Archive of Our Own ^beta

Kaikaina comes awake with a groan, and then a whimper. She can taste blood, and her throat hurts. What the fuck happened to her? And what’s making that annoying beeping? Why is her hand so heavy?

“You awake?” a voice asks. “The nurse said you might be thirsty. Want a drink?”

She nods, winces again when the room she can’t see because her eyes are still closed, spins. Her head feels like it’s got a big rock sloshing around in it, making every little movement dizzying. A straw pokes at her lips and she swallows obediently, lets the cool water soothe her dry mouth. It stings in her throat but it’s soooo worth it.

“Does it hurt a lot?” the voice asks again. “We can get you more pain meds, if you need them.”

She forces her eyes open, rocks her tipsy head over to look at the owner of the voice. The world is bleary, like one of those smudgy paintings by one of those French guys who painted like the paintbrush was strapped to the end of their dicks. There’s a vaguely human-shaped thing sitting next to her bed. She’s in a hospital?

“Ohhh fuuuck,” she groans out. “Whuddidoo this time?”

The person-blob chuckles at her, a quiet, warm sound. Kai resolves to open her eyes more; Chuckles sounds like he might be hot.

“You got your tonsils out,” he says. “Here, take another few sips.”

She sucks down some more water and then leans her bed back on the pillow. Water is so good. Water is like, life. She’s pretty sure she heard that on a nature special once, but now she really believes it.

Wash smiles at her, doing his best to hide his concern and failing more than a little bit. Kai eyes him up and down. She feels a little bit like a camera with someone playing with the dial on her lens focus. But she can still make out broad shoulders, a shock of gotta-be-dyed blond, and a definite impression of muscle definition.

“Tucker just ran out to get something,” he tells her. “He’ll be right back.”

All of his words go directly in one ear and out the other without touching her brain. Focusing on more than one thing is really hard right now.

Chuckles is totally hot. Score.

She takes in the hospital room, her head flopping around like a broken bobblehead on her neck as she looks around. She gets lost in the ugly pattern on the curtains, trying to decide if those are flowers, or birds, or, like, turds.

“How are you feeling?” Wash asks.

She turns back to look at him, groggy and confused. Her hair is messy and flattened down from the anesthesia mask and she probably really needs a shower, but Wash can’t help thinking that she’s adorable. If he were a cubicle kind of person, it’s the kind of picture he would put up in his cubicle to cheer him up at work. She frowns at him, like she heard the thought and disapproves.

“Are you my doctor?” she slurs.

Wash rolls his eyes and wishes that joke would just die already.

“Very funny. No, I’m not your doctor.”

Maybe a nurse, Kai muses. Maybe bitter about it? Never mind. Priorities.

“….Wanna play doctor?”

Wash laughs, relief swooping through him. She can’t be feeling too bad if she’s still up to hitting on him.

“I think I’ll take a rain check.”

She smiles at him, leaning back into the pillows.

“Hell yeah, pencil me in for aaaalll afternoon, babe,” she sighs. Blinks. “…. Why am I here again?”

“You just got your tonsils out,” Wash reminds her. The nurse did say she might be pretty out of it for a while. Apparently, she’d had some sort of weird reaction to the anesthesia and was taking longer to come out of it than usual.

Kai closes her eyes and tries to remember what tonsils are.

Her eyes open wide with horror.

“Doc,” she hisses, shaking off his grip to pull at Wash’s sleeve frantically, “Doctor, does that mean—“

“I’m not a docto—“

Kai turns liquid dark eyes at him and Wash wishes he was not so weak to that.

“Are my blowjobs skills gonna make it, doc?” she asks plaintively. “I’ve been working on my deepthroat technique too long for it to just be gone.”

Wash scrubs his free hand over his face and tries not to laugh or, like, smack himself with it. At least there’s no one else in the room.

“You already asked the real doctor that,” he says through gritted teeth. He gently removes her grip from his sleeve and puts her hand back on the bed. “Remember? Wow, you are really out of it.”

She frowns at him suspiciously.

“If you’re a doctor, you have to say so when people ask you,” she says, leaning forward to shove an unsteady index finger in the general direction of his face. “That’s a real law.”

“That is absolutely not a real law.”

“If you’re not my doctor, then why were you there when I was talking to the other doctor?” she demands. “Ha! Caught you! So, you are a doctor!”

“Because you asked me to go with you!” Wash retorts, pitch rising. “You said you were scared and asked us to—“

He stops mid-word, realization hitting him. Well, the nurse did say it was a weird reaction…

“Kai, do you know who I am?” he asks.

Kai scrunches up her nose in a very intent thinking face.

“My…. Parole officer?” she guesses.

Wash closes his eyes. Pinches the bridge of his nose. Inhales, and then exhales, sighing from the deepest, greatest depths of his soul.

“I’m not your parole officer,” he says. “I’m Wash. Washington.”

She blinks at him uncomprehendingly.

“I’m your—“ he fights down the squeak in his voice. “—Your boyfriend.”

Kai’s jaw drops. Her expression is a visual translation of “!!!”

“Noway,” she whispers. “Really?!”

Wash holds up his hand, his fingers entwined with hers. He’s been holding it since before she woke up, and she’s only just now noticed. Oh, Kai thinks, so that’s why my hand was so heavy and warm. Now she just feels warm and light (and still so so woozy) all over.

“I bagged a hottie,” she singsongs, settling back into her pillows with the air of a queen. “Na nan na na, go me!”

“I’m pretty sure I should be the one singing,” Wash says, furiously fighting down a blush.

“It’s my boyfriend and I’ll dance if I want to,” Kai retorts, waving her free hand in the air. “I bet you got freckles everywhere. Have I licked them all yet?”

Wash’s loses his battle with the color pink. You could probably use his ears at night to direct air traffic. Thankfully, he’s spared from having to answer by a voice in the doorway.

“Guess who’s the best?”

Tucker saunters in, closing the hospital room door behind him before moonwalking in a victory circle. Kai starts at the skinny jeans, gray and clinging, follows them up, up, up, right at the correct moment for ass, past a general impression of toned-ness and litheness to a pretty face and a sleek mane of tied back dreadlocks. He’s wearing his “Love Doctor” t-shirt, Wash notes with mounting despair. No wonder he wouldn’t unzip his jacket earlier. Did he really have to.

“Mission success,” Tucker. beams, complete with finger guns. Looks at Kai and somehow finds a way to beam brighter. “Oh, hey, you’re awake.”

Kai continues to blink owlishly at him. Wash drags another chair up next to him by the bed.

“Mission success because of my recon,” he retorts.

“Yeah, but I’m the one that pulled it off,” Tucker teases.

Kai leans over closer to Wash.

“Who’s that?” she hisses, loud enough to wake the dead.

“That’s Tucker,” Wash says, eyes laughing. “He’s our boyfriend.”

“I got two boyfriends?!”

“Hell yeah, you do,” Tucker responds on automatic. “Wait, what? Since when is this news?”

“I think someone had an interesting reaction to the anesthesia,” Wash interjects. “She thought I was her doctor when she woke up.”

“Oho shit,” Tucker crows, “Dude, please tell me your phone is working, mine just died, we gotta get video of this.”

“I forgot the charger at home,” Wash says apologetically holding up his own currently useless cell. Maybe he should have spent less time in the waiting room googling potential side effects of a tonsillectomy and aftercare instructions after all.

“I got two boyfriends!” Kai whispers to herself, bouncing a little in the bed. She stops with a wince when the movement somehow hurts her throat. “Are you two dating, too?”

“Yup,” Tucker says, crossing over to them. He drops a kiss on her forehead and then on Wash’s for good measure. Wash sends him a long-suffering look.

“Kiss him proper!” Kai demands. She’s honestly half expecting them to refuse.

Tucker bends dramatically at the waist, tilts Wash’s head back to the right angle and kisses him soundly on the mouth. He tries to slip in some tongue, but Wash keeps his mouth firmly shut. This is a hospital. Tucker pulls away but doesn’t go far.

“Put a show on for the lady, Wash,” Tucker admonishes, leaning in again.

Wash curses his continued susceptibility to a challenge and pulls Tucker in by the collar until Tucker’s pushing him flush with the back of his chair, almost in his lap, kisses him with all the relief he has that they’re all here, all still together, before he releases him. Tucker clears his throat and straightens, a smirk hiding in the corner of his mouth like a shark in the waves.

Kai claps her hands in delight, including the one Wash is holding, nearly yanking him off the chair. Tucker snorts.

“Do we ever have threesomes?” she asks, voice hushed and excited.

“All. The fucking. Time,” Tucker tells her, throwing himself into the chair next to Wash. Wash sends him a look like, “really?” but Tucker just grins back at him.

“Whoah,” Kai whispers, staring down at her hand in her lap. She looks at the hand Wash is still holding, and then back at the one in her lap. “I grew up and became a superhero.”

It occurs to her suddenly, that something very big and very important is missing.

“Where’s Dex?” she asks.

“You told him not to come, since it was just a routine procedure,” Wash tells her.

“So, naturally, he’s down in the parking lot,” Tucker interjects. “In case you change your mind.”

“Really?”

“Totally, dude,” Tucker says. “What a dweeb.”

“Do you want to see him?” Wash asks.

Kai snorts.

“Pshaw. No. Dweeb,” she says. “…Maybe later.”

“Whatever you want, sexy,” Tucker says. “Anyway, look what I got!”

Tucker digs into his jacket pocket and pulls out two little baggies. He shakes them at her gleefully, so it takes her a second to recognize her favorite pineapple gummies. They’re a Japanese brand, and really hard to find around here.

And that, for some reason, is what finally sells her on this dreamlife scenario in front of her.

“Obviously you can’t have them right now,” Tucker is saying, not noticing at all the way her bottom lip is trembling. “But we figured besides all the ice cream and soup and stuff we’d get you something to cheer you up!”

Kaikaina nods frantically. Man, now her throat really hurts. Wash squeezes her hand, his expression so fond that she can’t look at it directly. She curls her fingers tighter against his, looks down at his long, freckled fingers. Wow, those are good hands. She bets he’s really good at—

“Are you…. crying?” Tucker asks, alarmed.

Kai clutches the bag of gummies to her chest with her free hand.

“I’m just so happy,” she wails up at the ceiling.

She’s still got tears drying on her cheeks ten minutes later when the nurse comes in to check on her; the first thing she asks is how soon after getting her tonsils out she can give blowjobs again.