roci | (no subject)

(no subject)

When Jim shows up, he's in one of the corridors on the Rocinante, boots muddied, wind-whipped hair, eyes bloodshot with fatigue, dark circles underneath.

He stops dead. Wavering on his feet. Staring dully at what's in front of him like it can't be.

Slowly, his mind processes a somewhat-suppressed memory of a conversation with an ineffable being that runs a boat in space full of prisoners.
"Jesus fucking Christ.

"Jesus fucking Christ."

Somewhere in his exhausted brain and body, he reaches a reserve of adrenaline not yet depleted, and he takes the few steps to what-was-formerly-the-airlock-door at a run. Slams his hand into the release, and it opens onto the hallways of the Barge.

Like he knew it would.

Time seems to do a weird sort of skip, because suddenly his face is on the ground and he's not standing up anymore. And his vision has gone all sparkly. Not green, though. Not green.

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"Is your uniform squirming?" No, that can't be right.

They've gotten most of it; Jim just couldn't last long enough without hallucinating. He thinks he sees the Montana house through the door, and he pulls against Jedao's grip.

"You shouldn't be here," he says. "If you're not real, I will find a way to kill you."

His mind is losing its grip on the sequence of events. He can't remember what just happened, and the only thing stopping him from panicking is that he literally has no energy for it. He has no energy for anything.

"Sure," he lies, to an invisible person telling him to sleep, and he can't remember why he's not supposed to sleep, but he remembers that he's not supposed to. "Just one more time around." Around what?

"James, that is a very interesting promise, but I'm the realest person you know. Come on, coffee's in the kitchen. Robe first, unless you want to be bare-assed for my boyfriends after all."

Jedao clucks soothingly, manages to drape a towel on Holden's shoulders without letting him fall over, and shuffle him into Quentin's bathrobe, which has the benefits of being closest to his size and particularly soft.

Partway through this process, Jim perceives the ground approaching him at a stately pace, almost friendly. He's too far gone to figure out if it's because his perception of time is gone, his perception of space is gone, he's managing to catch himself, or Jedao is catching him.

He's unconscious before he can figure it out.

And it is unconsciousness, not sleep. His breathing is shallow, and his heartbeat is fast and not totally regular. Skin is warm, but it might just be from the warm shower water.

As it happens, he'll be fine without intervention, because he would have been fine without intervention. But whatever last reserve was sustaining him during his interaction with Jedao, it's gone.

Jedao carries him into the room that's sometimes Quentin's quiet room, sometimes Tup's room, sometimes a spare room. It's small, and white: white walls, white sheets, white blanket.

Jedao putters and frets, checks his pulse and once or twice his pupils, but ultimately decides to wait it out. Whenever Jim returns to consciousness, he's still in the bathrobe and under a few cozy white blankets, on a mattress on a bare white floor. Jedao is a pillar of black and gold in the otherwise colorless room. He sits cross-legged, reading something on a tablet. There's a glass of water, a plate of fresh-ish blueberry and chocolate muffins from the dining hall, and coffee kept sacriligiously warm in one of Jedao's self-heating teacups.

When he comes to, every part of him is a knot of throbbing pain, and he is simultaneously ravenously hungry and dizzyingly nauseated.

He rolls over and presses his forehead against the mattress. "Oh, Jesus fucking Christ." He may have felt this bad once or twice as a result of high-G burns and fights, but he can't remember it if he has. "Oh fuck." His hands form into fists, not to fight, but just to squeeze on something. It feels like the worst flu of his life, like sore throat and fever and aches everywhere. He's shaking, shivering, but he's too hot at the same time. He's not sick, though; the antivirals he takes every three months make sure of that. He's just -- like he said, having the worst hangover of his life.

He honestly feels like he zeroes in on the water with some kind of extrasensory perception, because he couldn't have seen it while he rolled over, right? Whatever. He chugs the entire glass and curls back up.

Jedao pets his hair, very gently.

"More?" He keeps his voice soft and low.

"No more," comes Holden's muffled voice, "of anything, ever." This is an ultimatum, to the universe: please stop happening all the time.

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