn't his mother or his sister, but his partner Kevin Ryan. When the nurse led him in, Javier had been thrown by how distressed his partner had looked. Not that he'd expected proud stoicism, not from Ryan, but it had surprised him to see the pain lying so close to the surface. Kevin had looked uncomfortable standing there, and Javier could tell he wasn't sure whether he should say something. Though, really, what was there that could be said?
"So yeah," Javier had finally said, helping him out. He had muted the TV he hadn't really been watching, but didn't look at his partner as he spoke. "I'm dying. Sucks."
"Hey, there's still a chance, though," Kevin had said, his tone almost making a question. Looking up, Javier had seen his eyes ridiculously hopeful.
"Yeah." He'd answered, looking away.
A chance at what, though, he hadn't wanted to think about.
Kevin had dragged a chair from beside the wall to the side of his bed.
"I think there's a game on right now." Kevin had told him, casually.
Javier had cast an uncertain glance at his partner. Kevin hadn't seemed to notice. Taking the hint, he had changed the channel. Apart from a few idle comments about the game, there hadn't been any conversation after that. Javier remembered thinking maybe that was for the best. Still, while it had been impossible to keep his mind on the scores or the plays, for a few hours he hadn't felt the fear as sharply.
---
In the United States and Canada, IHN survivors no longer lack for any rights under the law, though there are groups still challenging the progress that has been made. In particular, there has always been a vocal contingent who argue that when the heart stops, life stops. Fortunately in the US, since the early '70s, a person cannot be declared dead while there is still measurable brain activity. As post-vital brain activity is the only discernible distinction between a IHN survivor and an IHN fatality, by definition the word "alive" applies to them in a strictly legal sense. There is nothing preventing them from owning property, holding a job, or voting, so long as they are ruled mentally competent.
However, while theoretically the standards for competence are more or less the same standards applied to anyone else, post-onset evaluations commonly stress certain points that are considered to be of particular concern...
(From Dead Voices: IHN and the Civil Rights Movement, by Mark R. Rowland; 1999)
---
There were moments when he thought he'd made the wrong decision. Most of them, if he was completely honest.
Physically, the fever had been the worst part, burning so hot and intense he'd wondered if he might die anyway, when he wasn't shivering so hard he thought his bones would break. It had lasted for three days, the last two of which were spent only half-lucid. After that had cooled off, it had been easier to endure. By the fourth day, he had experienced all the wonderful flu-like flavors—headaches, joint aches, nausea—but by the sixth day, even that had been starting to fall away. More than anything, after that, he had just felt tired. And even as he had continued to grow weaker, the doctors had assured him that the worst had passed.
Physically. The shit going on in his head had been a whole other mess entirely.
They had wanted him to pay close attention to any emotional changes. Anger, they had said, was normal under the circumstances, but that he should report any other "unusual or alarming thoughts". Javier wasn't stupid, he knew what they were talking about. Though, if asked, he would have been hard pressed to decide whether he would have preferred they just say it outright. And when they had explained, as soon as the fever had broken, that the restraints were simply hospital policy, he had tried not to be a dick about it. He understood the need, but that didn't make it any less humiliating.
Or the reasons any less terrifying.
---
Blood is the preferred vector for the hypothetical pathogen behind IHN. All recorded cases follow some form of blood-to-blood contact, normally through a bite. One of the earliest onset-stage behaviors to manifest is usually some variety of self-injury, and in the vast majority of cases this takes the form of cheilophagia: compulsive biting of the lips and tongue. Many scientists believe that the wounds caused by these behaviors increase the chances of spreading the infection.
Normally within a day, this development is followed by the more extreme behaviors for which IHN is notorious.
(From http://www.ihnfacts.org/faqs/onset.html)
---
Kevin had visited him several times over the following week, though a few of those visits had been eaten up by the delirium of his fever. And afterward Ryan had kicked up more of a fuss about the restraints than he had. It had taken one nurse's threat to ban him from the floor to make Kevin back down. Javier had a feeling his partner was in denial that they were necessary. He understood that. He'd had plenty of time for denial himself. Because it was impossible to imagine that he could ever... That he would ever be... Sometimes it was difficult to even think it, and part of him had been convinced it just wouldn't happen. Not to him.
But on day five it had, and there were no words to describe the sick horror he'd felt at himself.
He had been experiencing the minor behavioral signs of onset-stage ever since he'd broken from his fever two days earlier. So far he had managed to catch himself each time, lip sucked in between teeth that worried it gently. So far, he had managed to stop himself short of breaking the skin. It was getting harder to do. There was something almost soothing about it, the scrape of flesh against his teeth, and sometimes he'd find himself running the tip of his tongue along the ridges of his molars with enough pressure that it hurt. The nurse had offered a mouth-guard if he thought he needed it, but with his arms tied he would have had to have the nurse put it in, and he wasn't about to gag himself if he didn't have to.
It was late afternoon. Ryan had just left when the nurse returned to do her hourly check. Part of that was checking his restraints. Her fingertips had felt white-hot against his skin, and he was unable to hold in a gasp. He had known that his body temperature had been dropping gradually ever since the fever broke; it was currently hovering around 88.3. Still, he had found himself staring at her fingers, wondering how they could possibly hold that kind of heat. His eyes had roamed, almost on their own. The nurse was very fair skinned—fair enough that the veins stood out a faint blue through the skin of her wrists, and Javier had found his gaze climbing upward, following until they disappeared beneath the surface of the soft-looking skin below the elbow.
Blood mixed with saliva in his mouth before Javier even realized his incisors had met through his lower lip.
As the pain registered itself, Javier had recoiled violently from his thoughts, dragging his eyes away. He'd had to take deep, slow breaths to push down the nausea that threatened to overcome him. The nurse had noticed his distress and begun asking him something, but the words had disappeared behind the ringing in his ears. Right then he had wanted more than anything to be alone. He couldn't stand the thought of her looking at him—of having anyone look at him—but his mind was too messed up just then to even think of trying to speak. Eyes squeezed shut, he had turned away as far as he could.
Though he never did manage to ask her to leave, she had eventually gotten the message, leaving the room as his panicked breathing dissolved into ragged, uncontrollable sobs.
After that, he had asked the nurses to let Ryan know that he didn't want his visits anymore. Either they'd failed to deliver it, or his partner was determined to be difficult, because the next morning he'd come anyway. If he had been told, and if Kevin suspected the reason behind the message, he never showed it. He never asked Javier about his lip, either. He had just come in, wearing that same stupid, hateful look of hope on his face. He'd talked about things at the station, and how Castle was driving Beckett up the wall, and that everyone at the 12th was praying for him.
Javier had never felt less deserving of prayer in his life, but somehow it just hadn't been in him to ask Kevin to leave, not once he was there. So Javier had listened, though he hadn't had much to say. In fact, beyond a few short responses he hadn't said anything. Not about the doctor's projections and how he really didn't have a lot of time left. Not about the thin, sharp pains he'd begun feeling in his chest. And definitely not about the twisted thoughts that had begun to haunt his mind... Like what it would feel like to draw his partner's tie loose, open the collar of his shirt and bury his teeth in the pale flesh of his throat.
He had ground his teeth against those words, those thoughts, until his jaw ached. Ground them until all that was left was the optimistic smile that he knew Kevin needed to see.
His mother had visited more than once during the beginning of his illness, but she only came once after he had pulled through the fever. That last visit had been short and difficult, the presence of the straps anchoring his arms to the bed a source of pain left unacknowledged between them. Having her see him like that—tied down like a dangerous animal—had been painful, but it was nothing next to the thought of what it implied. The idea of her thinking of him in the context of all the things she must have heard... He didn't know how to handle that.
When the onset behaviors started, he had called her, asking her not to come. He'd heard hesitation over the line, and for a moment he thought she might argue. If she had, he didn't think he would have had the strength to beg. Her voice had been thick when she finally agreed, and he could tell she was crying. It had gutted him, and for a few seconds he had wanted to change his mind. He couldn't, though, he just couldn't, not after Ryan's visit. The nurse had been bad enough, but that— No. He couldn't see his family now. If he did, and he started thinking those things about them...
He knew he would never be able to handle that.
---
Javier's heart gave out on the eighth day.
Or possibly the night of the seventh day, it was difficult to tell. If asked, most people would say they'd prefer to die in their sleep. If given a second chance, Javier thought he would have asked for almost anything else, because when it happened he had almost failed to noticed. Not that he hadn't felt something was wrong, he simply hadn't known what it was. He hated to think of how long he might have gone on not knowing if he hadn't realized that the the EKG had been turned off while he slept. Everything was almost as it had been yesterday, the other devices doing the jobs they were meant to, only now one humming machine was silent, still. Tears had stung his eyes once he'd processed what that meant.
Post-vital, the word rang uneasily in his mind. Painfully, it was echoed by the older, crueler term. Undead.
It was difficult getting used to the stillness inside—to accept the idea that what had once made him alive was now just a useless chunk of meat in his chest. It felt so final, so definite. As though the last thread anchoring him to his old life had suddenly been severed.
Well. Every thread but one.
When Kevin arrived it hadn't taken him long to make the same deduction about the EKG that Javier had. He never mentioned it, but Javier had seen the exact moment, Kevin's sudden blink of surprise. Their conversation had been sparse that day, their interactions awkward, and the visit had ended much sooner than the others before it.
That afternoon, as he'd watched his partner leave, Javier though he could imagine what dying might have felt like.
---
He hadn't been sure Kevin would return after that. Two days later, however, Ryan had shown up, only to stop in the hallway to argue with his fiance.
"You're out of line, Jenn," Kevin was saying now, voice tight with unvoiced anger. "That was so out of line. I don't even—"
"Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about, Kevin Ryan." Jenny told him, hotly, "Don't pretend you haven't been reading everything you could find on this...disease ever since it started. You know what it does to them. You know what it's doing to him. To his head. How can you know that and still believe that thing in there is Javier?"
Knowing Ryan as he did, he had suspected that his partner knew more about what was happening than he let on. Javier didn't think her question would have stung him anywhere near as much if he hadn't occasionally wondered the same thing himself. Kevin didn't answer that question for either one of them, however, choosing instead to ask one of his own.
"And if it was me, Jenny?" He asked her, voice dropping low. "What if this had happened to me, would you have just dumped my ass and moved on?"
There was a short silence before Kevin pushed on.
"You know what, don't answer that. Here. Take the keys. I'll grab a taxi, later, I just— I can't even look at you right now."
After a moment, Javier heard her footsteps disappearing down the hall. Ryan loitered in the hallway, and for a minute Javier didn't know if he was hesitating or just letting himself cool off. Apparently it was the latter, because soon the footsteps continued their approach. When Kevin entered he wore the same smile he had every time before, though Javier thought it seemed a little less desperate than it used to. Despite the awkwardness of his last visit, that make a twisted kind of sense. Paradoxically, once Javier's heart had stopped he was out of the woods—at least as far as "survival" was concerned.
Now it was just a matter of getting through the next two months of hospitalization with his mind intact.
---
After the initial drop in cell count the first noticeable symptom of IHN is hyperpyrexia, an extremely high fever that has been recorded reaching temperatures as high as 109 degrees. Studies indicate that patients whose fevers are allowed to progress untreated display higher rates of survival than those whose fever's are reduced. They also tend to have a higher rate of successful recovery from onset behaviors and better overall quality of life. This seems to support the belief that the febrile phase of the illness is tied to whatever changes occur in the brain that allow post-vital life to continue.
It is after this phase of the disease ends that the characteristic symptoms and behaviors first begin to develop. These can vary greatly from individual to individual, though many appear to be universal. Self-harm, while not always presented, is still common enough to bear mention, as when it does manifest is it almost always the first sign to appear. Intrusive violent thoughts and increased aggression are always seen, and their inevitable, rapid escalation require measures be taken to prevent the patient from harming themselves or others. Patients who are post-vital all display a measurable increase in the acuity of all five senses, as well as sharing similar changes in regards to appetite. Many also report a decreased desire or need for sleep.
Delirium, paranoia, mania, delusions, and hallucinations have all been observed in patients entering the difficult middle phase of onset-stage IHN. Individuals who are restrained may be more easily enraged than those who are simply kept isolated from others, but while many advocates argue that restraint is cruel, most doctors, nurses, and even many patients maintain its necessity during both onset and recovery.
Invariably all of these behaviors, both common and idiosyncratic, share the same central focus in every recorded instance of the disease: the development in effected individuals of an abnormal impulse mimicking the prey drive observed naturally in most predators. Understandably, in a survey of IHN survivors, 97% considered the at times overwhelming urge to attack and devour those around them the single most distressing element of their condition.
(From An Introduction to Post-Vital Medicine, 2009 edition)
---
Though Ryan never mentioned the fight with Jenny it became sort of a mental landmark for Javier, because things intensified swiftly after that.
More than once he tried to convince Kevin to stop coming, but his partner wouldn't hear it, even after Javier told him that he'd asked his family not to visit either. Perhaps predictably, that revelation had only made him more stubborn. He always came, always talked about what Javier was missing out there—what was waiting for him, once he got out—even if half the time he knew Javier wasn't listening. He wasn't ungrateful, but as the second week slid past, the thoughts became harder and harder to push away. Often Javier lost track of their conversations completely, forced to shut his eyes and try his best to drown out the images plaguing him. Gradually, the thoughts began to evolve into impulses, and Javier spent most of their time together with fists clenched so tightly his knuckles ached for hours after Kevin had left. When his control was the thinnest, Javier often wound up yelling at him. Sometimes it was intentional; if he was going to lose it he preferred to have his best friend leave pissed at him than see him at his worst.
Worst. Looking back, Javier could almost laugh that he'd ever thought those moments the lowest he could possibly sink.
By the middle of the third week, Javier's forearms were raw where the restraints chafed against his skin. It had long since passed the point where the impulses could be ignored. Whenever someone entered the room, now, there was this fight or flight moment that demanded reaction. So far that reaction was to try and escape them, despite the impossibility the restraints presented. Normally the nurses and doctors simply went about their routine, despite his useless struggles and the embarrassing, terrified sounds he made. When it was Kevin, sometimes he could still manage to calm down for a few moments, though often Javier wasted them apologizing for himself.
Eventually it became difficult for him to keep track of how much time was passing. Sometimes he thought that was a blessing.
He thought it was about that same time that he first lost his grip on everything he'd been holding onto. He remembered the sharp click his teeth had made closing on empty air far more vividly than the act itself, and it took him a few seconds to process that he'd tried to take a bite out of the nurse who was tending the seeping wounds on his lips. The idea that he'd snapped at the man like an injured dog produced a bubble of sick laughter before he subsided for a while into a shaken depression.
It was toward the end of his first month, maybe, that things started getting fuzzy around the edges.
He had good days, days when he was almost half-sane. On one of these, he'd asked one of the nurses for the date. Realizing that the day of Ryan's wedding had passed, Javier had felt something bitter twist inside him. On Kevin's next visit—for while they'd grown shorter as Javier lost more of himself, the man had never ceased coming entirely—Javier had offered caustic congratulations to his ex-partner. He'd been almost proud to do so, as it was possibly the tidiest thought process he'd managed to string together in days. He'd been unable to take much satisfaction in Kevin's stricken look, however. And, as the guilt he felt was quickly consumed by his ever present rage, he'd bitten in on the middle of Kevin's protest.
"Shut up, Kev," Javier had growled out to the man who had been his best friend, "Shut the fuck up and leave. If I see you again I swear to God I'll open your throat with my teeth."
He didn't always sleep, but that night he did. He even managed to dream. He dreamt sick, guilty dreams about his partner's horrified face, and how Jenny's long blonde hair would be the most perfect handhold to keep her still as he tore the flesh from her pretty cheek.
---
Most of the next month was a blur of sick hunger and bloody thoughts. Kevin's face, that final expression of hurt and shock, haunted him through most of it.
The waking dreams were an atypical development in his case. If he'd been anywhere near lucid by then, he probably would have thought that was unfair. As it was his real life, delusions, and dreams—waking or otherwise—were all so interchangeably horrific it almost failed to matter. Almost. Most of the time he could tell he'd been dreaming once it was over, but often he couldn't. Not right away. They were incredibly intense, and often preyed on his current circumstances, further loosening his grasp of reality. More than once, he dreamed he'd managed to slip his restraints. With the doctors or nurses there was always their eventual reappearance to assure him that the events were only dreams. Sometimes, though, in the dreams, Kevin was there. In one incredibly brutal scenario, the memory of his partner's blood on his hands and in his throat had been so vivid that for the better part of a day Javier had genuinely believed he'd killed him.
It had taken several hours for the nurses to convince him otherwise, offering the bitter reassurance that Ryan hadn't been in to see him in almost a week.
Part One / Part Two
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Date: Thursday, 29 September 2011 07:03 am (UTC)From: