Chapter Text
They decide to make a day of it, against Sebastian’s better judgement.
When Ava first comes to him in early Spring, radiology outpatient order form in hand, and asks if he’d be willing to drive her to the hospital in the city, he jumps at the chance to help. She’s not just accepting his help, she’s asking for it, for once. (He’s delighted by it now. Later, he’ll think back and wonder if it should have been his first clue that she was worse off than she seemed.) He insists that they should just go for the X-ray and come directly back— He says you need an X-ray, Ava, that sounds kind of serious— but she waves his concerns away.
“Honestly, my cough isn’t that bad, and Harvey doesn’t seem too concerned, you know? At this point, it’s mostly just a precaution to make sure it’s not, like, pneumonia or whatever,” Ava laughs, leaning forward in her chair. “We might as well make the best of it, right?”
He keeps typing, his eyes trained on the monitor. “You’ve had this cough for a week.”
“Okay, true,” she says, holding up a finger in his peripheral vision, “but, hear me out: I’ve still been filling special orders and things, right? Like, I’ve kept up with my work. I think I deserve to have a little fun.”
Yeah, and maybe if you’d stop pushing yourself so hard, you’d be healed up by now, he’s about to counter, but then he makes the mistake of actually swiveling in his chair to look at her properly, and the words die in his throat.
She looks more tired than normal, with circles dark under her hazel eyes, but she’s giving him an imploring little smile that makes his heart skip a beat, and he finds some small, stupid part of his brain agreeing that maybe she does deserve to have a little fun, after all. (With him. She wants a fun outing in the city with him.) Her skin glows, the light from his table lamp catching a handful of strands in her hair and turning them gold. He can smell the light, citrusy scent of her shampoo as she leans towards him.
It’s not like he’s never noticed she’s pretty. It’s just that he’s been noticing it a lot more than usual, lately.
She blinks at him, her eyes searching his face, and for a half-second, he swears they flit down to his lips, and—
She chokes. Her eyes go wide, and she puts a good few feet of distance between them and turns her head aside to cough into her elbow. The coughing fit lasts for a good ten seconds or so, long enough for worry to settle in his chest.
“Sorry,” she breathes, once she’s properly recovered.
“You don’t have to apologize for coughing,” he says automatically, his brow furrowing with concern. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, thanks!” Her voice is bright, but she still sounds a little winded. “I’m good.”
“You sure you don’t wanna go get it checked out now?”
“What, you mean right now?” She cranes her neck, squinting at the clock on his monitor. “It’s, like, ten o’clock at night.”
“So? I stay up until five in the morning pretty regularly. Ten is nothing,” he says, stretching his arms over his head casually. And even if I didn’t normally stay up until five in the morning, I’d do it for you, if you asked me.
“Thanks, but I’m pretty sure the imaging center’s closed, and I’ve got a few things to wrap up before bed,” she says, and he nearly cuts in that she should be getting sleep, not prepping more special orders, when she grins and adds: “Besides, we can’t go on fun city adventures if everything’s closed for the night, right?”
“Sure,” Sebastian agrees, because he has exactly one weak point, and it’s the imploring smile she’s giving him. “Tomorrow, then? I can swing by the farm sometime after lunch.”
“Yes!” she insists eagerly. “And we can hang out after?”
He chuckles and turns back to his monitor, trying to school his smile into something that seems a little more cool and laid-back and amused, and a lot less stupidly in love with the local farmer. From the way his cheeks hurt, he guesses he’s only moderately successful.
“That sounds fun,” he says, trying hard not to get his hopes up and trying even harder to be a good and responsible friend, “but let’s see how you’re feeling tomorrow and then decide, okay?”
.
After she leaves, he focuses on coding (and the whole “not getting his hopes up” thing) for maybe about one more hour, tops, and then spends the next three hours drafting up a list of places he could take Ava while they’re in the city. His favorite sushi place; a bookshop he knows she’ll really enjoy; Amber Hill Park; the bakery with the really good apple muffins on Holmsbard Street…
He runs through his usual gamut of Date-With-Ava Ideas quickly, because even before this, he’s already spent an embarrassing number of hours imagining what a date with her— which this is probably not, he keeps having to remind himself— would be like. Then, unwilling to leave well enough alone, he starts in on the weird and outlandish ideas. He’s ten minutes into looking up food tours, even though he despises that sort of thing and Ava’s feelings about them are probably neutral at best, when he decides he probably needs a smoke break.
Quit being stupid, he tells himself sternly, settling in under the tree beside the lake.
It’s not a date. He pulls out a cigarette. Lights it.
This is a fun, friendly, medically-necessary outing, and we’re going to be super normal about this and not make things weird, he tells himself, taking a long pull and then exhaling slowly. He closes his eyes as he feels the nicotine hit.
The nervous-excited tension in his chest eases a bit, but worry worms in to replace it.
She says she’s only had this cough for about a week, even though he first noticed it about two weeks ago, but he secretly wonders if it hasn’t been going on for longer. The onset has been weirdly gradual. Pneumonia’s opportunistic (although he’s still holding out hope that this is, as Ava keeps insisting, “just a bad cold, I don’t even have a fever or anything, quit worrying”), and there’s usually some sort of secondary cause.
A weakened immune system is one, and Ava hasn’t been taking particularly good care of herself, lately.
He distinctly remembers seeing her limping along the lake path during one of his late-night smoke breaks a few weeks back, covered in blood and soot and barely standing, but she’d smiled and laughed and waved away his concern. I’ve already done this like, three times already this week, it’s fine!
And he’d ignored the spike of worry, scoffed and rolled his eyes and told her that doing something a lot doesn’t make it fine. He’d asked if she wanted him to walk her back to the farm, or maybe the clinic. She’d said she was okay, that she didn’t want to bother him.
Thanks, though, she’d said. It’s nice of you to offer. She’d smiled at him and twirled the end of her ponytail around her finger, biting her lip, and there was a warm undertone in her voice, something he would’ve almost been tempted to peg as affectionate, if he weren’t correcting for his confirmation bias—
And then she’d doubled over coughing.
For all of Ava’s strengths, paying attention to her limits isn’t one of them. Acknowledging she even has limits isn’t one of them. She’s always pushing herself too hard, always trying to fill every request posted on the bulletin board outside Pierre’s, even if she doesn’t really have the bandwidth. She’s trying to incubate her own chicken eggs, which is taking up a ton of her time right now, and she’s also trying to set up her new greenhouse, and build two dozen new casks to put in her cellar, and, and, and—
So. A weakened immune system, due to stress and exhaustion. That’s one possible cause.
Secondhand smoking, he reminds himself grimly, is another risk factor for pneumonia.
He goes to bed as soon as he’s done with the cigarette, but he doesn’t sleep much that night.
.
When they get to the imaging center the next day, the waiting room is full, and the harried-looking woman at the reception desk informs Ava that it’ll probably be about an hour-long wait for the X-ray machine. She grabs a clipboard and a clean pen and starts filling out her intake forms, and Sebastian settles in one of the uncomfortable wood-frame chairs beside her.
“You really don’t have to wait with me,” she tells Sebastian, after she’s handed the clipboard back. “Not that I don’t appreciate it, but coming into the city’s a big thing for you, right? I’m sure you’ve got a bunch of errands to run.”
“Nah, I’d definitely rather wait here with you. If that’s cool?” His voice is a little hesitant towards the end, halting, like he thinks her not being cool with it is even a possibility.
“Yeah,” she says, affection leaking into her voice as her absolute traitor of a heart twists up just a little. She ignores the feeling and the implications— bottles all of it right on up and tosses it into the back of her mind, because she’s not about to risk the tentative thing she has with Sebastian by doing something stupid like admitting what it means to her. “That’s cool.”
He hums and settles back in his chair. “Cool.”
“Anyway, I’ll let you see my X-ray after, if you want,” she promises, nudging his shoulder and wiggling her fingers. She grins at him. “I bet it’ll look really cool. All glowy and skeletal and ribcage-y. You like skeletons, right?”
“I’m sure I’ll like your skeleton, at least,” he laughs, nudging her shoulder back and giving her one of those rare, genuine smiles. Her heart flutters again, a warm, affectionate feeling blooming in her chest, and she—
The next breath she pulls is more of a wheeze. Her lungs suddenly feel rigid, like they can’t quite expand the way they should, and she can’t manage to take a full breath. She turns away to cough. This coughing fit lasts a particularly long time, and it feels like an eternity because every time she tries to gasp for air, something blocks it. Finally, something dislodges into her throat, and she swallows and manages to choke whatever it is down. The urge to cough immediately subsides, and she takes a few shallow, shuddering breaths.
There’s a warm, comfortable weight on her back. It takes her a second longer than it should to realize that it’s Sebastian’s hand.
“Your cough’s getting worse,” he murmurs. He doesn’t move his hand.
She takes a few more deep breaths before she speaks, just to make sure sure talking won’t set her off again, because she’s still hoping to have a Poorly-Defined Date-Like Hangout with him this afternoon, and hacking up a lung in front of him probably will not help her prospects. “Really? I feel totally fine.”
“It sounds worse,” he says, frowning with concern. She wants his smile back. “Look, I know we were planning to do some stuff this afternoon, but if you’re not feeling up to it, we don’t have to.”
“No-no-no, I’m definitely feeling up for it!” she says, a little too quickly, and his eyebrows raise. Then something awful occurs to her, and she has to ask: “Unless… Are you not feeling up to it?”
He scoffs, like the question is absurd. “Of course I am. Just wanna make sure you’re not pushing yourself too hard.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.” A ghost of that earlier smile is back from the dead, and it has a conspiratorial edge, like they’re both in on the same inside joke. “You know, I heard there’s a bakery on Holmsbard that has really good apple muffins. If you’re interested.”
She pretends to consider it. “I do love apple muffins.”
“I know,” he says, and his smile is fully resurrected, now. Even in the fluorescent lights of the waiting room, his eyes shine. “That’s why I suggested it.”
She smiles so wide her cheeks ache and tries her best not to cough again.
.
After about forty-five minutes, Ava’s name is called. She walks to the door, trying her best to take deep, calming breaths, and she doesn’t even realize she’s digging her nails into the palms of her hands until Sebastian nudges the back of her hand with his own. She relaxes, and he interlaces their fingers. His hand is warm and solid, grounding her.
The technician who called Ava’s name clears his throat. “Uh, sir, you’re not allowed to come into the X-ray room with her.”
“Right. Good luck in there,” Sebastian says, giving her hand a quick squeeze before releasing it. (Is it her, or are his cheeks pink?) (It’s probably just her.) “Not that luck really has anything to do with it, but… Uh… You know what I mean.”
She laughs, and some of the tension leaves her shoulders. “Thanks, Seb.”
“I’ll be out here if you need anything, yeah?”
She swallows hard and nods, because there’s a tickle in her throat, and she doesn’t want to cough again. She shoots him a smile that she hopes is reassuring, then steps through the doorway.
The technician escorts her to the changing area to remove her bra (shirts and jewelry are allowed in the X-ray room, but breast support and emotional support, apparently, are not). She shuts herself into the small, grey room, about the size of a maintenance closet. It’s not too different from a changing room at the mall, really, except there’s a bench attached to the wall, and a set of lockers for storing real clothes. A small bin in the corner is marked as being for hospital gowns.
Once she’s changed, the technician brings her to a room with a giant machine, presumably for the X-rays. The far corner of the room is walled off at an angle, with a little glass panel for the technician to look through. The machine is bigger than she was expecting it to be, with a big tan-beige rectangle on the lefthand side, and a camera-looking thing on an adjustable metal arm that she assumes is the actual X-ray part.
The technician tells her to stand facing the rectangle, and then to put her chin on top of it, so she does. He makes a few adjustments to the camera, bringing it closer to her back, then tells her not to move. His footsteps retreat to the walled-off corner.
“Take a deep breath for me?”
She takes as big a lungful of air as she can— once again, her lungs don’t feel like they’re expanding quite the way they should, but it’s better than it was earlier— and then holds it. There are a few keyboard clicks, and the technician makes a weird noise. It’s not a good weird noise, Ava thinks, but it’s not a bad weird noise, either. Mostly a surprised weird noise.
“Uh… Is this a follow-up appointment?” the technician asks from behind the wall.
“Nah, just the first one,” Ava tells him, exhaling and ignoring whatever the heck is going on with that tickle in her throat. “Honestly, it’s probably nothing.”
“Right,” the technician says, after a pause that’s about three seconds too long to be comfortable. “Okay, uh, can you turn to your right for me, and then take another deep breath in?”
He takes another X-ray from a different angle, then tells her to change back into her bra and take a seat in the hallway while he burns the images to a CD. She waits, fidgeting, until he finally emerges from the back room, a paper-wrapped CD in his hand. He holds it out to her with a somber expression.
“Your doctor needs to see this,” he says, his voice weirdly grave.
“Right,” she says, reaching out to grab the CD, but he doesn’t let it go.
“No, he needs to see it immediately,” the technician tells her, making Very Intense Eye Contact. “Like, today.”
Her heart sinks, but she laughs. “Oh, so it is pneumonia, after all?”
“I’m not allowed to give you a diagnosis. Just show it to him,” he says. His expression’s still serious, and maybe a little pitying, but he finally lets her take the CD out of his hands. She bundles it into her backpack, feeling, for the first time, maybe a little concerned.
“Thanks,” she says, and then pastes on her healthiest-looking smile. “So, listen, I was planning on doing some other stuff in the city this afternoon with my friend? The one from the lobby? And I know you can’t give me a diagnosis, but do you know if whatever I have is, like, contagious? Because if it’s not, I was really kind of hoping to, um…”
The technician’s eyebrows shoot up beyond his receding hairline at the word ‘friend,’ and they stay there. Ava frowns and crosses her arms, her face heating.
“What?”
“Nothing,” the technician says, after another too-long-for-comfort pause.
You were holding hands and making heart eyes at him five minutes ago, the technician’s eyebrows say. You’re willing to push through your Probably-Pneumonia just to hang out with him for an afternoon. You’re clearly attached at the hip and whatever the heck your feelings for that guy are, I highly doubt they’re platonic.
He clears his throat. “Well, you’re definitely not contagious, but—”
“Perfect!” Ava shoulders her backpack, and he cringes.
“But I’m not sure hanging out with your, er, friend, is that good of an idea right now, given your condition. You really should show those to your doctor as soon as possible!”
“Oh, I’m feeling fine! And I’ll show it to him as soon as I get back home, I promise,” she says, giving the technician a jaunty wave as she pushes her way through the door. “Thanks for the X-ray, I hope you have an awesome day, bye!”
The technician opens his mouth to say something else, but the door closes, and he’s gone.
Anyway, Ava thinks, meeting Sebastian’s eyes across the waiting room, I really am feeling okay, and one afternoon can’t make that much of a difference, right?