Chapter Text
Wyll may be biased, but he’s pretty sure House Ten is the prettiest in the Cul-de-Sac. The white ionic columns framing the pink-painted door, the hearts carved into the porch railings, the concrete ramp painted to look like a mossy river.
Wyll is thirty minutes early, spiral notebook in his top pocket. He’s fresh off his first two-day weekend this month, feeling like a brand new man. He’s looking it too, his hair redone, his clothes ironed.
He’s wearing one of his favorite scrub tops, although that doesn’t mean much—he loves them all! It’s midnight blue, printed with smiling yellow moons and dozy white stars. The first time he wore it one of his patients reached up to pet his chest while he was adjusting her pillow. “I like your blouse,” she murmured, rheumy eyes shifting between the shapes and bright colors.
He ordered another pair as soon as he got home that night!
Wyll struts up the ramp as the motion-activated lights flick on, aware that neighborhood busybodies may be snapping his picture for Nextdoor again. At least spiraling about “suspicious activity” keeps the retiree’s minds active, lessening their chances of needing a facility like this in the near future.
Someone left a thermos next to the grimy wrought iron porch chair. Decked out in Death Metal band logos and dented to hell—it’s Karlach’s all right. The door is unlocked. The alarm chirps as he lets himself in.
Brown liquid drips down the bucolic hilly mural that dominates the left-hand wall, a plastic cup cracked on the floor below.
Blankets are strewn across the room, The absorbent pad from one of the recliners is on top of the tv. The TV Remote is disassembled, the empty battery compartment oozing with what he hopes is strawberry jelly.
The orange robotic cat lies face-down on the floor. Wyll hears the soft whhh-k of its simulated breathing and blinking. Wyll rights it and sets it on an end table.
Wyll takes a deep breath and reminds himself of the importance of maintaining a professional demeanor and unconditional positive regard for all of his charges.
Then, into the breach of the kitchen, where he can hear the low, calm rumble of Karlach’s voice.
The likely culprit is a bony woman who looks about a hundred years old. She in an chair pulled to the side of the kitchen table.
Karlach kneels next to her, the dyed hair on her non-shaved side free of its usual bobby pins, falling over her eye. She stirs up a dish of chocolate pudding.
“I made it just for you, mama,” she smacks her lips, “Come and get it.”
“For me?”
Karlach loads up the spoon, betraying more eagerness than Wyll would have personally. Eagerness just makes them suspicious.
“For your birthday, Miss Emmeline .”
The woman—Emmeline— squints down at Karlach, then at the pudding.
“It’s my birthday?”
She leans down to sniff the spoon.
Wyll’s messenger bag is sitting strangely on his shoulder. When he shifts it, a floorboard creaks under his sneakers.
Emmeline jumps, twisting back in her chair to look at him.
“Tell me where she is!” She shrieks, jabbing a finger in his direction.
“Don’t be scared. That’s just my friend, Wyll.” Karlach says,
“He took—he took my daughter.”
Wyll starts retreating.
“No! He’s a nice guy! Show her that little dance you do, Wyll.”
Wyll does many little dances, as a lot of residents seem to get a kick out of them. But it it were him in Karlach’s shoes he would have validated the resident’s fear, taken her side against Wyll. The consequences for failing to do so may be dire.
Indeed, Emmeline points a finger in Karlach’s face, knocking the dish of pudding out of her hand. It lands facedown on the floor.
Karlach stares mournfully at the spill, then back up at Em, who is reaching for the table with both hands, using it to pull herself up. Karlach reaches for her and she slaps at her hand, knees wobbling.
Karlach is reduced to following her as she takes small, shuffling steps around the perimeter of the table, scanning the distance as if her missing daughter might be stashed in the medicine cabinet or behind the bookshelf.
There’s a foot of space between the mantel and the table, nothing for her to grab onto.
She steps into the void, swaying. Karlach catches her in the waist and Emmeline pulls at her hands. Wyll has to admire her audacity in trying to fight a brick shithouse like Karlach when she has the physical composition of a half-filled sack of straw.
When she realizes her attempts to move Karlach away aren’t working, she tries to gauge her with cracked yellow fingernails.
“Wyll. A little help?”
“Give me a second.”
“Take any longer and I’m no longer your friend.”
Wyll leaves, takes his scrub cap and coat off, then comes back into the room.
He walks up to Emmeline stopping short of her personal bubble.
“You called about your daughter being missing?”
She stops mauling Karlach to look up at him. “Yes! Jenevelle!”
“We’re gonna find her ma’am. Can you give me a description?”
Her thin eyebrows knit. Too broad a request.
“What color hair does she have?”
“Black,” she fires back immediately. Or um, sometimes it’s white.”
She stares at the floor, trying to reconcile how both things can be true at once.
“She dyes it?” Wyll prompts, finally..
“Yes!” She says and scowls. “I don’t know why Arnell lets her. She’s only ten.”
“Only ten?” Wyll holds out his hand to her. She takes it.
He steers her towards the living room: easier to get her down for the night if she’s in a recliner.
“She’s trying to grow up too fast.”
“My daughter is the same way.”
It’s usually helpful to say yes when patients ask if he has kids, so Wyll has invented a daughter, Lily. She’s a spitfire, her favorite subject is science, and he’s told her exactly what to say to anyone who touches her in any way she doesn’t want to be touched.
“Okay.” Emmeline brushes the subject of his false daughter aside. “But my…but Jennevelle.”
“What’s her favorite game to play?”
“Yes, she likes games.”
He has her within spitting distance of one of the recliners.
Karlach lifts the heavy thing just enough to line it up with her backside without scratching the floors, though the floors are already scratched to hell.
She sits without much prompting, caught up in trying to explain. Wyll sits in the recliner next to her and keeps her talking. He learns that Jennevelle is a serious young girl who keeps trying to make pets out of slugs from the garden and frogs from the backyard pond.
He learns that Emmeline and her husband are naturalists, who met doing an observational study of wolves. Learns about how wolves feed their pregnant mates, regurgitating meat for them, and how they got called to Jenevelle’s school once because she filled her cheeks with baloney and kool-aid and spat the mixture on another student’s sneakers. She is no longer allowed to play wolves at recess.
Emmeline’s eyelids droop and Wyll covers her with a crocheted blanket from the rack in the corner. He raises the armchair footrest.
Karlach collapses into the recliner next to him.
“Ugh, you saved my life there, buddy.” She claps his armrest, too loudly. “You got the magic touch.”
“I don’t know about that.” Says Wyll, who does absolutely have the magic touch. He’s not saying he’s the best at redirection out of anyone who works here, but well. He’s never met anybody better.
Still, Karlach is a gem. Oh, he was skeptical of her at first. She forgot to turn bed alarms back on, leading to more than one fall. She jammed patient's knees into walls and mashed their faces into the side rails while she was doing changes, blithely calling “Oops, sorry mate!” each time. She didn’t so much transfer patients as suplex them into bed from their wheelchairs.
He was gearing up to complain to Jaheira about her, but she approached him and asked for his help. Said she’d noticed how competent he was and how great with the patients, and she wanted to be just like him someday.
And well. Obviously she wasn’t totally hopeless, having such excellent taste in role models.
Since then she’s improved immensely. She’s still a walking maelstrom at times but she’s gotten gentler, and he’s seen her get the most dour, unenthusiastic patients engaged in activities. Exercise is her specialty, but she also gets the patients excited for the adorable art projects her much shyer coworker Alfria dreams up. The set of popsicle stick and pipe cleaner dragonflies hung up in the kitchen owes much of its existence to Karlach, no doubt.
Granted, She’ll tear off into the yard sometimes to scream, which adds fuel to the Nextdoor fire, but she never takes her frustration out on her patients.
Wyll waves dismissively. “You had the situation well in hand before I came stomping in. I—
He sits up abruptly.“Hey, what was in that pudding she dumped?”
“Lorazepam.”
“Please tell me I can dose her again in four hours.”
“No, bud. Six hours.”
He groans. “If she wakes up…If she wakes up tonight is going to be a real adventure.”
“At least Jahiera sent you some backup.”
Wyll rallies.“Backup?”
If Wyll were entirely honest, his least favorite thing about the night shift is the lack of company. Oh sure, there’s his patients, but they’re sleeping most nights and when they aren’t. Well. They’re to trying escape their nefarious kidnappers or dodge the long spindly fingers of the shadow man. They don’t want to hear about how Wyll plans to try a new stir fry recipe for dinner.
Besides, having a buddy will make things less stressful for Wyll, and way safer for the patient.
“Do you know who?”
The door slams open. Astarion stands there, wild-eyed. Sweat shines yellow on his neck in the dim lamplight, but his white curls are perfectly styled, like a poster on a salon wall. He’s wearing the only clothes Wyll has ever seen him wear, a set of black scrubs with a deep v-neck overlaid with a matching cardigan.
“Hello, darlings,” he pants. He inexplicably bows to both of them. “My lateness was tragically unavoidable. No need for anyone higher up the chain to hear about it hmm?”
Wyll nods at him, politely enough. He’s only five minutes late. No one in their right mind would report him for that unless they were ridiculously petty. But Astarion is the kind of person who inspires pettiness in others. Even Wyll would be tempted to engage in it. If he stooped to that sort of thing.
“Astarion!” Karlach bellows.
Emmeline startles in her sleep.
Wyll gives Karlach a look.
“Sorry,” she whispers. She ushers Astarion off to the kitchen where Wyll can hear the two of them gossip like old friends. Wyll thought that level of excitement was reserved for him. Not that he’s jealous per se.
But Astarion of all people? Really?
Astarion isn’t the worst caregiver Wyll has ever worked with. He isn’t even the worst caregiver he’s worked with and failed to report to management.
It’s like a magic trick, watching Astarion change a patient. For a split second, Wyll focuses on the sparks of bewildered terror in the eyes of someone Astarion has just yanked the blankets off of, without bothering to greet her or explain the procedure. Then he glances back down to see her diaper incontinence briefs have been changed, she’s been pulled back up to the head of the bed, the cloth chuck underneath her are smoothed of wrinkles. He’s a pro at slipping cannulas back into noses too, and tucking wayward legs back onto mattresses without waking his patients.
He is fastidious about infection control, washing his hands every time he so much as bends over to pick a pen off the floor. He disinfects the bathrooms frequently. He’s rarely late. He never calls off. He performs visual inspections as soon as he arrives and every hour after.
It’s just—he’s so sure he’s better than this job, and better than every single patient. On Astarion’s first day shadowing, Wyll told him he had no plans to progress to nursing school because he preferred the humble hands-on nature of caregiver work. Astarion sneered, “Prefer it? That’s a joke, right? You’re joking?” Whenever a hard-of-hearing patient has a large bowel movement he’ll mutter “Ew ew ew ew” under his breath the entire time he’s cleaning it up. And when one of his charges thanks him for completing a task he snaps back, “Keep your gratitude. I’m not doing THIS out of the goodness of my heart.”
The last straw for Wyll came when Astarion responded to a patient who was insisting that her son didn’t know where she was by snapping, “Oh of course he knows! He dumped you here to die because you are impossible to live with!”
When confronted, Astarion pointed out that she was no longer trying to get out of bed.
“Because she’s crying too hard to move!”
“She’s always blubbering. Besides, nobody ever broke a hip by crying too hard. I did her a favor.”
When Wyll politely but firmly insisted, he caved like a matchstick mansion, swearing up and down that he’d mend his ways. Obviously a ploy, a cheap tactic meant to avoid being reported to management.
But Wyll let it slide. Because he’s seen a patient’s face crumple after being unnecessarily snapped at. They forget all about it within an hour.
On the other hand, he’s seen bed sores: tunnels into the black void of body ringed by brackish pus, and bright red inflammation. Seen patients left dirty so long there’s a brown ring of piss on the pad beneath them, and he has to spend at least half an hour chiseling dry excrement off of their poor, sore vulvas. There is a limited pool of people willing to do this job, even less who are competent.
He’s not going to rat on Astarion just for a bubbly, golden-hearted 22 year old to come choke his patients on applesauce instead.
But that doesn’t mean he has to like him.
Astarion slips into the garage, intent on digging out the hard, metal chairs they use when somebody is actively transitioning (as in transitioning from alive to dead, not as in deciding to switch their postmenopausal estrogen for testosterone.) It’s a heartwarming sight, when somebody’s entire family gathers by their bedside, weeping. Wyll always has to divert his attention into herding the other residents away from the mourners, lest he stand there goggling at the sheer love laid bare before him.
Astarion needs the chairs, apparently, because he refuses to sit in the recliners, calling them “piss-saturated bedbug motels.” He’s not exactly wrong but…damn they’re cozy. What kind of person is unmoved by such exceptional coziness?
Wyll sits at the kitchen counter, by the security camera monitors, glancing now and then to make sure Emmeline is still sleeping in her chair. Astarion emerges from the garage to loom over his elbow.
Wyll is meant to be divvying up the patients between them. It’s not a complicated task, as Astarion is eager to point out. Wyll still hems and haws over it for the better part of twenty minutes.
It’s just not fair! That Hope should have to go without updates on Wyll’s “daughter”, which always make her smile, or that Efrin should have his body manipulated like a piece of unfeeling machinery, without anyone warning him what’s about to happen to him.
In the end, he takes Golby and Arves. It’s too depressing to contemplate Golby being ignored when he tries to regale Astarion with his genuinely fascinating past working a plethora of careers from animal control to airline pilot.
Even worse to imagine Astarion changing Arves in stolid silence when the man smiles so bashfully whenever Wyll compliments his wedding ring, turning it back and forth in the light.
He takes Emmeline as well. Wyll wouldn’t trust Astarion with her for more than a second.
Astarion takes Wyll’s report on the patients he was given, rolling his eyes when Wyll tries to fill him in on their interests and idiosyncrasies.
“Get to the point” he snarls. “I don’t have all night.”
“We have plenty of time.” Wyll points out.
“Yes, well.” Astarion glances at his messenger bag, which is propped up on a metal chair beside the chair that he’s sitting in. “I’d like to get some reading done.”
That’s right. Astarion reads tabloids all night, whenever he isn’t working. None of Wyll’s business, he likes to write inspirational bon mots in his notebook when he has downtime, but yeesh. Who cares who got a nose job and when?
Wyll can’t help checking in on Astarion’s patients as soon as he’s done with them. None of them look distressed. They’re all asleep again, actually. Well, good.
Emmeline wakes screaming at 1 am but he’s able to calm her down and herd her into the bathroom.
She balks at the sight of herself in the mirror. “I look ter-RI-ble.” She sifts through her sparse cornsilk hair. “And my hands!”
She peers down at her bony, wrinkled fingers “What happened? Why do they look like that?”
If he were with a different caregiver, Wyll might call them in for help.
As it is he just rubs her shoulder, and she leans back against him. When he turns her away from the mirror she goes willingly, thank goodness. As soon as Wyll returns her to the armchair she passes out.
In the morning, Astarion pulls a bright blue disposable gown from his bag just to take the diaper incontinence brief-filled master trash from the bathroom out to the black bin.
“Did you bring that from home?” Wyll asks. He must have. All the PPE stuff is crammed into the storage side of the garage.
“I’m not letting it leak on me,” Astarion sniffs.
He rebuffs Wyll’s morning offer of a handshake, plainly miffed by the idea that he would touch another caregiver voluntarily.
Wyll sits back, watching him storm out the second it hits seven.
It’s fascinating, isn’t it? The infinite diversity of people? He’s lucky, to have existed in proximity to such a baffling specimen for a night. It probably taught him something or other.
But he’s fully absorbed the lesson now! No need for Astarion to show up again tomorrow.
Astarion shows up again tomorrow. Wyll is decked out in scrubs depicting droopy—eyed dogs with even droopier ears.His matching cap says Sit Stay, Heal.
Wyll makes a point of asking in his most sunshiney voice how Astarion is because Wyll is just spectacular .
Astarion shrinks away.“I’m here aren’t I?Obviously I could be doing a lot better.”
His fingers fly on the garage lock keypad and he ducks into the garage. When he re-emerges, his two folding chairs reek of disinfectant. As if anyone but Astarion ever touches them.
Wyll offers to switch up their patients, taking Hope Efrin and Baelen, while Astarion takes Arves Emmeline and Golby.
Astarion asks what possible benefit there could be to a change like that. Wyll’s hastily cobbled-together answer does not convince him.
“That sounds unnecessarily complicated.” Astarion sticks his nose in the air, “Let’s just stick with the same division of labor.”
The real reason, of course, is that no patient deserves to have Astarion five nights a week, so Wyll would like to spread the burden of his noxious attitude around if he could help it. But he can’t just say that, so he sticks to checking on Astarion’s patients after his rounds, just in case they need comfort or a kind word. None do, but you never know!
Emmeline takes her “optional” lorazepam but wakes up in the middle of the night anyway.
Wyll braces himself, but she is pleasantly confused, looking around at the room, saying everything is beautiful.
Astarion wrinkles his nose at this pronouncement.
There’s a beach ball tucked under the tv table for exercise time. Wyll is tickled to discover that she’s happy to toss it back and forth with him. Astarion remarks that they’ll probably break something, and he hopes it’s the hideous mauve lamp.
The next day Wyll is wearing scrubs with frolicking unicorns and a cap that says Believe In Magic.
Astarion recoils from him before he can even hit him with “Are you having a wonderful day?”
Emmeline is awake. She shakes her head at the ball but is happy to pet the orange robotic cat that swivels its head and breathes. She combs its hair with her fingernails and tries to feed it the dregs of her empty pudding cup. Astarion whines about how repulsive it is with the ring of stained fur around its mouth, and how ungodly it is to see it breathe.
While he’s off doing his changes, Wyll looks at Emmeline presses a finger to his mouth, and moves the cat to the top of the cabinet right outside the room he’s working in, before padding back to his seat.
He hears the whirr of the cat’s eyes opening and a yelp from the hallway.
His eyes meet Emmeline’s. Does she know exactly what’s going on or is she just picking up on his enthusiasm? Either way, they giggle together.
Astarion stomps in, dangling the cat by its ear.
“This hideous thing is yours, I presume?” he asks Emmeline.
“That’s not how you carry a cat.” She laughs at him
Wyll insists that he did not move it and had no idea how it got into the hallway from the living room.
Unable to prove anything, Astarion flounces off to his chair and hunkers down behind the charting binder, the top of his coif poking out.
Wyll resolves to make him sulk like that as often as possible.
A week passes, and then another. Wyll divides his time between ensuring Astarion doesn’t hurt his patients’ feelings and finding new ways to piss him off.
Karlach has the patients make fridge magnets in the shape of ladybugs with spare bits of fabric. A detailed coloring book page of a mermaid goes up on the wall, signed by Hope.
Wyll notices the bananas in the fruit basket are going off, so one night he uses a box of cake mix in the pantry to make muffins with them.
Astarion stares longingly at the muffins but refuses to eat them, saying he saw the nasty excuses for fruit that went into them, thank you very much. Wyll chews loudly, letting Astarion hear every bite.
And Emmeline! Emmeline eats three of them, which has Wyll feeling straight-up gleeful. She needs to gain weight so badly, poor thing.
He resolves to bake for her at least once a week, even if he has to bring the mix himself!
Will it gel with his own diet? Ah, well… it’s fine. Wyll can resist temptation sometimes. Under some circumstances.
If it seems like it’s shaping up to be another Stelmane situation, with the way Emmeline’s particular way of saying ter-RI-ble has wormed its way into his brain, or the temptation he feels seeing plush kittens at the dollar store, well. He’s sure it isn’t. For one thing, there’s no administrator taking bribes to ignore her wretched husband’s abuse. Nobody’s hurting her except herself—he would never again miss such blatant signs.
She’ll die a good death and Wyll will consequently take it in stride. Watch proudly, hand over his heart, as the mortuary guys wheel her away.
Wyll doesn’t get along with Emmeline every night. Sometimes, she’ll go from half-dozing to tottering around the living room, searching for her daughter under the bleach-faded couch cushions. Sometimes she’ll get all the way to the kitchen, and paw through the trash, calling “Jenny? Jenevelle?”.
On a night when Wyll is wearing his smiling stars scrub top, Wyll follows her, hands hovering on either side of her waist, trying to offer soothing words.
If she tries to go into Emrich's room at the end of the hall he’ll have to haul her back. She fights, digging her nails into his skin and squirming.
Astarion calls from the other room, “You need some help there?”
“No!” Wyll calls back.
Astarion can’t be trusted in a situation like this. He’ll say something awful.
About a week ago, she glared at Wyll over the laced pudding he was trying to offer her.
“You took my daughter!” she shrieked.
“All the more reason you should be nice to him,” Astarion remarked from his chair. “Simmer down and perhaps he’ll return her with all her fingers intact.
She didn’t hear him, but still! What a thing to say!
It’s not just that though. Astarion would be so smug, crowing about how the biddie whisperer himself is begging the lowly Astarion for help. He’d ask, with breathless false earnesty, if Wyll has tried peacefully redirecting her yet? Because peaceful redirection invariably works. There’s never any need to resort to nastier tactics.
Wyll would have to fold all the rest of the laundry and take out the trash for a week before Astarion stopped milking it.
No, fuck that. Wyll is more than capable of handling a couple of scratches here and there! He’s certainly survived worse. And there is no better feeling than getting her down after an hour-long breakdown, tucking her red and white swirling blanket over her, and raising his eyebrows at Astarion as if to say that’s how it’s fucking done.
He goes to her, eyes wide and friendly. She lunges at him and overbalances, falling into him.
Caught by him, more or less, her opinion on Wyll reversed. All of a sudden, Wyll is a good and handsome young gentleman.
Astarion glares at him.“Are you sure you had the situation in hand?”
“Yes, of course, I—
“Well it looked like you didn’t.”
“Astarion your concern is, um. Sweet. But I’m a big boy. I really am capable of doing it alone.”
“And what do you think it looks like, me sitting here on my ass while you wrestle with her?,” Astarion demands, petulant, “What are they going to say when you inevitably drop her?”
“I won’t drop her.”
“And how do I know I can trust you to ask for help when—
“I try not to ask you for anything!” Wyll blurts, “You—
Astarion’s gaze is incisive, “What about me?”
Deescalate. Deescalate. It’s no good for the patients if their caregivers are fighting all the time.
“You don’t seem like the kind of person who would appreciate being asked.” Wyll finishes, a bit plaintively.
“Well, I do. ” Astarion flashes him a predatory grin, “In fact, next time you won’t even have to ask. I’ll help whether you like it or not.”
Wyll gets a call from Jaheira at 5:30 that someone called off at House Six. He drives over. Zevlor greets him with a grunt. Wyll shambles from task to task in a haze. At 3:25, twenty five minutes after he was supposed to be off, he loads himself up with enough caffeine to make an elephant jittery, and leaves, glancing down at his phone.
It’s a text from his father!
There’s a headache brewing between his eyes, exacerbated by the glare of reflected sunlight through his windshield.
But his father! His father called!
He cranks the radio and shouts along.
He remembers calling Ulder from a midwest diner, at the age of seventeen. Informing him that he was striking out on his own, moving out west, ready to stand on his own two feet.
Ulder yelled at him so loudly that the gruff butch waitress overheard. She gave Wyll a free slice of pie.
Ah, it was anger borne of worry, no doubt. It must be nerve-wracking to think about your only son hitchhiking all the way to California!
And he had no idea of course, that whatever lurid things he might imagine Wyll being forced into in the passenger seats of stranger’s cars, his stepmother Mizora was doing worse to him at home.
Not that Ulder expressed concern for his well-being outright! That wasn’t the kind of man he was! There were a lot of disappointed tirades, over the next month, about Wyll abandoning his role as heir apparent of Ravengard Industries. A lot about how cruel it was to cast off his poor stepmother, refusing to even call her. How Ulder was caught in the middle, Mizora pestering him nonstop to have the police drag him home.
Ultimately Ulder did not contact law enforcement. He decided he would let Wyll correct his own mistake—or fail to and be disowned.
On Wyll’s twentieth, Wyll caved and took one of Mizora’s calls. He gave her what she wanted over the phone and in her post-orgasm haze she agreed to entreat Ulder to contact him.
Wyll groveled a little. Well. Groveled a lot. But Ulder agreed that, while he would never again financially support Wyll, no matter how dire his straits, they could communicate. Wyll sent him articles he thought he’d find interesting, milestone updates about his life, requests for advice, and congratulations on whatever of Ulder’s accomplishments made the news. Ulder rarely replied, but Wyll’s texts were read. He read them!
And Ulder acknowledged his birthdays. Once upon a time, he thought he’d never get anything from him again, not even an annual text. He cherishes them all. Takes screenshot after screenshot. He considers printing them to hang on his wall, but it feels… dirty . Dirty like whatever Mizora’s doing with all those compromising polaroids she took of him.
But never mind that, because it’s not even Wyll’s birthday, and yet the best present he’s ever gotten is sitting on his phone.
Unwilling to drive distracted, he waits until he’s pulled into his little apartment. He speeds through chitchat with his neighbor, Volo, and sets himself up on his couch, placing a glass of water on the ikea coffee table. His leg bounces in the way Ulder always chided him for. Well, it’s a good thing Ulder loathes video calls.
“Hey!” Wyll calls out, as soon as the call goes through, before Ulder has had time to greet him, “Did you mean to text that to me ? Even if not, hi! How are you? It’s Wyll!”
Ulder informs him that Mizora is due to have a hip replacement the next winter. She’s asked to have Wyll take care of her, and Ulder would appreciate if Wyll stepped up to do it.
“I don’t know.” Wyll manages. His mouth is dry, and he knows there’s a glass of water within reach, but he can’t move to drink.
“We could catch up, while you were home.”
“I’d love that. I honestly would. I’m just not sure I could get the time off work.”
“Well, I’ve given you plenty of notice. Surely they’d understand.”
“Maybe,”Wyll hedges.“Uh, Father?”
“Yes?”
He owes his father the truth. He’s owed it to him for a long time now.
When he was a kid Mizora would frame Wyll often, setting it up to look like Wyll made an awful mess or stole or wasted food. Ulder never gave any real consideration to Wyll’s protestations about being innocent. Who would trust a child over an adult with no obvious reason to lie? He’d always tan Wyll’s hide about it.
So Wyll believed her when she said Ulder would never believe him about the things she did to him in his racecar-shaped bed. That he would hurt Wyll badly for lying.
Of course, Ulder is a man of integrity who takes accusations of abuse seriously. He doesn’t even like Mizora—Wyll is pretty sure he married her because it was cheaper than hiring a nanny. He’d take Wyll’s side.
But he would want evidence first. He would want a detailed account of what she did to him, one that he could check against Wyll’s medical and school attendance records. And damn it, Wyll cannot bring himself to inflict such prurient slop onto him.
“Nothing.”
Wyll says goodbye and is summarily hung up on.
He slumps against the arm of his couch.
He needs to change into his home clothes, cook, or at the very least heat up some Lean Cuisine. Maybe get a head start on his CEUs or any of the chores that have been piling up the more time he spends pulling doubles and covering “weekends”.
Instead, he’s frozen, closing his eyes against the memory of a glass bottle forcing its way inside, lubed but not lubed well enough. The worst part always, was when the cold neck of it had slipped in, and she was giving him time to “adjust.”
He would swim in dread, knowing what was in store for him when she started to push in the wide body of the bottle. No matter how she’d stretched him he was too little to take it. It hurt like dying.
But he didn’t! He endured, he overcame. He set out west with faith and a dream! And after a couple of weeks of sleeping under an overpass, BG Career College scooped him up and the rest is history.
He’ll continue to thrive, as long as he continues to ignore the fragment of him that still thinks it’s bleeding alone on a bed, waiting for help from somebody.
Emmeline hates the sensation of anything wet, meaning sometimes, after she wakes up in soaked Depends, she’s too busy screaming and pulling at her clothes to allow Wyll to lead her off to the bathroom.
Other times she lets him take her but lets out a cry of pure rage when he gives her a once-over with a warm washcloth.
On a night when he’s wearing scrubs printed with gray and orange kittens and a cap that says Nursing is my Purrpose .Astarion appears at the door as soon as Wyll has accomplished the not-inconsiderable feat of stuffing her into new diapers incontinence briefs while dodging her attempts to kick and bite.
She jabs an accusing finger in Wyll’s direction and Astarion tuts.
“Yes, he’s awful, isn’t he? That man , strutting around in his fancy little scrubs as if he’s god’s gift to the profession.”
“He’s not all that!” she agrees, venomously.
Astarion giggles loftily. “He is not.”
Wyll disposes of his gloves and turns on the faucet.
He obeys the laminated sign on the mirror, sliding his fingers between each other, twisting his thumb in his palm. He tries to visualize his anger breaking apart under the suds and swirling down the drain, but it sticks to him like tar.
It’s standard procedure to take a resident’s side against a caregiver that they’re mad at, of course, but did Astarion really have to bring Wyll’s scrubs into it? Not that. Of course, it isn’t just that.
But damn! They’re fun! The residents like them!
Astarion wouldn’t know fun if it bit him in the nose.
The thought of Astarion being bitten in the nose makes him feel a bit better but he still texts Karlach at 4:30, when he knows she’s awake and ready to drive to work.
Okay can I be a little mean about Astarion? He does his work but -_- I can’t stand him. He’s SO WHINY and HOSTILE and every time he does a round of changes he spends 20 minutes in the bathroom after fixing his hair! Also he’s got such a stick up his ass but he acts like IM the uptight one for insisting we be kind to the residents?
Wyll waits for the notification. Karlach may like Astarion but she’s always telling Wyll to show his nasty side more. Hopefully, she won’t take it as a sign that he talks shit behind everyone’s back, including hers. God. He can’t imagine having more than two or three negative things to say about her.
Still, if there’s a way to unsend a text he doesn’t know it. He waggles his foot, waiting for a reply.
Across the room, Astarion looks down at his own phone and cackles.
Wyll’s stomach drops into his feet. His phone pings and he looks down at the notification.
It’s the kiss-blowing emoji. From Astarion.
A quick check confirms. He accidentally texted the group chat that Karlach tried to start between the two of them.
If he ever gets memory loss it better take this moment first. Well, the molestation first. Then this.
He raises his heavy head, “Astarion, needless to say—
“I knew it!” Astarion declares, gleeful. “I knew you had to be a little bit of a bitch. Nobody wears hearts and rainbows day in and day out unless they’re hiding a mean streak a mile wide.”
Not all of Wyll’s tops are “Compassion and Care themed.” There’s the other categories: “Night Time”, “Nature,” and “Seasonal”.
Not that that will matter to Astarion, “I’m sorry for what I said.”
“Yes, excuse me while I die of a broken heart. I knew you didn’t like me, darling. All this does is make you a little more interesting.”
Wyll buries his head in his hands. Nine minutes later, Karlach texts him:
LOL
U FUCKED UP HUH?’
Sorrryyyy mate
LMAO
Astarion “heart reacts” to every message.
When he shuffles off to do his morning changes he’s all twisted up. He puts Arves’s diapers incontinence briefs on backward. He has to turn him an extra time to fix them, which upsets him. Of course, it does! He should be pissed! His hip is still in the process of healing from this May’s fracture.
But Arves is so sunny the rest of the time, the textbook definition of pleasantly confused. Stings to have those hands slapping at his, when they usually just reach up and gently pull at his surgical mask, calmly curious.
Worst of all, he’s scheduled for tomorrow. And as far as he knows, Astarion is too.
Wyll is not the sort of man who calls off with less than two weeks' notice for a non-emergency. The mere thought is anathema to him. But he could always spontaneously contract bubonic plague before 7 pm tomorrow. Not that he’s hoping—it would be terrible to do something as active as hope.
It’s just. Well, it’s a possibility.
He does not come down with the plague. Wyll squares his shoulders and walks off to his social execution at 7:30 on the dot.
He submits to Karlach’s teasing of him with grace, knowing it is well-deserved. The mug of green tea she pours for him is less deserved but he takes that as well.
Astarion arrives precisely on time. He sets up his chairs, hangs his cardigan over the backs of them and strides into the kitchen.
Wyll forces himself to meet Astarion’s eyes, but Astarion’s gaze is glassy. He stares through him as if he’s not even there.
He always has deep, purple circles under his eyes, but tonight they look swollen. His hair lies a little limper than usual, which is to say, limper than Wyll has ever seen it.
“Shit.” Karlach says, “You okay, buddy? You look dead on your feet.”
“Yes, I just. My—
He frowns in Wyll’s direction.
“Oh, don’t worry.” Karlach chirps, “He’s ambiguously fruity but definitely not homophobic.”
Wyll nods. That’s him. Probably bisexual but at the very least accepting!
“My partner needed my help with something. He’s a blithering idiot but he does spoil me.”
She hums, sympathetic. “Let me put on a pot of coffee for you, huh?”
Astarion massages his temples. “No thank you. The coffee here tastes like vinegar.”
It tastes like instant coffee, not great, not terrible, but leave it to Astarion to slander anything short of an $8 cappuccino.
Karlach’s eyes narrow.“Okay, I know you’re snooty. But are you sure? Because…”
His tone is clipped. “Leave it.”
Astarion spends the first hour pacing the living room. Wyll sees Em stirring at the sound of his footfalls and asks him to move to the kitchen instead.
Astarion sits on his hard chair with a huff instead. He seems to have forgotten his tabloids. He forages in the tv stand drawers and finds a donated copy of Westaways, the little nothing magazine put out by Triple A. He pages through it, brows furrowed with admirable determination but it isn’t long before he slumps face-first against the nearest recliner, softly snoring.
He doesn’t need to be awake this second. Wyll can rouse him before his first round of changes.
He covers Astarion with a blanket, tucking it under his pointy chin.
When it’s time for them to start on their changes Wyll nudges him. Astarion holds his hands over his face, eyes darting in terror.
“It’s just me.”
“I…I knew that.” Astarion mumbles. “Did you put a blanket on me? I refuse to use these blankets. They’ve probably all been pissed on at some point or another.
Wyll shrugs.
Astarion smooths down his rumpled scrubs. “Jaheira doesn’t need to know that you caught me sleeping does she?” He gives a rakish smile, “A little favor here, a little favor there. What would it take to get you to forget?”
Wyll presses a hand to his chest.“I will not tell her. You have my solemn word.”
“Your…” Astarion blinks at him. “Oh, lord. You’re something else.”
Wyll would never admit it, but he prefers Astarion’s baseless mocking to the hangdog look he was giving him earlier.
Astarion takes another moment to collect himself and peels himself standing.
While he’s gone, Wyll searches for coffee on Doordash, tamping down on his thrifty instincts. What’s the point of all the overtime he’s pulling if he doesn’t indulge himself now and then?
When Astarion reappears his hair is still mussed from sleep, flyaways haloing his head.
Wyll waits until he’s sitting and holds his phone out to him. Astarion recoils until he sees what’s on the screen.
“That’s not necessary,” he protests, his eyes wide and startled.
Wyll is steadfast, wiggling the phone at him.“Come on. Indulge me. Think of it as me making it up to you.”
“Making it up to me?”
“The text I sent about you.”
“Oh, right.”
Had he forgotten? Damn it. If Wyll hadn’t brought it up he could have gotten away scot-free!
The tension bleeds from Astarion’s shoulders. “I suppose I’ll be very generous and allow you to redeem yourself. If you insist.”
“I insist.”
Astarion plucks Wyll’s phone with two fingers, wiping it down with an alcohol wipe. He scrolls for a while, chooses a ten-dollar drink with add-ons that make it cost twelve dollars, and hands the phone back.
Wyll nobly refrains from asking him if he’s aware that some people might consider it a faux pas to order like that when somebody else is paying.
In the morning, as they’re in the garage office faxing their paper charts to corporate, Astarion tells the laminated employee rights poster on the wall, “Thank you.”
“Anytime,” Wyll responds, addressing the rickety three-hole-puncher he’s using.
By the time he looks up Astarion has left the room.
A day later, Wyll catches Astarion leafing through little notebook he scribbles in during their considerable downtime. When confronted, Astarion shrugs. “I had to make sure you weren’t taking down any confidential patient information.”
“Uh-huh”
Astarion leans forward, his head on his hand, “Now all those saccharine sayings? I could have done without reading those.”
“I hope they pained you.”
“But who’s this woman you keep drawing?” Astarion leers at him, “Is she your girlfriend? If so, you’re both….
He looks Wyll up and down
…very lucky.”
Sarcasm no doubt, given Wyll’s weight. He’s thinner than he used to be but he’s sure he falls short of Astarion’s lofty standards.
Wyll crosses his arms over his chest.“It’s my daughter, actually. Lily.”
Astarion reels. “You have an adult daughter? How old are you?”
“Sixty-five.”
“No, really. How old?”
“I moisturize.” Wyll states dryly. “You should try it.”
Luckily, this shifts Astarion’s attention away from Wyll’s fictitious daughter, and Wyll’s strange proclivity for speculating about what she would be like, at his age, having lived such a different life from his own.
Instead Astarion spends five minutes vigorously defending his own skincare routine and the rest of the night badgering Wyll with guesses about his age.
The next day, Astarion catches Wyll moving the robotic cat to spook him. “I knew it!” He snaps, “You…you absolute menace.”
He throws the cat at Wyll, who catches it and collapses on the nearest recliner, dissolving into peals of helpless laughter.
On a night when Wyll is wearing scrubs printed with patchwork style owls and a cap declaring “Owl Be There For You”, Emmeline gets such bad constipation that they’re in the bathroom with her for forty minutes, holding her hands to keep her from digging the rock hard excrement out with her fingernails. In order to keep from screaming, Wyll imagines he is a 1950s midwife in a cute little outfit, assisting in the miracle of birth. Then he imagines the monstrous bowel movement that’s slowly edging out of Emmeline crying and reaching for a cuddle and he wants to scream even more.
After they’ve gotten her empty, washed, and settled. Astarion discovers he has a line of shit smeared on his skinny wrist.
He makes Wyll bring him a clean sponge for the kitchen and scours his skin,
“I don’t deserve this,” he squeaks, on the verge of hyperventilating. “I went to college, you know. Four years of university and for what?”
Oh, Poor you Wyll wants to say, but Astarion is so pathetic he can’t bring himself to be sarcastic.
“What were you planning on doing?”
Astarion looks at him through the mirror, his gray eyes rimmed with red.
“I had my heart set on being a surgeon,” he rasps, “I used to watch videos of surgeries all the time. The blood! The gore! The stakes! I used to tell the boys at school that surgery was the only real sport and the rest of it was all just silly game playing. They were not receptive to the idea.”
“Color me shocked.”
“I made it to medical school even” Astarion puffs up like a rooster. “I wasn’t the top of my class my first year but I did very well.”
“What happened?”
Astarion looks down at his wrist. The area that was contaminated is now a blotch of angry red, flecked with blood.
“This”, he says wearily. “I got so neurotic about germs I doomed myself to being a shit mopper forever. Ah, it would be funny if it were anyone but me.”
He disinfects the abrasion and wraps it up in gauze. His hands move gracefully, deftly.
When Wyll gets home, he pulls up a video of an appendectomy, in the spirit of understanding Astarion a little better.
It makes sense for him to picture Astarion in place of the lead surgeon but why does he keep slipping into the role of the one on the table?
And why is he half-hard by the time the video ends?
On a night when Wyll is wearing a midnight blue scrub top, printed with orange swirling stars she gets fed up with rifling through the common areas and stalks off towards the hallway, toward Stelmane’s room.
Wyll takes her hand and she claws at him, wailing.
Astarion appears in his cardigan and gloves and seizes her under one arm while Wyll takes the other. They march her back to the living room while she cries, throwing her weight to the ground and kicking at their shins.
They put her in a recliner, and ratchet it backward, raising the legs. She has a hard time getting up, which makes it a restraint in the eyes of the law.
Wyll’s CNA certificate instructor told a story about a nursing home resident on supplementary oxygen who nevertheless insisted on smoking. He was warned of the dangers but he refused to listen. His refusals were all documented. “ Attempted to educate the patient on safe O2 concentrator usage. Patient stated, “If I die I die, and if you try to swipe my Newports again I’ll take you all down with me.” Will continue to monitor.
The patio was cleared once a day for him to do his business. One day, predictably, he lit up and exploded, showering ten patient’s windows with bloody chunks. They found his dentures on the roof and his false eye wedged into the mud of the gutter out front.
His family sued, but they lost. The documentation showed that the facility had acted correctly.
At seventeen Wyll thought that story was incredibly romantic. The lengths the nurses went to to ensure this man maintained his autonomy! The fact that the system actually backed them up!
Doesn’t work that way in practice though. Never being sued in the first place is miles better than defeating a lawsuit.
Besides, Wyll doesn’t want to watch people explode, especially not Emmeline, who he thinks of every time he sees his neighbor’s orange cat in the window. Emmeline, who doesn’t understand the torturous level of pain she’s risking when she tries to walk on her own. Emmeline, who tries to invade other patients’ space, infringing on other patients’ autonomy, because she doesn’t know any better.
He couldn’t handle the sight of all that carnage or the scent of all that freely chosen neglect. His scrappy little heart would shatter, irreparably. He knows it.
Astarion looks down at her, shaking his head. Wyll lurches forwards, guilt sparking in his chest. He may not be as staunch a patient liberationist as he was at seventeen but he does hate when redirection fails, hates having to manhandle anyone.
“Listen,” he pleads with her.
Astarion snatches up his outstretched hand. “Oh, Leave her alone for once. You’re a terrible hoverer.”
“Astarion—
For some reason, Astarion is still holding his hand.
“Shh.” He pushes down Wyll’s sleeve,
“What are you doing?”
“She probably has shit under her nails. Do you want sepsis or not?”
Astarion digs an alcohol wipe from his bag. He presses it to Wyll’s wrist. Wyll shivers at the sting of it.
“Hold still,” he barks.
He’s seen Astarion throw his weight around, coldly authoritative. He’s seen him inflict necessary pain. Wyll is an empathetic creature. It should feel no different, seeing it happen in front of him and having it aimed at him directly.
And yet…
It takes no effort at all for Wyll to follow his command, sitting pretty while he sweeps icy fire down the length of his forearm. It’s the easiest thing he’s done in longer than he cares to remember. For the past however many years it’s been work and work and chores and work.
Wyll stares over Astarion’s head. His pulse thuds in his veins. Can Astarion feel it?
He has a boyfriend. He has a boyfriend and he is Wyll’s coworker and most salient of all, they do not get along.
None of those facts do a thing to calm the storm brewing inside him. If anything, they drive him madder.
“Finished.” Astarion taps his palm.
“I think I left an alarm on!” Wyll springs to his feet, fleeing to the bathroom. He douses himself in icy water. He bounces up and down on his heels. He thinks of Mizora, and the night after his tenth birthday party, and the texts on his phone asking him if he thinks he’ll be able to manage coming out to care for her.
Thinking of Mizora does the trick.
When he sinks back into his recliner, Astarion is leaning towards Emmeline holding out one of the tabloids he spends all night reading.
She traces her finger along the glossy page, and he winces but doesn’t pull away.
“I don’t like her dress,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “It’s… busy…”
“Me neither,” Astarion cackles. “Busy…you’re exactly right.”
Wyll has to turn away, to look out the window at the deserted suburban street, glowing faintly under the streetlights.
The next few days are a challenge, and a challenge is just a learning opportunity, but boy if Wyll could opt out, he would.
If it isn’t Astarion ghosting through his mind uninvited it’s Mizora and the poisoned bargain he could make with her. Come back and care for her like there were no hard feelings, and he could spend time with his father again, really be his son for the first time in seven years
Luckily Wyll has to renew his certification, which is as decent a distraction as any!
If he were working in a nursing home they’d have enough in-services that his CEUs were covered, easily. But Green Grove Memory Care employs mostly caregivers, who may have zero professional training, beyond the afternoon of videos they watch on onboarding and whatever wisdom the employee they spend their first week shadowing imparts.
Wyll is a huge proponent of continuing education. Knowledge is power! He has an unlimited membership to the CEU website so he can do extra if he has time.
He logs onto Access CEU, perusing his options.
“Ears nose and throat problems? Don’t mind if I do.”
Whoever writes these things has the ability to make some fascinating medical problems seem unfathomably dull.
It’s only 10 am and the dry prose already has Wyll’s eyes fluttering shut.
Not even the diagram of a tracheostomy on page six can save him.
He lands in a dream, a dream where he’s on his knees and blindfolded.
A voice coos to him while a hand pulls his hair just how he likes it. A familiar voice, but he can’t quite place it. It isn’t her voice at least.
Someone traces the line of his cheekbone, the line of his jaw. They stroke down his throat, to his collarbone. Slide up under the gauze encircling it like a collar.
“Let’s see how you’re healing, hmm?”
They unwrap Wyll, exposing the hole in the middle of his throat. Wyll sucks in clear air for the first time in years, unhindered by all the lies he was forced to tell on Mizora’s behalf.
Traces of them had been lingering in his larynx, spreading cancerously throughout his trachea. All the doctors told him his throat felt like it was closing for no good reason until Astarion came along—Astarion, who smelled the true ailment on his breath.
Astarion rubs the muscled rim with a slick, gloved finger, noting the lack of bleeding.
“Good, good,” he hums, smugly regarding his handiwork, “You’ve been following your aftercare instructions haven’t you?”
Wyll nods.
“But now it’s time for the real test.”
Yes, the moment of truth. They’ll see whether he was able to give Wyll not only a voice but a replacement for what Mizora left strange, stretched out, ruined.
“You ready baby?”
Wyll whimpers, already drooling for it. The walls of his throat wet and needy for Astarion.
His finger slides inside his stoma, caressing his throat from from within. His eyes water as his windpipe convulses.
A thumb dabs the tear from the corner of his eye.
Beautiful, darling.” Astarion murmurs. “You are so beautiful like this.”
Wyll’s nails dig into his thighs as his lover’s slick cockhead nudges his stoma. He tilts his head back, and his lover takes the invitation, murmuring praise to him at how sweetly he takes the excruciating stretch.
When Astarion’s cock hits the back wall of his throat, it’s like he’s swallowing the sun. He sobs, instinctually trying to writhe away, but Astarion looks down into his wet eyes and sees that he wants to take it, even if he has to be forced.
He holds Wyll down, groaning at the vibration of his desperate vocalizations around his shaft. He uses Wyll for their mutual pleasure, hips thumping mindlessly, setting a steady rhythm of pain.
It isn’t long before Astarion’s hands tighten in his hair and he grunts, forcing a load of cum down Wyll’s trachea. Astarion pulls out, leaving to Wyll splutter and cough.
He removes his gloves, washes his hands, and returns to kneel by Wyll’s side. He tilts his chin up, admiring his little hole, puffy from use, oozing a trail of cum down the side of his neck. He flushes the orifice with warm water, over the bathtub so Wyll can let it run out of his mouth.
Props him up on pillows like some pampered prince, plying him with honey and lozenges. It’s a struggle to get any of it down his abused throat but Astarion calls him good when he manages so he tries.
Wyll wakes up to his second alarm to find cum crusted on the inside of his pajama pants.
His first wet dream since he was prepubescent and the only one to date that hasn’t made him wish he was dead.
Wyll rises with a rueful chuckle and showers. He’s been too busy to do a load of washcloths so he lathers himself with his hands. He stands in the warm spray, letting it rinse away the suds that cling to his fingers like white curls.