I Know We're Not in a Drama

Ch 4. Existential Crisis - Solved

He'd tried to ignore said crisis by inviting Jiang WanYin to Atlantic City for a weekend of playing in the ocean and gambling on the penny slot machines. They'd each put twenty bucks on their playing card and walked out with three dollars and twenty-five cents and a five dollar credit to one of the restaurants, so it was not a complete loss. It was easy to forget he might not be as straight as he'd always thought he was when in the air conditioned and overly oxygenated casino. It was a lot harder to ignore when relaxing on the beach and there were literally hundreds of nearly naked men in bathing trunks or bikini bottoms, all with varying degrees of hotness and, yes, he was idly cataloging their degrees of hotness and surreptitiously following, eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, the ones who could almost challenge Lan Zhan for the position of 'hottest'.

Then on Saturday night, in the privacy of his hotel room, he'd opened an incognito web page and browsed to a porn site dedicated to men. As Lan Zhan had stated previously, it was... educational. After cleaning himself up, and throwing the dirty towels under the bathroom sink, he crawled completely under the sheets and yanked the pillow over his head for additional privacy. "I am so fucked."

Back now in his own room, Lan Zhan's innocent question glared at him like an accusation. He wrote slowly, [Just in my head for a bit, I guess. Maybe I'm coming down with a summer head cold. I feel off. Like my skin is the wrong size.] He stopped typing, staring at the phone screen until it went black and he could see his reflection. He couldn't see it in the reflection, but he had odd eyes for a Chinese, too: gray irises bordering on silver if the light was at a good angle. He wondered if Lan Zhan had noticed his eye color. "Of course he did, you idiot," he whined. "He's just too polite to ask what manhua I stepped out of." He clicked his phone back on and hit 'send', before he was tempted to write anything incriminating.

Anything incriminating.... Like... I think I'm gay.

~*~

"Fuck this hurts!" Wei WuXian writhed in pain.

"Sir... please. We'll get you some pain medication, but first we need to know if there's anything broken. Please lie as still as possible." The doctor? Nurse? Someone wearing red scrubs was leaning over his face, trying to talk him into compliance. "I'm going to take the neck brace off so we can x-ray your neck and upper spine, but you need to lie very still. Can you do that for me?"

Wei WuXian wanted to nod, but, given the position he was forced into, answered verbally, "Yes."

There were a few clicks and whirs. "They look good to me, but the brace goes back on until the radiologist takes a peek. He's on his way now. I'm going to x-ray that wrist; I definitely think that's broken. This is going to hurt, but I need you to lie as still as possible after I position it, okay?"

"Okay," Wei WuXian agreed. Because there wasn't really an option there to disagree.... "Fuck!"

"You can yell and scream all you like in just a moment...." More clicks and the tech was back. "Good. Definitely broken. Clear as a whistle. I can't splint that up for you, but we can move it to a less painful position. Move slowly... there. Good. I'm gonna slide you over a bit... There. Right arm next, but you aren't screaming when I touch this side, so I think you're intact here." More clicks. "Sorry, gotta bother that left arm again. Gonna slide you back.... Hold off on crying until I... there. Stay just like that."

Wei WuXian grit his teeth through the pain. "What happened?"

"You were hit by a car, I think. But if I heard correctly, you saw he wasn't stopping and tried to swerve. That intersection of Elliot and Fourth has traffic cameras, so I'm sure it will be easy for the police to see what happened. That hill? Late afternoon sun? The city really needs to put one of those 'traffic light is red' early warning signs before you can't see that the light is red.