[MINGLE] Worried/Sick 1: Symptoms Manifest & Reaction

[sixthiteration]

WHERE: Anywhere; multiple locations
WHEN: Apx. 13-18 November
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Serious illness and reactions to such

IMPORTANT NOTES: This is the first of two mingles. Please see the timing and general event details here.

Illness Presents and Putting Heads Together will have their own top-levels in this post, but you may make separate top-levels for whatever you like! Anything is welcome, as long as it tangentially relates to the Worried/Sick plot.

Please keep in mind the established plot details, but creative license is welcome and encouraged as long as it doesn't step on toes.

Comments

[onesyllable]

It's a sentiment that Joshua gets and he understands and he was there with him. Except if its all true, he never gets the chance. He gets maybe a burial, and given what a stick of dynamite can do to a man, he's not even sure he gets that.

But then Vasquez is couching and he moves to lean in to him, stroking his back. "You need to stop talking. Just rest, okay? I need you breathing, not choking," he murmurs, a lot of concern in his voice though he has no idea how to vocalize it all.

[quinientos]

Vasquez doesn't even want to stop talking or coughing, not if it gets him Faraday stroking his back like that. He stares at him, eyes wide and shining with hope, and there's just a shred of hope and wariness there. Because, it feels so good.

And yet, there's a wariness, because what does it matter if Faraday doesn't want anything else? "I'll heal," he promises. "And you'll just go back to being dead or someone else's. You, world's greatest lover, after all. Not that I got to know."

[onesyllable]

"Well when you're healed, you can get yourself riled up. Not right now," he says, trying to sound stern, failing a bit but still trying. He can be stern, but he just doesn't want to be right now. Not with what Vasquez is dealing with emotionally and physically.

And then more words that leave him all twisted up inside, not even sure what to say. What he's expected to say. "I'm not dead. Whatever you think happened to me, or did happen to me, or whatever? I'm not dead."


Which is all that matters, right?

"And I'm no one's. Never have been," he points out. Not that he's ever tried, so maybe that's not the point.

He glances around, as if anyone else is going to hear them. Only one there is Bobo and he's probably definitely not listening. "Never knew you wanted to know, and who knows if that title even holds with men," he hisses, making a face, so confused about all of this. "Sides, you killed him." If all of this isn't just the haze of fever, but it's sounding an awful lot like the things Wanda told him about. "So what's that say?"

[quinientos]

He's not, but he could leave Vasquez and then it would all be over, because even if he went home too, he knows there wouldn't be anything waiting for him. He grimaces, wishing that the truth didn't hurt so much, though maybe that's the sickness.

"You never had a man?" he asks, eyes wide and almost innocent as he gapes at Faraday. "And I am a very good lover. You could ask Bobo or Cael if you wanted to know," he rambles, knowing he shouldn't be tossing out names like this so easily, but he's not thinking. "I could be so good to you, querido," he admits, breathing out those words.

[onesyllable]

"This is the talk to be having now?" Mostly because he never wants to have this talk. Not ever. Not when it says so much about him that he never wants to talk about in public.

"But I'm... I don't want to know what your boyfriends say about you," he says, tones bitter, pained, fighting the urge to get up, to run. Wanting to not be there, not having this talk. Not like that.

"I spent a lot of time in saloons and inns. Not like I had to find other company than what I had." Girls working the bars liked a man with money and a good smile. Because that is a better focus than those last words, wanting to imagine just how good Vasquez could be to him. Did it matter when he thought he was dead?

[quinientos]

"So you had Marias and Ethels," he grumbles, sinking down into the bed and away from Faraday, trying not to let the jealousy consume him, but it does. Honestly, it does, because he's not very happy with this idea of Faraday with other women, but now he's gone and put it in his head.

It's very stupid of him, but he's a stupid man and even stupider when he's sick.

[onesyllable]

"What..." He shifts, staring at Vasquez where he's collapsed on the bed. "Are you... Are you jealous?"

Because he's seen it, but not on a man and not directed at him but he's seen it.

"You've been in my life longer than any woman that ever shared my bed. Are you kidding me?"

[quinientos]

He makes a face, still half-turned away from Faraday because so what if he's jealous. When he'd been drunk, he could laugh about this all he wanted and talk about his own experiences, but now that he's sick and aching and feverish, he can't do anything but make faces about these women.

"How am I supposed to know this?" he gripes. "You talk about being the world's greatest lover, how am I to know you don't have some little chica waiting for you?"

[onesyllable]

"Then ask but you're really going to... You moved me into the house of the man you're sleeping with," he points out, sounding more stunned than he does upset. "You just told me to ask them about your lovemaking skills and..."

And his head is kind of spinning, though he doesn't think this is about being sick. It's about not even illness, it's confusion and emotions and not even knowing what to say.

"I am the world's greatest lover..." Yet to be proven, thank you. "And do I seem the type to have a wife? Someone waiting on me? I run the moment they think they can tie me down."

[quinientos]

"I think any man can have a wife eventually," he opines, even though whether that remains to be seen about whether it'll be a good match is out there. He's aching and tired, his body feeling like it's swaying and he hacks again, curling up on his body.

"You run out into fields, you run to danger," he complains, rubbing his face in his pillow, but the next sentences are just strings of incomprehensible Spanish, sweating and wanting to fall asleep again, not wanting to talk about this anymore.

[onesyllable]

"I saved your goddamn life," he mutters, moving to untangle the blanket from beneath Vasquez. "And I had hoped to save Goodnight and Billy too," he adds, finding knowing he hadn't hurts more than he thought it would.

"And if I could give you your life, then good," he says, the words still soft, trying to get Vasquez to lay back so he could cover him up. "I'm going to check on what's his name, see if he's gone running out the door naked or something," he says, reaching up to brush curls from Vasquez's brow.

"Go to sleep, okay?"

[quinientos]

Vasquez leans into the touch, eyes wide and almost pleading with how much they want that touch to continue. He got his life, but what did it matter when he was alone and an outlaw? He doesn't want that life. He wants this one, where they can have something together, but he doesn't know how to say it.

"Sleep," he agrees, eyes already falling shut. "Don't go too far."

[onesyllable]

"I'll be right back," he vows, not moving away right away, just watching him to make sure he's settled. Then, once he is, he heads off to check on Bobo before coming back and sitting close to watch him.