#morgues

Gordon eyed his arm. “You’re licking it now.”

“yeah? now’s later, from the ice cream, b’cause we had it, uhh, a while ago.”

“It’s been ten minutes. Joshua still has his co- JOSH!”

Benrey jolted from the force of terror in Gordon’s sudden shout, and he looked up to see Gordon lunging for the sidewalk’s edge, where Joshua had just stepped into the street, eyes fixed on something colorful on the center line.

The world slowed down. Benrey’s ear flicked as tires rushed over asphalt up the lane - a car was coming. It wasn’t late enough in the evening for everyone to have their headlights on, but it was dark enough that they should. However, there was no play of light across the street. This car’s headlights were off.

Joshua’s heel connected with the edge of a pothole and he started to stumble. Gordon was running, leaning forward - he was going to be horizontal in a moment, and he also wasn’t going to be able to reach Joshua in time. Benrey could tell that like he could tell the flavor of ice cream he’d been eating. He knew.

It was an easy enough decision to make. Benrey wasn’t human - he could move faster, jump higher, phase in and out of solid objects. This was a problem with a simple solution.

To an outside observer, it probably looked like Benrey flickered as he moved from the sidewalk to the street, scooping Joshua up in the middle of the lane and turning to bring him back. The car was still feet away, and it wasn’t even going that fast -

But they were on a corner, and now there was a truck coming around the curve, accelerating as it drifted over the center line, and Benrey wasn’t expecting that, he wasn’t ready for it, and Gordon was still advancing - if he kept coming he’d be hit by the car, and Benrey and Joshua would both be hit by the truck, and - and -

Benrey panicked, and threw the kid.

Joshua sailed through the air and collided with Gordon, who slammed to a halt and started to go over backward as he fumbled to catch his child. The truck clipped Benrey’s shoulder and sent him spinning right into the path of the car, which promptly ran him over.

Tires screeched, people screamed, and Benrey looked up at what was probably an axle - and then something heavy rolled onto his head and he didn’t see anything at all.

* * *

Benrey woke up in the dark. It was cold, but not frigid. He was laying on his back, and all his parts felt like they were attached. On the whole, he’d woken up in worse places.

Then he tried to sit up, and immediately slammed his head on a hard surface approximately six inches in front of his face. 

“owww,” he whined, and his voice echoed off metal walls in every direction. Wherever Benrey was, it was cramped and closed-in and solid stainless steel.

He’d still woken up in worse places.

It took him a few minutes, but eventually he was able to clip through the metal and into the closest open space. Benrey found himself in a dim room furnished with stainless steel tables, drains on the epoxy floor, a splashguard around the edge of the room, and a whole wall of three-foot-by-two-foot drawers, one of which he had just clipped out of.

Benrey stood up and tugged on the door next to his. It slid open to reveal an elderly woman who was clearly dead.

“gross,” Benrey said, and closed the drawer with a clang.

Something clattered outside. Benrey frowned and walked over to peer through the window on the swinging door. A very young man was sitting at a desk in the hall, a lunchbox open next to his elbow and his mouth full of what looked like chicken salad sandwich. He stared at Benrey, who waved at him through the little square window.

When he didn’t move, Benrey pushed the door open. The guy’s eyes dropped, then sprang back up to Benrey’s face and he made a choking sound. The ID badge clipped onto his shirt had a big line of colored text along the bottom that read “INTERN.”

Benrey glanced down as well and frowned. “oh, yo, what? why’m’i naked?”

The intern wheezed, his face turning an alarming shade of red.

“d’you know where my clothes are?” Benrey asked him.

Still coughing, the intern raised a shaking hand and pointed back into the room, to the wall opposite the one Benrey had climbed out of. The drawers on that wall were much smaller, with precise labels on them. Benrey walked over and ran his finger down the rows until it stuttered over a drawer marked “Freeman.” He yanked it open fast enough that it dropped off the rails, and he struggled to push it back in for a moment before abandoning it as a lost cause. 

In the space inside, there were several bagged items. Benrey pulled them out one by one - his blood-soaked pants, his blood-soaked shirt, his blood-soaked hoodie. Well. Technically it was Gordon’s blood-soaked hoodie, but Benrey wore it better. Underwear, shoes - oh, hey, wallet, that’s nice. The cell phone had blood on it, but he wasn’t sure if that would count as water damage or not. It was scuffed and cracked, but the screen powered on when he pushed the power button. Score. But the clothes were unsalvageable.

He padded back across the floor and pushed the door open a little again. The intern froze with the desk phone up to his ear and his finger hovering over the keypad.

“bro, d’you - you didn’t wash my stuff? that’s not good service, man. zero stars.”

The intern made a slightly hysterical noise, then clapped his free hand over his mouth. Benrey frowned at him, then glanced over his shoulder. He supposed he could just take someone else’s clothes. It wasn’t like they were going to use them. But that felt like it would make Gordon yell at him, and not in a good way. Not the fun kind of yelling, with a smile hidden in it.

“you got more of those?”

The intern swallowed and rasped, “There’s…spare scrubs in the changing room?”

Benrey raised his eyebrows. The intern pointed to another door next to the one Benrey was looking out of. It was smaller, and the room on the other side was dark.

“But - after you do that, you have to sit down and wait for a doctor, okay?”

“whuh?” Benrey let the door to the hall swing closed and opened the changing room door.

“Sir, you - you need to wait for a doctor after you get dressed! You should be evaluated for -”

“myuh, sure,” Benrey muttered, flicking coathangers. He pulled on a loose pair of plain blue scrubs, and found some soft shoe covers that could work as shoes in a pinch. He wiggled his toes against the grippy rubber and snorted.

“Sir?” The intern sounded like he’d opened the hall door. “Sir, do you need help?”

“nope,” Benrey replied, thumbing through his phone’s contacts. Gordon’s phone went straight to voicemail. He called the home phone, and it rang until the answering machine picked up. Benrey hung up and stared blankly at the wall.

He was pretty sure that Gordon and Joshua had been out of the way of the car, but then again, he had thought he was out of the way of the car. And yeah, okay, he would have been if it weren’t for the truck, but he should have noticed that earlier. Could he have missed another hazard? Possibly.

Fuck.

Benrey called Tommy.

Tommy answered on the second ring without a greeting. “Are you back? Where are you?” 

“uh.” Benrey looked around. “morgue?”

Tommy swore viciously in a language Benrey didn’t recognize. “You gotta - you have to get to the hospital. The one on - with the - the bird statue, it’s, um -”

“i know where it is,” Benrey interrupted. Tommy was bad with locations when he was under pressure, and the tense tremor to his voice suggested that was the case. “dunno where i am, but i’ll, uh…find out, i guess.” He swallowed, and forced himself to continue. “is…Gordon…”

“Gordon’s fine - well.” Tommy paused, and there were voices in the background mixed with a tinny announcement. He was on some kind of public transport - a bus or train or something. “It’s, um. It’s Joshua. He hit his head and, um.”

An icy hole yawned open in Benrey’s chest. “is he…?”

“Oh! No, he’s, he’s alive, but it’s - he’s hurt,” Tommy stuttered. “You should - you might be able to, um -”

“yeah,” Benrey said, eyeing the winged logo on the bulk scrubs. “i’ll find them.”

He ended the call and closed his eyes, focusing. The morgue was underground, but the logo on the scrubs suggested he was in the right hospital, which made sense. He couldn’t hear Gordon or Joshua, so he’d have to go looking for them. And that meant he didn’t have time to wait around and talk to any doctors about his “miraculous recovery.”

“Sir?” The intern tapped on the hall door. Benrey pocketed his phone and clipped through the wall.

Being in scrubs in a hospital was actually super useful. Benrey kept his head down and kept moving, listening in each wing for familiar voices, and no one bothered him, even when he ended up in an area of the hospital where no one was in scrubs the same shade of blue he was wearing. 

After a few more minutes of aimless wandering, he remembered some snippet from a TV show about how hospitals were grouped by age - so all he had to do was find the kid’s section, and he’d find Joshua. He listened for children, and almost immediately heard little voices on another floor in the wing across an open quad, green lawns criss-crossed by concrete paths and studded with fountains. Benrey padded through the open area, ducking under the shadow of the colossal bird statue on the roof, and slipped through the door behind someone in a white lab coat. He was used to following white lab coats. Being in a hospital was surprisingly homey.

Once he got up to the right floor, Benrey tilted his head to listen again. Immediately he zeroed in on a familiar voice, speaking with a very unfamiliar edge of desperation.

“Well then, what DO you know? Because it sounds to me like you don’t know ANYTHING right now!”

“Sir,” a calmer voice replied, as Benrey trotted down a hall full of single-occupant rooms with lots of beeping machinery. “We’re hoping to avoid surgery, but he needs time for the swelling to go down. The medically-induced coma is necessary for that. I understand that it’s frustrating to wait, but right now, that’s all we can do.”

Benrey rounded the corner and saw Gordon with his back to the corridor wall, glaring down at a diminutive dark-haired woman who was giving him a sympathetically no-nonsense look. Benrey idly noted that Gordon was a fucking mess - his clothes were disheveled with dirt and possibly blood, one knee of his pants was torn, his hair was coming out of its tie, his hand was bandaged, and his prosthetic had a bright silver line where the coating had been scraped off. 

“If you can’t keep a calm environment for your son,” the doctor said, “you’re going to have to leave the room and wait in the common area for news.”

“No,” Gordon exclaimed, then visibly tempered himself, blinking reddened eyes. “No, I can - I’ll be quiet. I’m sorry. I just -” He squeezed his eyes closed, and his shoulders shuddered for a moment before he took a shaky inhale. The doctor placed a hand on his arm and squeezed.

“We’re doing everything we can,” she said. “The best thing to do right now is wait.”

Gordon’s head was still down, but he nodded. Behind the doctor, Benrey slipped into the room and set his back to the wall, hoping the doctor wasn’t planning to come back inside.

“If you need anything, go to the nurse’s station or hit the call button,” the doctor said, and Benrey huffed out a relieved breath as her footsteps receded. He didn’t look at the bed yet. He didn’t want to see. Gordon was coming back inside, anyway.

Benrey reached out and tugged Gordon away from the door, clapping a hand over his mouth. Gordon jolted, his bloodshot eyes going wide for a moment before they focused on Benrey, and then Gordon crumpled.

“oof,” Benrey huffed, and set his feet to support the sudden influx of weight as Gordon collapsed onto him, his arms coming up around Benrey and squeezing so tightly that he squeaked.

“You motherfucker,” Gordon gasped, his voice ragged and shaking. “You stupid motherfucker.”

“hey,” Benrey said mildly, rubbing a hand up and down Gordon’s back. 

“You fucking -” Gordon pulled back and straightened up, reaching up with one hand to pull his glasses off and scrub the back of his hands across his wet cheeks. Benrey cleared his throat uncomfortably. Gordon’s prosthetic tightened on Benrey’s arm, like he was afraid Benrey would disappear if he let go.

“are you…okay?”

Gordon gasped out a weak cough of laughter, shaking his head and squeezing his eyes shut. His lips were pulled back in a grimace. “Fuck,” he whispered, then shoved his glasses back on and looked down at Benrey. “I’m - it’s better, now that you’re back,” he said.

Benrey reeled. “uh.”

“Took you a while,” Gordon told him. Benrey looked around for a clock, then realized that wouldn’t help. He pulled his phone out and Gordon made a pained sound at the bloodstains and cracks.

“oh dang,” Benrey said. Almost two days had passed. “was i - did you not change?”

“My kid is in the hospital and you were - “ Gordon swallowed. “Of fucking course I didn’t change. That would - I’d have to leave, and what if -” He cut himself off and pressed his lips tightly together.

And, well, it was probably time. Benrey turned his head and looked at the bed.

It was both better and worse than he’d expected. Better in that Joshua didn’t look scuffed up at all - he was clean, with no trace of blood and only minimal bruising on one cheek. But then Benrey looked at the the machines hooked up to his little arms, the plastic array over his lower face with a tube going down his throat, the hiss and puff of a ventilator pushing air into his lungs -

Benrey ducked his head into Gordon’s chest and breathed. Gordon’s arms came up around him again, and this time Gordon was the one patting Benrey’s back.

“I know,” Gordon rasped. “It looks - bad.”

“what’s - wrong with him?”

“Brain swelling,” Gordon said. “He - we both fell, and I couldn’t - I didn’t -”

“s’not your fault,” Benrey said, knowing that as much as he knew anything. “i, uh. i kinda. panicked. shouldn’t have -”

“If it’s not my fault, it’s not your fault.” Gordon’s voice was firm for the first time. 

Benrey chuckled weakly. “yeah, okay.” He pulled himself away from Gordon and tangled their hands together, dragging him closer to Joshua’s bedside.

“They’re hoping the swelling will go down on its own,” Gordon said, reaching out to push a curl out of Joshua’s face. “They say they don’t - they’d rather not do surgery.”

Benrey hummed and reached out, letting his hand hover over Joshua’s chest, rising and falling with slow regularity as the machines hissed. He moved his hand up to Joshua’s head and let his palm settle gently against the wild mess of curls. There at last he found evidence of their close scrape - there were particles of dirt in Joshua’s hair. 

“can i try something?” Benrey asked, not making eye contact with Gordon. He wasn’t sure it would work, but Tommy was the one who had suggested it, so it might. He’d done similar-enough things before, though always for more obvious injuries like cuts or bullet holes. He wasn’t sure it would work with something like a brain bleed.

Gordon’s grip tightened on Benrey’s hand again. “Will it hurt him?”

Benrey shook his head sharply. “nah, it’ll just…work, or, uh. not.”

“Then sure, I guess.” Gordon sighed. “As long as it won’t make things worse.”

Benrey gave a tight nod, and then stood still, working his jaw. He had to concentrate, fix up an extra-strong dose. If this didn’t work, he didn’t know what he was going to do. Worse, he didn’t know what Gordon would do.

Finally, he took in a deep breath, then leaned over Joshua and tugged the edge of the tube over, opening Joshie’s mouth just enough to sing a burst of brilliantly vibrant teal green sweet voice down his throat. He kept the tone going until he became almost light-headed - he didn’t need to breathe all the time, but he’d gotten used to it, and pushing out that much energy at once was a lot when he was still rebuilding his own body. Benrey ended up sagging against Gordon’s side, letting Gordon take his weight and bring a hand up to steady him as he gasped and watched the monitors. 

Something chirped, and the small screen connected to the electrodes on Joshua’s temples flashed green. Gordon made a broken sound and squeezed Benrey tighter against his side.

“Mr. Freeman?” Benrey flinched at the voice from the doorway. Gordon shifted to look over his shoulder and said something over Benrey’s head that he missed. Joshua’s eyelids had just fluttered.

The nurse stepped into Benrey’s field of view, busily checking the readings on the machines and making sure all the tubes and electrodes were connected. When she looked up at Gordon, she was smiling.

“This is a very good sign. Mr. Freeman. It looks like the intracranial pressure is dropping, which means the swelling is going down. Let me go call the doctor and we’ll see what our next steps are. But between you and me, I think we might be able to wake him up before the end of the day.” She patted the bed and gave Benrey an odd look before she left the room.

“did it…worked?” Benrey asked blearily. He may have used a bit more energy than was advisable so soon after waking up. He felt the bones of his hands trying to poke through, and pushed them back. His ribs emerged from his torso as a result, but that was fine - it was under the scrub top, so no one could see.

Gordon’s voice was choked when he replied. “Yeah, buddy - I think it did. Are you -”

Benrey’s knees buckled as he abruptly lost the connective tissue of his legs, and Gordon scooped him tighter against his side.

“What are you - no, no - hang on, what’s happening?” His hands worked to gather Benrey up and deposit him in the uncomfortable chair next to Joshua’s bed. Benrey felt a little floaty, which might have been the fact that Gordon had just picked him up like he weighed almost nothing - and might have been because he actually weighed almost nothing, since he kept losing body mass.

“s’fine,” he said weakly. “m’fine, i just…lotsa…tired.”

“Shit,” Gordon hissed, and pressed his broad warm palm to Benrey’s forehead. “Did you kill yourself keeping my kid alive?”

“no-uh,” Benrey protested. “i just. need a minute.” He brought one hand up and linked his fingers with Gordon’s again, tugging their joined hands into his lap.

Gordon straightened up when the same slender dark-haired doctor bustled in, but he left his hand linked with Benrey’s. Through half-closed eyes, Benrey watched the doctor pause and squint at him.

“Who is this?” 

“He’s family,” Gordon said with no hesitation.

The doctor’s eyebrows went up, but she didn’t protest. Instead, she launched straight into a full examination of Joshua, checking the machines, shining a light into his eyes, and speaking rapidly to Gordon, who seemed to be keeping up only marginally better than Benrey was.

Eventually she stepped back and tucked her hands into the pockets of her lab coat. “Well, I’d say this is an example of the power of the young,” she said. “It looks like your son is well on his way to recovery. The swelling has definitely gone down, though we’ll have to get some imaging to make sure and check for residual issues. But I’d say we’re out of the woods.”

Gordon laughed weakly and ran his free hand over his face, leaning his hip back against the chair he’d poured Benrey into. “Does that mean - can you wake him up?”

The doctor gestured, and the nurse from earlier came in. “We can remove the intubation, and he should wake up on his own.”

Benrey closed his eyes and drifted for a few minutes, listening to the busy sounds of the nurse disconnecting what sounded like half of the machines and coiling up the tubing. 

“Push this button when he wakes up, or if you have any questions,” she said, then her footsteps tapped out of the room and off down the hall.

“Benrey?” Gordon asked, and Benrey dragged his eyes open. “You okay, man?”

“mmhmm,” Benrey hummed languidly. He felt relaxed for the first time since he’d been licking ice cream off his wrist on a city sidewalk.

Gordon’s eyes raked over Benrey’s face, and he seemed to come to a decision. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.” He carefully unlinked their fingers and cast a quick glance at the bed before hurrying out of the room.

Benrey rolled his head sideways and stared at Joshua. He looked much better without the tube down his throat, though he still had the electrodes stuck to his temples and the tube in his elbow and a little tube under his nose that smelled like cold oxygen. He was terribly small in the hospital bed, the white of the sheets washing him out and making him look ashen.

“Here,” Gordon said, and pushed a chilly cylinder into Benrey’s hand. Instinctively, he tipped his head back and drained the bottle of soda without even checking to see what it was. Gordon wasn’t going to poison him.

“Wow, that was - okay, then. Want some food? I have chips and Oreos, so - no, don’t eat the plastic -” Gordon sputtered. Benrey grinned and kept crunching. He needed a lot of materials to rebuild himself if he didn’t want to end up back in the morgue - and then there would definitely be questions.

“thanks, that hit the spot,” he said, tapping at his ribcage, which made a hollow sound. 

Gordon made a face. “Doesn’t sound like enough if you’re still a xylophone. Want more food or more soda?”

“chips please,” Benrey said, and Gordon handed him the bag with a resigned look as Benrey stuffed the whole thing in his mouth, packaging and all.

When he looked up again, Gordon was watching Joshua, his gaze distant. After checking to make sure he actually had leg muscles this time, Benrey heaved himself to his feet and leaned into Gordon, who tangled their fingers together again.

“How’d you find us?” Gordon asked.

Benrey shrugged. “i was in the basement. called your phone, but it was off. called Tommy, he said where you were. the, uh, logo’s the same, so…” He trailed off, plucking at the scrub top. Gordon sighed again and wrapped him up in a hug.

“I’m really glad you’re here, man.” His voice was muffled where he spoke into Benrey’s shoulder. “Thank you for - for helping him.”

Gordon’s arms were so tight around Benrey that he felt his ribs creaking. He wheezed and patted Gordon’s shoulder. “okay, okay. s’not like i saved the world or anything.” He wasn’t the type. That was Gordon’s job, after all.

Laughing, Gordon pulled back and grinned down at him, the exhausted lines of his face crinkling around his eyes. “Are you kidding? You saved Joshua, and you got yourself back, again,” he said, his green eyes shining. “He is my world, and you - the two of you - you’re all the world I need. So yeah - yeah, you did.”

Benrey stared at him, pink sweet voice welling up in his throat. What the fuck was he supposed to say to that? He’d never been anyone’s world. More often than not, people wanted him out of their world.

“oh,” he said, and looked back at the bed to break eye contact.

Gordon’s lips pressed against the side of his face, and Benrey huffed out a burst of coral pink and robin’s egg blue sweet voice in surprise. Gordon chuckled into Benrey’s hair and kissed his temple again. He took a breath like he was going to say something - but then the sheets rustled, and Joshua opened his eyes. 

Gordon immediately darted to lean over him, pulling Benrey with him. Benrey glanced around and found the right button to push to call the nurse, and the room quickly filled up with medical personnel. 

Later, when Joshua had been cleared by a very confused MRI tech who said he’d never seen cranial inflammation completely disappear like that, Benrey dragged another chair into Joshua’s room while they waited for his observation period to be over so he could be discharged. Gordon smiled tiredly at him when he scooted up next to him so they were both leaning their elbows on the bed, watching Joshua’s chest hitch in a much more natural rhythm in sleep. 

Gordon didn’t say anything when Benrey put his head down on his folded arms after a few minutes. He’d sourced a few more vending machine snacks, and Tommy was still on his way back from the same conference that Dr. Coomer and Bubby were presenting at, so he’d promised to bring more food. In the meantime, Benrey was exhausted.

Gordon’s hand came down on Benrey’s head and ran over his crown, his fingers scritching Benrey’s scalp. “You wanna take a nap, buddy? We got time for that.”

“hmngph,” Benrey replied, and Gordon chuckled.

“I’ll wake you when Tommy gets here.”

“or if Joshie wakes up,” Benrey mumbled, eyes closed.

Gordon’s hand stilled, then squeezed the back of his neck. “Yeah, okay,” he said, roughly. “I’ll wake you if Joshie wakes up.”