bk_forever | FAKE Fic: Trapped

Title: Trapped
Fandom: FAKE
Author:

badly_knitted
Characters: Ryo, Dee, Bikky, Nurse Emiry, OCs.
Rating: G
Setting: After Vol. 7.
Summary: Ryo gets trapped under a collapsed building while chasing a perp.
Word Count: 1303
Written For:

juliet316’s prompt ‘Author's choice, author's choice, pain everywhere they were touched,’ at fic_promptly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters. They belong to the wonderful Sanami Matoh.

“Ryo? Ryo!” Dee’s voice, shouting his name, gradually brought Ryo to consciousness; he sort of wished it hadn’t, because waking up meant being aware of the pain that had made him pass out in the first place. As much as he longed for the oblivion of unconsciousness though, he couldn’t allow himself to escape back into it. He was in a less than ideal situation and he was going to need help getting out of it.

“Dee?” he tried, but all that came out was a faint croak. He moistened his lips and tried again. “Over here!”

There were scrabbling noises, and then Dee’s voice again, closer now. “Keep shoutin’, bud!”

“I’m here, Dee.” It wasn’t much of a shout, but it seemed to be good enough for Dee. Moments later his head came into view, peering under the rubble that had Ryo pinned face down on… Well, not the floor, that appeared to have collapsed underneath him when the ceiling had collapsed on top of him, so what he was laying on was probably more rubble, with him in the middle like the filling of a bizarre sandwich.

“Hang in there, babe, we’ll get you out.” Dee kept his voice low, barely more than a whisper, reaching out to grasp Ryo’s hand, which was the only part of him not currently buried in bricks, plaster, concrete, and shattered wooden beams and floorboards.

Ryo whimpered at the touch; even his fingers hurt. “We?” he asked, voice hoarse from all the dust in the air.

“I called rescue services. God, when everything started to collapse I was sure you were a goner. Can ya move at all?”

Ryo tried, and cried out as even worse pain lanced through him, almost making him black out again. When his vision cleared, he shook his head slightly. “No. Sorry, Dee, I shouldn’t have followed Wilkes in here; I knew it wasn’t safe, just didn’t want him getting away again.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it, everything’s gonna be fine.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah, I promise. I’m not lettin’ anything bad happen to ya, okay?”

Ryo decided not to point out that something bad was already happening to him; having a building collapse on top of you is never good, no matter how you look at it. Instead he just whispered, “Okay.”

It look more than three hours to dig Ryo out of the rubble, and through it all he drifted in and out of consciousness, but Dee stayed with him the entire time, talking to him, a paramedic beside him monitoring Ryo’s condition. When the last slab of concrete was finally lifted off him, Ryo screamed in agony before mercifully passing out. He never saw the tears running down his lover’s face as Dee watched him being eased onto a backboard, neck collar in place and a pressure bandage over a deep gash in his right thigh.

The next time Ryo woke up he was lying against soft pillows in a hospital bed. He groaned; even the slight weight of the sheet covering him hurt and his back and legs throbbed with pain where they pressed into the mattress. Hell, even his fingers ached. He prised his eyes open and saw Dee, pale and drawn, sitting in a chair beside the bed, gently holding his hand. Across the room, Bikky was curled up in a chair, asleep with a blanket tucked around him.

“Hey,” Dee said softly. “Welcome back to the land of livin’.” He reached up to brush Ryo’s hair back out of his eyes

Ryo tried not to wince at the tender gesture, but couldn’t help the faint, pained, “Ow.”

“Sorry. Does that hurt?”

“Everything hurts,” Ryo admitted weakly.

“Yeah, not surprising; you’re pretty much one massive bruise all over. I’ll see about gettin’ you some stronger pain meds.” Dee pressed the buzzer to call a nurse, and moments later, the door opened, the familiar figure of Nurse Emiry bustling in.

“Well, awake at last, are we? You’re a lucky man, Detective Maclean.”

“I don’t feel very lucky.”

“I suppose not, but nevertheless, you are. No major bones broken, probably because you were already falling through the floor when the ceiling came down on your head. Well, that’s what the rescue people think happened. You cracked three ribs and broke a finger, several nasty lacerations which needed stitches, and bruising to approximately seventy percent of your body, but remarkably no internal injuries.” She checked his charts. “Hmmm. I’d call that lucky under the circumstances.”

“He’s in a lot of pain; can you give him something for it?” Dee asked.

Nurse Emiry seemed to ignore Dee, but her next words to Ryo made it clear she’d heard. “Are you allergic to morphine?”

“No.”

“Good. Your partner wasn’t sure so we didn’t want to risk it before. I’m going to hook you up to this machine here.” She bustled around to the other side of the bed and hooked the machine into the drip tube that was already in Ryo’s arm, then swiped her card through a slot in the side and punched numbers on a keypad, setting the dosage levels and time intervals. She picked up a button on a wire, clicked it a couple of times, and a warm feeling began to flow through Ryo’s body, the pain gradually beginning to melt away before it. He sighed in relief. “Now, you take this,” Nurse Emiry pressed the button firmly into Ryo’s hand and he stifled a yelp. “Press the button whenever you need pain relief. Don’t worry, you can’t give yourself too much.”

“Thanks, Nurse Emiry.”

“Just doing my job. Now, try to get some sleep. I’ll check up on you later.” She turned to Dee. “And you keep quiet. You can stay for a little while longer, but Detective Maclean needs his rest. If I catch you disturbing him, I won’t bother calling security; I’ll throw you out on your ear myself. Are we clear?”

“Yes, Nurse Emiry,” Dee replied meekly.

“Good, perhaps there’s hope for you yet.”

As soon as Emiry had left the room, Bikky pushed off his blanket and came over to the bed.

“Ryo?”

“Hey, Biks. Sorry if I scared you.”

“S’okay. How d’you feel?”

“Sore all over; I never knew lying in bed could be so painful,” Ryo replied. He tried to smile wryly but winced instead. He must have bitten his lip at some point and smiling made the healing wound tear open again. “Even the covers hurt.” Bikky frowned, concerned, but Ryo shook his head slightly. “It’s fine, the morphine is helping a lot; I’m just badly bruised, that’s all. I’ll heal.” Ryo did his best to sound reassuring. He turned to Dee. “I made a mess of everything, didn’t I? After all that, Wilkes still got away.”

“Ah, no.” Dee shook his head. “From what the investigators can tell, Wilkes rigged that building as an escape route, but it backfired on him. He won’t be hurtin’ anyone else, he didn’t make it out and he wasn’t as lucky as you. They found his body in the rubble, looks like he broke his neck when the staircase collapsed on top of him. They think he was hidin’ underneath it, probably thought it would protect him. He was wrong.”

Ryo sighed, smiling slightly, relief pouring through him. “Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bastard.” He was a little surprised at his own vindictiveness, but Gerald Wilkes had been a monster, preying on young children, and now he would never ruin another innocent life. It was worth all the pain Ryo was going through to know that. Closing his eyes, still smiling faintly, he felt the last of the tension draining out of his battered, abused body. Dee was right; with Wilkes gone for good everything was going to be just fine.

The End