thejusticelounge | (no subject)

He’s alone in the bed, in the room, in the whole bungalow.

Despite this, Ollie’s first instinct upon finding that he can’t open his eyes is to gasp, “help—” and then feel sinking, chilling dismay when there’s no rumbling reassurances from Bruce, no clever soothing touch from Kate. He opens and closes his hand, spasmodically, and huffs in shock when he realizes he’s holding needles, a whole jangle of them. It doesn’t hurt so much when they stab into the tough pads of his hands, archer’s callouses. Or maybe that’s because he’s too focused on the horror of his eyes being pinned shut.

Dropping the needles, Ollie brings his hands together, plucking out the few remaining stragglers, and lies flat on his back on the bed, breathing. In and out of his lungs the dusty hot air goes until he feels he’s calm enough to bring his fingers up to his eyes and touch them, gently; he draws his knees up, unconsciously, pressing the sole of one foot against the inside ankle of the other.

The surgical needles are long and straight and Ollie can smell disinfectant. His fingertips skate along the line of his lashes and he moans as they discover what’s happened (what he’s done?). His eyelids are pinned tightly along the seams, tacked over-under with the length of the needle, like a basic running stitch. Neat and precise, as skilled and utilitarian work as Oliver himself would have done, has done, on less gruesome material.

He turns onto his side and curls up, finding the blunt end of the needle on the outside corner of his right eye, and starts, slowly, to pull. There’s brittle dried serum that breaks around each puncture as Ollie eases the needle out, under-over, and he makes a miserable sound that ends on a retch as the first needle finally clears the last hole. He brings his shaking fingers to his left eyelid and repeats the process, slipping too quickly with the final part of it because blood has started leaking along the still-shut seam of his right eye, fucking head wounds, they always bleed so damn much and there, now his left eye is bleeding too, and there’s tears adding to the blood as well, stinging the punctures where the salt of them seeps in.

I guess that’ll work for saline, Ollie thinks, curling tighter in on himself with a half-choked sob. He can’t be crazy, goddammit he’s not supposed to be crazy. There’s no time for it. Not with everything else going on. Drawing in a long choppy breath, he hurls himself off the bed, staggering blind down the hallway to the bathroom and turning the tap on as cold and hard as it can go, washing his face over and over until his lips and the tip of his nose are almost numb.

It’s only then that he dares to lift his head and look at his reflection in the mirror, as blood starts springing up in beads again along the wet dark blond, holly berries dotting the bases of his clumped lashes. He blinks and they tangle and stick, the blood joining up into hot rivulets that trail from both corners of both eyes. The thin skin of the lids is already starting to swell, shiny and bursting, and every blink makes him nauseated.

Ollie watches until the blood winds down into his beard, streaking it, then goes back to the bed and puts himself back to sleep