damned_institute | Day 37: Breakfast

[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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I saw him yesterday afternoon. He seemed shaken. I think that he had the dubious honor of receiving a visitor." And Alec had a pretty good idea of who it might have been. It was one literary pair of adversaries that he had remembered - Javert vs. Valjean, the determined inspector against the reformed, unjustly persecuted ex-con.

Javert really wouldn't appreciate it if he said he felt more like Valjean...

"Get down!" Alec growled, trying to yank Armand out of the path of the flying breakfast.

Armand turned his attention back to the Alec, since he couldn't find where the toast had gone. The frown over the news about Javert had just settled, when his eyes widened in surprise at Alec's shout. He wasn't braced and got yanked almost flat against the table, straight into the heavily piled plate of food the nurse had given him.

"You bastard!" Armand cried, and picked up the now-squashed bits of toast and flung them at Alec. He scraped sticky syrup and eggs from his face and licked remnants from around his mouth. He was laughing a bit now instead of frowning though.

Whoops. So maybe that had completely defeated the main objective. But at least he still had his reflexes--

Apparently not, since Armand's surprise toast attack hit him in the face. He was, quite literally, gobsmacked.

Now, Alec Trevelyan could handle a lot of things. He could handle being shot. He could handle being exploded. He could even, somehow, handle falling several stories. But food fights were something alien to him. "Bastard, am I?" he said mildly, scooping up some of the scrambled eggs in his hand. "I'll give you bastard..."

Torpedo tube one, you may fire when ready. Engage! And the eggs were away.

It may have defeated the purpose, but it was a silly thing. Armand needed something silly to distract him from his horrid mood, not to mention that it saved him from having to eat that enormous plate of food the nurse had given him. Giggling, Armand ducked down, close to diving under the table, but was slowed by grabbing his plate to take with him. It wouldn't do to deprive himself of ammunition. So he ended up with eggs in his hair.

Now he also had a reason to look forward to getting clean in the showers later. A food fight was a brilliant plan. He wondered who he should thank, other than Alec. He grabbed two sausages, ate one and jumped up to chuck the other across at Alec.

Holy--! Flying sausage! Trevelyan ducked as the aerodynamic food item went sailing past his head. Scowling, he picked up a piece of bacon and bit off the end of it, much like how one would arm a grenade, then threw it at Armand.

Funny, but this was definitely helping his mood. He just hoped that there wouldn't be any nurses coming to spoil the fun. Maybe this would give him the motivation to actually go out and do something this evening...

With a giggling screech that shouldn't have come out of the mouth of a grown man, Armand ducked, then looked through his plate for more ammunition. There were still a few eruptions of flying food elsewhere, but he spotted a nurse and orderly team closing in out of the corner of his eye. He scrambled back into his chair.

He swallowed down his giggles, and slammed his plate back onto the table. "Alec, I think we've been caught. Nothing happened, yes? We were caught in the crossfire." Not all the giggles would stay suppressed. He couldn't find his fork, and he suspected that something squishy, perhaps a bit of egg, was between his rear and the seat of the chair. So he picked up a bit of cantaloupe with his fingers and nibbled on it. He needn't have been so delicate. His face and hair were sticky with syrup.

Oh, damn, speak of the devil. There they came, intent on making everything boring and institutional again. Trevelyan could teach them a thing or two about the value of chaos, that was for sure.

Still, he didn't wish to start off another day pumped full of drugs. He reluctantly returned to his seat. "Right. Just rather unfortunately seated at the conjunction of two neighboring food fights." He nodded and looked around. "Now where's my goddamn bacon?" he asked, although he knew for a fact that it was probably lurking somewhere in the neighborhood of Armand's hair.

Day 37: Breakfast

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