Keye has not been sleeping well, lately. He tosses and turns, waking often to mumble nonsense syllables with his eyes half-open. What's more, sleeping spells aren't doing much good. Once they're on him, he sleeps...but the spells drift apart within minutes, and he's bright-eyed and muttering again; in short, magic simply won't stick. The only times he's seemed to get any kind of decent rest are when his fingers unconsciously drift to brush against the base of that strange narhwal horn...and as often as he picks that up, he tosses it away again, sometimes back onto the table, and sometimes onto the floor. Various nurses respond to his pleas to pick it up for him again, because he seems to have decided that he can't bear to be separated from it for long, because the pain is worse, but it calms that; the nausea is worse, but it calms that; the fever and the hallucinations are worse, but it calms those too...and best of all, the nightmares...they've gotten vivider, but it calms all that. But can it save him?

He is awake now, short of breath, his face shiny with sweat, and no matter how many times he turns that piece of horn over in his hands, he still feels faint and horribly sick. He tries pressing it to his pale lips, but it can't seem to drive off the nausea...he tries putting the end in his mouth, on top of his tongue and then under it, but it isn't helping right now...this has happened before (is it his imagination, or is it worse this time?) and as before, in his frustration, he hurls the disc across the room. It doesn't break, and this seems to upset him. He moans, twisting.

His cheeks are flushed, his eyes overbright, but his lips are pale, and the shadows around his eyes are a bruised-looking purple-grey. His hands twist in the blanket, and he's slack-jawed, and perhaps a trickle of saliva has escaped the corner of his mouth.
In a nutshell, this is a sick, sick boy.

Alexander doesn't know what to do. He's close to panicking--which I imagine would make Douglas's day, if the creepy ex-doctor could see him--and he's pacing the room, watching Keye and wondering why there haven't been nurses and doctors swarming the room yet.

He took down the wards earlier. And left only certain ones--set to kill and keyed to Douglas's presence. The only one they were meant to keep out was him, because if he came, it would not be to wish Keye a swift recovery.

Feeling useless, desperate, and rather ill--Keye can't die. He won't let that happen--he bends to pick up that little disc and starts in surprise when his fingers tingle... Magic? What?

He crosses the room and strokes Keye's hair away from his face, willing the boy to get through this... He puts the disc in Keye's hands again... Oh yes. And experimentally sends a thread of his own magic into it. Whatever it does, it has seemed to soothe his boy before... He wants it to do more.

He clasps the disc, seeming surprised as everything subsides to a dull throb. He no longer flinches when Alexander touches him...in fact, he has for the most part stopped responding entirely, to anything that isn't that little piece of horn.
But after a few moments, the comforting coolness fades, and all the illness intensifies...he pulls at the horn, scraping it across the palms of his hands as if he wants it to cut. But it's getting worse...worse.
His eyes unfocus even further, his pupils dilating, and he convulses, his back arching to make a bridge over the bed. The horn is clutched in something similar to a death-grip.

And the doctors and nurses are certainly swarming the room now.

Yes, and shoving Alexander out of the way. Literally shoving, in one case, because this particular doctor needs to be right there, right now, and he doesn't need a panicking father in his way, thank you very much!

Alexander, surprisingly, lets himself be shoved and steps away from the gaggle of doctors and nurses, watching for any glimpse that Keye isn't going to die... He sends a stronger thread of magic into that disc; it seemed to help.

You can't die, not now... Come on, Keye.

Keye collapses back to the bed, after being injected with...something. But something isn't right. He's unsettlingly still, and someone is getting out defibrillators...
And once, twice...
The doctor with the paddles breathes a sigh of relief, because although the danger hasn't passed, the boy's heart is working again.
And a blurry almost-hour passes, and slowly people trickle out of the room, until there are only two left, and then one, looking exhausted. She approaches Alexander and forces herself to straighten up, her mouth to turn upward at the corners, no matter how tired she is (this is her third major crisis today, you know). She tells Alexander that, although some tests need to be done for brain damage, Keye's condition is fairly stable...and the boy will probably make a full recovery.
And, if there's someone to care for him, he can go home in a few days.

How's that for an emotional roller coaster?

Keye would probably be utterly astonished to see Alexander's reaction to this news. Come to think of it, so would anyone else who knows the man. He's not the type to be physically affectionate, even with Keye...

... but he hugs the woman tightly anyway--probably she's used to this kind of reaction--and beams. (He also slips her a bit of energy; it's the least he can do in gratitude.)

"He lives with me; I'll be glad to take care of him."

And then he shoos her from the room and resumes his usual place at Keye's side.

(I told you you wouldn't die, son.)

The woman sagged into him for a moment, partly because she was so tired (and he was so good-looking? Naaaah...), but partly because the last relative hadn't hugged her, but turned away to cry instead.
Surprisingly enough, she felt better afterward, and trotted off to finish out the last four hours of her shift.

Alexander would have been better off heading back to his cot, because Keye was deeply asleep. In fact, it was nearly five hours before he woke, looking around immediately for Alexander.

He spent those five hours working on that project that he's had pushed to the back of his mind for the past five days. With Keye's life no longer in danger, he actually felt that he could think about that and not make some kind of stupid mistake.

Yay mental calculations?

A small smile hovered on the corners of his mouth the entire time, and every few minutes, he would glance over at Keye and smile more.

"I told you so."

"Told me what?" he mumbled, confused. "What're you so happy about?"

"I told you you weren't going to die."

Alexander... is beaming. That's unusual, even around Keye.

"You can come home in a few days, they said."

"..."
He really has no idea what Alexander is talking about. He doesn't know how close he was to death.
"...I get to go home?"
There's plaintive, almost tearful relief in his voice, and a faint, not-quite-believing-it smile hovered on his face. He wants to go home so badly.

"Yes. I assume I'll be loaded down with a myriad of instructions to prevent you from relapsing or some such thing, but you can come home in a few days." I wonder which of them is happier about it.

Probably Keye, though Alexander is very close behind.

"Oh..." conflict flickered across his face. "I...well, I...wouldn't want to be any trouble..."
He frowned. However badly he might want to go home, that didn't make up for this, in his mind...
"I don't want to be a burden..."

Oh brother.

"Don't you start. You're not a burden."

Is Alexander going to have to repeat himself over and over and over again, just like he did for everything else?

Wait. Do I even have to ask?

Keye could argue the point, because taking care of someone like that is a burden...
What he didn't quite get was that it was a lovingly and willingly borne one. He looked confused and opened his mouth to protest...then shut it again.
"Well, as long as you don't mind. I really do want to go home."
He grinned,
"...how long was I asleep for? I had the weirdest dream."

"About five hours, I think. What dream would this be?"

Wow. He didn't have to argue Keye into accepting the care that Alexander was going to give him, Douglas or no Douglas. Which reminded him; he could probably take down those wards now...

Nah. He'd leave them up until they left the hospital. His own home was much better to fortify against Douglas anyway.

"I don't really remember, only that it was weird. And very busy, and there were a lot of people around, and somebody shocked my chest, and it hurt. I didn't like it. I was getting so sleepy, too, and they had to go and do that."

"I don't think that was a dream, Keye." Because that was pretty much what happened when Keye hit crisis.

Reflexively, Alexander shivers. Death was way, way too close at that point. Aside from the fact that he really really really doesn't want Keye to die, he doesn't particularly want to be near anyone when they die.

He's not sure of the mechanics of it, but Azrael's bound to be around. What if he happens to read Alexander's mind, or something? It's probably paranoia, but still.

"Well sure it was a dream, it wasn't real..."
Was it? He looked confused.
"...are you okay?"

"I'm fine. I'm just tired of helplessly watching you die. Or almost die, rather." He shook his head and leaned back in his chair.

And changed the subject.

"Where did you get this?" he asked, indicating the little 'lucky charm' that Alan had left in the room. (Wonder whether that was deliberate or not. Probably deliberate; Alan hates it when there's nothing he can do.)

"Almost die...?" he looked slightly alarmed. "I...didn't know. I'm sorry...were you scared?"
He picked up the bit of horn, smiling a little.
"A guy named Alan came in, and he left it behind. It's a piece of a narwhal horn."

Eyebrow. A very skeptical eyebrow at that.

"Yes, and I'm Douglas Kael." Which he's not. (Thank the gods.) "He just left this here? Did he say anything about it?"

Alexander might not have encountered this sort of thing before, but he's not stupid, and he has a fairly good guess as to what this bit of horn really is. You don't get to be a mage of thirty-odd years of experience without knowing that kind of thing.

"He said it was a narwhal horn, and kind of a good luck charm, and he left it here on accident."
He grinned.
"I think it's pretty. I like it."

Accident. Right.

"Yes, so do I. But I doubt it's a narwhal horn or anything of the kind." Narwhal horns don't make his fingers tingle with unfamiliar magic. They're just bone. This is something else.

"Really?"
His eyes lit up. Haha, maybe it was something exciting after all!
"'cause I said that, 'cause I thought narwhal horns were brown, but he said they're not all brown..."
He rubbed his thumb across the iridescent surface.
"I think it's pretty. I wonder if you can buy them anyplace."

Alexander shrugged. "I'm not an expert, but I imagine that they come in varying shades, just like anything else. But that's not why I think this is something else." He took it and rubbed it between his fingers.

"It feels of magic."

And not human magic, either.

"Magic feels?"
Lucky Alexander, being able to feel magic. Keye stared at him wonderingly, practically glowing with interest.
"What's it feel like?"

Luck has nothing to do with it; it comes from years of automatically checking things for magic. By now, it's something he does without thinking. (Probably the reason he didn't notice the thing's magic before is because it's a subtle sort of thing. And, of course, he was distracted by Keye.)

"Well... It varies with the magic. That little thing makes my fingers tingle when I touch it. Other things, depending on what they are, make me feel a bit ill, perhaps, or euphoric..." Another shrug. "It depends on what the magic is... and on what left the magic there. Human magic feels different from elven magic feels different from fae magic... It goes on."

"Does it come natural, or did you learn it?"
The unspoken question there is Could I learn it too?

He turned the little thing in his hands again, squinting at it. Try as he might, it wouldn't tingle, but it did feel nice and cool in his hands.
"I don't feel so sick when I have it. Maybe it has...magical salt from the ocean in it. Like smelling salts but magic. I bet there's magic in the ocean somewhere, 'cause I heard it's real big."

He smiled.

"Yes, I could probably teach you to do the same thing." Hey, look! He's getting to be able to understand (some of) the unspoken questions that Keye is so fond of asking him.

"Maybe so. Ask your friend when he comes back for it."

He nodded, grinning.
It didn't show much, but it meant a lot to him that Alexander was learning to read him. It was proof, beyond all the words, that he was cared for.

"...you ever seen it? The ocean?"

"I've been there a few times... when I was much younger." Much, much, much younger. And female.

"Why, haven't you?"

Keye's from New York, right? Isn't New York on the ocean? (Okay, okay, so it covers five counties--or at least touches them--but still.)

"I haven't."
New York City is on the ocean, yes...but Keye stayed well away from the coast, all his time there (which is impressive, because it was pretty much all his life). He closed his eyes when he crossed the bridge to the mainland on the way to Canada.
"And I don't want to."
He doesn't like water. The thought of a body so big that he couldn't see the other side makes him shudder. He hasn't been anywhere near the Lacroix either, by the way.

"I see."

Alexander has encountered this particular phobia before. If just a little water on his head upsets him as much as it did, the professor doesn't want to imagine what the boy would be like completely submersed.

"I rather liked it, especially the smell." And the company. Family and boyfriend. Mmm.

"Rrrr..." he made a face. He's learned to detect the smell of water in the air (so that he can get inside, fast), and he doesn't like that either. Some people have wondered how he bathes.
"I like other things better, like clubs and bowling alleys."

Bowling?

"I haven't been back in a very long time." Too many memories involved, and too much chance that he'll encounter someone he used to know. (Not that they'd recognize him, but there's always the chance he'd recognize them and say something foolish while he was offguard.)

"I shan't be taking you to any clubs--" That would set a bad example for his son. "--but maybe we can go bowling when you're stronger."

After all, that's a normal parent/child activity, isn't it?

"Are you sure about that?" he raised one eyebrow, trying to put an evil grin on his face. It wasn't working; he liked Alexander too much.
"Might wanna bear in mind that I will beat you so badly that you will want to just lay down and die, right there in the gutter."

"Oh, I doubt that. I cheat."

He uses magic to guide the ball to where he wants it to go.

"But I'll let you tie with me."

Hey, playful banter. This is good, right?

"How d'you cheat at bowling?" he squinted. "Not only is that really weird, it's kinda...I dunno..."
Snort.
"Pathetic. I mean c'mon."

"Magic."

Yeah, it probably is pathetic. The funny thing is it's actually harder to make the ball do exactly what he wants it to do with magic than it would be to bowl and not cheat.

"I prefer to think of it as practice."

For what?