5SOS Sickfics

Hospital

For @StaceyStonier! Enjoy xx
It's 2017 and I'm back, bitches!
I wrote this without looking back at the prompt (ain't nobody got time for that), I hope it's what you wanted.

xx

Luke's POV:

Tiny men in tiny snow suits with tiny pick axes and tiny wagons roamed the endlessly snowy abyss of my throat. It was so cold that I couldn't feel my feet, yet a sweat-inducing warmth ghosted around my person.

In a haze of semi-unconsciousness, I blearily open my eyes and stare at the ceiling. As a cheap hotel room' ceiling, it definitely plays the part of being inexcessive, but what ceiling doesn't? The cream paint clearly used to be white, and is chipped like nail polish on the fingers of an avid guitar player or origamist; the majority of it remains, but there are patches missing, due to constant tapping, pulling, plucking and smoothing.

I sigh, swallowing air and feeling the sandpaper walls of my throat grinding against each other. Though I'm not moving, I'm out of breath and my heart is racing. The slack figure of the person beside me doesn't wake as I try to clear my gritty throat and say his name

"'Ikey?" It comes out, when I finish willing my voice to work and start actually trying to use it. I shut my eyes tightly, as of wishing on a star that doesn't exist. "Mike," I fumble blindly for his hand finding a forearm and shaking it weakly. "Wake up..." I squeak, an ache at the back of my throat making me feel like I have a hot glass ball lodged there, keeping the swollen walls from closing in.

"Ugh, shut up, Luke," he groans, the layer of sleep still being brushed from his words, his feather duster my swan song. "Lemme sleep," he whines, yanking his forearm from my calm grip.

"I'm sick," I huff, accentuating the sentence with a feeble cough.

"Boo, you whore," he shuffles a little closer to the edge. I try to breathe deeply, but it comes out as a choked sob noise, and a whine of pain. There's a pause while he draws breath. "Really?"

I make a strangled cat noise trying to reply.

"But... You were sick last year! You can't be sick again!"

I sniff.

"Fine. But you have to wash the bowl if you puke."

-

hurts so bad , I scrawl on my whiteboard, pouting.

"You can't have any more pain killers, Luke," Mikey shoots a steely glare at me.

I make a noise of discontent, but I'm not quite sure what it is.

"Really that bad, huh?" Michael sighs and walks over to me on the sofa, lifting my legs up so he can sit with my ankles in his lap. The fire in my throat continues to blaze as if my walls were made of dry, long-leaf pine. "Poor baby," he soothes, pulling up my socks from where they're bunched around my ankles and tucking them under my sweatpants. A coughing fit grips me suddenly, and for a time I coughed so hard that I was sure I was going to be sick. All the while, Michael let me squeeze his hand and rubbed circles on my knees. "C'mon," he says, tugging on my hand lightly. "You and me are going to the hospital."

-
Narrative:

"I know I tell you to shut up all the time, but I don't really mean it, you know that, right, Lukey? You're my best friend and beyond, and I have so much fun with you," Michael bit back a tear as he lay at Luke's post-op bedside, holding his hand. "We're like soulmates, and one day you'll find someone really, really great who loves you in the ways that we don't love each other, and I'm sure I'll love them nearly as much as I love you," a tear slipped past Michael's strong barrier. "Please wake up, Lukey; I need you."

There was silence apart from the slow chink of the second hand on the mechanical steel clock that sat, propped up against the wall on a low shelf. Luke lay still, only his chest rising and falling, fever still high, IV still vital. It was a silent few hours for Michael, as he sat in his reinforced plastic chair.

When Luke's eyelids flitted open, he had a look of utmost wonderment and terror. The Halloween glow of his delicate skin made him look surreal on the sheets of clinical white and starch. The blue in Luke's eyes was dimmed, but everlasting. Michael knew that he didn't not truly have to speak to Luke, placing his fingertips on Luke's forehead and brushing strands of sandstone from his face. Luke coughed lightly; there was almost no sound at all.

"Shut up, Luke," Michael's voice was laced with sarcasm and dripping with irony, a painful cocktail of pain and laughter. Though there was an underlying seriousness to his tone, Michael bowed his head a little, and cracked a smile.