#threads.hiro

Iggy: It had been a long day, and Iggy was starting to feel it. After spending the weekend working with Lennon and Lux, he was coming down from the natural high of being successful and having a good time. Unfortunately, he'd followed that with a pill here or there offered to him by another dancer or a bartender at Abito during his shift. His shift, which had felt neverending. By the end of it though, he was loose and giddy and giggly. And one of his favorite patrons took advantage of that. "Wanna keep the party going? Let's get a room at the motel," and who was Iggy to say no? Someone wanted him, wanted to spend time with him and more importantly share their drugs.

Passing Andrea on his way in, being pulled along by the guy who had stuffed a dollar down his underwear just hours prior, Iggy laughed and brought two fingers to his forehead, swinging them outward in a salute to his cousin. He didn't exchange any words with her though, just went to the room and threw off his shoes and coat.

Everything was fun, for a bit. And then suddenly it wasn't as fun. He felt thirsty, so thirsty he wanted to stick his entire head in the motel bathroom toilet. Fortunately for him, he couldn't make it that far. When he tried to stand off the bed, his legs gave out and he crumbled. His 'friend' was laughing, grabbing Iggy under the arms and yanking him upwards to throw him back on the bed again. "M-my sh-shirt-" Iggy started, wanting to point and realizing his hands were shaking too bad to do much of anything. His eyes were unfocused and his ears were ringing, nothing was making sense. When he started to retch and his body started to seize, his friend finally stopped laughing.

The only sound Iggy made as his 'friend' gathered his things and ran out of the room was a short gurgle in place of a groan, completely unaware of his surroundings now.

Hiro: Hiro didn't make it in time to see the moment Iggy entered the lobby of the hotel, he arrives just a few moments later. He'd left his zippo in one of the rooms last time he booked a night and thankfully, Andrea found it under the bed, hidden and lost. Likely kicked under the bed by mistake and not at all noticed until the next time Hiro went to reach for it and came up empty handed. Luckily for him, it was discovered. That zippo means something to him even if it is only a simple and old rectangle to everyone else.

He spends some time there with Andrea, just lounging around the lobby, leaning against the front counter and chatting with her to pass the time. It's fun, it's comfortable. She's good company.

He wasn't on his way out but Hiro doesn't exactly sit still and so often just takes a lap of the small reception area while maintaining conversation and perhaps it's just luck that he happens to pass the door and the window that looks out to see one of the doors fly open. Nothing alarming about that at all, except for when a body flies through the door not half a second later, clearly in a rush. They aren't even entirely dressed yet which is alarming considering the weather. That's the alarming part.

"The fuck is that person doing?" Hiro nods his head out the window to the view of the one booking it away from the closing door of the hotel room, gesturing for Andrea to take a look. "They just ran out half dressed. It's fucking freezing out."

Andrea: Andrea preferred working nights because it was usually quiet. She wasn’t good with people and at least the drunk kind didn’t care nor remember if she chose the right dialogue to answer them.

She’d been reading for hours when a man dropped his credit card on the counter, asking for his usual room. She didn’t have the heart to admit she was new, so she picked a random room and hoped she was right. She wondered who he thought he was to assume she’d keep a specific room available in case he showed up…

"Enjoy your stay," she said instead of whatever was going through her head.

That’s when she noticed her cousin. His gesture pulled a small smile from her. She didn’t think anything of the whole interaction. She often saw Iggy here.

She also often saw the next person that would show up to keep her company.

Hiro.

Someone she considered a friend these days. She didn’t know if the feeling was mutual.

She wouldn’t dream of judging them. Maybe if she wasn’t so traumatized, she would also spend her nights with different people. Just the thought of being touched too long, even platonically, made her want to crawl out of her skin. For a moment, she was able to drop her book and talk with Hiro. She mostly listened, but she was happy to do so.

"Wait- what?" she rushed to the window beside Hiro when he pointed out someone outside. Her first instinct was to make it to the half dressed man to help, but when she reached the door from the desk office and recognized him, she froze. "That’s-“ she swallowed. "That’s the man who came in with my cousin. Iggy…"

The hopeful scenario was that he just angered Iggy and was kicked out of the room. Which… still wasn’t ideal. Her mind then jumped to the worst scenario. The same way Iggy did when she went missing. And he had been somewhat right. She hoped she wasn’t.

"Room six," she told Hiro. She was already moving behind the desk, grabbing the spare keys. Her hands were shaking.

Iggy: Iggy had long ago stopped caring about what happened to him. He couldn't put an exact date on it, but at some point in his addiction and mental illness spiral, it just had stopped mattering whether he lived or died most of the time. Which wasn't to say he was looking to die, just that it had been a possibility for a while and he wasn't fighting the chance anymore. How could he, without admitting some of his behaviors needed to change?

So he went to motels with strangers, sometimes only making it in their cars before giving them what they wanted so he could get what he wanted. Sometimes he went home with them, though he never took them home with him. Home was his safe space, the only one he had left. But everywhere he went, he went with the idea that he was there for a good time, not for a long time.

Still, he never would've expected that the moment things went too far, whoever he'd trusted to be with him in that experience would cut and run. Leaving Iggy half naked and lying in a motel bed in a puddle of his own sick, breathing shallow and slow and choking. And while the guy had taken all of his things with him, the track marks on Iggy's arm and finger shaped bruises on his hips were all the evidence anyone would need to know what had happened.

Hiro: She says, Room Six, like it’s the answer to a question he didn’t ask. The solution to a problem already in her head that he isn’t aware of but he puts the pieces together on his own. That’s the guy that came in with Iggy. So what reason would he have to cut and run from the room half dressed into the freezing cold? A reason that can’t be good.

Typically, Hiro doesn’t spend much time thinking about who the person he’s fucking is fucking. It’s one of those things that is only assumed but not expressly talked about. Hiro is certainly sleeping with other people. He knows Iggy is too but this is a little bit in his face and he’s not quite sure how he feels about it. If there's nothing wrong and the guy just left because he doesn't believe in aftercare, does Hiro really want to go barge into the room and see Iggy reclining in the motel bed, dazed and satisfied after getting dicked by some random? Not really. Is he jealous? He’s not going to think about that. Is he concerned? …Yes but purely because Andrea is concerned only and for no other reason beyond from that.

So… guess he’s about to go barge into a room. Room Six to be exact.

He’s got the reception door open and waiting for Andrea once she grabs the room key. Each step that takes him away from the reception room and closer to Room Six feels like a mile and yet before he even realizes it, he’s already there in front of it. He’s already preparing himself to see something he doesn’t really want to see. He’s breathing in through his nose… one… two… three… and out… one… two… three… Just waiting to see what’s on the other side of this door.

Andrea: For once in her life, she hoped to be wrong... But why would someone run this fast if they weren't scared of getting caught for something?

With the key in hand, she walked quickly towards the right room. She didn't run. Why? She felt like if she took some urgency away from the situation, maybe it wouldn't feel so wrong. What if she ran and freaked out just to realize Iggy was laying on the bed, watching crappy television?

She knocked on the door, giving her cousin a chance to yell out something stupid, but nothing. She exchanged a worried look with Hiro. If Iggy tried to speak, it wasn't loud enough to be heard from the outside...

She unlocked the door and there he was, laying on the bed, but no crappy television. ''Iggy!'' He was shaking. He couldn't breathe well. Something wasn't right. She knelt next to the bed and cupped his face in her hands.

''What did he do to you?'' she asked, panicked and angry. She then looked up at Hiro. ''Call 911, now!'' Her voice was firm, as if she was the one in control of the situation. She wasn't. She didn't even know what was going on.

Iggy: Time felt like it was moving very quickly, though there was a chance Iggy just wasn't aware of time at all. He was barely conscious, and only for moments before losing his grip again. But he was trying to stay in the moment, trying to hold on. He didn't hear his cousin, but he did see her face for a split second, and he wondered if that was just a dream. If he were fantasizing about being saved, and since she'd been the last face he'd seen before entering that room, it made sense she'd be the one in the fantasy.

He wanted to speak, but barely any sound came out of him, and his eyes rolled back into his head before he could really determine what was real and what was fake. Everything kept going black, silent, and he wasn't really able to keep steady in any sense of the word.

Hiro: The door opens and the room tunnels to a pinprick with Iggy at the center. An overload of sensory information barrages Hiro’s eyes at such an alarming rate that almost none of it actually sticks and the only thing he can see is Iggy in a pile of his own sick. Iggy in a pile of his own sick. Iggy. Sick. Iggy.

The time between being outside the door and being inside the room dissolves into nothing. He hears Andrea’s urgent voice to call 911 but he’s already doing it.

“He can’t answer,” Hiro says to her, to the air, to the ringing dial tone pressed against his ear. Said in a way like he knows what he’s talking about, like he’s seen this before.

There’s too much happening at once. He shuts everything down, everything that doesn’t need to be happening right now gets pushed aside. His feelings. His thoughts. Himself. He’s watching from outside of his body like he’s hovering in a crane overhead and below him is the scene playing out.

Iggy’s twitching body, convulsing, track marks. Sick trickling from the corner of his mouth. A voice in his ear, the emergency response operator, wills him to speak and he responds, “We need an ambulance at the Ennora motel. One adult male.” Track marks. “Possible overdose. No, I don’t know what he took.”

The phone gets passed into Andrea’s hands, “Tell them the address,” and then he takes hold of Iggy’s body, turning him onto his side so he stops choking on his own sick. He pushes back his curls, those pretty curls. Is this the last time– He doesn’t think about that. He pushes back Iggy’s hair. He fits his fingers past his lips to drag out more sick, pulling thick bile to clear his airway. “Breathe,” he rubs Iggy’s sternum with his knuckles with enough pressure to hurt. “Don’t go to sleep.”

Andrea: She didn’t understand why Iggy couldn’t answer. She especially wondered why Hiro seemed so certain of it. What did he know that she didn’t?

She focused her attention on her cousin. She already wasted too many years away from him, she didn’t want to lose him when she just got him back. "Help is on the way, you’re gonna be fine. I’m here. We’re here," she kept telling him in a soft, and slightly panicked voice.

Possible overdose.

She frowned, looked up at Hiro as if to say are you sure? There wasn’t time to wonder if she would’ve known Iggy did drugs. She was given the phone and stood up so Hiro could take over. She told whoever was on the other side the exact address. She felt frustrated. They were wasting time! This town was small enough, they should know where the motel was. She could feel tears sliding down her cheeks as the woman spoke to her. She was barely hearing what she had to say.

Iggy: When he was aware of anything, it was discomfort. Everything felt wrong. Hands on him felt painful, and he wanted to pull away from them but he couldn't. He could almost hear someone speaking, and he thought it sounded like Hiro, but that was even crazier than Andrea coming to save him. He felt himself coughing up whatever was blocking his airway, though he wasn't able to put any effort into it himself. Then his teeth were chattering, and he tried to force his eyes to focus, a small sob escaping him as the first real sound he could emit that he didn't choke on.

"Stop," he was raspy and unclear and soft, but it was a word finally. Iggy wanted to push whoever was on him away, but he still had no control over his limbs. His eyes watered and he felt that discomfort washing over him again. "St-stop," he wasn't speaking to the people in the room, he was trying to tell his body, not wanting it to happen again when his body began to spasm once more.

Hiro: “That’s it, Iggy,” Hiro urges, “That’s it. Stay awake,” he stops grinding his knuckles against Iggy’s sternum when the next wave of spasms takes him over. The sheets get pushed out of the way of Iggy’s spasming body and a pillow tugged under his head to keep it propped up. A little secret piece of Hiro elates at the sound of Iggy’s voice. It’s rough, hard to hear, but it’s there.

“Drea, I need you,” pulling her attention away from the phone call. “Take a deep breath. I need you to talk to him.” Giving her an occupation that’s a little more physical so it feels satisfying and helpful even if right now there’s not much they can do without any actual medical attention. “We need to keep him awake. Did they say how long until the ambulance?”

Andrea: Her eyes travelled from Hiro to Iggy. Her cousin was struggling to speak, but at least he was conscious enough to try and say something. Maybe that was a good sign. She wouldn't know. She couldn't bring herself to ask Hiro.

She was pulled from her thoughts by Hiro's voice. She realized she was still holding the phone against her ear. The woman was telling her to breathe and was updating her on the location of the ambulance. She focused on her breathing, just like Hiro had said. ''They're almost here,'' she said. She couldn't recall the exact amount of minutes, only the few reassuring words that had been spoken directly into her ear.

She dropped the phone on the bed and sat next to where Iggy was laying. ''You are doing so good, in a few minutes you'll have all the help you need... And... you know what? When this is all over, you'll get to use this so much. Anything you want and that I'm usually too boring to say yes to, you'll be able to get...'' she was rambling, trying to say anything that would usually make him feel better even if she knew he maybe couldn't hear her.

Iggy: He was so, so tired. His eyes weren't focusing, he felt nothing but wrong, and he could barely understand what was being said to him. Another strangled sob fell out of him, and his eyes fell shut, body going completely limp now that the seizing had stopped.

Hiro: Hiro still hasn’t come back into his body. He’s still watching from somewhere else high above them like everything that’s happening below is part of a scene of a movie. A dramatic moment that wrenches the heart and leaves the audience captivated, glued to the screen for every pleading cry left, hoping along with the actors that the next scene doesn’t cut to a funeral.

A funeral.

With Iggy laying there on his side, body no longer spasming and eyes shut, with the sweat dripping down his neck cooling and the sick still sticking to his chin… it’s hard to imagine a happy ending. But they did it right. They did everything right. Hiro quickly runs through the mental checklist, dark eyes keen and sharp stab at everything in sight like it’ll make the important details stick better even though his thoughts are coated in grease, readily slipping away every time he tries to spear them.

“You’ll be okay,” Hiro says it and it’s unclear exactly who he’s saying it to. Iggy. Andrea. Himself. “You’ll be okay.” He has to be. He has to be. There is no other option. He can’t watch another person di–

Flashing lights seep into the room like flames, coating the room in red and then a stark bright white.

He’s already moving to the door to open it for the paramedics.

Andrea: Andy thought the strangled sobs and the quiet 'stops' were horrible to hear, but the complete quiet that followed proved to be even worse. Was he dead? She looked at Hiro with tears in her eyes. Quickly, she decided to look for his pulse. She felt panicked until she thought maybe she could feel his heartbeat. It was so faint, she wasn't sure if maybe she just wished it so much she imagined it. She didn't have to wonder if there was anything more she should be doing, the paramedics were already stepping in the room. ''Please, you need to help him! I don't know if he's breathing,'' she pleaded, as if they would be more likely to do their job if they knew someone cared about him.

Iggy: The EMTs sweeped in, moving past Andrea and Hiro and taking charge of the situation. They administered Narcan, and took vitals, shouting out their findings to each other and working quickly. Slow pulse, difficult to find. Blood pressure low. Unresponsive, but ready for transport. They got him on a stretcher, Iggy's limp body putting up no fight. "Is one of you coming with us?" One of the EMTs asked the two bystanders, tone rushed but kind.

Hiro: Hiro starts to step forward by instinct, a pure and natural reflex to do something and that something involves moving forward but then he stops. Andrea said Iggy was her cousin. Of course, it should be her to go. Not Hiro. Not him. What was Hiro to Iggy when his cousin was there? Someone he fucks from time to time when he gets lonely. No, it shouldn't be Hiro who goes. So he does what he always does and he steps aside.

Even if right now, he wishes there was room in that ambulance for two.

"I'll ... follow in my van."

Andrea: Andrea hurried to the ambulance. She didn’t even know Hiro knew Iggy. Well, she knew now. She wasn’t completely blind… But she didn’t think he could be closer than family.

Was she even considered close like that? It wasn’t the right moment to think about it all.

"Yes, be careful," she stopped once she heard Hiro’s words. She turned around only to squeeze his hand, sharing a look that showed how much she meant it.

She then climbed into the ambulance, looking as the EMTs worked on Iggy. She told them everything she knew, not sure if they were even listening.

Iggy: As his cousin got into the ambulance, Iggy's eyes opened again and he looked around, not really aware but more awake than he'd been previously. He looked confused for a second, and then an EMT was helping him get sick into some plastic despite not being able to sit up. His whole body trembled, and he couldn't help thinking it was a lot nicer being unconscious.

"That's the naloxone working," the other EMT told Andrea, offering her a hopeful smile. The ambulance was racing off towards the hospital as soon as the doors were closed.

Iggy didn't make it long before slipping into unconsciousness again, and the EMT nearest him administered another dose of narcan, keeping track of his vitals until they got to their destination.

EMTs raced him through the doors of the hospital, but a nurse stopped Andrea from following and led her to the waiting room instead. "What is your relationship to the patient? Could you help us with some paperwork?"

Andrea: Andrea was just so relieved to see him awake. She had been so scared to ask, but some part of her was convinced he died in that room… "He’s my cousin. I’ll try," she didn’t know if she’d be able to answer all the questions. Was he allergic to anything? Did he have a medical history? How was she supposed to know?