argentum_ls (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
argentum_ls) wrote2012-07-15 09:46 pm
argentum_ls) wrote2012-07-15 09:46 pm
Entry tags:
Fanfic: Untitled [Sliders]
Title: Untitled
Characters: Three unnamed. Pick three.
Summary: Being too sick to travel has lasting consequences.
Notes: For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
angst_bingo prompt: fever
Word Count: 500
The LED blinks numbers that he can’t make sense of. His hand shakes as he fumbles with the timer, turning it this way and that in hopes that the digits will resolve into real numbers. How much time? He thinks. How much longer until they can leave?
He feels a cool touch on his forehead, then a calm voice says, “You’re burning up.”
He nods, tries to nod. His head feels so heavy and his thoughts so sluggish that he can’t tell if his body is obeying the commands his mind sends or if he is only dreaming that it is. His throat is raspy when he answers, “Hafta get outta here.”
“We can’t,” someone else replies. “Window won’t open for a couple more days.”
There’s more. He thinks. But the words warp in the air and come into his head stretched and disordered, mixed with interference from other conversations. He catches a comment about fresh milk and another about contagion and he thinks they might be related.
“What are we gonna do?”
“I don’t know,” he hears. “I don’t know. Don’t know.”
He struggles to sit up, but he’s hot, so incredibly hot, and cool hands are always pushing him back down. Frustration courses through him because they don’t understand what they need to do.
“Rest,” his friend says. “You have to get better or we’ll have to….”
His stomach clenches up in concern at what goes unsaid, and he thinks he’s going to vomit.
When he opens his eyes again, the numbers are still blinking, but they’ve changed. Five columns are lit up instead of six. He tries to work out why that’s significant, concludes that the answer relates to ice cream. He’d like ice cream. He’s been out in the sun so long and his throat burns with thirst and he feels like he’s lying in a puddle. His hair is soaked, his body damp. He feels sticky all over. He tosses his head back and forth, searching for a dry place on the pillow. There isn’t one.
“It’s a risk,” the one voice says. “What if the next world has a cure?”
He hears a weary sigh, full of hopelessness, from the other. “What if it doesn’t?”
His friends are talking as if he can’t hear them. He doesn’t want them know he can, fearful of making their decision harder. He opens his mouth to weigh in, but all that comes out is a pained moan. The arguing stops and hands cover him. They touch his forehead and cheeks, rearrange the pillow, press a glass to his mouth with something bitter in it that he instinctively fights.
“Can you really live with that responsibility?” he hears.
“Can you?” the other challenges.
He kicks the sheet off his body, its thin fabric too much. His friends’ answers are swallowed in his heat. As he drifts into fevered sleep, it’s on a current of worry about where he’ll be when he wakes up, and with whom. If anyone.
Characters: Three unnamed. Pick three.
Summary: Being too sick to travel has lasting consequences.
Notes: For
angst_bingo prompt: feverWord Count: 500
The LED blinks numbers that he can’t make sense of. His hand shakes as he fumbles with the timer, turning it this way and that in hopes that the digits will resolve into real numbers. How much time? He thinks. How much longer until they can leave?
He feels a cool touch on his forehead, then a calm voice says, “You’re burning up.”
He nods, tries to nod. His head feels so heavy and his thoughts so sluggish that he can’t tell if his body is obeying the commands his mind sends or if he is only dreaming that it is. His throat is raspy when he answers, “Hafta get outta here.”
“We can’t,” someone else replies. “Window won’t open for a couple more days.”
There’s more. He thinks. But the words warp in the air and come into his head stretched and disordered, mixed with interference from other conversations. He catches a comment about fresh milk and another about contagion and he thinks they might be related.
“What are we gonna do?”
“I don’t know,” he hears. “I don’t know. Don’t know.”
He struggles to sit up, but he’s hot, so incredibly hot, and cool hands are always pushing him back down. Frustration courses through him because they don’t understand what they need to do.
“Rest,” his friend says. “You have to get better or we’ll have to….”
His stomach clenches up in concern at what goes unsaid, and he thinks he’s going to vomit.
When he opens his eyes again, the numbers are still blinking, but they’ve changed. Five columns are lit up instead of six. He tries to work out why that’s significant, concludes that the answer relates to ice cream. He’d like ice cream. He’s been out in the sun so long and his throat burns with thirst and he feels like he’s lying in a puddle. His hair is soaked, his body damp. He feels sticky all over. He tosses his head back and forth, searching for a dry place on the pillow. There isn’t one.
“It’s a risk,” the one voice says. “What if the next world has a cure?”
He hears a weary sigh, full of hopelessness, from the other. “What if it doesn’t?”
His friends are talking as if he can’t hear them. He doesn’t want them know he can, fearful of making their decision harder. He opens his mouth to weigh in, but all that comes out is a pained moan. The arguing stops and hands cover him. They touch his forehead and cheeks, rearrange the pillow, press a glass to his mouth with something bitter in it that he instinctively fights.
“Can you really live with that responsibility?” he hears.
“Can you?” the other challenges.
He kicks the sheet off his body, its thin fabric too much. His friends’ answers are swallowed in his heat. As he drifts into fevered sleep, it’s on a current of worry about where he’ll be when he wakes up, and with whom. If anyone.