Wilford Warfstache (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cottoncandypink) wrote2017-06-19 01:26 pm
cottoncandypink) wrote2017-06-19 01:26 pm
You’re a tough little bastard, you know that?
Billy hadn’t really known what to pick up from Wilford’s place, but there wasn’t much of anything there to be picked up. He didn’t have anything, and Billy already knew that. He came back with a ratty old bathrobe that Wilford had had since high school, a pair of slippers that had been buried in the back of his closet, and a backpack full of clothes that he couldn’t really wear around all the stuff he was hooked up to. The bathrobe wasn’t much, but just wearing something that was actually his made him feel a little more like himself. He mostly slept to pass the time, but it wasn’t a pleasant or restful sleep. It was a fuzzy, drugged sleep that left him feeling just as gross as he’d felt before. He hated pain killers, but he imagined he’d hate being in pain even more in this one case.
The first time he saw the damage, while a nurse was invading his space and checking his stitches, he almost puked. The only reason he didn’t was probably because he had nothing in his stomach to puke up. One of the hidden benefits to a clear liquid diet, it seemed. He hadn’t ever seen the aftermath of taking three rounds to the stomach and surviving. He’d expected a few stitches here and there from where the bullets had gone in. He hadn’t expected the long incision straight down his stomach, or the other long one just over his hip. There were more in his side, and two more spots on his back that needed checking.
“Two of them went straight through. The third took a detour,” Billy had explained later.
It was no wonder everything hurt. Because everything was hurt. The clean-up operation must have taken hours.
“You’re a tough little bastard, you know that?”
He kept his bathrobe tied closed after that. He had to wear the belt high around his chest, because anything around his stomach was agony. But anything to keep him from having to look at that mess was preferable. Even more preferable would have been being anywhere but where he was. He hated the nurses and doctors and everyone else constantly invading his space. Billy was there more often than not, but he at least kept his hands to himself. He probably felt like he had to be there, for some irritating, sentimental reason, since nobody else would be coming to look smug at him.
“I want to go home,” he said while the doctor was in having a look at his charts.
“I… would very strongly recommend against that,” the doctor said.
Wilford shook his head. He hated the room, and the people in it, and the bed he was on, and the TV that never stopped showing the news, and everything that was sticking out of him. He wanted it all to just go away, so he could curl up somewhere dark and just be miserable for a while.
“I want to go home,” Wilford repeated.
The doctor put the clipboard back on the end of the bed. “Do you have anyone at home to keep an eye on you?” he asked slowly.
Wilford started to answer that he didn’t need anyone else, but his head was still all full of sand and cotton, and Billy was faster. “He’ll stay with me,” he said.
The doctor seemed to accept this a little more easily, but going to Billy’s wasn’t what Wilford wanted. He wanted to be left alone.
“Wil, you’re on the third floor. That’s a lot of stairs, man,” Billy said.
It occurred to Wilford he may have been even more slow to react than he realised. Or maybe Billy was secretly psychic. But he had forgotten about the stairs. Even sitting up hurt; he’d never be able to get to his front door.
“I’ll go with him,” he said, pointing at Billy.
The doctor still didn’t seem very convinced, but he nodded anyway. “Okay. I’ll go get the discharge started.” He gave Wilford a strange look before leaving the room.
Billy watched him go, waiting until the door was closed before turning back to Wilford. “You sure you don’t want to give it a few more days?”
He didn’t. It was the last thing he wanted. He hated everything about this place.
“I want to go home,” he repeated again.
“All right. We’ll go home.” Billy didn’t seem convinced either, but at least he’d leave Wilford alone. He respected personal space boundaries, unlike everyone else here. Wilford just needed to be left alone, and then he’d feel better.
Eventually, the doctor came back in with a stack of forms and releases and waivers for Wilford to sign - agreeing that the hospital wasn’t at fault if complications arose from refusing treatment, agreeing that he’d refused treatment, agreeing to having consented to the treatment he did receive. He didn’t care about any of it. He signed them all with a loose, sloppy signature that barely looked like his own, trusted that Billy was listening to medication instructions and garbage about follow-up appointments, and everything else. He still didn’t care about any of it. He was tired, he was starving, everything hurt, and he wanted it all to go away.
While the doctor finished up, a nurse Wilford hadn’t seen before came in and started getting everything ready for him to get up and leave. He removed all the gunk stuck to his chest, and took the line out of his arm so quickly, Wilford hadn’t even realised that’s what he was doing until it was done. He was already starting to blank out again when the nurse got up and moved to the foot of the bed. He was saying something, but Wilford wasn’t paying attention. He just wanted this guy to finish what he was doing so he could go. And then he felt the nurse’s hands go under the hospital gown, and Wilford jumped back to reality so quickly, he could feel his foot connect with something hard.
“Woah!” Billy said, quickly stepping forward to lean Wilford back into the bed. He had a strange look on his face that Wilford couldn’t read, but he wasn’t trying to. He was more concerned with the nurse.
“What the fuck is he doing down there?” he demanded.
“Man, you haven’t been able to get up to take a piss in three days,” Billy reminded him. “He’s got to take the tube out of your dick. You have to let him.”
Wilford had been so out of it, this fact had not even occurred to him until that moment. He didn’t even have anything to say. He just glared up at Billy, like it was his fault.
“That’s a normal reaction,” the nurse assured. He didn’t sound very sincere, but Wilford wasn’t equipped to go picking that fight. “It’s just a couple of seconds, okay? Let’s try again. Deep breath.”
Wilford did not take a deep breath. He kept his jaw set tightly and tried to ignore the fact that this man had his hands on him. It wasn’t a fact that was easy to ignore, and left him feeling light-headed and nauseated. Even once the nurse finished up, Wilford could feel himself trembling from trying to stay still. Billy put a hand on his shoulder, but Wilford slapped it away before he puked.
“Okay, all done,” the nurse said. “Do you want to try to get up and go pee for me?”
“No,” Wilford said firmly.
An awkward glance was shared between the nurse and Billy.
“All right. He’s going home with you, right?” the nurse asked.
Billy nodded, giving Wilford that same strange look again. “Yeah.”
“If he’s not able to urinate within the next eight hours, bring him back,” he said. He nodded to Wilford and gathered up everything to be taken away. “Good luck.”
Now that it was finally time to get up and go, Wilford couldn’t even force himself to get out of the bed. He felt like if he moved, he’d be sick. He hated himself for not even being lucid enough to realise that was going to be a thing. Thankfully, Billy said nothing, and busied himself with getting some clothes out of the bag he’d brought over on the first day. He’d been smart about it, and grabbed some T-shirts that were too big, and a few pairs of pyjamas.
“Do you want my help?” he asked cautiously as he laid the clothes out on the bed.
Wilford shook his head. He wanted to tell Billy to fuck off, but he didn’t know what would happen if he opened his mouth. Billy hung around after that for a few more seconds, before nodding and finally turning to leave the room. Even after he was gone, it took what felt like a week for Wilford to feel like he could move again. He moved even more slowly and sluggishly than was just from the drugs surging through his system, but he didn’t try to fight it. He put the pyjamas on first before he even thought about taking off his robe and gown. Even that was exhausting, and he had to take a long break afterward. Then he pulled the shirt on and took another break before even considering getting something on his feet. But he couldn’t reach the floor from his high perch on the hospital bed, and trying to stretch or bend down to get his feet into the slippers just made everything hurt again. If his nerves didn’t make him puke, trying to get down on his own would have, so he sat in a bitter silence. As he waited for Billy to come back, he slowly realised that there was something else he should be doing. Something important. Something about all this.
If something did happen now, he’d be doing all this again. He did not want to do all this again, because it was awful. He slowly and deliberately took his save log from his inventory and opened it up to find the next empty space. This was not an ideal place to save, but it was better than the alternative. If a helicopter dropped out of the sky on him as they drove down the freeway, he wouldn’t have to figure out what to do differently next time, and risk getting shot in the face instead. Any other time, he wouldn’t have even thought twice about it, but this time was different. He was clinically dead twice. But clinically dead is still dead, and should have triggered a reset anyway. But it didn’t. And now he was here, feeling miserable in every possible way while someone knocked at the door to be let in.
Wilford didn’t bother responding, forcing Billy to crack the door open and cautiously peer in. When he found Wilford dressed, he opened the door all the way and pushed a wheelchair into the room. Wilford tried to get down on his own, but even with the absurd amounts of morphine in him, it hurt too much to try, giving him no other choice but to let Billy help him down. Once he was in the chair, Billy helped him get his slippers on, and folded up his bath robe so he could hold it in his lap. Wilford had never felt so useless in his life.
-
Billy’s apartment was small, but thankfully on the ground floor. He opened the door into his front room, and slowly led Wilford over to the sofa to sit down.
“Let me get some stuff out of my room, and you can have my bed.”
“Couch is fine,” Wilford said as firmly as he could manage. Like hell was he sleeping in someone else’s bedroom. The hospital room was bad enough.
That strange look was back on Billy’s face. He was making assumptions, but Wilford didn’t have the energy to challenge him on it. He could have his assumptions, if it meant Billy would leave him alone while he was stuck here.
Still, Billy disappeared to somewhere in the back of the apartment. A few moments later, he returned with a pillow and a blanket from his room, which he carefully put down on the sofa for later. Wilford wanted to lie back down, though it felt like it would take him about twenty years to get the energy to do so. Billy put the remote and a huge paper bag down on the table in front of the sofa, before leaning over to pull the table out to make a little more room. He sat down on the other end of the sofa, keeping plenty of room between them, and reached for the paper bag again. He pulled out several bottles of pills, reading the labels for each of them in turn. Antibiotics, pain killers, sedatives, anti-inflammatories. No wonder he felt like everything was full of sand. He’d been pumped full of two of the things he hated most, and a bunch of other junk on top of it. With everything laid out so neatly on the table, Billy sighed and looked toward the kitchen.
“You think you’ll be all right on your own for about twenty minutes?” he asked.
Wilford nodded. Being on his own was exactly what he wanted at that moment.
Billy got up to get the bag he’d brought from Wilford’s apartment, and dug through it to pull something from the bottom. He handed Wilford his phone, and went to the kitchen to write down a quick note.
“The address here,” he said, putting the note down on the table next to the remote. “If you need to call an ambulance.”
Wilford waved him away tiredly. He didn’t want to look at Billy’s face for a moment longer. Billy hung around for a few moments longer before leaving the apartment again. Wilford waited until he seemed like he was well and truly gone before he convinced himself to try to get up. It felt like it took about a year to manage it, and the first thing he did was slowly wander off to find the bathroom. Whatever that nurse had done to him made him feel like his bladder was about to burst, which made that priority one. Once that was taken care of, he started to make his way back to the sofa, but thought better of it about halfway there. He turned to find a door, and on the first try, managed to find exactly what he was looking for. He stayed at the bar just long enough to leave a note, before returning to Billy’s apartment to rest. About fifteen minutes later, he got up to check the bar again, and was pleasantly surprised to find Buster waiting for him in the bed the kids set up for him. The dog started to jump up excitedly, but seemed to immediately realise something was wrong. Wilford let him into the apartment and closed the door behind him, where the dog promptly dropped his bat right in the middle of the hallway. He tried to make it back to the sofa, but ran out of energy in the middle of the living room. Buster danced nervously at his feet, looking up at him and whining loudly. Eventually, Wilford gave up and very carefully managed to lie down on the floor. It wasn’t comfortable in the least, and just getting down there hurt, but it meant he wasn’t standing up anymore. Buster continued to dance around him, and tried to lie on top of him until Wilford pushed him away sharply. After a few more repeats of that, the dog got the hint and sprawled across Wilford’s legs instead. That was… acceptable.
He didn’t know how long he’d spent on the floor, but Billy didn’t seem terribly pleased about it when he got home with his hands full of Chinese takeaway. As soon as he stepped through the door, Buster turned his attention to him and growled sharply.
“Knock it off,” Wilford said, twisting his ear.
“…Where’d the dog come from?” he asked.
Wilford suddenly remembered that Billy didn’t know about the dog yet. Whoops.
“He’s mine. Friend brought him over,” he said.
“I didn’t see a dog at your place,” Billy said.
“Lives with my friend.”
Billy shook his head and abandoned this line of questioning, and took the paper bags to the kitchen instead. Once they were settled, he immediately rushed back out to the living room to kneel down beside Wilford. Buster growled at him again, until Wilford twisted his ear and shut him up.
“Knock it off,” he said again.
Cautiously, Billy offered his hand for the dog to sniff. “We gotta get your daddy off the floor, okay,” he said, hoping to convince the dog to get up.
It didn’t, but a nudge from Wilford did. Buster danced nervously nearby while Billy helped Wilford up off the floor, and got him back to the sofa. As soon as Wilford was settled again, Buster immediately climbed up onto the sofa and sprawled over Wilford’s legs, resuming his task of dedicated protection. Wilford would have found it funny if he didn’t feel so fucking helpless. When Billy came again from the kitchen, he put a squat, styrofoam bowl down onto the coffee table, along with a plastic spoon. While Billy got rice and teriyaki beef, Wilford got egg flower soup. If he hadn’t been so tired, he would have been insanely jealous.
The first time he saw the damage, while a nurse was invading his space and checking his stitches, he almost puked. The only reason he didn’t was probably because he had nothing in his stomach to puke up. One of the hidden benefits to a clear liquid diet, it seemed. He hadn’t ever seen the aftermath of taking three rounds to the stomach and surviving. He’d expected a few stitches here and there from where the bullets had gone in. He hadn’t expected the long incision straight down his stomach, or the other long one just over his hip. There were more in his side, and two more spots on his back that needed checking.
“Two of them went straight through. The third took a detour,” Billy had explained later.
It was no wonder everything hurt. Because everything was hurt. The clean-up operation must have taken hours.
“You’re a tough little bastard, you know that?”
He kept his bathrobe tied closed after that. He had to wear the belt high around his chest, because anything around his stomach was agony. But anything to keep him from having to look at that mess was preferable. Even more preferable would have been being anywhere but where he was. He hated the nurses and doctors and everyone else constantly invading his space. Billy was there more often than not, but he at least kept his hands to himself. He probably felt like he had to be there, for some irritating, sentimental reason, since nobody else would be coming to look smug at him.
“I want to go home,” he said while the doctor was in having a look at his charts.
“I… would very strongly recommend against that,” the doctor said.
Wilford shook his head. He hated the room, and the people in it, and the bed he was on, and the TV that never stopped showing the news, and everything that was sticking out of him. He wanted it all to just go away, so he could curl up somewhere dark and just be miserable for a while.
“I want to go home,” Wilford repeated.
The doctor put the clipboard back on the end of the bed. “Do you have anyone at home to keep an eye on you?” he asked slowly.
Wilford started to answer that he didn’t need anyone else, but his head was still all full of sand and cotton, and Billy was faster. “He’ll stay with me,” he said.
The doctor seemed to accept this a little more easily, but going to Billy’s wasn’t what Wilford wanted. He wanted to be left alone.
“Wil, you’re on the third floor. That’s a lot of stairs, man,” Billy said.
It occurred to Wilford he may have been even more slow to react than he realised. Or maybe Billy was secretly psychic. But he had forgotten about the stairs. Even sitting up hurt; he’d never be able to get to his front door.
“I’ll go with him,” he said, pointing at Billy.
The doctor still didn’t seem very convinced, but he nodded anyway. “Okay. I’ll go get the discharge started.” He gave Wilford a strange look before leaving the room.
Billy watched him go, waiting until the door was closed before turning back to Wilford. “You sure you don’t want to give it a few more days?”
He didn’t. It was the last thing he wanted. He hated everything about this place.
“I want to go home,” he repeated again.
“All right. We’ll go home.” Billy didn’t seem convinced either, but at least he’d leave Wilford alone. He respected personal space boundaries, unlike everyone else here. Wilford just needed to be left alone, and then he’d feel better.
Eventually, the doctor came back in with a stack of forms and releases and waivers for Wilford to sign - agreeing that the hospital wasn’t at fault if complications arose from refusing treatment, agreeing that he’d refused treatment, agreeing to having consented to the treatment he did receive. He didn’t care about any of it. He signed them all with a loose, sloppy signature that barely looked like his own, trusted that Billy was listening to medication instructions and garbage about follow-up appointments, and everything else. He still didn’t care about any of it. He was tired, he was starving, everything hurt, and he wanted it all to go away.
While the doctor finished up, a nurse Wilford hadn’t seen before came in and started getting everything ready for him to get up and leave. He removed all the gunk stuck to his chest, and took the line out of his arm so quickly, Wilford hadn’t even realised that’s what he was doing until it was done. He was already starting to blank out again when the nurse got up and moved to the foot of the bed. He was saying something, but Wilford wasn’t paying attention. He just wanted this guy to finish what he was doing so he could go. And then he felt the nurse’s hands go under the hospital gown, and Wilford jumped back to reality so quickly, he could feel his foot connect with something hard.
“Woah!” Billy said, quickly stepping forward to lean Wilford back into the bed. He had a strange look on his face that Wilford couldn’t read, but he wasn’t trying to. He was more concerned with the nurse.
“What the fuck is he doing down there?” he demanded.
“Man, you haven’t been able to get up to take a piss in three days,” Billy reminded him. “He’s got to take the tube out of your dick. You have to let him.”
Wilford had been so out of it, this fact had not even occurred to him until that moment. He didn’t even have anything to say. He just glared up at Billy, like it was his fault.
“That’s a normal reaction,” the nurse assured. He didn’t sound very sincere, but Wilford wasn’t equipped to go picking that fight. “It’s just a couple of seconds, okay? Let’s try again. Deep breath.”
Wilford did not take a deep breath. He kept his jaw set tightly and tried to ignore the fact that this man had his hands on him. It wasn’t a fact that was easy to ignore, and left him feeling light-headed and nauseated. Even once the nurse finished up, Wilford could feel himself trembling from trying to stay still. Billy put a hand on his shoulder, but Wilford slapped it away before he puked.
“Okay, all done,” the nurse said. “Do you want to try to get up and go pee for me?”
“No,” Wilford said firmly.
An awkward glance was shared between the nurse and Billy.
“All right. He’s going home with you, right?” the nurse asked.
Billy nodded, giving Wilford that same strange look again. “Yeah.”
“If he’s not able to urinate within the next eight hours, bring him back,” he said. He nodded to Wilford and gathered up everything to be taken away. “Good luck.”
Now that it was finally time to get up and go, Wilford couldn’t even force himself to get out of the bed. He felt like if he moved, he’d be sick. He hated himself for not even being lucid enough to realise that was going to be a thing. Thankfully, Billy said nothing, and busied himself with getting some clothes out of the bag he’d brought over on the first day. He’d been smart about it, and grabbed some T-shirts that were too big, and a few pairs of pyjamas.
“Do you want my help?” he asked cautiously as he laid the clothes out on the bed.
Wilford shook his head. He wanted to tell Billy to fuck off, but he didn’t know what would happen if he opened his mouth. Billy hung around after that for a few more seconds, before nodding and finally turning to leave the room. Even after he was gone, it took what felt like a week for Wilford to feel like he could move again. He moved even more slowly and sluggishly than was just from the drugs surging through his system, but he didn’t try to fight it. He put the pyjamas on first before he even thought about taking off his robe and gown. Even that was exhausting, and he had to take a long break afterward. Then he pulled the shirt on and took another break before even considering getting something on his feet. But he couldn’t reach the floor from his high perch on the hospital bed, and trying to stretch or bend down to get his feet into the slippers just made everything hurt again. If his nerves didn’t make him puke, trying to get down on his own would have, so he sat in a bitter silence. As he waited for Billy to come back, he slowly realised that there was something else he should be doing. Something important. Something about all this.
If something did happen now, he’d be doing all this again. He did not want to do all this again, because it was awful. He slowly and deliberately took his save log from his inventory and opened it up to find the next empty space. This was not an ideal place to save, but it was better than the alternative. If a helicopter dropped out of the sky on him as they drove down the freeway, he wouldn’t have to figure out what to do differently next time, and risk getting shot in the face instead. Any other time, he wouldn’t have even thought twice about it, but this time was different. He was clinically dead twice. But clinically dead is still dead, and should have triggered a reset anyway. But it didn’t. And now he was here, feeling miserable in every possible way while someone knocked at the door to be let in.
Wilford didn’t bother responding, forcing Billy to crack the door open and cautiously peer in. When he found Wilford dressed, he opened the door all the way and pushed a wheelchair into the room. Wilford tried to get down on his own, but even with the absurd amounts of morphine in him, it hurt too much to try, giving him no other choice but to let Billy help him down. Once he was in the chair, Billy helped him get his slippers on, and folded up his bath robe so he could hold it in his lap. Wilford had never felt so useless in his life.
-
Billy’s apartment was small, but thankfully on the ground floor. He opened the door into his front room, and slowly led Wilford over to the sofa to sit down.
“Let me get some stuff out of my room, and you can have my bed.”
“Couch is fine,” Wilford said as firmly as he could manage. Like hell was he sleeping in someone else’s bedroom. The hospital room was bad enough.
That strange look was back on Billy’s face. He was making assumptions, but Wilford didn’t have the energy to challenge him on it. He could have his assumptions, if it meant Billy would leave him alone while he was stuck here.
Still, Billy disappeared to somewhere in the back of the apartment. A few moments later, he returned with a pillow and a blanket from his room, which he carefully put down on the sofa for later. Wilford wanted to lie back down, though it felt like it would take him about twenty years to get the energy to do so. Billy put the remote and a huge paper bag down on the table in front of the sofa, before leaning over to pull the table out to make a little more room. He sat down on the other end of the sofa, keeping plenty of room between them, and reached for the paper bag again. He pulled out several bottles of pills, reading the labels for each of them in turn. Antibiotics, pain killers, sedatives, anti-inflammatories. No wonder he felt like everything was full of sand. He’d been pumped full of two of the things he hated most, and a bunch of other junk on top of it. With everything laid out so neatly on the table, Billy sighed and looked toward the kitchen.
“You think you’ll be all right on your own for about twenty minutes?” he asked.
Wilford nodded. Being on his own was exactly what he wanted at that moment.
Billy got up to get the bag he’d brought from Wilford’s apartment, and dug through it to pull something from the bottom. He handed Wilford his phone, and went to the kitchen to write down a quick note.
“The address here,” he said, putting the note down on the table next to the remote. “If you need to call an ambulance.”
Wilford waved him away tiredly. He didn’t want to look at Billy’s face for a moment longer. Billy hung around for a few moments longer before leaving the apartment again. Wilford waited until he seemed like he was well and truly gone before he convinced himself to try to get up. It felt like it took about a year to manage it, and the first thing he did was slowly wander off to find the bathroom. Whatever that nurse had done to him made him feel like his bladder was about to burst, which made that priority one. Once that was taken care of, he started to make his way back to the sofa, but thought better of it about halfway there. He turned to find a door, and on the first try, managed to find exactly what he was looking for. He stayed at the bar just long enough to leave a note, before returning to Billy’s apartment to rest. About fifteen minutes later, he got up to check the bar again, and was pleasantly surprised to find Buster waiting for him in the bed the kids set up for him. The dog started to jump up excitedly, but seemed to immediately realise something was wrong. Wilford let him into the apartment and closed the door behind him, where the dog promptly dropped his bat right in the middle of the hallway. He tried to make it back to the sofa, but ran out of energy in the middle of the living room. Buster danced nervously at his feet, looking up at him and whining loudly. Eventually, Wilford gave up and very carefully managed to lie down on the floor. It wasn’t comfortable in the least, and just getting down there hurt, but it meant he wasn’t standing up anymore. Buster continued to dance around him, and tried to lie on top of him until Wilford pushed him away sharply. After a few more repeats of that, the dog got the hint and sprawled across Wilford’s legs instead. That was… acceptable.
He didn’t know how long he’d spent on the floor, but Billy didn’t seem terribly pleased about it when he got home with his hands full of Chinese takeaway. As soon as he stepped through the door, Buster turned his attention to him and growled sharply.
“Knock it off,” Wilford said, twisting his ear.
“…Where’d the dog come from?” he asked.
Wilford suddenly remembered that Billy didn’t know about the dog yet. Whoops.
“He’s mine. Friend brought him over,” he said.
“I didn’t see a dog at your place,” Billy said.
“Lives with my friend.”
Billy shook his head and abandoned this line of questioning, and took the paper bags to the kitchen instead. Once they were settled, he immediately rushed back out to the living room to kneel down beside Wilford. Buster growled at him again, until Wilford twisted his ear and shut him up.
“Knock it off,” he said again.
Cautiously, Billy offered his hand for the dog to sniff. “We gotta get your daddy off the floor, okay,” he said, hoping to convince the dog to get up.
It didn’t, but a nudge from Wilford did. Buster danced nervously nearby while Billy helped Wilford up off the floor, and got him back to the sofa. As soon as Wilford was settled again, Buster immediately climbed up onto the sofa and sprawled over Wilford’s legs, resuming his task of dedicated protection. Wilford would have found it funny if he didn’t feel so fucking helpless. When Billy came again from the kitchen, he put a squat, styrofoam bowl down onto the coffee table, along with a plastic spoon. While Billy got rice and teriyaki beef, Wilford got egg flower soup. If he hadn’t been so tired, he would have been insanely jealous.