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[daretodo]

By now I know the drill. I'm on a strict order of bed rest for the ten days proceeding my surgery, which seems about as long as an overnight trip compared to my last stay in the clinic, a fact I try to focus on as I shift once again on the cramped, uncomfortable mattress. It's not like the bed back in mine and Mary Jane's hut is all that much better, really, but its location is infinitely preferable, surrounded by warm, wooden walls, all of my personal belongings, and most importantly, natural daylight. That it easily accommodates two is another point in its favor, but that particular train of thought just threatens to depress me more -- I'm a newlywed and I can't even sleep in the same bed as my wife. While I undoubtedly have bigger concerns, that's the one I keep circling back around to in my few moments alone.

I nearly lost my life to a man who probably could care less about me, and I did it at the expense of Mary Jane's happiness -- and for what? Some sense of duty, of responsibility? We've only just started our lives together, and I swanned off to play the hero for someone who didn't even want saving, leaving my wife with the all too real possibility of becoming a widow at age twenty-two. God, I've been so selfish lately, caught up in my own personal drama with Johnny's and Sarah's disappearances and Council business and the O.R. that I haven't really been there for the one person who means everything to me. That'll have to change once I'm out of here.

For now, though, I'm left to my own devices, MJ off making lunch for us both. With nothing else to do, I've turned to a battered copy of The Time Machine for entertainment, but I pay attention only to every other sentence, my mind elsewhere entirely even as I turn another page.

Comments

[daretodo]

"I'm sorry," I murmur, face falling for all of a moment until I notice those big brown eyes staring at me, and I school my expression to something less depressing. I was just a kid when I lost my parents, but I can remember it like it was just yesterday. This isn't about me, though, much as I can sympathize. Dad? I mouth to Sam, taking his lead.

[badblood_rising]

The corners of Sam's mouth twitched downwards in a tight, slight disapproving look. It was subconscious, like a nervous tick, something he couldn't fix because he wasn't wholly aware of it.

He waved his hand backwards, mouthing "long gone" and hoping Peter could read that on his lips. He didn't especially want to talk about that just then with Cori on his hip.

"But seriously, what did happen to you? During the hurricane?" he guessed, but thought unlikely, given what Peter had said about friends. Sam moved to set Cori down on the bed next to Peter so he could look for a bandaid with both hands.

[daretodo]

"Well, it happened on the 11th, yeah, so you get half points," I say, buying the hint to follow the change in subject instead of wheeling back around on that look of his. There's a story there -- that's one of things I've been picking up about Sam since we first met, that there's a story -- but loath as I am to talk about myself in any real capacity, the guy could probably use some shadenfreude right about now. "Tony Stark went on a bender in that fancy suit of his. I got in the way."

[badblood_rising]

"F-fudge," he stuttered awkwardly, giving Cori a glance, who watched them both with strange attentiveness.

"Did anybody else get hurt?" Sam asked. He hadn't heard anything, but clearly that didn't mean anything. He could have missed a lot in the last couple of days. "You're gonna be okay, right?" Hospitals weirded him out, after all that had happened in them and how severe things had to be to get a Winchester in a bed in the first place, but he could take an accounting of injuries pretty well. Peter looked in serious need of some recovery time, but not bedridden for life or anything.

[daretodo]

"Aw, dude, your concern is touching," I say with as easy a smile I've managed in days, pressing a hand high on my chest to avoid the incision site. It is, in a way, though I'd never admit so in earnest, not when I barely know the guy. Still, it's easier to talk to someone not embroiled in all of this -- there's plenty I can gloss over, details I don't have to mention. It's almost freeing.

"I'll be fine. The only other casualty of the night was the yacht we were on -- too much structural damage, you know? The whole thing sank."

[badblood_rising]

"I'm a sensitive kind of guy," Sam replied, mostly straight-faced, but a hint of a smile crept out. It was just nice knowing that, for Peter at least, things would be okay. No doom and gloom attached to this injury, no sign of bigger and badder things to come or worry over whatever was still breathing down their necks. Just a guy on a bender with some big toys.

"That sucks," Sam allowed as he moved to a cabinet and got down a box of bandaids. "But, I mean, we're on an island that looks like Hawai'i. Not that big of a loss. Not like it could go anywhere."