milliways_bar | (no subject)

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A fourteen-year-old boy with alarming amounts of blood dripping off his upper body and trickling out his mouth comes stumbling through the door.

"Shower," he says.

And then, more urgently, "Shower."

Luckily for him, despite his single-minded attention to getting some place where he can have a wash, one of the waitrats notices him and wisely hands him a bucket, which turns out to be very useful because after a confused half a minute, he vomits more blood into it.

Would it reassure anyone to know that the blood isn't his?

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Shit.

Guppy moves over quickly to him.

"Hey, Alex? Let's get you into the infirmary before half the bar sympathy puke, eh?"

Funnily enough, that's Alex's first thought, as well.

"It's not mine," he manages to spit out, because he'd rather not have anyone thinking he's bleeding internally. Though he wouldn't mind gargling with several strong chemicals to get the taste of snake blood out of his mouth.

"That's only slightly reassuring." Guppy says, taking him gently by the shoulders and steering him to the infirmary.

The infirmary, his old haunt. On the way, he keeps the bucket near his face so he can spit blood into it every few seconds.

What he'd really like, right now, is a shower. Or a hose. Anything capable of getting rid of the blood would be nice, really.

Guppy takes him straight through to the infirmary bathrooms. No way to examine him with so much blood in the way, and it comes equipped with handy shower stools and things for people to sit on while being hosed down, as it were.

"Probably better out than in. Whose blood is it?" he asks, getting Alex sitting down. If it was Frogspawn or Coral, he'd be back rubbing them now, because being sick is nasty and gross, but he's not sure Alex would appreciate that.

"A snake's."

Definitely better out than in, even if it's still unpleasant either way. He might not object to the backrubbing at this point, honestly. He's had a long day.

"Was it venemous? Unpleasant that it is, if you don't manage to bring it back we might have to consider a stomach pump." Guppy says.

"I don't know."

He didn't get a very good look at it, unfortunately. Still, knowing its owner: "Probably."

"Okay, what did the snake look like?"

The narration, not knowing much of snakes, will kindly step aside for a moment and let Alex do the talking.

And, occasionally, spitting.

It sounds rather venomous.

"Aesclepius, can you go to the bar and find an identification guide for snakes please?" Guppy says to one of the infirmary waitrats.

"Do you think you've vomited up most of it now?"

"Probably."

But he rather suspects that the taste is never coming out.

Guppy gets Work Experience Waitrat to bring him some water, and gets the shower head to try and clean Alex up a bit.

"Are you hurt anywhere else?"

"I'm okay."

A few more bruises than last time, admittedly, but that's his life. Mostly he just feels sort of sick still, and that'll pass. Eventually.

"You want to tell me what happened?" Guppy asks, showering his hair gently, looking for bumps or wounds.

"Would you believe me if I said I was playing a video game?"

"When the snake attacked you?"

He sighs.

"Something like that."

He sort of had to attack the snake first, but it's all the same in the end.

"Did someone set the snake on you?"

He sighs. "Sort of."

Guppy towel dries Alex's hair and starts rinsing off the rest of him.

"Was the snake in the game?"

"Yes."

At least he had played the game before getting thrown into the real-life mock up.

"And it... came out?"

"I was in a sort of real life mock up of it that the developer used for recording reactions."

Especially the death ones.

"With your consent?"

He eyes Guppy. "Does it look like I'd consented?"

"No, unless it went wrong."

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