tampered | (no subject)

When; December 10th at the Hospital
Rating; PG-13 for blood and swearing
Characters; Office Staff + Brocklehurst + House
Summary; Styles infamous ulcer finally exploded
Log;

It had been months of agony.

The past two weeks had been the worst - stomach pain after stomach pain, and no medicine would quell it; nothing pink, chalky or with the worlds "antacid" would fix it. Finally Styles just began to deal with it, but vomiting blood in the office had been the last straw.

He thought Faye was going to start screaming when she saw him, or heard Weasley drop the coffee, but she managed to drag him to the hospital.

He distinctly remembered the words, "Don't tell Brocklehurst" come out of his mouth, but he may have hallucinated it. But then he also remembered Longbottom calling for help...did he call Nicholas?

He hated blood.

[ooc: Okay, people! If you were in the law office, you would have seen the eruption. It's up to you if you want to post here - it will go from an open to the office staff post to a closed one quickly - it will be clear when. Any other questions, feel free to IM me~]

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Blue lifted his chin. "I scream out a good cadence, too."

He wasn't that shy. Not after Little Red Riding Hood, and not after Baba Yaga. "Sing Satchmo, I can drink my weight in beer, and I my words make my cloak not explode." There was a twinkle in his eye now.

"You're full of hidden talents, Blue," said the Corinthian, addressing him by his name briefly. His teeth eyes were narrowed in amusement. "Things no one else knows," added the nightmare. He looked Blue straight in the eye, apparent even behind his sunglasses. Cori could feel that sense of camaraderie at the Castle, and how it influenced a nature of a different sort. He was good at telling these things.

"Everyone knows things that others don't," Blue said, his voice deepening, that first veneer of sixteen year old boy that he played up with the mundies vanishing. "The question is how much of it we let out."

He knew that the Corinthian knew he wasn't 16, but that hadn't stopped him from acting it. Now, it was more serious, more of the Boy Blue that Rose Red knew, that Bigby and Snow knew. "We all make decisions. Some of us lead armies and others of us hide behind the opening lines."

He took one look over at the Corinthian. "We're going to have to see what kind of man you are, Corinthian. I don't play games."

That response took him by surprise. His senses told him there was more to Blue that he let on, hell the Corinthian knew that by his dreams alone. Just by his mannerisms the nightmare was well aware of the fact that his goldenboy teenager image was a charade, a hood he pulled up to conceal his true self, because the real Boy Blue needed that cover. If Last Castle was any indication, the blond's life was no walk in the fucking park... or a nap in the haystack. Those days were long gone.

He had little to say to it, the revelation itself not as unexpected as the speed with which Blue revealed it. His last remark though, Cori could address that. He reached across into Boy Blue's bag for a gumdrop then placed it into his own mouth before leaning forward to kiss him. It was his choice to take the treat or not.

Blue didn't get kissed very often. In the 1200 years that he had been alive, he hadn't been kissed much at all. A couple of times, during the war, by a farm girl behind the haystack when he was the real sixteen years old (on the same day that his poem had been recited), by Red Riding Hood and Baba Yaga but not much more than that.

He wasn't very experienced with them. The burst of candy slipped into his mouth and he chewed it, then swallowed, and looked right up into the nightmare's eyeteeth.

There was very little that Boy Blue was afraid of. He was the goldenboy teenager, to an extent, but he was also the warrior. The boy who fell asleep in haystacks would always be there, playful and innocent, as much as the herald and the swordsman.

He just looked over carefully and asked, "Next time, should I get you pizza?"

His reaction was more than enough. For all those years he missed, spending more time on the battlefield than between the sheets, the Corinthian could tell Blue wasn't necessarily chaste. He just had standards and that was the real challenge. The nightmare almost considered it not worth his effort, it was too soon for him to care about anything more than fun and games. The taste of sugar on Blue's tongue convinced him otherwise.

The Corinthian leaned back as if nothing queer had transpired between them. "No, anything's fine," said the nightmare as he finished off another fry, "I cook on occasion." That was an understatement.

"I had to learn to cook," Blue said, "But I don't do it very well," he admitted after a minute. "I can make pancakes, tuna salad and macaroni and cheese, provided it comes from the box." He wrinkled his nose. "I ate out a lot."

His diet had never exactly been stellar, either. Neither had been a priority. "I'm better at music," he admitted. "And at getting things done."

And making friends, but that went unvoiced.

"I picked it up as a hobby. It passed the time," he nodded to Blue. Never mind that that time was solitary isolation in his Citadel. There was little to do when he wasn't being a fear machine or helping his Lord with tasks and thus berating the raven who was always his partner in crime. He missed Matthew and hadn't had much time to warm up to Tethys.

"I'm sure you are, Almond Joy," said the nightmare with another smirk. "Tomorrow night, we'll pay The Raven a visit," he suggested.

Blue nodded in agreement. "All right," he responded congenially. "Tomorrow night, then."

The nightmare smirked, and as he had said once before.

"It's a date."