better tragedies

December 2087. Vicky Garth is 23, Vale Akiyama is 27.

previously: thank you, part 4

* warnings: briefly NSFW, gratuitous cuddling! *

In their first thirty-six hours as a couple, Vale and Vicky didn’t leave the apartment as much as they could have.




There was just too much to do indoors. They’d been dreaming about, and fretting over, and pining for these moments for months. Surely the rest could wait. The restaurants, the festivals, the karaoke bars, the galleries, the theaters, and the garden centers weren’t going anywhere.


But, as it would turn out, these two lovebirds weren’t going anywhere, either. Except back to bed, and not in a sexy way. Back to bed with a bottle of NyQuil and two boxes of tissues.


It wouldn’t be fair to say whose fault this was. Vicky, on the one hand, had just been on a crowded and enclosed train for many hours. Vale, on the other hand, had been at ground zero of a pulsing and perspiring night club full of sweaty, breathy, dancing humans. It was smack dab between Christmas and New Year, the height of flu season. And it was a particularly nasty flu season this year, everyone said. Everyone was traveling and hugging and exchanging gifts and viruses. There were germs everywhere.

But, however it happened, they were both slaughtered with this nasty flu, hearts racing, skin flushed and sweaty, hotter than hot and not in a good way. Passing out in a pile of snotty tissues wasn’t part of Vale’s elaborate plans for this week, either. But, like it or not, that was exactly what happened. 


It was hours before he woke in the darkness. The dull thump of music and festivities from the plaza down below brought him to the window. He had hoped to take Vicky to the Hijinks Festival—she would have loved it—but Vicky was still out cold. 

He went to her side of the bed and touched her forehead. It was hot and dewy with sweat. He figured he was in better shape than she was, so he should go out and fetch some supplies. He threw on a sweatshirt.


He only wanted to tell her that he was heading out for a minute, but she startled at his touch and tried to sit up, woozy and disoriented.

“Whoa, what time is it?”

“Almost midnight,” he said. “Hey, stay in bed. I’m just gonna pop out and grab some things. Go back to sleep.”

The city lights were dizzying and the December chill made his lungs feel shrunken and tight. But he made it to the corner store and back, buying whatever looked like it might help. Healthy sounding herbs and salves and pills and soups and teas. He bought it all. He must have made a lot of noise unpacking it all on the kitchen counter, because Vicky stumbled out of the bedroom in a daze. 

“I got green tea. I got herbal remedies and extra strength over the counter flu medicine. I didn’t figure you wanted chicken noodle soup, so I bought spicy hot onion. But then I didn’t know if you’d want anything spicy, so I got broccoli cheddar. But then my mom said the cream soup might make you feel worse.”

“You called your mom?”

“Well, not exactly. She called me. But she said I sounded sick, and I can’t ever lie to my mom. Then she knew you were here, then she knew you were sick too, and I guess she already suspected we would probably hook up. So she said she hopes you feel better soon, and when are we coming to visit?”


But they needed to get this healing party started. He popped open two cans of ginger green tea. He barely got a sip of his before he started hacking up a lung. Going out in the cold might not have been the best idea. Each cough made his ribs ache.


They were awake from sleeping all day, but too dazed to do anything very strenuous or thoughtful. So they decided to watch a movie. Laughing hurt, too, but it was good to get their minds off the sickness for a while.


Then, because the first tea didn’t work, they tried another more medicinal brand. Dissolvable antioxidant pods with Echinacea and lemon. Vicky probably would have bought better stuff. She knew much more about all this wellness stuff than he did. He basically just grabbed anything that sounded remotely healthy, and he couldn’t say any of it worked. It only made him need to pee.

So Vicky headed to bed, and Vale stopped off in the bathroom to pee out all that useless tea. He was coming back from the bathroom when it finally hit him like a truck. It wasn’t true that he didn’t get this bug as badly as Vicky did, only that he got it later. Maybe that proved that she brought the disease here with her, but he was far too incoherent to point fingers. 


He hit the floor with a thud.


Vicky helped him up. “Holy shit. What happened?”

“Am I dead?”

“Not unless I am too. You don’t sound good. Maybe you should get checked out tomorrow morning.”

“Can’t you be my nurse?”

“I dropped out, remember? You need a real doctor.”


She guided him through the dark, back to bed. 


In the morning, he did his very best to avoid going to the doctor. 

“Let’s just cuddle. Let’s watch sitcom rerun marathons and drink some more of that useless tea.” 

It’ll pass, he thought. Surely it can’t last forever.


She laid her head on his chest, and after one or two episodes, she said, “Babe, you’re actually wheezing pretty bad. Come on, we’re going to the clinic.”

So he went to get checked out. 

He peed in a cup, got his blood drawn, and they scanned his lungs. 

“It’s not pneumonia,” the doctor said. “Yet. Just a pretty nasty chest infection. Good thing you came in. Antibiotics and rest.”

“That’s it?”

“Nothing more to do,” the doctor said. 

“Thanks a lot,” Vale said.


By that evening, Vicky was feeling better. And with a fresh burst of energy, she thought she knew just what he needed! A superfoods salad—kale, avocado, edamame, and quinoa, tossed in olive oil and so much garlic it blew open one of his clogged up lungs. 

He had high hopes for the vegetables, but they didn’t really work any better than anything else they’d tried. 

“Okay, if not the superfoods,” she said, “Then maybe a hot steam shower? To clear out your lungs.”

“I think you might need to help me,” he said. “I might get dizzy again and pass out.”

“I can definitely help,” she said.   



The shower was one thing that finally did make him feel better. Better in spirit, at least. Because it also wore him out. Vicky got him safely back to bed before he face-planted the rug again. 

And now Vicky was officially out of clothes. Or, more exactly, she was out of her “lounging around the house” clothes, since that was all they’d done so far. All she had left was the dress she planned to wear on New Year’s Eve, a couple of blouses that were lovely, but delicate and itchy, and a single pair of skinny jeans. 

She was glad to be wrong about how many clothes she should have packed. It was a better tragedy than to have packed too much to wear and went home early. 

“Just stay naked,” he mumbled, semi-comatose already. 

“You wish,” she said. “But it’s December.” 

“Right side, second drawer. Grab whatever you want.” 

She poked through the drawer of t-shirts and found a purple long-sleeved henley, old, worn soft, and so comfy. She hoped he realized he wasn’t getting this back. 

She tidied up a little and started a load of laundry.

When she returned to the bedroom, he was out cold. She had ambitions of maybe reading a little or doodling in her bullet journal. But instead, soon after, Vicky was out cold, too. 

In the morning, Vicky woke up with the sunrise and made breakfast. Vale never woke up with the sunrise, but he woke at his usual 10:00 am, feeling more like himself than he’d felt in days. 

He was hungry, and Vicky’s pancakes were delicious. But he must not have looked as okay as he felt.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “You don’t feel better?”

Overriding any thrill he might have about finally feeling better, he couldn’t help the disappointment. The week was nearly over. He finally got her out here to visit, after begging for months, and they were sick the whole time. It was tragic. Time flies when you’re delirious with fever and breathing out of half a lung.

“No, it’s not that,” he said. “I guess it’s just, damn, I have to work tonight. We slept for five days and there’s so much we didn’t get to do.” 

“You can’t call off?”

He shook his head. “The New Year’s Eve show is in two days. It’s gonna be insane, and not the good kind of insane. I don’t have anything ready. But it’ll probably work out. Nobody really pays that much attention to me as long as the music doesn’t stop.”

He smiled at her, hopeful with an idea. “Or, maybe, could you stay a little longer? This week didn’t count. We need more time.” Then a flash of doubt crossed his face. “I mean, unless you don’t like me that much.”

She nodded. “I do like you that much.”

“Good. We’ll make the most of it,” he said. “Finish your breakfast. I’m gonna show you at least one damn thing in this city before I have to work tonight.”


They got dressed, and he took her to the gardens. The top floor of the community center was basically a giant greenhouse, floor to ceiling windows, skylights, and planter boxes full of life. 


She jumped and squealed with excitement. “Are you kidding me? Holy shit. I know you promised me gardens, but I wouldn’t have guessed it was on top of a fucking skyscraper!”

“I know, pretty wild, huh?”

“How did you ever find this?”

“There’s a gym two floors down,” he said. “I actually hate working out, but I also really love hamburgers. So I finished a workout and was looking for somewhere to chill out after, and I ended up here. I just knew you’d love it.”

“Vale! This is amazing!”


“It’s cute how excited you get about plants,” he said. 

“It’s sweet that plants make you think of me,” she said. 


She held his hands between them, letting out a gentle sigh. For better or worse, they’d been inseparable for six days. She was sad to let him go, even if it was just work for a few hours. It made her realize how tragic it was going to feel to get on a train and go back home, even if she stayed a few extra days, even if she stayed an extra week.  

“I know this week wasn’t everything you hoped for,” she said. “But it was still a good week. It was… I don’t know. I guess ’nice’ isn’t the right word. But it was special. It counted. You were fun to be sick with.”

“Yeah? Well, you were an excellent nurse, especially for a pre-med drop out.” He sighed then, matching her disappointment. “I gotta get going. You have your metro card? You know how to get back? Do you have enough money?”

She nodded.

“So dig in,” he said. “Or harvest or prune or water or whatever it is people do here. I’ll see you back home later.”

“Have a good show,” she said. 

—

gameplay/story notes: so this one wasn’t planned, lol! I had planned to have them do all of those fun things on Vale’s itinerary. 

But I have the Private Practice mod in, and I think there must be something wrong with a mod conflict or something. Nothing I did would get him better. The medicine failed for both of them, which I’ve never seen happen before. It gave them the over-medicated moodlet, like they weren’t actually sick. But they were sick! 

Finally, the green tea worked on Vicky, but not Vale. Vale just had to sleep it off, but it came back three times, strong 24 hour flu moodlets! Whew! Not the most fun ever, lol!

Also, his mom really did call. I don’t know if it was a game update or a mod that added this dialogue, but I thought it was cute that they actually cared whether he followed through on that visit or not.