51a/n: hadley, mace, and bubbles (not the cartoon network character) belong to me. now to see what mischief I can put them into…
-1
-the hospital & the cat.
Hadley's room looked like it belonged to an anal retentive cat. Mostly because Hadley himself was not unlike an anal retentive cat.
He washed excessively, cleaned excessively, whined if you messed up his room, excessively, and walked around looking like he'd just smelled the shit you'd stepped in two days ago. Which, he probably could smell because he had that good of a schnoz. In his past life, contrary to his current one, Hadley had probably been a bloodhound.
Right now, however, Hadley wasn't doing very much sniffing. He was sprawled on the floor of his pristine bedroom, unconscious, with an orange pill bottle casually tipped over in his outstretched hand. Half the pills in it were gone, presumably into his stomach, which explained the unconscious.
Two EMT's hunched over his body, speculatively.
"Can't we just let him die this one time?" the more rotund of the two whined. He nudged the supine figure with one of his knuckles. "Get him from try-hard to die-hard?"
"You know he never takes enough to actually die. He has this down to a science," his slimmer partner replied. Gingerly, he leaned over to check Hadley's pulse and was unsurprised to find it going strong beneath the pale skin. Satisfied, he rolled back on his heels and sprung to his feet, signaling that the extraction team could come in and take the body away. His partner got to his feet, too.
"Why's he do it, you think?"
"From what I hear the kid puts the anti in anti-social. Can't stand having a roommate."
"Why doesn't he just request a single?"
"Apparently his dad really believes in the 'college experience' He won't let the university move him."
"So, the kid gets all his roommates to move out–"
"–by faking suicide, yes."
The round EMT shrugged in grudging admiration. "Gotta admit, the kids got balls."
"Balls, maybe, but none of them are marbles if you catch my drift."
They stepped out into the night where Hadley was being escorted into the back of the ambulance, more colloquially known as 'Hadley's Ride' because it was always on duty when the 'Hadley Call' came in.
The Hadley Call was the panicked phone-call to 911 from whoever his roommate it was at the time who had just discovered Hadley's lifeless body on the floor. They even had a special code for it, the H142. 142 for the time, of course. 1:42 am. Hadley was nothing if not punctual.
This was the fourth H142 this semester. Any normal kid would be so knee deep in psych ward he wouldn't even know what daylight looked like. Hadley, however, was no normal kid. Well he was normal, but his father wasn't, and he liked games of strings that made all sorts of administrators do exactly what he wanted. Like keeping his, quote, "non-suicidal, suicidal quark brain of son out of the mental hospital, in school, and with a roommate" or he would reconsider his "continued generous donations to this shit-hole of an institution." End quote.
Shit got real when money was involved, especially when you didn't have enough.
Hadley was pissed.
He had specifically requested in his suicide note that if they went against his wishes (which they had to) and managed to bring him back to life (which they would do) they were to specifically put him in a hypoallergenic, single room.
He put it in all his suicide notes and yet every single time he checked into Prince Memorial Hospital, they just left him in the emergency room with nary a curtain between him and the next inveterate mouth breather. Tonight he'd been shanked to one of the bubbly-type variety whom Hadley firmly believed had only ever been created because the God/Gods/Goddesses/big bang/who the fuck cares in charge had been high.
"So what are you in here for?" Bubbles asked with a toothy grin. His legs were swung over the side of the bed and jiggled with nervous energy. Blonde hair fringed about blue eyes that crinkled at the sides. He could have been cute if his entire person didn't scream 'I want to smother you with sunshine and love'.
Hadley groaned.
It was enough that he had to be in the same room as it. Now he had to make actual conversation? Fuck that.
"I'm homeless," he said shortly. People hated homeless people. They gave them money not out of altruism, but so they would have enough to stop being homeless, or go be homeless somewhere the fuck else.
Bubbles giggled. He giggled like a nine-year old girl in pigtails and a pink skirt. "You can't get brought in here for being homeless, silly!"
"How would you know? You're not homeless," Hadley grunted, still unnerved by the giggling maniac next to him. He wondered, idly, if people like this were supposed to be allowed to wander around without supervision.
"You have nice hair," Bubbles pointed out, pointlessly.
Hadley shrugged. "I take after my mom."
"Was she homeless too?"
"Of course she is homeless. And my dad is homeless. We're a homeless, fucking trio."
"You fuck your parents?" Bubbles giggled again, like he'd just made the joke of the century. It wasn't even the joke of the 'couple of minutes ago'. No, that was the fact that despite engineering the perfect social excuse to be ignored, Hadley was still engaged in this inane conversation.
Frustrated, Hadley sat up in his bed and washed his hands down his face. "Okay, okay fine, do you really want to know what I am doing in here?" he demanded, leaning in towards Bubbles, conspiratorially. He dropped his voice low.
Bubbles nodded, manic grin firmly in place, and leaned in closer as well.
Hadley took a deep breath, then in complete dead-pan he said,
"I fucked a cat."
"A cat?" Bubbles whispered.
"In the asshole, only my dick is too big so it killed the poor thing and I couldn't slide it off. So I came to the hospital. The fucking end."
Bubbles eyes went very, very round and the color drained from his face. Hadley smiled to himself pleased. His work here was done.
He lay back and pulled the covers up over his head. Hopefully, now he would be finally left the fuck alone. He didn't see what was so hard about it, this leaving him alone. Everyone was always in his business, wanting to know how he was, where he was, what he was eating, how he was eating.
Was he masturbating regularly?
FUCK!
Only his mother seemed to get it. After cheating on his father, divorcing him, and then running off with her lover, he'd heard not a word from her. Ten years of peaceful non-communication. Frankly he wanted to send her one of those 'Best Mum in the World' mugs, but he didn't have an address to send it to.
He dug his head deeper into the pillows. The hospital was busy tonight. Apparently, some building downtown had erupted in flames and people were being brought in by the ambulance droves. His nurse had informed him that he'd even had to share his 'Hadley Ride' with another patient on the way in. Hadley was glad he'd not been awake for that travesty.
Nurses and doctors and other associated workers tracked back and forth, looking busy, yelling busy, and trying to fake patience for impatient patients. Still, Hadley found the sounds of the hospital soothing. In fact, Hadley just found the hospital soothing in general. Not because they were clean, because, let's face it, they were the hub of every super-bug ever, but because it was their mission to try and keep everything clean. It always smelled like the perfect cocktail of bleach and disinfectant, a smell he could never recreate in his own dorm room because the carpet consistently soaked up the smell. It was the only place he ever truly felt like he could get a good night's sleep.
Suddenly–
"Oh little cat, you were so young, then a sick man, destroyed your bum, oh little cat, why did you die so painfully?"
Hadley's jaw dropped open in horror. Was that maniacal shit singing?
"Where you scared? Who knows? No one. Shed a tear, or more than one? Oh little cat, why were you hurt so terribly?"
"Nurse!" Hadley shouted jumping up in his bed. "Nurse! Someone get me the hell out of here before I kill myself for real!"
a/n. nope, bubbles is not mace. bubbles is bubbles, an infernal creation of my mind, who is going to feature quite prominently because he says so. look out for mace next chapter. also read and review if you please. please.
citation. bubbles sang his eulogy to the tune of "Little Prince" off the Soundtrack to 1974 Motion Picture, "The Little Prince".