Rhinopharyngitis (Dante)

[Wren O'Hara]

It wasn’t Wren O’Hara’s week.

He really should have taken the hint after he’d gotten three hours of detention, in retrospect. When things like that started happening, his sister said, it was time to shutter the windows and ride it out. It was really pretty good advice.

Instead of listening to his sister, though, he’d gone out on a limb and had done the worst thing one could possibly do under the influence of negative karma – meet new people. He’d tried to teach someone how to swim earlier in the week, and had been repaid with some vicious, quick-spreading rumors about his non-existent sex life. He’d split some chocolate with a stranger, and it turned out that the stranger had given him the common cold for his trouble.

And then there was what had happened with Dante.

He still wasn’t sure what to make of it, not really. The other boy hadn’t talked to him in days; everywhere Wren looked, there Dante wasn’t. It had to be on purpose. What was worse was that he sort-of-kind-of understood. If it had been him, maybe he would be doing the same thing. It had been a very intense, emotional, and altogether unpleasant encounter. He had tried his best to help, and he hadn’t done very well.

He hadn’t been able to get it out of his mind, which was unfortunate, because at the moment the only thing he had in considerable excess was free time. For the first time in three years, he’d had to tell the dorm monitor that he was too sick to attend classes. Naturally, he blamed his sudden immunodeficiency on the fact that he hadn’t been able to swim in three days. He just didn’t feel right when he couldn’t swim.

But he’d been too busy serving those detentions to go to the pool. And so it was that his week of bad luck had come full circle, leaving him aching and congested and sneezing and miserable, with only his fish and a half-empty box of facial tissue and his own morose thoughts for company.

He sniffled pathetically and looked at the clock. It was only half past noon. He made a sound of dismay in the back of his throat which, in his current state, sounded more like the anguished last moo of a dying cow. He’d really wanted to sleep, but all of his attempts had failed spectacularly. Watching Netflix might make him feel better, he reasoned, but…

He shifted his gaze to his laptop, which was in its usual place on his desk.

Two meters had never seemed so far away.

[Dante Russo]

Yeah, Dante was avoiding Wren. He couldn't face him after what happened. He needed some time. Dude saw him cry-- not just cry, dude saw him completely fall the fuck apart. There was a part of him that still didn't know how to handle that, even though Jo Jo caught his freakouts all the time when he and Rebecca had to move in with them for a few months. The first time it happened, Dante iced him out until Jo Jo decided to pick a fight with him (really, pushing his buttons was a good way to get him talking to you again).

That was years ago, though, and Dante had actually grown as a person (even if Dante couldn't see it). He wasn't going to ice out Wren. He just needed a little time to recover from the shame and embarrassment of everything that happened. Today, actually, Dante had intended to stop avoiding him. He convinced himself by thinking of something to tell Wren off for-- hey, Dante never claimed to be good at this whole friendship thing. He needed to puff himself up a bit to be comfortable again.

But when he actually showed up in several of the places they usually crossed paths, Wren was nowhere to be seen. It was both confusing and irritating. Dante didn't like to look desperate, and he didn't like the idea of hunting Wren down. Of course, it was either that or go to class...

So there was Dante, knocking on Wren's door three times before just barging in without waiting for an answer. He glanced around and then headed for Wren's bedroom. "Hey," he said, poking his head inside, "where the hell 'av you been? We need to talk-- oh my god, are you sick? What d'you have? Because I'm not cleanin' up after it..." That wasn't strictly true. Dante would totally stay and clean up after whatever gross fluids Wren had going on. He was sort of used to cleaning up gross things. Rebecca drank when she was stressed.. which was most of the time. As a result, he knew how to get various bodily fluids out of most fabrics, and he wasn't actually grossed out by touching them. This was just Dante being kind of a dick because he felt insecure.

[Wren O'Hara]

The knocking startled Wren out of his Nyquil-induced reverie, and he blinked up at Dante blearily and sniffled.

“Hey,” he replied, stuffily. “Don’t you have class now?”

This was, of course, a stupid question; it had already been established that Dante skipped classes as regularly as he skipped meals and social niceties. Still, Wren found it hard to stop being a good influence. Bad week or no, the naïveté was there to stay.

He shifted under his blanket so that he was tilted very slightly to Dante’s side of the room. At the other boy’s dramatic repulsion, Wren managed a laugh that quickly turned into a loud, grating cough.

“Um, it’s just a cold,” he said meekly after managing to clear his throat. “I think I’ve got it under control.”

He gestured vaguely to the box of tissues beside his bed.

There was a beat of silence, wherein Wren remembered that Dante had said that he wanted to talk and was subsequently unsure of whether or not he wanted to have a conversation about what had happened a few days prior. But it wasn’t like he was going anywhere, he reasoned, and… well, mostly he was just glad that Dante was talking to him again.

Honestly, the fact that his friend had sought him out made him feel a little better about the whole thing.

“You can have the desk chair,” he informed the other boy, his voice thick with illness. “But can you bring me the computer before you sit down?”

He normally wouldn’t have asked, but the idea of removing himself from his warm spot under the covers was too much to bear. He sniffled and gave Dante a tiny half-smile that reeked of puppy-face.

[Dante Russo]

Dante scoffed and rolled his eyes. Of course he had class now, who did Wren think he was talking to? Dante didn't give a crap about school. If he was going to expend the energy, he'd rather learn something he actually wanted to know. When he wasn't frustrated because reading was so hard, he was bored out of his freaking skull!

He made a face when Wren started coughing. Eesh, that didn't sound fun. He wondered absently if Wren or one of his roommates kept tea around, but then he reminded himself that he'd come here for a reason, and he wasn't going to go all soft fetching Wren tea. Instead, he was going to be an ass. "If by 'under control' you mean it's kicking your ass, then yeah."

Dante moved toward the desk chair and was about to sit when Wren added a request for his computer. Dante looked at the desk, then at Wren. He made a face. "C'mon, man. Cool it with the puppy-face!" He picked up Wren's laptop and brought it to him. "You already look miserable and pathetic, you don't need it-- it's just overkill!" Dante set the laptop on the bed next to Wren, then decided that dragging the desk chair over to the bed too was probably a good plan.

When he was sitting down, Dante folded his hands in his lap and stared at them for a couple seconds. He wasn't one hundred percent sure he wanted to cuss wren out when he was sick. It took any joy there might have been out of the whole experience. Bitch could barely lift his head. But Dante really had to say something about this while he had the nerve. Because maybe tomorrow, and the next day, he might not care as much about what needed to be said. Maybe whole weeks would go by with him in a downward spiral, and he wouldn't say anything because he didn't care anymore. "Ok, so how hopped up on NyQuil are you? 'Cause I'm not even gonna bother if you're not gonna' remember this later, but.. We got things to talk about."

[Wren O'Hara]

Wren took the half-hearted insult without so much as a blink; if Dante had really been trying, he reasoned, then he could do much better than that. He’d come to view the other boy’s sarcastic remarks as terms of endearment more than anything else.

“Kicking my sinuses, really,” he replied thickly after a moment of pause. “M’ ass is fine.”

He took the proffered laptop from Dante’s hands with a sniff and a murmur of thanks. There was the sound of chair wheels rolling noisily across the wood floor. Wren slid his computer to the side for the time being; he had a feeling that whatever Dante had come to talk about was going to require his full, sniffling attention.

“Uh,” Wren said in reply to Dante’s question. “I just had a cup full, dude. I didn’t drink the whole bottle.”

He paused again and furrowed his eyebrows very slightly. His gaze traveled down to where Dante’s hands lay folded, then quickly darted back up to his eyes.

For the first time in his life, there were actually a lot of things he wanted to say. He finally realized what it was like to have to bite back words (and snot). Yet he remained passively silent, waiting for Dante as had become his routine.

Maybe that wasn’t good – he’d thought about that, too, while he’d been alone with his thoughts all morning.

But he waited anyway. Old habits certainly died hard.

[Dante Russo]

Dante raised an eyebrow. Did Wren really onle take the recomended dose of cold medicine? The only good thing about having a cold was the excuse to take too much medicine. Everything was funny for a while, and then you passed out. Heaven.

Regardless, Wren was coherent, so there were no excuses to puss out now. "Okay," Dante started. Then he stood up and started pacing. He really didn't want to talk about what happened. It was embarrassing, and he'd rather just ignore the issue-- but there was a whole thing with Koty right after the dust incident, and it was pointed out that Dante repeated his mistakes pretty much all the damn time. If he didn't want to take one of the many unhappy paths his life could wind up on, he had to start being... responsible.

"Look, you can't let me cut myself!" The words finally came out only a few notches below shouting. "What part of your brain thought that was a good idea!?" Seriously. Wasn't there a general consensus that self harm was bad and people shouldn't do it? Of course, if Wren hadn't done what he asked at the time, things would have escalated considerably, but that wasn't the point. "I'm trying not to do that anymore-- if I wanted to cut myself, I'd carry something sharp!"

Even as the words came out of his mouth, Dante felt a little bad about this. There were a number of ways to address this situation, but Dante was most comfortable with this one. He didn't have to put all of the blame on Wren. It wasn't actually his fault, and Dante knew that. He was just still too embarrassed about the whole thing to come out admitting that he should have told Wren more in the first place. Like.. "Hey I have flashbacks, and by the way, whatever you do, don't let me cut myself." How hard would that have been? In retrospect, it was easier than coming back later to clean up the mess. For a precog, Dante was pretty shortsighted.

[Wren O'Hara]

Wren blinked innocently, and wondered if anyone ever seriously took more than the recommended dose of cold medicine. Seriously, how muted would your sense of taste have to be to stomach the whole thing without puking?

Dante seemed to be satisfied with his answer, though, and soldiered on – quite literally. Wren watched with passive but slightly-nervous interest as his friend began pacing the floor of the small bedroom. This worried Wren slightly; anything that required the speaker to pace before it could be said could never be good news, in his experience.

The other boy finally spoke, and the words were so sharp that Wren’s heart palpitated weakly. He looked down at his blanket-covered knees, ashamed.

“I know I fucked up,” he said quietly. It was true; it was well-known, even to him, that he was a little slow, and even he had realized a couple of seconds after the fact. He opened his mouth again, but all that came out was a sniffle; Dante filled the gap with more words.

Silence lingered between them. Wren noticed a broken thread in the otherwise tightly-knit pattern of his blanket. He picked at it listlessly.

“I know,” he whispered again. “Sorry. I just…”

He let the sentence trail off uncertainly. He’d never been great with words, and it wasn’t exactly an easy feeling to describe at the best of times.

“It was just that… it scared me, and I’ve never seen anything like that happen before, you know, and you were – I mean, you were really upset,” he said in his scratchy sick-voice. “I just wanted you to feel better, and it seemed like…”

Like what? The quickest way? Certainly not the best, he thought with a fresh prick of guilt.

“I knew after I did it that I shouldn’t have,” he finished, trying to form some sort of adequate apology within the mess of words. “Sorry.”

He kept his eyes trained on the blanket, afraid to look up.

[Dante Russo]

Dante let out a sigh. He could only look at Wren for a few seconds before he burried his face in the palm of his hand. God, he always looked so damn sad when Dante got upset with him. He couldn't seem to keep in mind how much like shit that made him feel. This isn't what he was going for. Regardless of how many times this happened, Dante couldn't stop expecting Wren to snap back at him-- but he just folded!! Who did that? Jesus Christ, man, stand up for yourself!!

"Wren," Dante said, irritated, "do you have to do that? Do you have to just cave? I'm so full of shit right now, dude! I come in here like it's all your fault, and you just sit ther and take it? The fuck is that!? You asked me-- you fucking asked what I needed from you! And I told you exactly nothing! You should be pissed as hell at me right now! Why aren't you mad!?"

Really, Dante would feel much better if Wren were mad at him. He couldn't stand this sappy I'm-sorry-I-fucked-up bull shit. It made him feel like dirt. At least if Wren were mad at him, Dante would have to defend himself. He would have a reason for the aggressive posturing he was currently displaying, and he wouldn't be feeling shitty about it. Dante was used to relationships full of arguments and angry shouting. This was just strange, and Dante couldn't figure Wren out.

[Wren O'Hara]

Wren wasn’t sure he’d actually seen anyone facepalm in real life before. It might have been funny to him if he hadn’t felt so crummy, physically and mentally; as it was, all he could manage to do was mirror the other boy’s sigh.

Unusually, he didn’t hesitate in his reply.

“Because that’s… would that really make you feel better?” he asked, looking as skeptical as he was able to in his current condition. He studied the other boy for a few long moments. He tried and failed to suppress a sniffle.

“Because everyone knows that you shouldn’t let somebody cut themselves, okay?” he said quietly. “I’m the one idiot that thought, for one second, it might be an okay idea. I’m stupid, I know, but even I didn’t think I was that stupid.”

For the first time, he sounded a little bitter; he sighed again and pinched the bridge of his round, chapped nose between thumb and forefinger. His eyes were closed.

“And you stopped talking to me, so I thought you just… didn’t want to be my friend anymore,” he admitted. “But you’re here. And unless you’re here to tell me that we can’t be friends, then I can’t be mad.”

He withdrew his hand and opened his eyes. He gave the other boy a look that was distinctly not-puppy-like.

“So tell me,” he said, as matter-of-factly as was possible with sinus congestion. “What you need me to do, okay? We’re being real, right? So tell me, and I won’t fuck up again.”

[Dante Russo]

“Because that’s… would that really make you feel better?”

"Yes! It really would! But I can tell by that look you're givin' me that that's not gonna happen!" Dante gestured exasperatedly at Wren's expression. He turned away from Wren and continued pacing.

When Wren proclaimed he was stupid, Dante sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, still pacing back and forth. He knew that the convention here was to tell Wren he wasn't stupid but.. Dante thought most people were stupid, and Wren was pretty average. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but it did mean that Dante couldn't truthfully tell Wren that he wasn't stupid.

Yes, Dante did acknowledge that he was an arrogant dickwad.

“...We’re being real, right? So tell me, and I won’t fuck up again."

"Okay, so while we're being real lemme explain t'you why that's crap: the whole time I've known you, every time I tell you to fuckin' do something, you do it. Doesn't matter what it is! I could tell you night now to suck it up and come with me outside because I wanna smoke during this conversation-- and you would seriously consider doing it! Don't get me wrong, I fuckin' love that about you. I like it when bitches actually do what I say-- my point is that you didn't fuck anything up. I know how you work, and I should have been on top of it. I fucked up."

Dante wasn't really sure why it was so important that the blame rested on himself, but he was. It seemed really important, and he was (clearly) up tight about it. He took a deep breath and stopped pacing, pressing a hand to his forehead.

"So... I guess, obviously, don't let me cut myself," he said, gesturing aimlessly. Dante looked, really, a lot like he didn't want to have this conversation. His scowl looked pained, and he alternated between looking at the floor and the ceiling. "And don't... don't touch me unless I touch you first. And..." Dante settled back into the seat he'd pulled up next to the bed. He slouched into it, folded his arms, and blocked his view of Wren by rubbing his forehead with his fingertips. "Look, it's hard to think of everything. It's so.. chaotic when it happens. I don't remember it like I remember other things. Maybe, I dunno... D'you have questions? Or... we could go over what went down play by play or... somethin', I dunno."

Dante moved his hand away from his face and looked at Wren. He looked almost as miserable as his sick friend. The thought of bringing it all up again, of revisiting that embarrassment, instead of pretending it never happened made Dante seriously unhappy. Part of him just wanted to call Jo Jo and make him explane what to do, but Jo Jo was still a little sore at him and, to be honest, Dante was sore right back (fuckin' straight boys).

[Wren O'Hara]

Wren remained admirably still as Dante gestured towards his face. His eyebrows were still slightly furrowed in concern; it was the closest that he could reasonably come to looking irritated under the circumstances. He wasn’t much of an actor, and especially not while sniffling pitifully.

He did feel a tiny flicker of resentment at being told that he did everything that Dante told him to do, because it wasn’t entirely true. Dante had told him to go away, and he hadn’t done that. He’d also told him to drop dead, and he hadn’t done that, either, although he supposed he couldn’t technically have obliged even if he’d wanted to. Still, the fact remained.

There was a pause wherein Wren ruminated on what Dante had just told him.

“…we aren’t going outside, right?” he asked finally, with a hint of good-natured weariness.

He knew, instinctively, that they had reached the point in the conversation where arguing with Dante was a fruitless endeavor. It got like this sometimes – though not usually so severely – and Wren was just smart enough to let the issue drop and rest where it fell.

Which, in this scenario, happened to be on Dante’s shoulders. It seemed very important to him…

Wren studied the other boy for a few moments before speaking again.

“Is that really okay?” he asked meekly. He made a bit of a face, then, and turned away just in time to sneeze into his elbow. He made a noise of weary dismay in the back of his throat and reached for a tissue.

He pawed gingerly at his red nose and tried to think of a good way to phrase his question.

“Isn’t there anything else that helps?” he murmured, finally. “Other than hurting yourself, I mean. Something I could say, or…” he trailed off uneasily. He wasn’t good with words, and he figured Dante must know that, too.

[Dante Russo]

Dante huffed. This was hard. He was trying to remember, trying to think through his past freak-outs. What worked? Well, nothing was as consistent as hurting himself. On his own, he usually wound up with burns but he should probably try to stop doing that too. It wasn’t the same, sure, but it was in the same friggin’ ballpark. What did Jo Jo always do? Because he never let Dante cut if he was around to stop him. Jo Jo made the whole thing seem so easy. He had it down to a friggin’ science or something, because sometimes Dante didn’t even notice he was being talked down until he was totally calm again.

“Okay, I guess,” Dante rubbed his forehead again, “try not to make a big thing out of it. I mean, don’t act like I’m freaking out. I know that’s.. hard, but I get aggressive when you act worried.” Dante sighed and slouched down a little more in the chair. He looked at the ceiling. “Um… Jo Jo used to distract me with math sometimes. Bitch would literally stand outside the door and describe his homework to me.. and he’d keep pestering me until I started helping him— and I don’t know if he just sucked at math or if he was just pretending to be stupid or what, but eventually I’d get fed up with him and come out to show him what I was talking about.”

Dante scratched his head and sighed yet again. He sat up in the chair and looked at Wren now. “But, just.. I dunno, man. Find something that’ll.. engage me, I guess, and then..” Dante rolled his eyes, “pretend I’m not being a total dick.” Dante shifted uncomfortably before slouching down again. “I think getting me to talk is… yeah.” He drummed his fingers on his knees and chewed on his lip. “Cigarettes work pretty well, too,” he added, turning his head to stare at the wall now. The tension around him was almost palpable. He found this whole thing so deeply embarrassing that his stomach hurt.

Also, remembering how awesome Jo Jo was just tied him up in knots. He missed that stupid kid, but they might finally be drifting apart after managing to maintain their friendship without seeing each other for two years. He didn’t really know what to do about it. He didn’t know if he should do anything about it. Jo Jo had his own shit to handle.

[Wren O'Hara]

Wren had certainly noticed that Dante’s irritation had increased exponentially in regards to his own worry, although he hadn’t thought to connect the two in his mind until now. He supposed it made sense – he knew the feeling, if only vaguely. The only time he’d ever been in the hospital as a child, he’d found himself incredibly resentful of the fussing.

“Math?” he asked. He pondered this for a moment. Math was complicated; he could see how that would work.

Also, it wasn’t exactly hard for him to pretend to be stupid. As he’d already stated, and Dante had silently confirmed, he didn’t even really need to pretend at all.

He looked at Dante again, and noted that the other boy looked possibly worse than he felt, which was decidedly bad.

“I can do that,” he said, voice thick with congestion and confidence. If talking about random, complex subjects was what it would take, then Wren could do that. He knew so many useless historical facts that he could probably talk a satellite out of orbit, if he talked in precisely the right direction. Even stupid people had hidden depths.

“Thanks. For telling me, I mean.”

He paused.

“I really am sorry.”

After the words were out, he immediately pursed his lips as though trying to bite back an embarrassing question. He failed; the question came anyway.

“Uh, do you still… I mean, do you still want to come to Florida?” he asked, his voice the epitome of forced nonchalance. He pulled at the edge of his laptop and managed to get it onto his lap. It was the quiet way – the Wren way – of bracing for bad news.

He really wanted to not care. He’d been trying for days to not care. But in the end, the fact remained that Dante was… well, the closest friend he had, even in the short time they’d known each other.

He couldn’t not care.

[Dante Russo]

Dante scowled at the wall, only making only minor flickers in his expression at what Wren was saying. He didn't look over at him until the question was asked, at which point he turned his head slowly and looked straight at Wren. He wasn't scowling anymore, but he did look awfully serious.

"Do you still want me to come?" he asked, his expression turning slightly suspicious. He couldn't imagine Wren being comfortable bringing Dante's particular brand of crazy around his family, not after actually seeing it. He was expecting one of two things to happen:

Either Wren would gently suggest that maybe it would be better if Dante stayed home, or Dante would bring it up so Wren wouldn't have to. He wasn't expecting Wren to be worried about Dante not wanting to come.

[Wren O'Hara]

“I – what?” Wren said distractedly, having been temporarily lost in his own thoughts. He gave Dante a gently surprised wide-eyed look. The rounded tip of his nose was a little transparent where it had been running.

The thought had never occurred to him to un-invite Dante. Had the other boy really thought…?

Wren leaned toward his friend, suspended by one hand digging into the mattress under the added weight. He furrowed his eyebrows.

“I definitely still want you to come,” he said, very seriously. He sniffled absentmindedly. “You’d have to work really hard to get out of it, dude. Like, you’d have to punch me in the eye or something, which I don’t recommend. And even then you’d have to mean it, which I don’t think you would,” he finished, dryly.

He studied Dante’s face curiously before withdrawing his hand from the mattress and leaning away again. He lifted the lid of his laptop; the machine whirred to life.

“I wasn’t kidding, you know,” he added. “When I said we were friends.”

He let the words linger between them until his laptop had successfully booted up from sleep, and he turned the screen toward Dante. The desktop picture was of a large, thin, black-and-white greyhound. It was a little blurry.

“D’you like dogs?” he asked, after a quick pause, as though nothing had happened. “That’s Frida. Because, um,”

He peered over the edge of his laptop to look at Frida upside-down. He put one thick finger on the screen around Frida’s face.

“The two white spots make her look like she has one big eyebrow. Like Frida Kahlo. Do you like Frida Kahlo?” Then, in the same breath, he soldiered on.

“Wanna watch Netflix?”