fandom_clinic | Fandom Clinic, Monday 5/1

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stark

Fandom Clinic, Monday 5/1

Stark came in a little later than usual this morning. Later and more jumpy than usual. It was hard to walk through town while carrying a tray of coffee and look over your shoulder in case of raccoons at the same time. He did make it in without spilling anything, somehow.

"Maybe you don't need caffeine," one nurse said, taking the tray before anything unfortunate happened.

"You do need a shirt though," said another, holding up a Crab Union shirt.

"I do?"

"Of course you do! We support union crustacean labor in this clinic! And besides, Stabby got them for all of us. Look, his even has extra sleeves!"

Stark just nodded and accepted the shirt, wondering how his stylist would feel about it.

The clinic was open, the crab had a many-sleeved shirt for all of his appendages, and the alien was in.

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Where everyone has a shirt on. Even the crab.

Someone had spent the weekend getting very drunk on the mainland and sleeping with inappropriate strangers while trying to forget the damage he'd managed to do on the island while owning quills.

That same someone was now wearing his grownup pants and walking into the clinic carrying a box of fancy cupcakes from the mainland.

"Hey. How's, uh. How's it going?"

What would make a stranger appropriate in this context?

"Better than it was," Stark said, offering a smile and trying to obviously be looking over Travis for signs of injury or distress. "How are you?"

. . . Hush.

"Well, I haven't burned anything down since last Thursday," Travis said, rubbing the back of his neck with the hand not holding the cupcakes. "And that's . . . not a gauge I ever thought I'd have for myself, so. Yeah." He held out the box. "Want to share some cupcakes? They're cocktail themed."

"That's not your fault," Stark said quickly. "You weren't yourself."

If he could just convince himself of that fact, too...

"I'd love to have a cupcake with you. You're alright? Not hurt or anything?"

"Nothing but my pride."

Though he had apparently managed to beat a Navy SEAL in unarmed combat? So his pride had mixed feelings, really.

"And, like, I know that, but I still don't feel it yet, you know?"

"I do know," Stark said, nodding sympathetically.

Someone hadn't yet worked up the courage to apologize for his own not-his-fault behavior.

"I'm glad you're not hurt. Would you like to sit? While we eat?"

There was a nice bench in the waiting area by the desk. They'd sat there before.

"Yeah." Travis gestured Stark to follow with his head and then aimed for said bench, sitting down and setting the box of cupcakes down between them.

He'd managed to score one of each flavor. It was way too many cupcakes. He'd absolutely let his guilt run wild while drunk and in the shop.

"So how'd you manage the week? I'm a little afraid to listen to the radio reports."

"I... tried to help and turned into a very large and angry raccoon," Stark said with a very heavy sigh.

He was looking intently at the the cupcakes, trying to choose the correct one.

He picked up the Hot Cherry Pie, eventually.

"The other raccoons followed me around."

"Ah." Travis nodded.

"So . . . your week was a lot like mine, then. Only with a fan club."

"With a fan club," Stark echoed. "They let me out of the store and followed me everywhere. I tried attacking... multiple people. They mostly cheered for me, the raccoons."

"I don't like not being me," he said with another sigh before taking a large bite out of his cupcake.

"Does anyone?" Travis asked. "Well. I guess the people who don't like themselves very much in the first place. But I don't think they'd much like this kind of thing, either."

"There have been times I wished I weren't myself. But not like that."

He looked over at Travis and frowned a little. "Are you sure you're alright? The last time you weren't... shaped like yourself you were very upset."

Understandably!

"Yeah, well . . . this time I had more of an idea why," Travis pointed out. "If I ever wake up as an angry vaguely man-shaped hedgehog for no reason, I'll probably freak out harder."

"I hope you don't," Stark said. "I'd much rather you stayed yourself."

A beat.

"Not that you'd wake up with me. I meant...I meant it's better, being yourself. Isn't it? And I'd miss you if you weren't you."

Travis snorted. “I like being myself. In your bed and out of it.” He gave Stark a somewhat shy look. “So . . . I guess that’s the answer to what we were talking about before I went all. . . .” He hooked his fingers into claws. “‘RAGR’, huh?”

"I'm glad you're you," Stark said. "It's much harder to be friends with angry spiky animal people than it is to be friends with you."

"I am slightly more easy going than an angry spiky animal person," Travis agreed with a laugh. "I've been told that a lot."

"You are much easier to get along with," Stark told him, smiling. "I promise."

Even if Travis could be a bit prickly at times.

He definitely had his moments, yes.

"Glad to hear that, at least," Travis said, still chuckling. "Were the raccoons disappointed when you turned back into yourself? I'm beginning to think you should get a restraining order against them or something."

"I don't think that would help." Stark shook his head regretfully.

Keith the Business Raccoon would respect it! But he wasn't one of the creepers to begin with.

"And I'm sure they were. Summer dragged me off somewhere after she hit me over the head a few times. They weren't around when I woke up."

"That was . . . helpful of Summer. I guess." Travis wasn't caught up on the 'knock them out to turn them into themselves again for a bit' thing, no. "I'm glad they haven't been harassing you all weekend."

"She kept me from hurting anyone, that I know of," Stark said. "So did Jane. And we were ourselves once we were unconscious. It just didn't last after we woke up again."

"And thank you. So am I."

". . . Huh. I guess that isn't any weirder than any other part of this whole thing."

"Less weird than some other things that have happened here," Stark said, nodding. "Or things that have happened at home."

"The cupcake is good," he added, nodding to the box. "Did you go looking for them?"

"Nope, just ended up there last night after the bars were shutting down." Travis picked out a cupcake for himself and started peeling off the wrapper. "Ramón suggested it. He was, uh. The bartender. From the place I was hanging out at."

That he'd followed home like a drunken puppy and then awkwardly walk-of-shamed away from in a hungover haze around 6 am.

Thankfully the cupcake place had been open until 7.

Stark's eyebrow went up, just a little, but he wasn't going to judge.

"Good bar?" he asked instead. "I haven't been anywhere on the mainland in... I'm not sure I remember the last time."

Travis shrugged. "It was . . . a bar. Nothing special. Nothing trashy, either."

"I haven't spent much time in bars that aren't here."

Summer's very memorable (until the parts he couldn't remember) epic bar crawl party was an outlier.

"I hope it was relaxing, at least. Not having to worry about the things you have to worry about here."

Where shirt removal might be required.

Not even 10 AM and I'm ready for a nap.

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Fandom Clinic, Monday 5/1

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Exam Rooms

OOC