#desiriley

Hi! It's the 38 anon😂 Sorry for leaving it blank, feel free to use whoever you want! Thanks  - npnp darling just wanted to double check lmao

No. 38 “You broke me”

The hospital room is quiet, silent like a church because people always seem to whisper whenever they enter the Intensive Care Unit.

Desi leans back in her chair, bone tired and bruised, exhausted in ways she hasn’t felt for a long while now. She keeps her gaze on the steadily beeping heart monitor, hearing the slow mechanical press of a ventilator. 

Riley looks so still, still and small in a way that Desi has always forgotten about; she’s always seemed larger than life, brave and witty, fierce and just as badass as Desi knew she was. It’s incredibly strange, and almost grieving to see him like this. Still and silent, hair flung around the pillow, and kept from her face from where Desi has so delicately braided the hair, taking such care to avoid the deep merlot and ocean blue bruising of her jaw, the imprint of a massive fist against her cheekbone.

She looks so lost, and it makes something rise in Desi’s chest, so heavy that it could crush her, has her gasping out a desperate exhale, hands fisting around her thighs, leaning foward until her hair can hang in her face and Riley is obscured from view, until she can’t see the tube lacing down her throat, the way her head is turned towards Desi as if searching for her even when she’s unconscious. 

She can’t help herself in how she reaches forward, hands trembling in ways she’s never known them to tremble before, how she lets her fingers curl around Rilley’s, clutches those limp fingers, that limp palm, pressing the tip of her fingers into where she can feel Riley’s pulse, a steady thrum so different from the fast and thready one she remembers.

“You can’t do this again, baby,” Desi chokes out, keeps her finger on that pulse, counts the beats even though the heart monitor does it for her. “You’re not the one that’s supposed to be gettin’ hurt, you’ve broke me, baby, you’ve broke me, you can’t do this, you shouldn’t have shoved me out the way, I had a vest, Riles, I had a fucking vest-”