Managing The Fuckups (Westworld, Theresa)

[Chanel_no5]

***Note*** 

So, I wrote this when the forum was down. I already posted it at the new forum and on tumblr, but I figured I'd post it here as well so I have all my stuff gathered in one place.   And, yeah, sorry for obsessively writing/being into one character only at a time. That's unfortunately how I work, so... I guess we just have to live with it. 

Also, sorry about the bad language. They do use the F-word a lot in this show, and trying to clean it up while writing doesn't feel fair. 

Anyway. Hopefully there are some people out there who aren't totally fed up with this fandom/character fics coming from me.  

***

Theresa was sick. Shivering in the cold night air of the desert town, she thought this might be the lowest she had felt since Delos hired her to work at Westworld, and she wished she was anywhere in the world except right here right now.

She had been deep asleep, doped up on NyQuil and hazy from fever, when Stubbs, the head of security, called on her. She wasn’t someone who awoke easily even under the best circumstances, and this was not the best of circumstances.

She started coughing, then snapped forward with a deep, harsh, exhausted sneeze.

“Bless you,” Stubbs said. Theresa didn’t reply, she just sighed and gave him a curt nod.

“I’m sorry I had to call you down,” he continued.

“It’s what Delos pays me for, Ashley,” she replied. “Managing the fuckups. I’ll be fine.”

She didn’t sound particularly convincing, not even to herself.

“You sound awful, though.”

“I know. Walk me through this. What the fuck happened?”

“I’d rather wait until Bernard comes down too, so I won’t have to go through it twice.”

“You called him already? Good.”

Truthfully, she knew he had, because Bernard had been next to her in bed when the call came. Theresa had nearly suffocated herself with the pillow in her desperate attempts to keep her coughing quiet while Bernard spoke on the phone.

“Right after I called you. He should be here by now.”

Theresa hummed. She and Bernard had an entire protocol set up for the possibility that they’d be called down for an emergency while in bed together, and rule number one was ‘never leave together, never arrive together’. But right now, she was starting to feel annoyed by how long he took.

She coughed again, a rough, rattling cough that made her lungs and chest burn and had the additional side effect of making Stubbs look at her with silent sympathy. She got herself almost under control for a couple of seconds, but then coughed herself into a harsh sneezing fit.

“HaaEESSHHoo! Huh-eeRSCHuh! Huh-eeRGSSCHoo! Ha-AERSSHHoo-oh fuck!”

“Bless you.”

This time it was Bernard’s warm voice offering her the blessing, and he also offered her a cup of hot coffee. So that’s why he had been taking so long. She forgave him his delay in an instant. Theresa wasn’t sure she’d be able to drink something as strong as coffee, considering her sore throat, but she could definitely use the caffeine. She still felt two thirds asleep.

“Thank you.”

She took a sip from the cup and realised that Bernard, as usual, had thought about everything. It wasn’t coffee, it was tea, spiked with both lemon and honey. She caught Bernard’s eye, nodded discreetly towards her cup and smiled. He returned the smile, then turned towards the scene before them.

“So, what are we looking at here?”

Stubbs started explaining, and Theresa tried to follow, tried to rise above the illness ravaging her body, but she couldn’t. All she could really focus on was how achy she was and how much her head was pounding. And she was freezing. And her chest felt tight. And her nose itched.

Fuck. She had to sneeze again.

It wasn’t in Theresa’s nature to hold back, but this time she decided to. She was tired of this cold, or flu or whatever it was, dictating the rules for her. Besides, she was trying to at least keep up the appearance of being in charge here, and that wasn’t particularly convincing if she couldn’t even be in charge of her own body’s behaviour.

She held her breath, cutting off the air supply to the sneeze that was trying to build, and rubbed the heel of her hand against her quivering, red-hot nostrils. Her eyelids, already heavy with drowsiness, began to flutter. Her eyes watered from the sheer effort of fighting back the desperate urge to sneeze.

The tickly wave didn’t withdraw; it kept crashing over her until there was nothing she could do. Her nostrils flared, and she could no longer hold her breath; she began drawing air in wildly hitching breaths, still fighting against her body’s demand.

Even her willpower could not override the physical need. Her cold won this battle, as it had won each battle before it.

Bernard, alerted by her uneven breathing, reached out and took the cup away from her. He knew only too well how violent her sneezes were, and he didn’t want her to spill the hot beverage and burn herself on top of everything.

Theresa simultaneously turned to the side and doubled over, unleashing a scraping, dizzying, wet sneeze. It felt like claws scratched her throat raw, and the force of the sneeze was enough to shift the congestion deep within her sinuses, triggering another sneeze, a messy aftershock.

“Oh my fucking God,” she muttered in a half-choked voice.

“Bless you,” Bernard said as she straightened up and took the tea back, taking a sip to soothe the pain in her throat.

“Thag you,” she said, wincing at how much worse she sounded. “Go on,” she told Stubbs. He had only just started speaking again when Bernard interrupted him.

“No, Ashley, wait.” He turned to Theresa. “Go back and go to bed. I’ll deal with this. I think I know what the problem is.”

Theresa was about to object – diagnosing park safety concerns was her job, not his – but she really felt like crap. She was sick and exhausted, and quite frankly a bit hopped up on cold meds, and she decided that even she had the right to be the damsel in distress. This once.

“Give me a report as soon as possible,” she said.

Bernard nodded, glancing at Stubbs. The other man was busy calling for a retrieving team, and paid no attention to the head of programming and the head of QA.

“I’ll join you in an hour tops,” Bernard said in a low voice.

Theresa gave him a pale smile. Red spots of fever burned on her cheeks and her eyes looked glazed. Her nose had the same feverishly red shade as her cheeks at this point. If she tried to breathe through her nose, the congestion made a crackling sound that felt like it came from inside her entire face. If this fucking illness didn’t turn into a sinus infection, she’d consider herself lucky.  

“I think I’ll be asleep by then.”

“I hope so,” Bernard said earnestly. “But I’ll be there anyway.”

Theresa’s smile became a little bit more natural.

“I’ll leave the door unlocked.”

With that, she turned and began to make her way back to the staff quarters and the blessed warmth of her bed.

***

The door was unlocked and there was a single dimmed light on in the hallway, but the rest of the apartment was dark. Bernard could hear Theresa’s coughing from the bedroom, and he winced. He did not like that cough at all. It sounded way too chesty. You could hear phlegm rattle in her chest when the spasms shook her, which was never a good sign.

He snuck into the bedroom, got out of his clothes and into her bed.

“’ow’d’t’go?”

It took him a moment to decipher the drowsy sounds slurred into her pillow and translate them into actual words; how did it go.

“Fine. The host seems to be checking out alright. But we wait for the full diagnostics, should be done in the morning.”

He huddled up close to her. Theresa remained on her side, back against him, so she didn’t have to reposition herself every time a coughing or sneezing fit struck her. He put his arms around her, pulled her closer, and he was pretty sure her fever was worse now than when they had gone to bed.

“Did you check your temperature?”

“What for?” Her voice sounded thick and husky, but at least she wasn’t muttering into the pillow now, which made her words at least somewhat comprehensible.

He sighed, but he smiled as he did.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t need a fucking thermometer to tell me I have a fever,” Theresa grumbled. “Uh-AARSSHHooo!”

“Bless you. Fair enough.” He gathered her hair and moved it aside so he could kiss the nape of her neck. Theresa shivered, and this time it had nothing to do with the fever. “Do you need anything?” he murmured.

“Just you,” Theresa replied. “And sleep.”

He chuckled.

“Okay,” he said softly. “Go to sleep, Tess. I’ll be following right behind you.”

“Doubtful.” She gasped in a sharp breath and immediately expelled it in a forceful sneeze, one that shook her body and by extension his as well. “Huh-EESSCHHuh! Ugh. I’ll keep you up all night. HahEESSHHHoo! Huh-ERSCHuh! Oh fuck…” The expletive came out carried on a defeated sigh, and she started to sit up. “ADJEESSHHOO! God… this is going to go on for a while, I can f-feehhh… ihYEESSHHoo! Feel that already.”

She tried to sniff and immediately sneezed again. And again. And again.

At this point, she was just sitting up in bed, repeatedly rocking forward with yet another urgent, ferocious, wet sneeze. Even in between the sneezes she was stuck in the desperately itchiness that forebode a sneeze, and her eyes were constantly half-closed in anticipation of the next onslaught. Her hair was dishevelled, and her face and neck were flushed, her nose was streaming, her eyes were overflowing, and there was absolutely nothing she could do but to sit there, hands up to her face, and sneeze.

And sneeze.

And sneeze.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” she managed to get out between the increasingly messy outbursts, “I feel like one of y-your huhhh… hosts, s-stuck in a loop… uh-EERRGSHHugh!”

“If you were one of my hosts, I’d be able to stop it, but…” Bernard said as he turned the lights on, then reached past her and grabbed a handful of tissues which he proceeded to gently push into her hands, “… as it is, I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.”

Theresa pressed the entire handful of Kleenex against the lower part of her face, uncharacteristically embarrassed about this drippy display of utter helplessness.

The next sneeze to come barrelling out of her was one of those sneezes that seem to spray directly from buildup and only get wetter. It was also a high-pitched scream sneeze, far from the typical Theresa-sneeze.

She fell silent right after it, as if she had shocked herself with the sounds she was capable of making. Bernard was silent too, for a whole two seconds, before he started to laugh.

“What the hell was that?”

“I’m surprised you have to ask, given that I’ve been doing it relentlessly for the past ten minutes,” Theresa replied haughtily, but her drenched voice was muffled behind the equally drenched tissues, efficiently killing the effect. She blew her nose, sneezed mid-blow, then kept blowing.

“Jokes aside,” Bernard said, handing her more tissues so she could swap the soaked ones for a fresh batch, “can I get you anything?”

“No… eeyyEESSHHuh! I think it’s winding down. Ugh, finally,”

Bernard frowned as he took a good look at her – she was so exhausted that she could barely sit up straight, and even though the sneezing was dying down, her eyes kept closing as her entire body begged her to just go to sleep so her immune defence had a chance to do its job.

“You know what?” he said. Theresa didn’t answer, just lowered the tissues and gave him a half-hearted look. He lost his train of thought for a moment when he saw how incredibly red and chapped her nose was by now, and had to shake his head to regain focus. “I think you need to take a sick day tomorrow.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Theresa asked. “We have a breaching host downstairs, a storyline in total disarray thanks to it, and you think I can just skip work? What are you doing?”

Bernard had moved his hand from her thigh to her forehead.

“You have a fever. And it’s getting worse.” He cocked his head to the side. “Do you really mistrust me so much that you won’t let me handle a breached host alone? Even when you can’t – “

“Heh-EGTSSCHHoo!”

“- stop sneezing for two minutes. Bless you.”

Theresa sighed and rubbed her nose.

“It’s not about trust. I need to have first-hand information on all safety risks.”

“I’ll text you every bit of information I find in the diagnostics. And the decision to put it back in service is still yours.”

Theresa sighed again and slumped against his shoulder.

“Fine, I’ll call in sick tomorrow.”

He kissed her temple.

“Good. Can you sleep now, you think?”

Theresa nodded. She was almost asleep already.

“Okay,” Bernard mumbled and turned the lights off again. Theresa simply shoved the pile of used tissues down on the floor on her side of the bed, then laid down again, pulling the blankets tight.

“I’m going to snore,” she declared as she adjusted the pillow.

“Don’t worry about that. Just go to sleep, Tess,” he said, wrapping his arms around her and spooning her. Theresa enjoyed his embrace, but she was freefalling into slumber and it only took minutes before she was completely knocked out.

And she did indeed snore. Sniffled, snorted, and snored. And coughed.

Somehow, maybe because their previous sleep had been interrupted, both managed to sleep through the raspy progress of Theresa’s cold, and tomorrow was a new day.

A new day, with new fuckups to manage.

 

Edited December 6, 2019 by Chanel_no5

[Likesn]

The way you write sneezes, especially cold sneezes, is so powerful. I like that. BTW- what's this new forum?

[Chanel_no5]

1 hour ago, Likesn said:

The way you write sneezes, especially cold sneezes, is so powerful. I like that. BTW- what's this new forum?

Haha, thank you!   I never thought of it that way, actually. I just tend to go with the specific character's most likely type of sneeze, and since the vast majority of cold fics I write are about Theresa, that does make sense.   There is no way in hell I can picture that woman with a dainty, "cute", or in any way controlled or contained type of sneeze, and she'd just get more and more annoyed the more she sneezes so that frustration would reflect in the sneezes themselves, I'd think. 

Not 100 % sure if the owner is okay with me posting the link to it on the public forum (she probably is, but better safe than sorry), so I PMed it to you. 😊

 

[SleepingPhlox]

Oh this is absolutely heavenly.  There is something very wonderful about someone commenting that they're going to keep sneezing for a while, while they are in the middle of doing it.  And you know what, just pretty much every single reaction she has to every aspect of it.  It's just wonderful.  Stuff like this is what I missed when the forum was gone. 

[Likesn]

23 hours ago, Chanel_no5 said:

Haha, thank you!   I never thought of it that way, actually. I just tend to go with the specific character's most likely type of sneeze, and since the vast majority of cold fics I write are about Theresa, that does make sense.   There is no way in hell I can picture that woman with a dainty, "cute", or in any way controlled or contained type of sneeze, and she'd just get more and more annoyed the more she sneezes so that frustration would reflect in the sneezes themselves, I'd think. 

Not 100 % sure if the owner is okay with me posting the link to it on the public forum (she probably is, but better safe than sorry), so I PMed it to you. 😊

 

Thank you!! And yeah, as someone who has seen the show- you are 100% right about the way Theresa would most likely sneeze 🤣

[Chanel_no5]

On 12/7/2019 at 8:20 PM, SleepingPhlox said:

Oh this is absolutely heavenly.  There is something very wonderful about someone commenting that they're going to keep sneezing for a while, while they are in the middle of doing it.  And you know what, just pretty much every single reaction she has to every aspect of it.  It's just wonderful.  Stuff like this is what I missed when the forum was gone. 

Thank you so, so much!! ❤️ You know, Theresa is so much fun to toy with thanks to her "fuck it"-attitude! 😁 Like, she's going to do her job because it's her job, and if she's sick, well, that's too fucking bad, but duties don't just go away. And then from time to time the mask slips and she more or less accidentally reveals just how shitty she's feeling, but even then she's a realist about it. She really should be the worst germaphobe in the world given how prone she is to catching colds when she's stressed and overworked (well... in MY universe anyway), but it doesn't bother her at all. 😏 Do I shamelessly use that to my advantage? Well.... maybe.