fuel to the fire &&joshua

The beginning of the year tended to see the medical wing filled with younger students who had not yet learned their place in the Academy and forgot that someone older but scrawnier than them in terms of brawn would still have an extreme advantage elementally. Like the Thunder he was currently attending to, sporting a gash along his arm. A fight with a Water elemental up on the cliffs, apparently, and it had ended in the Thunder being shoved over and cutting his forearm on a rock. Ironic, considering Water usually had the elemental disadvantage. Next time don't be a dumb ass, he thought to himself, though he held his tongue. The boy was Thunder and thus Joshua's alliance-based enemy but he had to remain professional when working in the medical wing. He was contemplating an actual job here come next year and he didn't want anything too bad on his record. "Don't pick at it," he scolded when the boy started tugging at the edges of the gauze. "If you want it to heal, leave it alone." He recieved a glare but no verbal response, the ninth grader realising he was free to go and leaving without thanks. Josh hadn't expected any and so wasn't offended.

Washing his hands and sterilizing them with soap, Joshua barely noticed the almost too-clean smell of the place. Years of volunteering at a hospital and months of working as a medical assistant at the retirement home had gotten him used to the smell of sterile places (and the elderly). He dried his hands on the towel and walked into the main waiting room, gray eyes scanning it for anyone that looked like they would be in need of his help. There was an Earth girl looking like she was holding back tears as she nursed an electrical burn but there was nothing he could do for her, a few kids that looked like they had your usual headaches and sniffles. Allergies, maybe, judging by the redness in one's eyes and the fact he kept rubbing at them. Josh's own gaze settled upon someone familiar and unfortunately burnt. Well. Shit. Memories of their last and incredibly awkward conversation while they were both stuck in detention crossed his mind. Ethan had been almost nice when he'd congratulated them on the engagement, Josh had been irritable, the usual tension that crackled between them. If not for Nell he'd have been comfortable disliking Ethan outright, but... Nell. She complicated everything.

It wasn't that he couldn't make his own friends and enemies, no, it was that he didn't want to cause any more unnecessary problems with her friends. Which meant this instead. He wasn't sure which to prefer. Guess I'd better... Letting the thought trail off, he approached Ethan and said, "Looks pretty bad." He didn't feel the need to indicate the burn because, well, that was pretty obvious. He doubted he would have went up to him otherwise. "Is that the only injury you've got?" Professional and direct was probably the best way to deal with this situation. You know, pretend like he hadn't spent their first meeting giving Ethan the same sorts of burns that he was now planning on treating. If Ethan would allow him to, that was. "I could help you out." People were at liberty to request not being treated by a certain person but it was highly recommended not to. "The usual Fire on duty's busy with some kid that crossed a senior." One of Joshua's classmates, actually. I heard he was expelled, he thought. "They'll be a while." Joshua was really Ethan's best bet if he wanted to avoid any adverse side-effects but, well, would he trust Josh?

Remaining professional and not allowing the awkwardness or tension to creep into things was hard. Very hard. At the same time, Josh knew that if he wanted to land a job in the medical wing upon graduation to sort of hold him over, he was going to have to play his cards right and get used to this. He'd need to help out his enemies all the time if he worked here full time. Or, well, part-time, but 'full time' in the sense that it was an actual job instead of random and occasional volunteer work. Nodding when Ethan accepted his help, Josh jerked his head toward the room that he'd left just a moment before. "We might want to get out of everyone's way." A lot of people were coughing and sneezing or else moaning in pain and it really was not a good place to be. Busy, too, with a lot of people moving around and milling about. The room was much quieter and an easier place to relax, concentrate. It was not a good idea to try and heal someone when you were not relaxed. Things could go wrong. He might not have been Ethan's biggest fan but Josh was not looking to accidentally put him in the real hospital. That wouldn't go over well.

He led the way into the room and closed the door so that most of the noise from the outside was muffled. "Can't hear myself think sometimes," he muttered, shaking his head and talking more to himself than anything (though Ethan could surely hear). The medical wing could be loud some days with all the chatting that went on in the waiting room. He liked his quiet, Joshua did, especially when he was trying to concentrate. Gray eyes fixed themselves briefly on Ethan. "Yeah," he said, then realised he didn't know what else to say on the matter. Fuck's sakes, why had he offered to help? He was not good at pretending. Funnily enough, though, he wasn't pretending. This awkward uncertainty was legitimately where they seemed to be at right now. "They take volunteers if they're serious enough about it, and I was, so..." Joshua wanted to become a doctor, you couldn't get much more serious than that. He blinked as he realised that Ethan probably wouldn't know this all-important fact about him, then decided that it did not matter either way. He usually only talked about it to friends, classmates, and coworkers, Ethan being none of these.

Exhaling slowly, he decided to get right down to the point of things, the reason that they'd been forced together this time. "When'd it happen?" After a second or two, realising that this might seem uncharacteristically nosy for someone who was not a friend, he clarified, "I need to know for the fix. It's a harder heal the longer you wait." If someone waited too long, the burns would simply remain there for good, like burns did with humans. He knew that it was risky to wait more than a couple days. Fresh burns could be completely healed with no trace of the injury save for a reddish sunburn-like mark that faded over the week. He could not get over the irony of the fact that he was helping Ethan with something he once would have done himself. Once had done himself. I wonder if he ever told Nell. If Ethan had, his fiancée had never brought it up.

[They're so awkward I love it xD Josh is just =| ]

Twenty minutes ago? Joshua nodded to show that he'd heard, relieved that it hadn't been days so that he knew he wouldn't have a chance of screwing this up. It was a lot more difficult to heal things that were left for a while and higher difficulty meant that more skill and stamina was required. He was fairly confident in himself and his abilities but he usually left the more serious cases up to the Fire elementals who had been healing as their job for a while so that he didn't cause any unfortunate accidents. That might get him into trouble and he didn't much like that idea. "Good, good," he said, sounding a tad distracted as he went through calculations in his head. He came back to his full senses when Ethan questioned him, glancing at the Water and nodding again, more committed this time around. "It should, yeah. There'll be redness and discomfort for a few days after but it's nothing ice won't fix and that goes away, too." He might have felt awkward but Josh was pretty good at not sounding it, at least for the time being. That was one good thing about being naturally secretive, used to hiding things about yourself from the world. He didn't like people to know when he was down in the dumps about anything so he'd gotten good at cover-up. Though he was not upset right now, he was also good at covering up most other things he didn't want people to detect.

Oddly enough, it did not even cross Joshua's mind to immaturely poke fun at Ethan's injuries or refer to the other boy as weak, not even in his head. He'd matured a lot over the past couple years and ever since situating himself on the opposite side of the alliance, he'd calmed down and relaxed his urge to provoke fights and confrontation. He was still that same temperamental Fire but he tried to avoid being completely petty, mostly because his new allies did not often give him a reason to act that way toward him. There were still a few people like Ethan whom he had past issues with, though, and they often created a great deal of his 'uncertain' relationships. Not friends or enemies, they hung in the balance. So he tried, as he was doing now, to keep things neutral. It was harder than he'd admit to himself. Ethan helped by asking a question that he could answer to keep himself distracted. "It's hard to explain," he admitted. "It's a mental thing, y'know, like using your powers themselves. If an elemental inflicts something, they can reverse the effects. Does that make sense?" He didn't speak condescendingly or anything, it was more like he was looking to confirm that he'd gotten his point across in an understandable manner.

Joshua was at least relieved that this encounter was in a medical environment, though he did not realise that Ethan was of the opposite opinion. Hospitals and medical settings had always made him feel very comfortable and in his element. He'd grown up with a doctor as a father, had started volunteering at the hospital when he was fourteen, was orienting his future toward being a doctor himself. It relaxed him. "If someone's a dumb ass and steps in poison oak, for example, the Earths can handle it. Fires and Thunders get burns. I knew a Water that saved someone from drowning once but there's not too many Water-related injuries, almost none with Wind." Not that it was a bad thing. Healing was not a very convenient skill when one considered that you couldn't heal yourself and that there was such a small window of time between contracting the injury and being able to have it completely reversed. Still, it was helpful to avoid government suspicion. Josh hesitated for only a moment (more out of awkwardness since this was Ethan than any kind of uncertainty) before he took his fellow graduate's arm and examined it with a critical gray gaze. "Yeah, I should be able to fix this no problem," he assured him. "It'll take a bit, though, since it's pretty vicious." Starting to work, he isolated small parts of the burn to focus on and progressed slowly, being as thorough as possible. If he rushed, it wouldn't bode well for him or for Ethan. Most people conversed with him when he was working but the fact that they'd never really gotten along made that... difficult. Oh dear.

[holy cow it really has been two years in game o.o time flies! you've been around since forever, lolol!]

It was strange to think of how much he'd changed, how differently he might have reacted now as opposed to how he'd reacted back then. Twenty-one years of dealing with a temper problem meant that he'd slowly started to gain a little more control over it and in recent times he'd been a lot more willing to roll his eyes and walk away from a verbal confrontation as opposed to scaling it up to physical violence. Insulting Nell was still a fail-safe way to make him snap, though. He was incredibly protective over her. He knew she wasn't some damsel in distress that needed his constant worrying but he couldn't help the way he felt. No one could. And it was for Nell that he resisted another fight with Ethan all those times before. He would do a lot to stay in her good graces. It would suck to lose the relationship over some other guy—and not even for intimate reasons! "I know what I'm doing, at least. You can trust me on that one." He might not have been able to go in-depth in terms of explaining how elemental healing worked but he could do it and he could do it pretty well. Maybe it was the fact that he was already so medically inclined that sort of helped him out in that department. He wanted to become a real doctor and so doctoring someone elementally was like adding another branch onto something he already aspired to do.

He didn't like to entertain the idea of drowning but unfortunately for Joshua that was precisely what came to mind when he was thinking about how the Waters could use their own powers for the good of healing. "Hopefully you don't have to learn how to do it yourself. Heard a few people have drowned in the lake, don't want to know about it happening again." The thought that some students had jumped off from the cliffs and had been stunned from the impact of hitting the water as hard as they had, causing them to drown, was a terrifying one to someone who feared doing just that. Drowning. At least there were plenty of older Water elementals around to help out, usually. If they managed to make it in time. He suppressed the urge to shudder, glad that he was so good at hiding his emotions. Fear wasn't something he wanted to display in front of Ethan. "No problem," he said after only a brief hesitation. Had it been a problem? He guessed not. There hadn't been any arguments thus far and that was a good thing. True, it had been a long time since they'd fought but a rivalry this tense and awkward didn't vanish overnight. The fact that they were both so uncomfortable with one another was sheer proof.

He wasn't expecting the words and they disarmed him for a moment, caught him off guard. Joshua blinked and paused in what he was doing for a moment before he continued, trying to think of what he could say in response. "Oh, well, uh, thanks," he said, hating how the surprise was more evident than he'd have intended. He liked to come off as proud and cool but it was a lot harder to adapt quickly when someone threw a wrench in what you were used to. "Guess I—uh, thanks, yeah." He had been about to say 'guess I owe you on that one' but his pride stopped him before he could get the words out. It was a bitch, pride was, and it stopped him from doing a lot of things. He wouldn't apologise for things he knew he'd done wrong even with his best friends. Like when he'd flipped out on Devin for making a joke about facial scars. He'd realised that it was an overreaction but though he'd made up with his friend, he'd never apologised. Nell was the only person he'd ever apologised to. "I guess she could have said something to me if you did," he realised. Would she have? He didn't know but she was so nice, so sweet, she probably would have had a problem with him attacking Ethan, right? "I never said anything either. For the record." It seemed like they'd both held off on causing more problems than their little spat was worth. It was for the best.

No one liked to be injured, that was for sure. There were masochists about of course but he hardly counted them and if he were to be honest, that kind of sexual gratification weirded him out. Wasn't his thing. The average human being (and elemental, for the record) did not like being sick, injured, or disabled in any way. A proud individual like Ethan or Joshua tended to like it even less. Being injured meant that you'd done something to earn that injury, probably something stupid. No proud person liked to be thought of as stupid. Being sick meant that you were not at your best, not one hundred percent. Neither of these things were ideal. "No argument there," he agreed. "I don't burn easily but it's possible and it is not fun." He shook his head, made a brief face at the memory. Electrical burns and traditional burns hurt him less than the average person given his natural resistance to his own element and Thunder's elemental disadvantage so he could only imagine what a burn would feel like to someone that did not have such a resistance. Ethan's burn probably felt a lot like the ones he'd gotten, actually, since his Water affiliation gave him a bit of an advantage. Didn't mean it didn't hurt, Josh knew that all too well.

Unnecessary. Yeah, that was a pretty good word for it. It felt strange, the feeling that he had right now. He wasn't angry or contemptuous toward Ethan any more, really. Two years had been long enough to allow his anger toward the Water elemental to fade away. He wasn't a grudge holder unless for a very good reason and though he would not admit it aloud, Josh knew the whole confrontation had been petty on both sides. Ethan shouldn't have spread the rumours and Joshua shouldn't have responded with violence. They'd both been wrong and he was over it. The awkwardness was a little harder to transcend. He could put the fight behind him and perhaps Ethan could as well but that left them in a state of uncertainty. Would it be permanent? He wasn't sure. Joshua continued to work on Ethan's arm as they conversed, glad that he didn't have to look him in the eye. Eye contact could say a lot for how you were feeling about someone and he didn't want to give his uncertainty away. "Well, it's like you said," he replied, "it would have been.... unnecessary. Stupid, even." Causing fights between him and Nell and Ethan in some way, which was something he really just did not want to do.

The Water graduate asked how him and Nell were doing and Josh was at least a little more prepared for the unexpected question this time around. "We're, uh, we're good," he said, and then realised that his awkward interjection might have made it sound like he was lying. Curse you, awkwardness! "Seriously, though. Never been better." He added this part a little more steadily so that it sounded believable and not nervous. "Have you, uh, talked to Nell or anything?" Trying to make decent conversation was difficult. Manageable, at least, but he couldn't help himself from interrupting his questions with 'uh' every now and then. At least he wasn't the only one, since Ethan was doing the same thing. Nell and Joshua did not often bring up their non-mutual friends in conversation, or indeed their mutual friends. It was easier to focus on their lives together when they didn't get into arguments over who hung out with who. It helped that neither were the suspicious type and that they each allowed the other freedom in choice of friends. Josh had never asked Nell to stop hanging around people like Ethan and vice versa. It was a comfortable existence.