Crazy and Reckless (3/4?)

Mar 22, 2010 17:17




The plane takes off from the desert sandbox. Micah is dead and Nate is lost to a world of pain and fever and regrets. He wonders in a few marginal moments of coherency if he’ll ever come back to the land where the sand gets everywhere, but he’s managing to make a small indescribable difference.

Nate knows the truth. It was an unspoken rule, an unwritten amendment that was tacked on when he decided to go play solider in the sand box. The rule was simple: the moment he got hurt he was coming home. No ifs, no buts, no “it’s just a scratch, I’m fine, don’t worry.” (It’s why he only ever complained to Dan. He’s blonde not stupid.)

So when Nate awakes in the bed of an aircraft he really isn’t even that surprised. He wonders if it was his grandfather, or if it was Chuck who managed to yell and scream and bribe their way into getting home to come home ( there’s no realization at all of the fact that the he could really just be screwed up beyond field repair, screwed up beyond bandages and the Sarge’s blood and the hidden storage of whiskey and popcorn).

A corpsman sees that he’s awake and manages to take his temperature (too high) and his blood pressure (too low) and “is there any pain? On a scale of 1 to 10, what do you think your pain level’s at? A 3?”

“8 out of 10, sir.” He wonders where the nice pain medication ran away too. The corpsman tsks like the nurses had done back at base. He apologizes for the lack of pain relief, “but I’ll get right on it.” Nate doesn’t believe him.

He falls asleep (unconscious) again. His fever spikes. His pain rockets. He cries out. He shakes. He sweats. The world moves and he’s still. It goes up and down and sideways. He throws up bile and sand. He trembles with pain and fire. He doesn’t know where he is, if he’s still on the plane or back at the base or home in his room, with the Captain not addicted to drugs and his mother still pressed and prim and Blair still the dotting girlfriend (she’ll always be the dotting girlfriend Nate, just… just not to you.)

He dreams that Chuck disowns him, discards him, walks away with Blair’s hand perfectly entwined in his own, and Nate is left standing on a corner somewhere, with no home and no family (was that a dream? Didn’t that happen?). He shakes.

He dreams his mother marries Blair’s stepfather, and they’re all dressed in medieval clothes, and his new daddy is ranting about logic and inconceivable notions, and there’s a giant and a castle and something about storms and buttered cups. He trembles.

He dreams he marries Jenny and they have little baby Rufus Humphreys running around, saying “dude” and trying to play guitar and his fever goes up another degree. He sweats.

He spends three days in confusion brought on by the ravaging fire circling in his bones. Where he is he doesn’t know. Where he’s going he has no idea. He doesn’t know who touches him, who moves him, who visits him ( no one visits you. Why would they visit you? You’re not rich anymore, you’re not powerful, and you’re just another scum).

Delirium is his only companion.

On the fourth day, his fever breaks in a great exhilarating moment. He wakes up around four a.m.; a clock on the table next to him informs him as such. Chuck is seated in a chair to his left, reading the New York Times. He’s fully engrossed in whatever political intrigue has unfolded while Nate was off in the sand. He’s wearing a suit (he always wears a suit) with a green tie. He doesn’t even look rumpled (people should always look rumpled at four a.m.), there’s no wrinkles, no lines, no nothing. Nate wonders absently if the New York Times Chuck is reading is yesterday’s edition or today’s. Knowing his friend and the power that exudes from him, it’s today’s.

“Chuck.” He wants to say. Wants to ask him about the edition of his newspaper and how he keeps his suits so nice and polished and clean. (No sand here, Nathaniel. No sand) But he’s already fallen back under the film of sleep and healing. It’s a cool, comforting black; it doesn’t scare him in the slightest (‘cause Chuck is here now, and he’d never let anything happen.)

He wakes again later. It’s still the day, and it’s the same day, judging by the green tie Chuck is still wearing when Nate opens his eyes. It’s The Wall Street Journal now, and he’s probably checking his stocks. This time though, his friend happens to glance up at the bed Nate’s been placed in. They make eye contact.

It’s been a whole year.

“Ch…” His throat protests like the people do against the war.

The paper is on the bed, and Chuck is up, standing next to him.

“Ch…” he tries again. He wants to say “hi,” and “thank you,” and how much he’s missed him and his smirk that means a good time’s about to be had at the expense of others, and everything else that should be said when you’ve been that close to death and touched it, smelled it, tasted it.

“Hush, Nathaniel.” Chuck retorts, pouring the smallest amount of water into a dingy yellow colored plastic cup (Chuck never touches plastic. Ever.) Nate tries to lift his hand to grab the cup, to swallow it whole, to be able to speak, but the very thought of his hands moving at this particular moment exhausts him. Chuck doesn’t even notice, simply raises the vile shade of yellow cup to Nate’s chapped and sun damaged lips. He drinks, too tired to contemplate embarrassment.

It’s heaven in liquid form. It caresses gently the rough patches of his throat as he swallows (he doesn’t have the energy yet to question why his throat aches so. Intubation, he will later learn, is the answer.). Too quickly, the cup is taken away, placed back on a bedside table next to him.

Hospital. Nate absently realizes. In a bed…with no sand.

“…thanks.” He manages to croak out. “Chuck…’m glad your ‘er.”

Chuck simply nods his head. He doesn’t say a word. Nate wants to ask a thousand questions, wants to hear a thousand stories, but the water drinking has drained him (Nate, you used to go for hours of binge drinking. Now you can’t even hold you water.) and he’s slipping back into the deep black.

“Welcome home Nathaniel,” Chuck murmurs, before picking up the paper from where it had fallen to the floor from the bed. He snaps it a couple of times so the paper folds how he wants it to, and then he sits and picks up his reading.

Nate stares for a moment. Chuck looks up. [it’s been a year.]

“Go back to sleep Nathaniel.”

And so he does.

crazy and reckless, nate, gossip girl

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