Hi, um, what if, there was a dialogue when between Garret and Tristan while at a bar, it would be kinda funny to see Tristan drunk🤣
(Takes place directly post-inferno epilogue)
Tristan won second place in the drinking contest between himself and two dragons. Garret did not know whether to be impressed or concerned.
At least Tristan was a calm drunk, though— something Garret had known since he was fifteen was that when Tristan finally made it back from a night in town, he was never upset or angry. He usually beelined for water and bed and passed out for a good ten hours without interruptions, and it seemed this night wasn’t looking to be an exception, considering he had his head tilted back, staring at the ceiling, thoroughly ignoring the world around him. Loud music coming from the speakers, Riley animatedly talking to Mist about something or another, Jade scamming the barman for more drinks— she had, well and truly, drunk both Riley and Tristan under the table— Ember trying to get an alcoholic drink without Wes noticing and failing for the third hour and counting.
Experimentally, Garret leaned over and gave Tristan a poke. Tristan didn’t startle, like he would when he was sober. Just blinked slowly and continued to stare at the ceiling.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Garret tried.
“I’m playing beer pong in my head,” Tristan responded, like it was a calm and logical statement to make, and a normal activity to do. “I think I could calculate the parabola to make a good shot, but it’d come down to hand-eye coordination.”
God. It was easy to forget sometimes, under all of his charm and wit, but his partner was a nerd. A nerd who was staring at the ceiling and calculating parabolas for an imaginary game of beer pong.
“Are you gonna name yourself Patriarch?”
Wait, what?
“I don’t… plan to, no,” Garret responded slowly. Tristan hummed in acknowledgement, still staring at the ceiling. “Do you think I should?”
“No,” Tristan replied. “I killed the last guy. Let’s… not have any more Patriarchs. Or Elder Wyrms.” He furrowed his brow slightly, and then his eyes widened in some sort of realization. “Oh, I killed both of those guys.”
Garret winced. “You did, didn’t you?”
“Huh.” Tristan said. He didn’t say anything else for a long time. Just stared, wide-eyed, until Garret almost considered poking him again, or trying to convince him to start drinking water to hopefully curb the hangover.
“Beer pong again,” Tristan announced.
“Playing beer pong?”
“Yep.”
“How’s the math going?”
“Do you actually wanna know? You can get me a napkin, I’ll write it out.”
Garret snorted. “I’ll pass.”
Hopefully Tristan would remember this conversation in the morning. It was, maybe, one that was worth continuing on a more serious note. What it meant to be a leader of St. George, after what happened to the last one. What it meant to have killed the last one, and still remain in St. George.
But it was definitely a conversation to have while sober.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Happy whumptober, all y’all, and boy am I happy to be back writing for Talon!
“Rhapsody in Crimson” is my general archive work for my collection of whumptober oneshots for 2022 (in order not to clog the Talon Saga tag on ao3), with every chapter corresponding to a different prompt. For today we have:
October 1
“A Little Out of the Ordinary” (Tristan St. Anthony)
Adverse Effects | Unconventional Restraints | "This wasn't supposed to happen"
The good news: at age 15, Tristan St. Anthony had survived his first raid on a dragon. A young one, accompanied by two humans that hadn’t put up much of a fight. They had managed to surprise them and pincer them into the house before they had the chance to run, and now a dragon was dead before it was old enough to do any real damage in the world. He was alive. His partner was alive. The rest of his team was alive.
The bad news:
“Holy fucking hell, St. Anthony.”
Panicking dragons, it turned out, didn’t like to stay and fight. They liked to run. Tristan, guarding one of the exits, had never been on a raid before, and maybe made the wrong decision in how to prevent a dragon from escaping while also preventing injury to his own body. But the dragon was dead, its servants were dead, and Tristan was not.
He leaned against the doorframe, closed his eyes, and tried to breathe slowly.
His armor had saved him from the worst of the flames, was the other good news. It was young enough that a direct burst of dragonflame to the chest wasn’t lethal. The armor had also absorbed the damage from its claws. It hadn’t spared him, however, from the jaws that clamped over the side of his ribs and started trying to tear them out. It… wasn’t too bad, really. It hurt, sure, and breathing was becoming a bit hard, but the only part of the matter that was really distressing was the smell of burnt skin. And the dead dragon slumped next to him, covered in blood. Its own blood. Tristan’s blood. Couldn’t really tell the difference anymore.
“Don’t,” Tristan coughed, tasting iron come out the back of his throat, “let Marc see.”
“This is Talbot: the raid is successful-- total of three targets, all neutralized. We’ll need a medic ready when we get back to base. St. Anthony’s sustained major burns and… biting damage to the ribcage. All other injuries are minor. Over.” Talbot reported, taking Tristan by the elbow as he lowered his voice, “Whether or not Marc sees this is my last concern, greenie. How’s your breathing?”
“Uh… bad?”
“Took any blows to the spine or the head?”
“No sir.”
“Okay. Raise your arm there, let me see…”
Really, it wasn’t too bad, other than the smell. Talbot eased off his armor and bandaged some of the worst areas— the parts that were bleeding too badly to wait, or were letting air into his chest cavity— and led him back to the truck where the others were waiting.
“Blanket,” Talbot called out before they reached it, leading Tristan by the elbow, which was frankly unnecessary. It wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t. It wasn’t.
“Who the fuck needs a blan— Tristan!”
“Go back in the truck,” Tristan rasped, glaring at his partner before he could get another word in. Talbot caught the bundle thrown at them and wasted no time in securing it to hide the injury from sight, even though it… it really wasn’t too bad. A bit of blood, a bit of bone, some charred flesh that made his stomach churn and some blood in the back of his throat that—
Talbot sat him down in the truck, called the doctor, and got permission to administer fifteen milligrams of morphine into his bloodstream. That made things better.
“I’d like to congratulate Marcus and Tristan on their first raid,” Talbot said as the truck began to move. Tristan ground his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut, and did not make a big deal out of it. Considering the itchy tingle on his arm, the morphine would kick in any minute and then all he’d have to deal with was the smell. “You did well.”
“What the fuck happened while I was guarding the north end?” Marc asked. When Tristan opened his eyes, Marc was staring at the blanket covering the right side of Tristan’s body like it was covered in as much blood as his uniform had been. Tristan looked down. No blood. No exposed bone.
The bone probably hadn’t actually been exposed, he reasoned. The brain got weird when the body was injured. It could make things seem worse than they were. When he took a breath, his ribs creaked and something stuck to his throat, but they all felt like they were still in his body. And the force from the bit would have driven his ribs in, not out.
Other than the tearing. That might have exposed some things. But Tristan couldn’t see it anymore, so that made it into the medic’s problem. Not his.
“Dragon tried to run out the south end. Didn’t succeed in its endeavor,” Tristan summarized. “Really, Marc, I’m fine. Quit looking at me like that.”
“You don’t look fine.”
Tristan coughed out a laugh. “Charmed.”
Marc pinched the bridge of his nose, and someone laughed. Tristan kept breathing steady, even if he couldn’t pull in a full breath without his ribs flaring.
“Even hatchlings are dangerous. You both know that. Getting through a raid is commendable, especially for your first time. Landing the final blow on one of the lizards—”
“I don’t think I was the one to get it to stop moving. Just stalled it enough for you to—” Tristan pantomimed shooting in lieu of speaking, because air was getting… difficult. The pain was starting to fade, at least— it was still there, which was good, it meant the fire hadn’t caused nerve damage, but at least it was further away from him.
“By being its chewtoy,” Marc said. “Are you— how are you feeling? That looked bad.”
“You weren’t supposed to see that,” Tristan muttered.
“Talbot said to get a blanket. I was closest. And— and you’re my friend, Tristan, you’re my partner. Besides, we’re both soldiers, it’s not your job to shield me from anything.”
“He has a point, greenie,” Talbot nudged him. “Y’ain’t twelve-year-olds anymore. Academy training is over. You’ll probably see worse.”
“Does it hurt too bad?” Marc asked. “You’re… you’re getting a bit ashy.”
“Nah, not too bad,” Tristan said, even as he grimaced, trying to swallow again and clear the blockage in his throat. He could hear a faint whistling sound that was… probably coming from him, now that he thought about it. Talbot had wrapped everything so his lungs wouldn’t collapse, so that didn’t make sense, but he just had to keep his calm until they could get to medbay. That was his only job. He could do that much. He wasn’t about to panic over a minor injury on his first raid.
It didn’t feel minor. Though, by this point, it didn’t feel much like anything except for an itch under his skin and not enough air in the van.
“Hey, hey, you good, St. Anthony?” Talbot squeezed his shoulder. The one that hadn’t been caught in the dragonfire, that wasn’t burned, but still itched like a scorpion sting. And now people were staring. He tried not to bristle or snap, but he didn’t like when people looked at him like that, making him feel smaller and more fragile than he was.
“I’m fine,” he coughed out. “Just— just—” he coughed again, trying to clear that blockage in his throat. He could feel his hands starting to shake and his eyes water. The whistling in his chest was getting worse. He felt like he was breathing through a straw.
“Tristan?” he could see the whites of Marc’s eyes as he stared, half-standing, like he wanted to help but was too afraid to touch him. Probably because of the burns. Or the blood. He wished Marc wouldn’t look at him like that, and made to tell him so, but all that came from his chest was a strangled wheeze. He to speak again, and— and—
“Shit. Shit shit shit, St. Anthony, what the fuck?”
Talbot went to his chest, to all of the damage and burnt flesh that he had hidden under a blanket, and Tristan tried to clear his throat again but it wasn’t working. He tried to get the air to tell them what was wrong, and that wasn’t working, either.
Oh god, he couldn’t breathe.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“It has to be a collapsed lung, hand over the kit, give me a syringe—”
Tristan clawed at his throat, trying to squirm away from the people touching him and looking at him, all too close and too loud and the pain wasn’t too bad anymore but his skin was crawling. He wanted to tell them that it wasn’t his lungs, he could still feel those moving and spasming beneath his ribs, but if it wasn’t his lungs then what was it? What was happening? What was wrong with him?
The world went fuzzy and narrow, diminishing under the burning need for air. Sounds got longer and more indistinguishable from one another, the hands keeping him upright wouldn’t stop touching him. And other than the thoughts of air he needed air please for the love of god he couldn’t breathe, the last thought through his mind was if I was going to die either way, the dragon should have gone for the throat.
:)
He woke up with his chest broken and aching, burns over most of his torso, but somehow the only thing that he could focus on was that he was thirsty and if the heart monitor kept making noise then he was going to break it.
He could breathe, though. He felt one of his ribs— probably more than one— scrape against his chest wall at every inhale, and his throat burned, but at least he wasn’t suffocating. That was nice.
He squinted his eyes open and turned his head to the side. Marc was sitting beside him, out of his tact gear and back in his regular uniform, looking tired but unhurt. Tristan hadn’t been able to check him over when they got back to the truck. He should have done that. He should have made sure he was okay.
He tried to form a sentence in his mind before he spoke it, but thinking through the shattered glass in his ribs was hard enough, let alone thinking in English. When he tried to speak all that came out was a raspy wheeze, anyway, so he supposed it didn’t matter.
Marc jerked to attention. “You’re awake!”
Tristan coughed in response, feeling his chest ache, nodding in lieu of any words. He watched Marc reach over and press a button on the side of the bed before squeezing his arm— the one that wasn’t covered in second-degree burns, but still itched all over.
“How are you feeling?”
Tristan cleared his throat. “Bad. Hurts.”
“Yeah, that was… that was nasty. Shit, I knew— I didn’t have any second thoughts going in, and I don’t, but for a first raid you’re certainly setting a precedent. We were supposed to guard the exits, where we weren’t likely to come under fire or fuck things up! And with— and with—” Marc groaned, propping his elbows on the bed and burying his face in his hands. “Fucking hell. You scared me.”
“Didn’t mean to,” Tristan rasped. He shut his eyes, clenching his jaw until he felt it creak as he tried to breathe, slow and steady. Fuck, where were the good painkillers when he needed them?
“You’ve been out for about twelve or thirteen hours. They had to put you under while they fixed your chest. They… the doctor says the burns shouldn’t scar, so that’s the good news. And you’ll make a full recovery with enough time. Uh… Lieutenant Martin actually came in for a few minutes to talk to the doctor about you.”
“What? Wh— what happened?” Tristan rasped. If the Lieutenant had been called in, things must have been serious. He tried to piece together the events of the raid. The gunfire. The dragon. The fire on his armor, jaws cracking his bones apart, the death screams of a dying monster that he swore were going to give him nightmares. Talbot walking him back to the truck and wrapping him in a blanket so no one had to look at the damage while he waited for medical attention. The itch in his throat that turned into a lump and then formed into something he couldn’t breathe around. The panic. The pain, dull and so much further away than it was now. The way the world tunneled out, and how, for a moment, he thought he was going to die.
“Uh…” Marc winced. “Well—”
“You had an anaphylactic reaction,” came a voice as the curtain around his bed peeled back. An older, severe-looking woman stared down at him. “You’re a piece of work, St. Anthony.”
“Ana— anphil— an—” Tristan gave up on replicating that word in his state, with the way air still scraped at his chest wall when he inhaled. “What?”
“Your throat closed up,” Marc supplied. “Talbot thought it was pneumothorax, but you weren’t responding to anything until the doctor stabbed you with an Epipen.”
“My…” that sounded right. Sounded more right than a collapsed lung. But that didn’t mean it made sense, because: “I’m not allergic to anything.”
Marc grimaced.
“I’m not. And even if I were, I didn’t…”
Tristan blinked, thinking through the events again. Gunfire. Dragon. Fire, teeth. More gunfire, but from his own weapon this time. Being led back to the truck, given a blanket, given—
Oh. Oh shit.
“Well, after we stabilized you, we went through what happened with Commander Talbot. The only thing that was put in your body after the attack was a syringe of morphine.”
Tristan covered his face with the arm that wasn’t wrapped to the wrist in gauze. “No.”
“It’s rare to be allergic to opioids. Pseudo-allergies are much more common, but we still ran a blood screening just in case, and… well. I suppose you should consider yourself unique.”
It was childish, but Tristan let out a long, thready groan. “Is that why everything hurts?”
“You don’t have any painkillers in your system at the moment, no. We’ll… I’ll tell a nurse to get you some ibuprofen.”
Somehow, even though Tristan knew that it helped, ibuprofen felt like insult to injury for second-degree burns and dragon jaws to his ribcage.
“Can someone ask a nurse to—” Tristan coughed and cleared his throat, “—get me some water, too?”
“That can be arranged.”
He listened to the doctor walk away and finally took his arm away from his face.
So he was allergic to opioids.
What the hell.
He didn’t know much about different types of painkillers, but he knew that opioids were common. Those were what the Order used for major injuries. Tristan had never taken them before, even the few times they had been offered during training, because the broken bones hadn’t been too bad and he knew the risks of addiction. But he always assumed that, if he really needed them, they’d be available.
Considering that he wasn’t on any other sort of IV, he was pretty sure it was safe to assume that the Order didn’t keep opioid alternatives in stock.
His chest hurt. He wasn’t a stranger to cracked and dislocated ribs, because injuries were expected in basic, but there was a difference to his floating ribs shifting out of place and a dragon digging its teeth into his ribcage and trying to tear it out. There was a difference between burns earned in training and a dragon’s fireball to the chest, armor or no. His body felt raw and fragile. It hurt.
And he was allergic to painkillers.
Somewhere, he was sure that some all-powerful being— God, Lucifer, Iblis, whoever— was laughing at his expense.
“I’m really thirsty,” Tristan said, ignoring how his voice wobbled, because at least that was something he was capable of correcting. If he was going to have to lay in his pain for the next few hours, he could do it without his throat feeling drier than sand.
“I’m sure the nurse will come soon,” Marc reassured him.
“Until then…” Tristan tried for a smirk, but it felt shaky on his face. From the expression on Marc’s face, he didn’t buy it. “Don’t suppose you brought a book or a deck of cards or something?”
“I’ll bring one tomorrow.”
Tristan nodded, closing his eyes again, his breaths shallow against his aching chest and still-itching throat.
