Dream Like New York

Who: Sasha Stanford and Justin Campbell
What: Tiny steps of recovery
Where: Sydney, Australia
When: After this

It took some time for the nurses and a wardsman (who had been helping with various things related to Justin’s care since he had woken from the first surgery here and was always so kind and chatty to him) to get Justin transferred from bed back into the special reclinable wheelchair yet again. It had been a few days since Justin had been in to see Sash and the awful realisation hit that Sash didn’t remember ever meeting him. The same day, Justin started showing symptoms of what turned out to be a kidney infection, a complication resulting from the surgery he had to repair the bladder rupture, one of the multiple serious injuries he sustained in the crash. The catheter he still had and his history of kidney injury from an overdose put him at risk. It was another thing to throw on the shitpile. He wasn’t surprised. Just exhausted and feeling crappy with it. He had turned down the request for Sash’s parents to come talk to him and his dad told them it was probably best to wait until Justin wasn’t feeling so poorly for him to visit Sash again.

But he knew the longer he waited to face it all again, the harder it would be and the more he would struggle to push on. He still had pain in his back and side which was different to what he’d had with the injuries and was chilled from the fever but that morning, when Ava had told him Sash had been saying his name, he agreed to go in to see him. Only after plucking up the courage to ask her if he said his actual name or called him Ren or Bueller again. It should’ve been funny, like a joke. There was nothing funny about it and it terrified him to seek clarification. Ava was so gentle with him and he was glad there was a history between her and his dad because he knew he could trust her. She told him she heard with her own ears that Sash had said ‘Justin’ but it had seemingly been in the context of again wondering if he had imagined him there. Not seeing him again was confusing him when he was already confused neurologically. There was no way Justin could ignore that once he knew.

( The nurse made sure his IV lines weren’t going to tangle on anything when they moved... )

LOG, COMPLETE

Who: Sasha Stanford and Alexis Harrington
What: Overdue heart-to-heart
Where: Waterfront Campbell home, Sydney
When: After this

Despite the fact Sasha knew he would never escape the 'Loving having a little bit of Austalia in him' jokes, Sasha was never going to get used to the Aussie heat. He had made a few trips Down Under with Justin since they started dating and the things he loved most about Sydney were Nana and Granddad Campbell's ducted airconditioning and pool. He woke up in a ball of sweat and discovered Justin had rolled over into Sasha's back in his sleep and pushed all the bedcovers on top of him. Justin was a sweaty mess himself and he was a snorer when he was drunk.

Checking his phone, Sasha found he'd probably only been asleep for a little over an hour. He shoved the covers onto the floor at the end of the bed and carefully leaned over Justin to make sure he hadn't thrown up in the bucket again but it was thankfully empty. Sasha laid back down again but sleep evaded him in the heat and lingering jetlag from the trip over. Not to mention the fact he was usually a light sleep and Justin's snoring (though not terrible) made it difficult to tap back into sleepiness again. He went to the bathroom and when he was washing his hands, realised the headache he had earlier when Justin was an absolute drunken mess was coming back, now in that sharp spear of ache behind one eyeball which wouldn't end well if he didn't take his preventative migraine medication now.

Which he dropped at the front door downstairs when Justin showered the foyer's tiles with more puke when they got back from the city earlier. He already had to take a dose when they were at the nightclub after the parade because the loud music and strobe lights threatened a migraine and it had been too early to fold on the night. Despite the fact a drunk Justin stressed him out, he had a good time. The parade was out of this world and he had friends cousins from back in the US who sent him texts saying they saw him and Justin on the live stream of the parade, telling him how cool they thought it was that Justin had the ace pride flag tied around his hips. Sasha had to admit that part meant a lot to him too. He didn't mind that people wondered how Justin - someone that oozed sex appeal - could be engaged to an ace person but sometimes fielding those questions was exhausting. There were only so many ways you could explain being asexual wasn't celibacy, nor did it mean a hate of sex. Some aces were sex-repulsed but he wasn't one of them. He just didn't want to explain what ace-flux or grey-ace meant all the time, or the fact you could be both gay and ace, and why.

"Shit," he cussed softly, realising he had to go downstairs. He turned the tap on low so he could splash some cold water on his face and went out to find a tank top to pull on over his purple silk boxer shorts. Or, more accurately, they were Justin's. Sasha was a cotton guy, to match his usual preference of living in jeans, snapbacks, and t-shirts. The only clean tank top he could find was Justin's limited edition black Footloose one that celebrated the show's 800th performance. That was a perk of being gay, there was no issue in sharing each other's clothes. His hair was sticking up all over the place because he laid down on it while it was still wet after a shower to wash away the vomit. Curly hair was a pain in the freckle, as Justin's Aussie family would say. He grabbed Justin's phone and propped it up beside the lamp on his side of the bed with the camera pointing on his supine form on the bed, bringing up what was basically a baby monitor app. They used it sometimes when Justin was in a really bad way to keep any eye on him while he slept. Considering he drank his weight in cocktails at the party, this definitely constituted.

Once he reached the bottom of the stairs and headed around the corner into the open-planned living room, he jumped and put a hand over his mouth before he shrieked in fright when someone was sitting on the chaise end of the modular sofa. Alexis was sitting reading a book in the soft light of the standard lamp. "Oh my god, I'm so glad I peed before I came down or I would've just totally embarrassed myself."