psychoshenanigans | Nor // AUAU

Entry tags:

nel,
robin

Nor // AUAU

Getting him back was easy after the ordeal in the other car. Robin basically just slings the elf over his shoulder and walks the short way to his club, like carrying an unconscious person around is a perfectly normal and semi-fashionable thing to do.

Which, to be fair, it might be. Around here, anyway.

The club itself is this little place tucked up between some other crumbling buildings, in about as good a shape as anything you'll find around there. The inside is in various stages of being-built and down-for-the-day, not that Nel will be conscious to see any of it. Robin heads straight upstairs, where the dressing rooms are. There are two doors just for him--technically both offices by name, though one contains actual work and the other is more a resting place where the only "work" he does is of a more physical nature.

Nel gets brought to that one. It's plain, still--a little room with a bed and a desk and a chair and a small separate room for bath and sink--but he's gathered up a few things. There's a pile of papers her and there, a couple of books, odd trinkets that Robin has collected in the living tunnels... The bed is nowhere near as lavish as Tek's, of course, but it's still covered in blankets and pillows enough to be considered soft and comfortable.

That's where Nel will wake up. Robin didn't bother showering or anything like that. He's still got a hole right through his clothes where he was shot. What was more important to him was curling up next to Nel and wrapping a protective arm around him so that he can feel when he wakes up.

Nevermind that he fell asleep pretty soon himself. Sleeping next to people always does that.

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To be perfectly honest, Nel is still drunk. Whatever time it is when he finds himself awake, it's before his body has found any sort of settled, hungover point. The unfamiliar walls still pitch and swim when he opens his eyes.

He doesn't know where he is, but that is neither unexpected nor alarming. That's usually how these things go, and he still has some hours before he needs to start thinking about it. He also can't remember what'd happened the night before, but that isn't unusual either.

What is unusual is the dull sense of dread that he wakes up with. Something bad had happened--the cold feeling in his gut tells him so. It's enough to get him immediately rolling over before he's even mostly awake, trying to pull himself together enough to think.

And he's not prepared for the face that he sees when he turns and hoists himself up onto one elbow.

It's so out of place, he's sure he's seeing things. It wouldn't be the first time. He could be dreaming, or confused, or simply not seeing what is actually in front of him. Reality just doesn't fit together well around it. But his stomach is sinking lower, there's a wordless and frantic feeling creeping up on him, and a few really upsetting chunks of memory are trying to surface.

...He ends up staring for a long time.

And it's about the time that he's pretty sure that he remembers someone getting shot, that his bewildered, half-conscious panic spikes, and he clumsily shoves Robin in the chest.

"--Hey."

Robin's slow to wake up. Nel's shifting does nothing. Being shoved in the chest gets him to roll over onto his back, but for a moment, it appears as if even that was just something he did in his sleep.

The room is quiet for a moment, strangely still and isolated from the usual buzz of the world--but then Robin mumbles something and tries to move his arm. He's probably conscious, at least.

He can't even name why, but seeing Robin move and make some sort of sound is overwhelmingly relieving. It means he's real. It means he's not dead.

Had he been the one shot? There'd been a lot of blood.

But Nel feels horrible, especially in the wake of the flood of adrenaline. Robin's here, he feels poisoned, and nothing makes sense. It feels like he'd been holding his breath for a long time and now he can finally get air, and it makes his whole body droop.

With a pathetic, confused whine, he lets the strength leave his arms and crumples down against Robin.

The whine actually finds him better than the shove did; something about a higher-pitched noise, perhaps. He blinks an eye open only to find his little companion crumpled over on his chest, which he's pretty sure is not where they left off.

He mumbles something that sounds vaguely like a question and tries to put an arm around him again.

If he'd been less uncomfortable, he might have been capable of calming down and maybe even resting. The arm around him is so nice, he'd been waiting so long for it...

But he can't stay there for more than a few moments.

Nothing is settling inside him, and it gets worse the more he wakes up. With another sad sound, he's suddenly moving again, pushing himself up on shaking arms so that he can wriggle over Robin enough to reach the edge of the bed.

Once he's leaning safely over the side, he gets unfortunately sick. If there had been some receptacle nearby that might have helped, he still misses it entirely.

Maybe that will help wake Robin up.

The retching does at least get him to focus.

But he doesn't move much. He thinks this is pretty normal, actually, having frequented the beds of party-goers and pub-crawlers for a long time before he for to this world. He lets Nel go, since there's not much he can do about it until he stops.

He does eventually sit up, though, just to make sure he's not about to die or tip off the bed.

Helping him not tip off the bed is probably a good idea--it's the thing he's the most in danger of. He currently has no grasp on balance, his limbs are shaky and weak, and his body's pretty unhappy with what he's done to it.

There's nothing of substance in his stomach, which is fortunate news for Robin's floor, but bad news for the rib muscles he might pull over retching on nothing but stomach acid.

And as soon as he can catch a breath, he crumples again, teetering precariously toward the edge as he tries to curl up.

"Hey, hey..."

Robin leans forward, grabbing his shoulders so that he doesn't go careening off the bed. He tries to guide him onto his side, but further away from the edge--enough for him to lean back over and be sick if his stomach is still convinced it can get the poisons out.

"Careful." as if that'd make any difference. "Remember to breathe."

Eventually, the sickened coughing turns into proper breathing, and he lets Robin lean him over onto his side. He means to apologize, but all he actually manages is a groan.

He does turn enough to look up at Robin, though. Squinting around the squeezing pain growing in his skull, he peers up... making doubly sure that he's really there and it's truly him.

Unguarded and miserable, the stress of disbelief is all over his face.

The poor thing.

Robin leans over him, only a little disgusted by the smell--acid and alcohol. It'll eat through the floor. He'll get someone else to clean it up in a minute.

He's more preoccupied with looking over Nel's face, gently brushing his bangs away. Despite everything, he's got a strange little smile.

"Easy, kid."

And, as an added thought, he drags up one of his less-loved covers and wipes off Nel's mouth with it. Seems the polite thing to do.

"You came back--?"

Half of the tone behind the hoarse question seems surprised, and he doesn't mean it to be. Of course he hadn't been doubting that Robin would do what he'd said. Nel had just been waiting--just as he does with his sister. He'd said over and over again, both out loud and in his head, that Robin was going to come back and his sister would visit as soon as she wasn't so busy.

So, the feeling of relief that is crawling up in his raw throat and strangling him must be from something else that he can't figure out.

And the other half of his question is honest and hesitant. He wants to know if that's what this really is. There's still that muddled doubt that he's missing something important. He's worried that he's just confused--it's a concern that has been popping up more often lately, so it's just waiting there in the front of his mind.

Edited 2013-05-11 04:20 (UTC)

"I told you I would."

He had to leave him out there for a very long time, but he came back. He's just lucky that he got to him before something worse happened. Part of him wants to smother Nel with the news--with all the good things that are going to happen to him now--but he knows that he wouldn't take it well. Not with the way he's been trained and molded and structured, and not while he's sick and poisoned.

He works at a different subject.

"They sure didn't make it easy for me to find you, though."

"I got moved around a lot."

It's one of those answers that he always has at the ready, even though it also happens to be true. It's easy to say--a simplified reason that helps excuse anyone else from blame.

And then, he thinks that he feels like he's going to be sick again. It crowds up in him, makes him curl up around his stomach a little and start pulling deeper breaths. With the way the pressure is building up in his head, he presses the heels of his hands against his eyes.

He puts a hand back on his shoulder, gently nudging him a little closer to the edge of the bed. Just in case he does reflexively try to sit up again, he can tilt him in the right direction.

"I got shot, you know." Said very matter-of-factly. "I'm better now."

"He shot you..."

He's remembering now, and he sounds a little distraught about it. The lingering awful feelings are just sticking to anything, without knowing where they're really supposed to go. Whether or not he was upset about it at the time, he's upset about it now.

He's upset about a lot, at the moment.

"I tried to tell him I knew you, but he did it anyway..."

"Hey, it's okay."

He really doesn't sound worried about it. In fact, he's smiling. He's hoping that his calm regarding the situation will edge into Nel a little bit.

"I made him jump. It's more my fault, really."

He prods at the hole in his clothes where the wound used to be.

"No one got hurt. It's fine."

He needs to sit up. Whether it's because he's going to get sick again, just feels sick and hopes that being more upright will help, or just really wants to make sure that Robin is okay and all that stuff he remembers from the night before truly did happen, he shoves himself up and careens around to face him.

He also wants to be closer to Robin, though he doesn't figure that part out until he's pretty much already there.

Just like he'd done in the car, he automatically goes to reach out and touch where the wound had been.

Since Robin isn't bleeding there this time, he's all right with letting Nel touch the spot where he used to be open and exposed. His skin looks just fine--like nothing had even happened.

"See?" He takes up Nel's fingers in his own, pressing his hand into the spot a little. It's solid, like it should be. "I'm okay."

Whatever little wires had been hovering around each other in Nel's head, close but not actually making a connection, that little bit pushes it all together. He finally gets it; the realization finally makes a dent. Robin is whole and present, he's right there like he'd been imagining, and he hadn't expected it.

He's upset because he feels horrible and he's too addled to keep himself from getting really confused. He's relieved and sad and in shock and is a little too poisoned to keep it all straight.

So, the hand that Robin hasn't caught raises so that he can duck his face into it, covering his eyes. He's worried that he's going to throw up, but he sucks in a shaking breath instead, and is almost surprised by it.

Edited 2013-05-11 06:02 (UTC)

There he goes. The poor thing, he thinks again.

Robin shifts so that the two of them are side by side. He wants Nel closer but doesn't want to ruin it--so he pulls in on his far shoulder like he's made of thin glass. It's fine, Nel can lean on him.

"Just sit for a little bit, okay? You were really far gone."

Nel isn't actually any more frail than he had been hours earlier, but he manages to feel like it. It's probably the way that his limbs weaken and shake when he tries to use them, jittering over to lean uncomfortably but gratefully against Robin's shoulder. That's where he wants to be, more than anything, despite how awful sitting up and leaning and being in contact with someone else really feels right now.

There's a wavering "--'m sorry" in there somewhere, but it's mostly muffled by his hands. At least he's gotten one apology out, though it will have to cover both his sorry state now and his sorry state from the night before.

He just shushes him, sneaking his hand under Nel's fingers so that he can cover his eyes himself. His gloves still smell like wax and leather, even after everything he puts them through.

He won't say anything until Nel has calmed down, though. He should really see if he can get him into a shower, get someone to fix this mess--but he can't do that if he's an absolute wreck.

They're going to be soaked with tears too, after this. Though, it does help Nel begin to calm down. Having his little circle of misery interrupted by someone else takes the momentum out of it. Robin steals the controls away from him.

So, he eventually winds down again. But he can't slump and settle into the potentially comfortable place he's at, because real nausea is beginning to take over his jostled insides.

After a weepy minute, he groans and pushes, so he can lean away again.

There we go. It doesn't take much for him to move his hand and help to push Nel forward. He doubts he's going to have much left in him to throw up, but maybe his stomach can finally be convinced that its empty.

He runs his fingers over Nel's back while he's busy, lightly traces invisible things along his bony shoulder blades and just below his neck. He might not even feel it, preoccupied as he is, as Robin plucks on little threads and tugs them out like loose fringe.

"Want to try making it to the washroom?" He doubts he'll tell him no, but it's worth it to see regardless. "Might be able to stick you under a shower for a while."

Nel leans there at the edge of the bed, staring blearily at the floor while keeping his lungs filled with steady breaths to even out his stomach. And he doesn't say no, as predicted, but he doesn't exactly agree, either.

It gets him thinking about something else. He looks around a little bit first, eyes sliding pointlessly around the room before he asks.

"Did I... have anything with me?"

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