#askingforthesun

Out of the corner of his eye, Swiss sees Rain speed down the hall towards his room, hands squiggling nervously at his sides as he rushes with purpose. It was a habit the ghoul had picked up to release extra anxiety, each finger tapping quickly against the thumb one at a time in quick succession. 

Whatever was going on with the water ghoul couldn't be good. He quickly throws shut the book he had been soldiering through for Cumulus’ benefit and walks after the water ghoul, seeing him turn into his room and shut the door. 

As Swiss reaches out to knock the door he hears Rain muttering worriedly, causing him to pause for a moment, frowning, before finally gently knocking. 

“Hey Raincloud, can I come in?” he gently asks, shoving down the worry that is starting to bubble up in his own throat. 

There is a quick sharp sigh from the other side of the door before it creaks open and Rain’s face appears. “Oh um, yeah sure babe. Come on in” he greets with a fake cheery tone, hand still running through the calming motion where it lays along his side. Rain is technically smiling, but it wouldn’t be convincing even if Swiss didn't know the water ghoul as well as he does. He turns away from the door and moves to sit in the middle of his bed, trusting the multi ghoul to follow.

Swiss steps inside the water ghouls room, turning to softly close the door. From behind him he hears a soft sniffle and feels his heart break. When he turns back around, Rain is staring at a spot on the floor, tears flowing mostly silently. Swiss knows that the cheerful facade was for the benefit of anyone else who may have been walking by, but the way Rain immediately dropped it leaves a knot of anxiety in his chest.

Swiss rushes to sit down in front of Rain, cradling his face tenderly in his hands and gently wiping away the tears with his thumbs. “What's wrong Raincloud, talk to me” he prompts, moving to run one hand soothingly through the water ghoul’s hair. 

Rain starts to rapidly mutter out broken sorrys and other things that Swiss for the most part can’t make out with the way the water ghoul is crying, but the phrase that sticks out is “I know you’re disappointed in me.”

“Whoa, Rainy take a deep breath for me okay?” he interrupts, leading the water ghoul in some breaths to calm down. “What do you mean you know I’m disappointed in you, babe? Why would you possibly think that?”

Rain stares up at him, mouth agape and tears still flowing. Swiss can see the gears turning in the water ghouls head as he runs through various ways to voice his fear. He lightly rubs up and down Rain’s arm, allowing him space to find the words he wants to say. 

Eventually he mutters out a small broken “so you haven’t heard then, that's somehow worse” before burying his face in Swiss’s shoulder. 

“Heard what babe, are you okay? Did something happen?” Swiss prods, trying his best to keep his voice level despite the deepest panic he feels swirling through his veins at the idea of what could possibly be distressing his mate like this. 

“No, I’m fine. Sorry to worry you. Sorry. I just, fuck… and its so stupid but I could already hear your disappointed sigh in my head before, and knowing I disappointed you was already a lot, and now I going to have to hear it in person and-” Rain rambles out before Swiss shoots him a look filled with so much love it throws the water ghoul off his rhythm forcing his voice to trail off. 

“I don’t even know what happened to make you so upset, but one thing I do know is that it doesn’t matter, okay? You are the only thing that matters to me. As long as I have you everything else is trivial.” he whispers, placing a kiss on the water ghouls' temple. 

“I love you too.” Rain lets out with a small sigh, finally leaning back to look Swiss fully in the eye. “I knew I was overreacting but it all kept echoing through my mind and I couldn’t get it to stop.”

“See, I have everything I could hope for. Please don’t let the voice of doubt inside your head sound like me, that is what breaks my heart. Besides, just because it sounds like you or me doesn’t mean that voice knows shit, Raincloud.”

Swiss catches the tiny twitch at the corner of Rain’s mouth, the slightest hint of a smile beginning to form now that he was moving past the original panic in his mind. 

“Next time you hear that mean voice you come find me okay? I’ll climb inside that noggin of yours and kick those thought’s ass myself okay?” 

That finally pulls the last parts of Rain’s smile out of hiding, allowing a goofy grin to overtake his face. Swiss looks into his eyes and promptly finds himself wishing he could drown there. The glint of appreciation for Swiss inside the water ghoul’s eyes sparkles like the most gorgeous oceanside view one could possibly imagine and he feels his heart swell at the sight. 

“There’s my beautiful Rainbow” he mutters, pulling Rain back into a tight embrace before he can start to cry himself now that he knows everything is alright. He’ll figure out what exactly happened later, but all that matters now is the feeling of the strong yet lean swimmer's arms of his mate currently wrapped around his waist. 

I think blood bags are so neat because not only do they normally have that feel to them of those squishy water tube toys, but there are different types for different products.

Blood gets split up into 4 different products: pRBC (packed red blood cells), FFP (fresh frozen plasma), platelets, cryprecipitate (the concentrated coagulation factor parts of plasma)

I know the RBC units are the fun sexy ones that people think of when they talk about blood which makes sense but there are the other components too. Technically speaking in transfusion for blood loss a 1:1 ratio of RBCs to FFP is recommended. So I constantly am like where is the plasma.

pRBC (packed red blood cell) bags have different types of additives in them. The additives are essentially a preservative, acting as food for the red cells and also an anticoagulant.

The bags for platelets are super cool to me cause they obviously need to be closed off so that bacteria cannot get in, especially since platelets are stored at room temp, but also platelets need to breathe so there still is oxygen exchange through the bag.

FFP have water balloon energy to me and I want to throw them so bad once they are thawed. (They are kept frozen until needed because once thawed its only good for 5 days)

NOW for the built in vampire rant. I LOVE LOVE LOVE when vampiric characters are just drinking a bad of blood or like have a connection to get bags of blood because it is always pRBCs and thats funny to me. I know that this is because then it reads as blood instead of weird goo but it still cracks me up because like what is happening to the rest of it? It is something that I love to think about!

It makes me feel like those types of vampiric characters are the vegetarians essentially of the vampiric world. Like they are only drinking the RBC component.

That or like what if the plasma component is like the vampire equivalent of a milkshake or a nice soda. Is cryopoor plasma (the plasma left over after cryoprecipitate gets made) the vampire equivalent of diet soda, except instead of aspartame its albumin? The idea cracks me up so much and I adore it.

Also yes jokes about vampires liking certain ABO types, but there are other antigens on those cells and I can't help but think about if they also have flavor. Do the different perservatives have a taste???? These are the vampire things I think about :D

To start here are some thoughts about RBC and transfusion biology:

I had talked before about how element relates to blood typing, and if they were part of the same grouping system or their own separate systems and I finally decided each element would be their own antigen families on the red blood cell. I think that makes it much more interesting because then you could technically have a ghoul that would be compatible with an element so to say, but might not actively exhibit the element. A ghoul could also then receive blood outside of their element in an emergency as long as they haven’t made an antibody to that element before (crossmatch time!).

Now quintessence ghouls are fun! In real immunohematology there is a uncommon phenomenon called a “Fy(b) GATA”, which essentially is somebody who exhibits the Fy(b) antigen on their tissue cells, but the gene coding for it has a mutation in it so that that antigen degrades and cannot properly encode on the red blood cells. A similar concept happens as a natural occurrence with quintessence ghouls so that on their actual tissue cells that element is present, but unless they have a secondary element, there’s not an elemental antigen on their RBCs. This essentially makes them the perfect universal donor for both RBCs AND plasma! (Fun fact in humans, ABO type comparability for RBCs and plasma are inverse of each other. So like AB patients can get any type RBCs but only AB plasma). Any sort of quintessence multi or hybrid would still have their secondary element(s) on the rbc though, but I like to think that quintessence is more of a recessive element and while it might be able to co-express with another element, that other element would be dominant.

I have also said before that Dews elemental transition would work sort of like a bone marrow transplant. Expanding on this to say that therefore his red cells would look like a fire ghoul (thanks Ifrit for being such a lovely donor) and his plasma looks like a water ghoul still.

Intermission blood thoughts: I think that once placed into a human vessel, there’s this weird 90 day period where all the old human blood left in the vessel gets gradually replaced by ghoul blood and they can’t really tap into their element until then.

Actual hematology thoughts: Ghoul blood is straight up weird man! Their plasma glows under UV light; it requires a special stain to look at correctly under a scope; their skin is sort of tough to get a needle through! Overall it took a long time to figure out what was going on with them. They all have much higher hematocrits (% RBCs by volume of blood) than humans do which leads to them having a lot more general stamina. There is definitely something weird going on with their red and white blood cell synthesis but I haven’t decided what yet. I do think they have a lower overall wbc count than humans do, but those individual types of cells are in differing percentages as well.