Day 37: Breakfast

[scarletspeedstr.livejournal.com]

[for Sylar, I believe]

At the sound of the intercom, Wally jerked awake and blinked around at the room. He’d fallen asleep. He should have been up and keeping an eye open for ZEX, but he’d fallen asleep waiting on his bed.

“Idiot,” he groaned, ruffling his hair and sighing in annoyance. “Way to help a guy out, hotshot.” Hopefully ZEX hadn’t dropped by and thought he’d left or something, or wouldn’t be too mad at him for just forgetting about it like that. If he was lucky, he’d be able to catch up with the other patient at some point and explain what had happened.

Rolling himself a little awkwardly out of the bed, Wally took the opportunity to stretch his injured leg and test how well it was holding up. It was feeling a bit better, not so much that he could abandon his crutch or that it didn’t pull painfully if he wasn’t careful, but better. Tony had apparently made it through the night in one piece as well, which was a relief. He really didn’t feel comfortable about the thought of his roommate wandering about on his own with an injured arm. Not when Wally himself could relax and fall asleep in the apparent safety of their room.

Yeah, he wasn’t going to let himself forget that one in a hurry.

It was at that moment that the door swung open to admit one of the nurses. She seemed surprised to find him awake and ready to go already, but smiled warmly. “Hungry, are we Mr. West? Well in that case, let’s get you to the cafeteria. The staff have provided some delicious French Toast as well as a range of other foods I’m sure you’ll like. Now will you be needing a hand with your leg, dear?”

“No thanks, I can handle it,” Wally replied, smiling back. After all, it probably wasn’t the nurses’ fault that this place was so messed up, so it wasn’t like picking fights with them would do anything. With a cheery wave goodbye, Wally slowly made his way to the cafeteria, keeping a tight grip on his crutch all the while. Obtaining a plate of food was only slightly less difficult than it had been yesterday – he didn’t have the painkillers to work around this time – but he managed well enough, coming away from the buffet with a tray containing a plate piled high with slices of French Toast and slathered in maple syrup, butter, and sugar, as well as a glass of juice. Not quite as good as some coffee would be right now, but the sugar would hopefully make up for it. And, with how few people were here at the moment, he could afford to take more food than might have been considered ‘normal’ – he’d have most of it gone by the time anyone came to keep him company, then he could just worry about how many extra serves would be allowed before he aroused suspicion.

Feeling pretty happy with how things were looking so far, Wally hummed faintly to himself as he dug in to his breakfast.

Comments

[sitard3d.livejournal.com]

Having finally decided that there was no accounting for taste, and resolving not to observe whatever weird combinations this guy put into his mouth next, Demyx grinned and shook the guy's hand. "S.T., hunh? I'm called Demyx. Nice to meet you." He shook his head slightly. "Sorry it's not just a dream."

[toxicspiderman]

Okay, that settled it. Having a bizarre name was definitely a dangerous thing. At least as far as landing here was concerned. This one took the cake -- like his parents had come up with it by dumping letters out of a Scrabble set. While high.

Motion caught his eye -- the kid he'd seen tangling with the squirrel had sat down a few tables over. And the Big Guy, both with limbs intact. That was a load off his shoulders. He could go back to telling himself there was nothing useful he could have done with a clean conscience.

"So what do people do around here for fun? Besides trying not to get eaten by the wildlife?"

[sitard3d.livejournal.com]

"For fun?" Demyx rubbed the back of his neck absentmindedly. "I don't really know. During the day, you kind of just have to do what the nurses tell you. At night, though, when all the monsters come out...well, I guess you can do whatever you want? Although it's kinda hard to have fun when there's monsters wandering around and everything's dark and creepy." He brightened slightly. "My friends and I are starting a band, though."

[toxicspiderman]

A band. Well, at least he had the hair for it. "What kind of band?" It had better be something involving guitars. Preferably loud guitars. Some seriously good rock would go a long way in making life more tolerable.

Okay, it would probably suck. But beggars couldn't be choosers, and music was music. Except Gloria Estafan. That was unadulterated crap, toxic to the ears.

The nights here would make a good MTV music video. He could see it -- camera wandering through hallways, band playing a concert in the middle of a trashed auditorium, carcasses of monsters adding some hard-core gore. Very metal. "Gonna have a concert? Maybe I should look into amateur brewing. Can't have a concert without beer."

A food fight had broken out across the room. Well, it was still at the shot-across-the-bow stage, but it'd be nearing border skirmish soon. Too bad he hadn't grabbed any fruit or other non-sticky, easily-thrown consumables.

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. Good ol' Groucho. Though whether he'd meant aerodynamics or Drosophila Melanogaster was still unclear. Both were bread-and-butter to the the gene-tinkering community. Fruit flies for their short lifespan and easily-mutable genome, bananas because they were grown as a monoculture. Attack of the Cloned Bananas. One good disease and bam -- a horde of duck-squeezers would be crying into their fruit-free granola. Scientists had been squawking about the imminent demise of the banana as long as S.T. could remember. But as ecological disasters went, this one was pretty damn low on the priority list. 'Save the bananas' just didn't have the crowd appeal of whales or fuzzy baby seals.

[sitard3d.livejournal.com]

Demyx glanced across the room at the food fight before grimacing and trying to hunker down into a smaller target in his chair. Two thoughts warred for dominance in his head - oh my god those people are going to be sticky in places they won't even find for a week, which was something he knew from experience, and oh please not in my hair. His hair was way too cool for syrup.

Actually, considering that he was apparently eating across from a guy who thought syrup worked with everything, maybe he was not in such a good place right now.

"I dunno what kind of band yet," he admitted absently, keeping one eye on the fight. "I mean, I've been inviting my friends, but most of them can't play any instruments yet - I'm gonna show them how." And it was a good thing he'd gone through so many instruments before finding his calling in the sitar(or at least he assumed that was the case, as he had a hell of a lot of instrumental knowledge in his head and that seemed the likeliest explanation for it), since if he weren't able to teach Matsuda and Ginji to play anything but the sitar they'd all be kind of stuck. "I play the sitar, though."

[toxicspiderman]

Demyx didn't seem too enthused about the food fight -- S.T. wondered if he was just playing 'too cool', or if he knew something S.T didn't. So far, the staff was tolerating the hijinks, but he doubted that would last. Either way, he'd stick to eating his breakfast. For today.

Ouch. He revised "probably suck" down to "the bad kind of noise pollution". The only people who were going to enjoy this band was the people in it. If they were tone-deaf. Or just deaf.

"Into the Beatles? Or just a big fan of everything Eastern?"

[sitard3d.livejournal.com]

It was a good thing Demyx didn't know about the doubts S.T. was harboring as to the projected awesome factor of their band. Sure, Matsuda and Ginji didn't know how to play yet, but Demyx would teach them. And they'd be good, he just knew it. They were too cool not to be.

Demyx shook his head slightly. "I just tried it and liked it," was his response. It wasn't as though he even remembered why, but he was pretty sure he hadn't had much exposure to the sitar as a human. He knew they'd been exotic where he came from, anyway.