Chapter Text
The hospital stay isn't pleasant.
Rex has a neighbor, some old coot who smells like piss and yells like he's being murdered every minute of every day. But he doesn't hate it. Rex doesn't hate it, because he still has ears to hear with, still has a voice (though ragged and raw) to yell back at the old fuck that it's midnight, and he needs to shut up and stop bothering the nurses.
He's on a liquid diet now, something about his stomach not coming back together right, something about him having trouble with absorption now? He isn't clear on the details, they went in one ear and out the other when the doctor told him. The whole thing is too fuzzy, the whole hospital stay, the whole ordeal. Rex can't even feel his body, can't even move his neck anymore, can't look down, though god knows he doesn't want to--
He spends his days watching the news, the coverage on the biggest catastrophe since last year in Chicago. It's hard to make sense of, hard to flip through channels with hands that won't obey him anymore.
He can't piss on his own anymore. Can't stand up, can't even eat without the assistance of some mild mannered nurse spooning him cold broth and smiling some too wide, too fake smile. It would be humiliating if some part of him wasn't so honored by it, not desperate for the attention but relishing in it regardless.
It's a lot like what being sick as a kid must have been like, what he always imagined it was. Someone coming and going at the press of a button, talking in sweet, soft words, treating him like an invalid but not for lack of respect.
It's nice. Not always, but for a while it's nice.
It's better when he gets visitors.
“You better have applesauce on you, Rae, it's been a long week.”
She snorts, a smile just tugging at the edges of her lips as she settles in her chair.
“I skimped on the applesauce this week, but I promise I have something better.”
“Oh yeah? Is it a kiss? Please say it's a kiss.”
She hesitates for a moment, but only for a moment, and she leans down, soft lips against his chapped ones. It's over too soon, but then she's spoon feeding him cookie butter while they watch jeopardy, so it isn't all bad.
Like this, Rex can't hold her, can't lift his hands or kiss her back, but he can tell her she looks pretty today. He can ask her if she's done unpacking yet, or if she's been procrastinating instead, too busy watching her favorite sitcom and relaxing now that she's not on duty. And he can ask her if she's enjoying it, the freedom and the quiet and the time spent hovering over him.
He can't kiss her, but she can still kiss him, and she will whenever he asks, whenever he works up the nerve to ask for her touch.
She's there every time he goes under.
“They're optimistic,” Rae tells him. “Its a real quick operation, doc says it's got a high rate of success--”
“If I die,” Rex snorts. “You get all my shit, okay?”
But Rae just smacks him, gentle and genial but forever leaden with a lingering anxiety that Rex can never seem to purge. All of his stuff went up in flames, anyway.
“Hey,” Rex always tells her. “I'll be right back, okay? You'll see me when I wake up.”
“Yeah,” Rae always says. “I will.”
She always does. He always wakes up with her by his side, curled against him like a stray cat, or huddled in her chair as she snores through the morning.
He asks her to show him her tits once, when he's still got a little too much fentanyl in his system and his filter's not quite what it normally is.
“Respectfully!” He shouts. “Whip em’ out when you're ready, beautiful!”
She laughs. She doesn't know if it's the anesthesia or just him, but she laughs, and the most she does is show him her bra.
“Later,” she promises. “You gotta make me dinner again first.”
He will. He's already got a few things in mind. Something with pasta, maybe, or a rack of ribs, or a pot roast, or dumplings. He's so fucking sick of applesauce. At least he's not still stuck with broth, but it's not much better.
Rae brings him soup. She brings a lot of soup.
“Italian wedding,” she says, blowing on it for him. “I figured you'd be sick of tomato…”
“Oh never,” Rex lies. “I love it, really.”
She brings him a whole thermos of the stuff after his latest surgery. Rex drinks it all down with a grin, grateful that he can still drink anything at all.
He's off the soft and liquid diet by the time he starts physical therapy. It softens the experience, but just barely.
“I feel like a fucking baby,” He confides in Rae as he shakily spoons himself bland, sugar free icecream. “I can't take two steps without someone holding me up. Its fucking stupid.”
“You just started,” Rae snaps. “You gotta give yourself more credit. Be patient.”
“Yeah,” Rex scoffs. “ Patient is my middle name.”
“I thought it was ‘Splode?’”
It still hurts when he laughs. He laughs a lot with Rae, but he never minds. He misses her when she's gone, misses her smile and her advice and the feeling of her lips against his face.
At least she's not the only one who visits.
“You look terrible,” Eve says. “I hope you don't feel as bad as you look.”
“Not even close,” Rex says, half lying. He won't go near a mirror. He won't confirm his fears. His whole body feels like a mass of numbness and jumbled ache, he can only imagine how it looks. A cast has been around his neck since day one, like one of those cones you put on a pet after a god awful vet visit. It's the only thing preventing him from looking himself over repeatedly.
“Did you bring me the good stuff or what?” Rex asks, eager to change the subject.
Eve ends up holding the catalogues up for him, flipping through each page with the patience of a saint while Rex talks about paint swatches and couch covers and wallpaper.
“If I had my own place, I’d put Martha Stewart to shame.”
Eve only scoffs. “ If? Aren't you moving in with Rae?”
Rex doesn't have a response to that at first.
“She never said anything about that.”
“... You probably just forgot,” Eve says, going quiet, terse as she picks up another magazine for him. This one is a spring collection, Rex isn't as excited about it as he should be.
Eve hugs him before she leaves.
“Mark wanted me to ask,” she says. “Are you okay if he--?”
“Oh he better come see me,” Rex laughs. “ Am I okay--? HA! I'll be more okay when he works up the balls to visit. Tell him I said that. Tell him he needs to come see me or he has no balls.”
“... Okay.”
Mark swings by within the hour.
He looks terrible . Bags under his eyes, his arm in a sling, a brand new shiner and a busted face like an Alabama housewife. He's seen better days. Rex doesn't bother asking what's wrong.
“Did you kick his ass?” Rex asks. “I hope you kicked his ass.”
“Yeah, but not before he kicked mine.”
“I can see that. Come sit, I'm getting nervous just watching you, man, you're swaying.”
Mark has every reason to be unsteady, Rex learns. Turns out he missed yet another cataclysmic event while he was recovering, and from the sounds of it, it wasn't pretty.
“Whoa…” He says, soaking in all of Mark's woes. “Dude. Your people are assholes.”
“Yeah,” Mark chuffs, half laughing. “I noticed.”
Silence descends upon them, then, silence Rex can't find it within himself to break. He can't decide if Mark has it worse than he does or not, cause he's fucked up and busted and carrying the world on his shoulders, but at least he's invincible.
Rex isn't so lucky. He'll live, but Cecil made it pretty clear that he'll never be fit for duty again. He'll live, and retire, but Mark will keep going and the wheel will keep turning and for him it'll never stop.
“You've still got me,” Rex says, too soft. “Fuck your dad's planet, fuck ‘em all. Knew you'd never sell us out, I don't tell you that enough--”
“Rex,” Mark sighs. “Don't-- don't do that, you don't have to--”
“I dunno what you mean.”
“You don't need to make me feel better, man, you're the one who almost--”
Mark bites his tongue. Rex just laughs, just rolls right passed the words in stride.
“Ah, but I didn't! And neither did you.”
But Mark makes a face then, like he knows something Rex doesn't, and that's enough. It's enough to have him wondering. Mark leaves, but not before a tearful goodbye and a promise to come back soon. Rex tells him he'll hold him to that.
He dreams about Mark that night.
Not his Mark, not his friend, the other Mark, the murderer wearing his friend’s face. He dreams that Bulletproof can't fly fast enough, that Rae didn't stay behind like she should have. He dies, somehow, and he wakes up in a cold sweat.
One of the night nurses takes him to the bathroom. It's an awkward, shambling affair. He's normally a two person assist, or so he thought, but she endeavors to take him by herself. And for a moment he thinks he catches his reflection in the bathroom mirror, but it comes and goes so quick he can't process it. He doesn't try to look again on his way out.
He has another surgery in the morning.
Rae swings by beforehand, just like always. She can't bring him anything, no ice cream or cookie butter or pudding, but Rex welcomes the company anyway. He tells her there's always next time. Her smile poorly hides a half grimace.
This procedure feels different. There are so many people in the room, too many, and the anesthesiologists look bored and listless, like they aren't here to do a job. The nurses are perfectly professional, but there's so damn many of them that Rex loses track of them, and by the time he's good and under he's halfway to a panic attack.
Things get normal a bit too quickly after that.
Rex loses his cone of shame, watching Rae lose her mind with laughter when he calls it that. He can swivel his head now, can look up and down, but the doc says it'll be tender for a long while, what with all the pins they put in. Rex has seen enough Grey's Anatomy to know that doesn't sound right, but he says nothing.
He looks too normal.
He has all his fingers and toes, and he can actually feel them now, can wiggle them and move them like he couldn't before. He still can't move much but it's a start. Better than it was.
When Rae cuddles up to him, he can actually feel her warmth for once, can wrap a not so numb arm around her and pretend they're elsewhere. She traces patterns into his chest one night, TV a blurred hum in the background, and Rex relishes that he can feel her fingertips against him. It's so perfect that he can almost ignore the negging voice in the back of his head telling him he shouldn't be able to feel anything at all, that it shouldn't be possible.
There isn't much he remembers from that night.
He dreams about it often, but never consistently. Sometimes Rae is there, sometimes she's not. Sometimes Rudy dies before him, and Amanda is never there in the first place, and sometimes they're alive and well and dragging him out by the bloody stumps of his arms. Sometimes Rex is alone. Sometimes there are two Marks, one holding him the way a dog holds a chew toy, and one begging his forgiveness, bleeding out all the while.
But the ending is always consistent. No matter when or why or how or with whom, Rex dies, and he wakes up to an ugly drop ceiling and his new neighbor snoring the night away.
He's discharged the following week.
And Rex doesn't even ask Rae if he really is moving in with her, because she takes his ass home without so much as a comment or complaint.
“You're not allowed to make fun of me,” Rae says, holding open the door so he can hobble in on his crutches. “I don't have the eye for interior design the way you do.”
Rex laughs, she squawks.
“Hey!”
“No, no, it's nice! It's so nice.”
To say the place is spartan is an understatement. Rae hadn't had much in the way of furniture when Rex was helping her move, and he knew that logistically, but actually seeing her very few belongings scattered across the otherwise barren apartment is--
Well, he can’t help but laugh. He's not even laughing at her, just with her, half caught in the hilarity and the anticipation of, well, a life together.
He's gonna decorate this place and its gonna put Better Homes and Gardens to fucking shame.
“Oh man,” Rex says. “A suede couch? granite counters?? Eco friendly wood veneers? Oh babe, this is perfect. This is already perfect. How do you feel about spider plants?”
Two hours later and they're huddled up on her couch watching cartoons on her phone. Rae promises she'll get a TV soon, Rex doesn't mind sharing one tiny screen, especially since it means he gets to have her in his lap. His hip locks up at some point, but he says nothing, too content with holding her, too comfortable under the throw blanket and her permeating heat. These days he's always cold.
Rae insists on making dinner when she realizes he can’t stand, no matter how much he protests. They'll fight about this in a week, when she gets fed up with him not understanding his limits and he gets fed up with being treated like a cripple. It'll boil over but they'll separate for an hour, come back together when they're calm, talk about it like adults and all will be well and good.
He makes her dinner the next night, a silent apology that she comes home to after work.
It becomes a regular thing. Rae jets off to work in the morning, Rex sends her off with nearly burnt coffee and a kiss and a hug and a promise, she comes back to a home cooked meal. She asks him about his visiting nurse and his PT sessions, he asks her if they’ve fired that bitch in her department yet. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, the whole thing monotonous but never stale.
For someone who's thrived on chaos his whole life, Rex begins to appreciate things like routine and structure like never before.
He also gets bored of them just as quickly.
“You and Eve need to drop by sometime,” Rex says, balancing the phone against his shoulder. “I'm basically a fucking housewife, dude, Rae's got me popping pills and everything!”
“They're multivitamins!” She yells from the couch.
“I know you guys are busy saving the world and everything, but don't be a couple of strangers! When you find some free time, be sure to grace us with your presence.”
“ Yeah, we can drop in sometime,” Mark laughs. “Eve and I have been putting off dinner with her parents though, so until that's over and done with--”
“Oh god,” Rex laughs, adjusting his hold on the whisk. “You poor bastard. Take all the time you need, and good luck.”
“... Are they that bad?”
“Yeah. Well, her mom’s not too bad, her dad though…”
Rex shudders, recalling an uncomfortable conversation. It was more of a lecture, really, one Rex rolled his eyes through and shudders at the mere thought of now. Christ. If he ever had a daughter, he vowed to never be as invested in her virginity as Eve's dickhead of a dad.
“ Is he racist?” Mark asks point blank. “ Cause I've only met him once and he was kinda a dick right off the bat. Don’t tell Eve I said that.”
“Ha! No, she'd probably agree with you. He's… he's just kinda the worst? You'll see what I mean.”
Mark does in fact see what he means.
“Nothing could have prepared me for that ,” Mark shudders, recounting the event a week later. “I completely understand why she spends all her time at my place now.”
“Yeah, that's one reason,” Rex laughs. “That and your washboard abs. Also your immaculate head game--”
“Dude!” Mark chokes, flushing all the way down to his neck.
“Oh please,” Rex snorts. “Wear it with pride, amigo. Some of us still need more practice.”
Rex serves carne asada that night. Rae spends half an hour cleaning up margarita mix in the wake of a rogue blender. She has too much to drink after that, and Rex gets to walk her back to her room after Mark and Eve jet off to go wrangle a kraken, the both of them leaning on his crutches as they stumble up the stairs. They have leftovers for breakfast, enjoy a lazy Saturday morning channel surfing and making out like teenagers. It's perfect, and Rex dares to admit that he’s happy like this, with mundanity and routine and good food and good friends and the occasional exceptional fuck when his body isn't aching like one big beautiful bruise.
But the following week presents new challenges, because of course it does.
He wakes up one day and something just doesn't feel right. He can't explain it in words. When Rae finds him face first in the toilet, hands clutched against the bowl, Rex can't speak to her, can't get the words out. He doesn't feel sick, doesn't throw up but he can feel something in his throat bobbing, something that doesn't belong there. There is no pain, no ache and no hurt, only a wrongness, a discomfort that Rex wants to reach inside himself and absolve.
They have to make a trip to the pentagon. Rae calls out of work and Rex spends the day passed out, doctors apparently sticking a camera down his throat to check for loose pins.
He didn't even know that could happen.
Things are back to normal for a day before it happens again, only this time Rae's at work and Rex is dry heaving over his sink at 2pm on a Tuesday. There's a lump in him, not choking him, not hurting him, just sitting under his skin or clinging to his trachea he doesn't know.
He coughs up two screws, perfectly clean, not even sharp, and he doesn't tell Rae when she gets home. It just doesn't feel that serious.
Dinner rolls around and he orders pizza, and if Rae knows somethings wrong she's polite enough not to badger him. He hardly eats, and that's not normal. But well, Rex just can't eat as much as he used to anyway, something about the size of his stomach and absorption. He can't remember the doctor's words too well, having drowned them out in the wake of his fentanyl induced stupor. It was hardly worth paying attention to.
But when he throws up later that night, his food is whole, and he begins to rethink that line of thought. There's no bile, no bits, nothing half digested. It's whole, like it never hit his stomach at all. Does he even have a stomach? He shouldn't have one. Gripping the porcelain throne, the realization comes that he just shouldn't have a fucking stomach, not anymore, not after--
Rex spends the next day in bed.
No matter how much she protests, Rex won't let Rae call out for him again. He pushes her to leave, if only because he knows he’s being weird, needy, a sad sack, ruining their peace and quiet with his jitters and his melancholy and his desire to sink into bed and disappear.
She calls him on her lunch, brings him home pho from that little place down the street he likes. He wonders how he got so lucky.
“Antonio's a loser,” Rex scoffs. “Labarbara should dump his sorry ass.”
“I don't think he's all bad. She should give him a chance.”
Her reality TV shows have rubbed off on him, have him hooked no matter what he would claim to the contrary. Maybe he likes them, or maybe he just likes having her curled around him while they gab about who's getting booted off the island that week.
Careful fingers work through his hair, gentle and slow, scratching his scalp. If humans could purr his ass would be a jet engine right now, nearly worked to sleep by Rae’s ministrations.
She ends up pulling on it twenty minutes later, her tongue down his throat and her ass pressed against his hard-on. They fuck on the very same counter he cooks her dinner on, and he's not even mad about it.
His hip is completely fucked the next morning.
“Well, you know what they say…” Rex laughs, pulling the belt of the wheelchair taut. “Save a horse, ride a cowboy.”
Rae just laughs, pressing a kiss to his cheek, never chastising him as they roll into the waiting room.
The news they get is not good news.
Another surgery, another round of recovery. By the time it's over, Rex won't need his crutches anymore but Rae will be out of a job. She’ll have a new one with odd hours, and Rex will feel the happiness ebb away into anxiety and uncertainty and guilt. He's still not cleared to work, he won't be for a while.
So it's back to housewife mode, obviously.
Rex can't say he minds, he doesn't. He wakes up every morning, gets her breakfast made, gets her lunch packed, tries and fails to use her French press correctly, but he's getting there. And the happiness is back again, until it's not.
Rae's hours have him high strung, have him waiting up and pulling out his hair with worry. He doesn't like it when she comes home in the middle of the night, doesn't like that she has to walk from the street corner to the building all the way up to their floor from the lobby by herself. It's too much ground, too far to be walking in the dead of night alone.
She can take care of herself. He knows that. Doesn't make the worry go away.
It only gets worse when she won't actually tell him where she's going and coming from, won't name the company or the position, just dances around it all willy nilly.
It's got him feeling… insecure. Suspicious. Outright paranoid, actually.
She's not cheating on him, she never would. Rex may be insecure but even he knows Rae just wouldn't do that to him. To anyone.
He asks to see her phone and she hands it over with no problem. He checks her texts and her socials and there's nothing, no problem. He goes to bed feeling crazy. He wakes up wondering why she's sleeping in so late.
A little while later and she's staying out all night, doesn't come home until Rex is half mad with exhaustion, body begging for sleep in the wee hours of the morning.
It just doesn't make sense .
Until he finds her old costume in the laundry hamper one day, and suddenly it does.
“Can we talk?” he asks, and there is not a defensive bone in her body, only resignation. Maybe it's the way he said it, maybe he sounded too wounded to her the way he does to his own ears. He doesn't know.
Rae asks to talk in the morning. Rex agrees, curls around her in bed like she'll slip away from him if he doesn't. But he wakes; and she's still there.
It's pancakes for breakfast, chocolate chip. Rex burns three of them before Rae turns off the stove.
“I don't get it,” he says after far too long, spatula discarded and head in his hands. “You quit. You quit for good. I'm benched for good. Why backslide now?”
“It’s not forever,” Rae promises. “It's just until I'm done with school, until I can find something more…” She wrings her hands, and Rex has never quite seen her like this. “The pay is good, the hours aren't bad, and the stakes are way lower than they were before. It's just a security gig.”
“I know but--”
“But what? It's expensive taking care of two people--”
Rae catches herself a moment too late, her words hanging in the air like an impending guillotine. Rex's chest aches. Rae has the nerve to look apologetic, regretful, like there was hardly any truth to what she said even though there is. Rex knows there is.
“I know,” he says softly, deflating and trying so hard to keep his head up. “I know I'm not exactly a cheap date.”
“That's not--” Rae takes a deep breath. “That's not what I meant.”
“Still true. Any more tests or treatments or surgeries and I'll be more expensive than a brand new Lamborghini.”
Rae snorts out a laugh, a moment of humor falling off her face too fast. “C'mon. Don't talk like that.”
Rex says nothing.
“You take care of me too, you know.”
Still nothing, not until she's pressed against him, arms around him.
He resists rolling his eyes. Barely.
“Sure, cause I'm such a small burden to bear for good sandwiches and a clean house.”
“You're not a burden. Not to me. Never to me.”
She would say that repeatedly in the following days, and sometimes, Rex would believe her.