enodia_ic | (no subject)

Who: Mouse Leesuchaikul & Jack Jung
When: 6/2, shortly after the Mole
Where: Mouse's apartment
What: Jack is a patronizing doctor guy and imposes himself on Mouse.
Warnings: Dried blood.

In the elevator on his way up to the fourth floor of the apartment building, Jack catches sight of his reflection and laughs. There, in the dark, polished surface of the door, are two purple streaks that stretch from his nose, down his chin, to the top of his shirt. His nose was bleeding. Embarrassing.

The blood has dried, partially on his face and partially on his shirt. He wipes his face as best he can with the back of his hand, but gives up on his shirt for now. There won't be any hiding it before he gets to Mouse's apartment; the best he can do is pretend the blood isn't his. And blood doesn't frighten Jack, especially not his own. It's just inconvenient when he acted so high and mighty to Mouse on the net about accepting other people's worry, their help.

When he knocks on the door of apartment 404, he feels prepared to lie.

Mouse glances at the door when he hears Jack knock and counts to ten before he lets himself walk over and act like he hasn't spent every moment since Jack said he was coming over stewing in a pit of anxiety he hadn't planned on.

Something about Jack coming over was unnerving, even though they'd cobbled together some loose form of friendship in the past few days. It's a little bit like baring his soul to let him into his apartment, the one space he'd cultivated as specifically his own into something of a haven for himself.

When he opens the door, he's already in the process of saying, "See, I'm fine," before he notices that purple blood on Jack's shirt and he narrows his eyes without finishing the sentence.

"What happened to you?"

Jack flashes a smile, ready to meet anything remotely like concern from Mouse with flippancy. "Huge monster mole. Have you heard?" He lifts his first-aid kit to remind Mouse of why he's here. "Are you going to let me in?"

Mouse gestures for Jack to make his way over to his couch, frowning as he steps aside so Jack can pass.

"Doesn't ring a bell, actually," it's said with more hostility than he'd intended, but he doesn't apologize. Jack's flippancy is only making him certain that he'd made the wrong choice in inviting him over, their recent civility be damned.

"So, you're allowed to ignore that I've already told you I'm fine—multiple times, even, but you expect me not to question you, right? That's what we're doing."

Jack catches the hostility in Mouse's voice (it's hard to miss, actually), but he's too preoccupied with the interior of Mouse's apartment to really be bothered. He notes with appreciation the artwork—Hannibal Lecter, Chucky, not bad—on the walls, the shelves of books, the DVDs, the comfortable wear of the couch. Mouse's apartment is different from Mouse's dorm back at school, where personal effects were regulated by the dorm monitors and a little harder to come by in the first place. Jack feels oddly gratified to see this is how Mouse has chosen to decorate his own space as an adult. He feels gratified just to know that Mouse was able to decorate his own space, assumedly the way he wants—it’s like a victory. Jack's observations of Mouse's apartment defang him, make him think it's less important that he lies or otherwise obfuscates the truth now, here.

"Hm?" Mouse had said something; Jack tries to remember the thread of conversation. Oh, hostility, right. "Ask me whatever you want," he shrugs. "As long as you show me you have a full range of motion in your arms."

Mouse chooses to cross his arms over his chest instead, which definitely doesn't show the full range of motion. All it does is make him look as frustrated as he feels, Jack not rising to fight with him making him feel worse.

There's a certain familiarity in it, the kind that's always present whenever he interacts with Jack nowadays, in an almost painful way. A reminder of all the worst parts of the days they'd be friends, the push and pull that was always so one-sided against Mouse.

So he unfolds his arms and starts moving through all the basic movements to show that they're working exactly as they should be. "Anything else, Doctor?"

Jack watches Mouse for any signs of pain or discomfort. He sees both, but not from anything muscle-related; Jack smiles a little, a joyless expression, understanding that once again he is the causative agent behind what is upsetting Mouse. He thumbs the smooth plastic corner of his first-aid kit, grounding himself in the sensation of two right angles meeting perfectly.

"I could check your pupils to see if they're enlarged," Jack starts. He smiles more broadly now, although it is equally joyless as before. "But you don't seem to be in a state of shock. You can put your arms down now."

Mouse does so, crossing his arms against his chest once more, fully on the defensive. There's a bookshelf behind Jack's head that he focuses his gaze on instead of looking him in the eyes, but he still lets out a "go for it," which is as much of an invitation as he'll give.

"Do whatever you need to do."

Even from a distance, Mouse's pupils look fine. Jack chews on the inside of his lower lip for a second, thinking. Is it so horrible that I worry about you? he'd like to ask. Is it so horrible to know that I care if you're alright? Jack wishes this would make Mouse happy—the knowledge that years could pass and Jack would still worry if Mouse was well, if he had cause to smile. But Jack guesses Mouse has his own people for that now. And it's been too many years since they called each other 'best friend.' Maybe, too, Jack is confusing himself, projecting onto Mouse; knowing that someone is thinking of him the same way he thinks of them, maybe this is something only Jack wants.

Anyway, there's nothing more for him to do. Jack gets the sense that the longer he overstays his welcome, the more distinctly unwell he will make Mouse. "That's all," Jack says briskly. "I just wanted to make sure." He laughs as he stands up. "Paranoid me."

"Yeah, yeah, great for paranoid you. Fuck anyone who feels that way about you, though." Mouse leaves it ambiguous on purpose. Even with the invitation to ask questions, it's obvious to Mouse that it was transactional purely for the sake of assuaging Jack's worries. If Jack didn't want him to pry, he wouldn't.

"You should at least let someone check you over, considering you passed out and now you're walking around with blood all over your shirt." There's some on his face too, but it's obvious that Jack had tried to get rid of it. Just one more thing meant to be hidden from Mouse, business as usual.

"If you really don't want to go to medical, you can stay here and get monitored by a nurse until you get the all clear. So no one has to worry about your dumb ass when there's already enough going on around here."

“No, I think I’ll just go,” Jack says quietly. He’s done or said something wrong—he keeps doing or saying the wrong thing to Mouse. He’s sorry for it, but he doesn’t know how many more times he can say sorry only to make things worse. All Jack knows is that Mouse saying, ‘so no one has to worry about your dumb ass when there’s already enough going on around here’ produces a painful tightness in Jack’s chest. It makes him feel small, embarrassed to occupy space in Mouse’s nice apartment.

Jack heads back toward the door. “Anyway, I’ll—" he begins, but he doesn’t know what to say. “Thanks,” he finishes, a little miserably.

Jack being so obviously upset throws Mouse off—he's so used to everything about Jack being almost muted. So for him to be noticeably upset can mean only one of two things, that he's either that much more upset than he'd ever been around Mouse or that things between them have changed so fundamentally that he's not sure it's possible they could ever go back to being anything again.

The second option scares him almost as much as dangling over a pit containing certain death.

"Sorry—I didn't mean to," Mouse starts then shakes his head, because he did mean to be an asshole. He just didn't expect Jack to care that much or at all.

"I'm not good at this," he makes a vague gesture between Jack and himself, as though it would explain anything. He's not even sure if there are words to explain what he means. "I don't usually let people come here," he adds, as though that made things any clearer.

"Sorry," he repeats.

“Don’t be sorry,” Jack urges. “You haven’t done anything wrong,” he says, and he means it. He’s always meant it. “You have a really cool apartment. Very ‘chill inner sanctum.’”

Jack takes one last look at everything and then starts to back out of the door. “‘Make sure you eat and drink something,” he says, unable to help himself. “Frayed nerves.” Jack squints, smiles wincingly. “But you already know that.”

Mouse wants to tell Jack to do the same, but it comes out as "you know that too."

His tone isn't mean, but he still winces at the condescension in the words alone. "I just mean you should eat and drink something too."

Jack shifts his first-aid kit to his left hand so he can salute Mouse with his right. His expression eases somewhat, his smile less wincing now. He feels slightly better to leave on this note, although he still believes he must leave. "Yes, nurse," he laughs. "I will."