Room 222, Tuesday Evening

[glacial_queen]

"I win again!" Karla tossed down her cards to show the winning hand and then began toting up the scores on the paper. Not that much math was required, considering most of Warren's scores for the round were in single-digits and several of Karla's had three. "I get to claim another forfeit!"

Karla was having a grand time. She was still fully dressed, even after six rounds of cradle--she hadn't even lost her shoes yet. Warren's clothing, on the other hand, were in a messy pile next to her; he was down to his boxers and a charming smile.

...Well, his boxers anyway.

Warren wasn't all that fond of cradle. But he had promised to play if she agreed to this vacation, dammit, and it wasn't like this game wasn't leading somewhere much more enjoyable for the both of them anyway. Karla felt no remorse about making him spend a few hours over the cradle board.

"I'll give you a choice," she said, grinning at him. "You can either lose your boxers--" thus ending the game "--or you can give me one of those very good, toe-curling, Karla-dipping kisses you do so well." Which also stood a chance of ending the game.

[For one at least at first, please! Post now open to anyone Karla would call in a panic over Warren.]

Comments

[wwiii]

They'd been playing this game for what felt like a lifetime, now. Warren was tired when he woke up today, and the fatigue had been creeping up on him more and more as the day wore on, which was not doing him any great favors when it came to concentrating on the cards.

It was... it was frustrating, was what it was, and he'd been sitting there and playing the game and obediently peeling his way out of different articles of clothing as the evening wore on, until it was down to this. And there she was, looking all smug, knowing that he hadn't stood a chance even when they started the game, and that set his teeth grinding.

The last round was the last straw, and even as Karla finished speaking, words that he barely even caught the meaning to, he was pulling himself to his feet and slamming his cards on the desk, and then spinning around and punching the wall entirely too hard to be healthy.

"I fucking hate this game," he growled, watching cracked plaster crumble to the floor.

[glacial_queen]

Karla...Karla was just going to sit there for a moment, staring at the wall, before dragging her shocked expression up to Warren's face.

"I--You--Huh?" Warren. Cursing. Hitting walls. These things did not compute.

Okay, perhaps there was a liiiiittle remorse for making him play cradle for a few hours.

[wwiii]

Warren re-claimed his hand, giving it a shake and rubbing idly at his bruising knuckles. I, you, huh, like she had no idea what the hell was eating at him, here. Like she hadn't just made him lose his mind for several hours so that she could gloat in his face each time her cards...

Her cards what? She'd been roping him into playing this stupid game for months and he still didn't know what the hell the point of it was! And he was just turning around to tell her as much when another wave of fatigue hit him so damn hard that his knees gave out, and he was finding himself en route to the floor.

[glacial_queen]

Sudden burst of temper aside, Warren was about to hit the ground. Karla flung herself out of her chair and lunged to catch him before her could hit. They landed in a tangle of limbs and feathers, Karla on her knees with her arms up around his chest. "Whoa, whoa," she said, putting her face to his. "You okay?"

Wow. He felt warm. Really, really warm. Was he running a temperature?

[wwiii]

One moment, Warren had been on his feet, and the next, he was halfway to the floor, draped across his girlfriend and more than a little bewildered. Did he just fall? He never just fell.

God, he was tired.

"I... I think so...?"

And yet he couldn't help the involuntary shudder that crept along his spine.

[glacial_queen]

"You look a little peaky," Karla said. You know, on top of the sudden anger and the fall and the possible temperature. "Too many extra sessions with Lucivar, maybe?"

That might explain the tiredness, but everything else...?

She tried to leverage him into standing, her hands dropping under his wings as she shifted position and was confused when she felt a few tiny bumps on his skin, almost like a bunch of blisters. A weird molt, maybe?

[wwiii]

Looking a bit dazed, Warren gave his head a shake. He'd been tired before coming back to the island, sure, but not in any way that would linger for so many days and then catch up to him all at once like this.

"No, they shouldn't..."

He froze. He'd been about to run his hand through his hair, to try to get some sort of bearings back, but now there was a look on his face as if the world had just dropped out from underfoot.

Maybe it was?

[trigons_child]

As soon as she got Karla's message, Raven teleported right to her room. Knocking was for people who weren't answering a desperate call.

She could feel right away that something was very wrong with Warren, though she wasn't sure just what it was. And the aggression she sensed was entirely unnatural as well. "What has happened?" she said, crossing the room to move beside the bed.

[glacial_queen]

"He's...come down with something," Karla said, unable to be more descriptive than that. "His Healing factor is fighting off an infection of some kind and it's taxing his body to the limit."

She brushed a lock of sweaty hair out of her face and added miserably, "I'm trying to burn through it as best I can, but I'm not making much progress at all."

[trigons_child]

"Allow me to try," Raven said, sending Karla a gentle pulse of reassurance before sitting on the edge of the bed, looking down at Warren. She frowned at the sight of the grey patches appearing then fading on his skin; while she wasn't fully knowledgeable about Earth illnesses, this looked like nothing she'd ever heard of before.

She stretched one hand toward Warren's face, dropping her shields. "May I heal you, Warren?" she said. Asking was mainly a courtesy; if he said no and Karla said yes, she'd go with Karla.

[wwiii]

May she? There was a hand in Warren's face, and he blinked up toward it blearily. May she...

She was...

He squinted a bit, swallowing at a lump in his throat. He should probably say something, but little things like managing speech were, by this point, a little too taxing for him to really manage.

Shrugging would do. He could get his shoulders up that high, anyhow. She could go right to town on that. It wasn't like he was doing so great against it.

[glacial_queen]

"He says yes," Karla said quickly. She have said that even if he had been shaking his head and looking terrified.

[trigons_child]

Raven touched her hand to Warren's cheek, bringing up her other to do the same to the other side of his face. "Do not worry, all will be well," she promised.

Her shields were already down, and she concentrated now on drawing the sickness out of him and bringing it into herself. The first touch of the infection made grey patches ripple across her skin, and her stomach twisted with the wrongness of how it felt, but she banished it as if it were any normal sickness. The aggression she also took, and it left a bitter taste in her mouth that she struggled to swallow as well.

Except as she pulled the infection out, she felt it sprout again inside his body. Frowning, she pulled harder at it.

[justwantsquiet.livejournal.com]

Sookie had to knock on the door with her elbow, her arms full with large bags bearing the Luke's logo. << I brought supper, >> she called on an inclusive link, even though she could already hear that Warren sounded...off.

[glacial_queen]

The door opened under Sookie's elbow, Karla wasn't about to leave his side to cross the tiny distance to answer the door. "Thank the Darkness," she said. "That smells delicious."

She darted a worried glance at Warren, unsure if he'd even be able to eat anything without help.

[justwantsquiet.livejournal.com]

Sookie looked over at Warren, hissing a breath through her teeth. "I brought plenty. For you, too, honey," she added as she started pulling out large containers of soup.

[glacial_queen]

Karla gave her a grateful look, standing up and stretching before ambling over to Sookie. She did keep darting glances back over to Warren as she went, just in case he got precipitously worse or did something foolish or...whatever.

"Oh good, soup," she said with relief. "I don't think he's really up for much in the way of chewing." And if Karla had to spoon-feed him, she wanted something simple.

[justwantsquiet.livejournal.com]

"Any idea on what's wrong?" Sookie asked softly, looking over at Warren with concern.

[glacial_queen]

Karla started ladling the soup into two bowls; she'd used enough Craft to make her ravenous. "I think...you know that rock the Mayor Summers and Deadpool warned us away from?"

Someone hadn't been warned well enough.

[longislandiceme]

You're damn right Bobby worries, Warren. Which would be as soon as he found out his friend was sick, he was knocking on his door rather frantically.

[glacial_queen]

Karla answered the door this time, her face lined with exhaustion. Some of those lines disappeared when she saw Bobby there. "Oh good," she said. "Sookie called for you?"

Warren had told Karla not to call Bobby. So she hadn't. There had been no rule about not calling Bobby's girlfriend in a panic and not passing along the warning.

[longislandiceme]

Bobby nodded. "Said something about Warren being sick?" he said, sounding... not as shocked as he should be, given Warren's healing factor. There really was only one thing he figured it could be, though, and a healing factor wouldn't be much help there.

[glacial_queen]

"He's running a high temperature, sweating, delirious, shaking..." The list of unfortunate symptoms went on and on. "Exhausted and covered in some kind of gray rash, too. If you could...?"

She waved over to the bed. "We need to get his fever down. I'm worried it could cause damage to him."

[longislandiceme]

"Of course," Bobby said, moving closer to where Warren lay. He didn't ice up, not yet, but the temperature around the bed dropped visibly, frost forming on Bobby's fingertips. "There isn't really a lot we can do for this," he added, still sure he knew what it was.

[glacial_queen]

"Wait, how do you know that?" Karla asked. "You've already studied it?"

Karla was under the misapprehension they were talking about the same thing.