torchwoodteaboy | [RL WITH SULU]

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[RL WITH SULU]

The past few days had been exciting ones, and definitely not in the way that Ianto would have predicted them to be when he'd first set foot on the boat. They should have known that there would be something wrong with this, but how were they to know that Sulu saying that nothing could go wrong after what they'd accomplished on the first night would come back to quite literally haunt them, as it were? Because there really was no denying it anymore. There'd been enough talk about what else had going on in other people's cabins enough to know that it wasn't just their suite. The whole ship was buzzing about it, and though everyone was reporting different things happening, there was really no doubt about it. Regardless of whatever was causing it, the place was haunted.

Ianto'd tried ignoring it. He'd tried rationalizing it, and any other number of things to keep from admitting that what they had were ghosts on their hands. There was really just no denying it anymore. What had started out as objects moving every once and a while, and strange sounds in the night had turned a lot more active over the next few nights, the hot water switching itself off as Ianto was showering, their suitcases emptied out all over the suite while they slept. Ianto'd made sure that the door had been locked each time, and had even taken to sleeping with the key in his shorts pocket, but it wasn't any use. The door hadn't been opening to let anyone in--whatever was happening in the suite, it wasn't coming from the outside.

What had started out as them trying to make the best of their vacation had ended up with, well, at least Ianto being very wary of his surroundings, and of what could possibly go wrong with them. As much as he'd like to initiate something more with Sulu, the idea that they would be watched while they did was...more than a little bit of a turn-off. He hoped that Sulu understood, as it was.

Sulu, for his part, seemed to be taking this whole ghost thing pretty hard. Because paranormal things were sort of right up Ianto's alley, considering that he worked for Torchwood and all, he was trying his hardest to be a good Torchwood officer, keep a level head for the other man, and not freak out at anything that might have otherwise given him pause. Sulu hadn't admitted to being frightened of these ghosts, but. Ianto could tell that he was definitely a lot less comfortable with the thought of them being around than even Ianto himself was. It was almost nice, to be able to be there for Sulu like he had to be because of these hauntings. Almost.

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Sulu may not have known exactly what the change in voice meant, but he noticed the change in the voice, as well as the way it affected Ianto. He reached for Ianto's hand, holding tight, knowing that it was doing something that Sulu was not going to be able to forgive. "I wish it would too," he mumbled. Then, trying to distract Ianto from the new voice, he said quietly, "Think we can make it to the room? I can... I can get something to wear." He was, after all, still wearing his towel, and it wasn't making this any easier to deal with.

The ghost, or spirit, or... whatever it was, though, didn't seem to really appreciate that comment - or maybe it hadn't liked how Sulu had gripped Ianto's hand, or how he was distracting the other from its taunts - because Sulu immediately felt a cold sensation near him, like someone standing far too close; and then, someone was grabbing his towel. Sulu, of course, grabbed his towel and practically leaped away, because he wasn't comfortable enough with this insane thing to let it mess with him like this.

Ianto gratefully let Sulu take his hand, taking whatever support he could find in that touch. He was grateful that the ghost had only chosen to say his name with Lisa's voice, because well. He hadn't really gotten around to explaining that whole side of things to Sulu. He definitely didn't want the way it was revealed to the other man to be through some crazy ghost on a ship in the middle of the ocean god knows where. "I... I think so," he said, successfully distracted from whatever it was that was trying to keep his attention, with all of its calling out for him, and using Lisa's voice to do so, now. "All we have to do is..." he started, going to say that he shouldn't upset it again, but then Sulu was moving away from him, clutching at his towel, and Ianto had no idea what was going on.

"Are... Are you alright?" he asked, not being able to figure out what he was seeing there. He was almost sure that the corner of Sulu's towel had lifted a little, before Sulu had put a hand out and swatted at whatever it was. He didn't seem to've touched anything, but the movement of the towel stopped there, and moved elsewhere. Ianto...had absolutely no idea what to do about this, and could only stand back and watch as well, the ghost, or whatever, seemed to start taking a fancy in Sulu as well.

Sulu was too busy being morbidly amused by the fact that a ghost was trying to yank his towel off of him to notice how ridiculous he must look, trying to get away from something invisible to both of them. He was exhausted, frustrated and frankly just plain scared by the fact that he was dealing with the paranormal... with something trying to be playful and trying to yank away his towel. As much as he would probably not have minded this situation had the ghost not started it all off by throwing shit at them, much less touching Ianto, wrapping an arm around him -

Well. He minded, plain and simple. So, when the ghost grabbed at the hem, Sulu swatted his hand through thin air and said in a very strained voice, "Stop." He wasn't going to put up with it - he wanted to feel safe in this stupid room, on this stupid vacation that had turned out to be nothing more than another shitty trick on the community's part. He clearly wasn't feeling that, though.

The thing giggled and tugged and Sulu wished he could do something other than feel utterly helpless, which was an ugly thing to feel when he was so used to being able to handle his situations. A cold hand, or maybe just the impression of a hand, touched his leg and he lashed out with his foot. "Fucking stop! Son of a bitch!" The worst part was that Sulu knew how ridiculous looking he was at the moment, and how futile it was to be trying to hit something he couldn't touch. He just didn't see any other way to handle it.

It probably would look comical, Sulu's struggle with the ghost, if it weren't for the fact that Ianto was actually quite upset that it had moved on to bothering Sulu. Bothering Ianto himself was one thing, he had had to deal with ghosts and such before. But Sulu, not only did it seem that he really didn't like the fact that whatever it was was invisible and unknown, but he had an obvious fear of this sort of thing, and to turn that on him was just cruel. The disembodied giggling sounded a lot less friendly to Ianto, now that it had taken a step beyond just annoying into tormenting.

Just as Sulu himself couldn't figure out what to do to get it to stop, Ianto really had no idea what to do. He wasn't sure whether to focus more attention on getting the...whatever it was to stop, or focus more on trying to get Sulu to calm down about it before something bad happened. Shit, shit, shit. "Leave... Leave off of him! He didn't..." God, that wasn't going to go anywhere. "Sulu, you...you have to calm down! It's not going to listen to reasoning, it..." He stumbled over his words, feeling lost and helpless, like there was nothing he could do because, well, there really wasn't, as he watched Sulu try and fight off an invisible aggressor in nothing more than a towel...

Edited 2010-10-06 04:20 (UTC)

Telling a man being tormented by a ghost that he had to calm down wasn't going to work either, if the sound Sulu made at Ianto's insistence was any indication. He couldn't stand this any more - his usual patience had run short by day three and now, faced with some paranormal thing trying to make his life miserable, taunting him and Ianto, able to move wherever, do anything - lock them in -

"I'm not going to calm down, Ianto!" he snapped, the hostility he felt towards the ghost leaking into his voice. If this were any other time, he wouldn't have snapped at Ianto like that, and if he had, he would have felt sorry immediately - but right now, he was too high-strung, too anxious to care.

The thing seemed to do the caring for him; immediately after he yelled at Ianto, he felt a... well, a pause, like that cold air near him had frozen solid, and then something, something was digging its fingers into his side and sinking its teeth into his shoulder. Yelping, Sulu flailed, tearing away from the suddenly freezing cold presence, so much colder than it had been before. He let out a string of curses, most in Japanese, and then the decanter was in the air, being hurled straight for him. Before he could react, it clocked him, the blow sending him reeling.

Ianto didn't know what to be more surprised by. Okay, well. Maybe the snapping at him didn't surprise him as much, simply because he knew that everything he had said before really wasn't any help, wasn't any use, but. Obviously whatever it was didn't like the snapping at him, so it had started attacking him. With all of the flailing around and yelling Sulu had been doing, Ianto really hadn't noticed the decanter until it was far too late, the thing not entering his field of vision until it was just milliseconds away from contact, and Ianto could only watch in horror as the thing cracked against Sulu's head. "Holy--!!" he said, running forward to catch Sulu so that he didn't further injure himself by knocking himself over any furniture, the decanter hitting the ground with a loud thud.

"Oh my god," Ianto said, panicking a little bit, "Sulu, say something! Are you..." And then he noticed the blood, starting to flow out of Sulu's hairline, down his left cheek and down his neck, warm and thick and really quite steady. "Oh, Christ," Ianto said, emphatically. Immediately, he put an arm around Sulu's shoulders, and half-guided, half-dragged him to the bathroom, kicking Sulu's suitcase in ahead of them before slamming and locking the door behind him. Without a moment's hesitation, Ianto manhandled Sulu to the toilet, pushing him down to sit on the lid before grabbing a hand towel and pressing it to the side of Sulu's head. God, it was bleeding so much, Ianto's hands shook as he held the towel there.

"Sulu..." he said, trying to think of what he should be doing in these circumstances. "Talk to me," he said, finally. "Tell me how bad this is. Tell--tell me anything. Here, uhm. State your full name and rank." That had to show that he was alright, right? Just please, be alright, he chanted to himself. Hopefully Sulu would know if he was really very injured or not. He was a military guy, after all. Hopefully he'd been injured like this enough before to tell Ianto whether he was going to be alright, or whether Ianto needed to be really concerned there, even more than he was at that moment. That is, if he could answer--not being able to would be a bad sign. Shit. All thoughts of the ghost were momentarily forgotten as Ianto hung on to any sort of response he got out of the other man.

Part of Sulu's mind went blank after the decanter cracked him on the head, a painful fuzziness making anything he registered that much less recognizable or understandable. He was aware of Ianto's arm around him and that he was being guided, surprisingly unhindered, but where and why was kind of a mystery. Ianto had asked him, some thirty seconds ago (thirty seconds that felt more like five), to say something, and so he opened his mouth as he was sat down. He tasted blood and became aware of the fact that he was bleeding.

Ianto's voice was underwater, just like everything else was, and laced with a dull ringing. Sulu found himself struggling to figure out what he'd been saying just then. And when he did, he tried to piece it together - why the hell was his name and rank important? - and then.

Right. Blunt force trauma - laceration to the temple, ghosts, yeah, this was going to be a concussion and McCoy was really going to let him have it.

"Breathe," he said to Ianto, hearing his voice and acknowledging the slur there, "It'll be okay."

Ianto really thought that it was easier said than done, breathing and calming himself down. Sulu didn't see how much blood there was there, he probably wasn't listening to his voice to hear how out of it he sounded, how his eyes were slightly unfocused and he looked just about as far from 'okay' as Ianto had ever seen him look. And Sulu had avoided his question.

"Just humor me, god damn it," Ianto said, his hand pressed firmly to the towel against Sulu's temple, bracing it with his other hand on the opposite cheek. "Your name and rank. Or... Or my name. What you ate for dinner tonight. Anything. Please." If Sulu started having memory issues, then their situation was going to get that much worse. Symptoms of head injuries took a moment to really kick in, Ianto knew, and if Sulu was going to pass out on him or god knows, something worse, he wanted to be more prepared for that than he was at that moment, standing over him, absolutely panicking because now that the ghost was capable of hurting them, everything was so much worse than before.

Ianto realized he was panicking, but he couldn't help it. The fact that he was holding a towel to a head wound caused by the throwing of a heavy object by something they couldn't even see that had developed some sort of sick attachment to him had him more than a little spooked. "Christ. I should have seen this coming. I should have recognized that things would just get worse. We should never have come back here tonight, what the hell was I even thinking..." he rambled, trying to keep himself from hyperventilating, because that really wouldn't help them now.

Sulu was surprisingly okay with this whole situation. Sure, he was almost naked, bleeding from the head, concussed and very likely on the verge of blacking out again, but. Well, he couldn't think what was good about this whole thing, but he knew there was some upside that he was missing at the moment. He'd get there.

He closed his eyes, because the light in the bathroom stung, he didn't want to get blood in them, and he felt too loopy and nauseated to keep trying to focus them. "I couldn't pronounce it," he slurred, referring to dinner, "Remember?" It had been in French, or some other language that Sulu had never bothered to study. He knew he was answering the questions Ianto didn't care about, so he groaned and reached up, putting his hand over Ianto's and pressing down against the wound because man, his head was killing him. And then the stinging from his arm registered, and he hissed and dropped it back into his lap.

"Look. Look, it's. It's okay. I'm Hikaru Sulu, you're Ianto Jones, and it's. It's." Ugh, he was really going to throw up. No, no, he was better than that. "It's all right. You couldn't have guessed. And 'm not good with... paranormal. Things. Ugh." Clearly, Sulu didn't get concussions often enough to be ready for any of this. "...Ghost. Right. Where'd it go?"

"It's okay, I've got it," Ianto said, in response to Sulu's trying to help him apply pressure to the bleeding. He noticed the hissing at the movement of Sulu's arm and he moved to take a closer look at his's shoulder, where there was a red mark forming. "What..." He kept the pressure on Sulu's head, moving to look closer at the mark on Sulu's shoulder. Were those...teeth? "Did... Did it bite you?" he asked Sulu, unable to keep the horror of that fact out of his voice.

He also noticed Sulu's eyes shutting, and just how generally not good he looked in that moment, and Ianto brought a corner of the towel up to wipe his forehead lightly, trying to get some of the blood away from where it was getting rather close to his eyes. "It's... It's still out there, I think. I. It doesn't seem to like coming in here that much, so. I figured that this would be the best place to go." He didn't say that it was probably the best place for them to be, with how injured Sulu was and how horrible he must be feeling, because really, Sulu was already aware of that side of things.

"Just..." Ianto said, thinking furiously, "take it easy. Don't move too quickly. I... I haven't seen it yet, but you've got a pretty nasty gash here, and I'd honestly be surprised if you didn't at least have a stage I concussion..." Ianto knew far too much about concussions for someone who wasn't even formally trained in first aid. He winced, feeling for Sulu. He'd been in this position before, the concussion bit at least, and he didn't envy the other man in the slightest.

Sulu groaned at the word "bite," opening his eyes to try and twist his head to get a better look - that was not a good move, as everything around blurred and wavered as his eyes tried too hard to focus on everything at once. "...Yeah," he said weakly, after a moment, "It bit me." He didn't really need to see the wound to know it - he'd been bitten by animals before, he knew what it felt like.

He was working on holding back from vomiting as much as possible, more than worrying about the bite; he didn't want to move himself from the toilet, and he didn't want to puke with Ianto right there, and most importantly, he just plain didn't want to puke. He wasn't sure his own tenacity and stubbornness would be much use here, but damned if he wasn't going to try.

"Definitely a concussion," he said, trying to force the slurry quality out of his voice, to sound better so Ianto wouldn't panic so much. "Ugh. Didn't even do anything..."

Ianto looked at the bite mark. The way the bruise was starting to form, you were definitely able to see teeth marks in the redness. ...human teeth. It looked human. Ianto shivered, really not liking that anything about that thing was even remotely human. "I... I'll wash that off in a moment. I just. I. I have to keep pressure on this... You're... You're kind of really bleeding," he said, stating the obvious. God, he really wished that there were some sort of first aid kit in there. He wasn't sure if ghost bites did anything to a person, but being able to put some antiseptic on it would definitely make him feel better about it.

Ianto didn't know whether it was his imagination, or whether Sulu was starting to actually look a little green around the edges, metaphorically speaking. He continued to watch the other man closely, trying to prepare himself for anything, really. He understood head wounds, and he knew how quickly they could go from bad to worse.

"I know you didn't," Ianto said softly, glancing at the door and beyond to where the ghost was mercifully leaving them be for the moment, before back at Sulu. "I... I'm sorry. Sorry that it seems to have developed some sort of obsession with me, and that it's taking it out on you. I... I think it didn't like that you appeared to have raised your voice to me. That's... That's why it threw the crystal at you..."

"Okay." That's all Sulu could say about the bite, unable to process the fact that he'd honestly been bitten by some kind of ghost. He didn't want to think about anything at the moment, because he was sure that if he did, his head would explode. God, it hurt!

He didn't want this thing to have taken an interest in Ianto. He didn't want it anywhere near Ianto; Ianto wasn't available, Ianto was with Sulu - okay, or Jack, but right now, he was with Sulu and Sulu did not want to share with some demonic presence that had just decided it thought Ianto looked pretty or had a nice aura or some crap like that. He winced a little, his irritation building a nice little throb in his head. He hated that it had made him upset enough that he'd yelled at Ianto, because even though he hadn't been mad, in any way, at the other man - it had sounded like that.

"Sorry about that," he mumbled, keeping his eyes closed, "I. Was just angry at - not at you. I didn't mean to..." He didn't know what felt worse - the fact that he had yelled at Ianto, or the fact that the ghost had felt like it needed to defend Ianto from him.

After a moment, he grimaced and said in a tight voice, "I think I need to throw up."

Ianto shrugged, waving it off. He really wasn't upset about Sulu raising his voice to him at all. He'd been frightened, Ianto really hadn't been able to help when the other man clear needed it, so. Of course he'd lashed out, it was only natural. "Don't worry about it," Ianto said gently. "I know you didn't mean to. It's alright, really. I just... I wish..." Well, even if the ghost had recognized that Sulu wasn't mad at Ianto, he'd still be mad at the ghost itself, so he wasn't sure that knowing Sulu hadn't mean him any harm would have done much good at all. After all, he'd've still been lashing out at something personal to the ghost, whatever that meant.

At Sulu's next words, though, Ianto froze. Crap. "Oh," he said, helpfully. "God. I, uh... Here," he said, stepping forward to help the other man up from where he was seated on the toilet, quickly flipping the lid up. He wasn't sure how much help Sulu needed otherwise, or how much help he was willing to accept, but he stayed very close by, should Sulu even look like he was asking for anything. He didn't know what to do about the head wound; the bleeding wouldn't have stopped yet, even if it might've been slowing. He just knew that Sulu'd probably appreciate it if he removed his hands from his face area, if he really was going to throw up, so he carefully removed his hand and the towel from the side of Sulu's head.

"Do... Do you need me to...?" he asked, leaving the question open ended, because he really didn't know what Sulu might need him to do, he just wanted to be able to do whatever he could. Sulu'd had to put up with him being ill because of that virus, and when they'd been kids that other time, so. He wanted to return the favor, but even more so, he wanted to feel useful, even in the slightest bit, and not as helpless as he had out in the parlor a minute ago.

Edited 2010-10-07 05:28 (UTC)

If Ianto had said that he was something personal to the ghost, he would have probably triggered an attempt at bravado that would have certainly made Sulu's situation even worse. As it stood, though, Sulu was simply aware of the fact that Ianto was helping him up, that he himself was grabbing his towel with his injured arm - he was still coherent enough to recognize the necessity of it - and that he was definitely going to throw up.

Ianto's open ended question went unanswered, as Sulu's knees immediately buckled and he found himself retching painfully into the toilet. He kneeled there miserably for a few moments once he was through, eyes closed and blood once again dripping all over his face, and after a dry heave or two, he finally croaked, "C-Could you..." There were all sorts of things Sulu wanted in that moment, the most obvious being that he didn't want to be sick any more, but he settled on, "Could you get me some water? ...And the towel," he added as an afterthought, because he needed to keep pressure to the wound on his head. He was thankful Ianto had pulled away, but he still knew he was going to lose way too much blood this way.

Ianto stood back as Sulu went down, wincing at the sounds of it all, knowing that throwing up with a head injury was just about one of the worse feelings ever. He wished that there was something to do, wished that he even knew if it was okay to run a comforting hand over Sulu's back while he was being ill into the toilet, but he didn't know. He had absolutely no idea. They were, well. They were very close, especially since that night a few days ago, but there were still thing he didn't know, and right now, he really didn't want to be making Sulu feel any worse. He did watch for any signs of the other man passing out, though, because that's all they needed, for the head injury to get worse because Ianto wasn't observant enough and Sulu ended up cracking it on something again.

At Sulu's request, Ianto hurried into action. "Yeah, sure," he said, standing quickly and moving to the sink to grab one of the hotel glasses, filling it with cold water before going back to Sulu. He handed the other man the glass, making sure he had a firm grip on it before putting the towel back over the cut, pressing down again. God. Sulu looked... He looked a mess, blood running down his face, down his chest. Ianto wanted to get a fresh towel and try to clean some of it off of him, but he'd wait until Sulu's stomach had settled a little more for that. Until he'd gotten this bleeding a bit more under control.

"Don't... Just sip it," Ianto said, aware that Sulu probably knew that anyway, but saying it made him feel better. "If you swallow too much too fast, it's just going to make things worse again." Ianto looked around, wishing that there was some sort of medicine he could give, some sort of remedy to help Sulu feel a little better, but unless Sulu had anything in his suitcase, they were really out of luck. He took the corner of the towel again, and once more used it to wipe the blood away from Sulu's eyes. Some paradise vacation this turned out to be, he thought glumly.

Sulu reached up and flushed the toilet, leaning back slowly so that he wouldn't slip and fall - or, more likely, black out from the vertigo and fall. He kept his eyes closed, barely opening them when he felt the glass being pressed into his hand, and then felt Ianto's hand against his head again. He did exactly what Ianto said, sipping at the water slowly. "Uugh."

He hated feeling covered in blood; he also hated being stuck in a towel, that he was concussed, that a ghost was terrorizing them on their damn vacation and that it had taken a weird liking to Ianto, one that Sulu did not appreciate. He wondered why he was focusing so much on that aspect, and why he was taking it so damned personally, but he decided that now probably wasn't the time to question himself.

"I'm - I'm sorry," he said after a few minutes, hoarse but not quite so slurred now. "I didn't mean..." To ruin what had been a relatively okay vacation? Yeah, right. "...I-If you hand me a towel, I can... I can clean myself up. We can... think of a way out of this."

"Oh, no," Ianto said, awkwardly. "Really. Really, don't be sorry. It's not your fault. None of this is your fault, and I certainly don't blame you for any of it." He looked around the bathroom again, as if searching for some sort of answer on what to do, but finding nothing, he turned back to Sulu. "Here," he said, moving to put the hand that wasn't pressed against Sulu's head on his shoulder, "let's. Sit back, the tub's right behind you, just lean back against that," he said, helping him to do exactly that. He wasn't sure if Sulu needed the help, as it was, but he felt better doing it.

"Alright, if... If you can hold this here by yourself for a few seconds," Ianto said, indicating the towel pressed to his temple, "I can get you another towel to clean up, alright? But you're going to have to press firmly. I... I really shouldn't have let go, earlier, we shouldn't ease up on the pressure if at all possible. But," Ianto said, continuing, trying to speak as directly as possible, going step-by-step, "if you can get cleaned up, I've got your suitcase in here. You... You could put some clothes on, and hopefully... We'll think of something. There has to be some way out of this room, alright? So, here," he said, moving Sulu's hand to the towel. "Hold this, and... And I'll get you that towel, alright?"

Sulu let Ianto help him - while he could have probably sat back on his own, he didn't want to take any chances. Raising his arm with a hiss as he stretched the bruising bite mark, he pressed the towel firmly against the side of his head. He knew that he needed to keep pressure, so that the wound wouldn't bleed so much and he wouldn't suffer anything more than a headache and a concussion.

As Ianto moved, Sulu found his eyes opening just enough to make him out - it was a good sign that everything was recognizable, if still a little blurry. He was reassured by it, and allowed himself to start formulating a plan. "I'll... Yeah, I could use some clothes, but then. We have to get out of the room," he said quietly, "Because it could come in here, and it clearly doesn't like me much." And, frankly, he didn't want to get clocked again.

Ianto grabbed a towel from the sink, and another hand towel, turning on the sink to soak the smaller towel in it. He paused as Sulu mentioned the fact that the ghost could come in the bathroom with them. Honestly, he was a little wary as to why it hadn't followed them in, but he wasn't going to question it. This was more than welcome, this moment of reprieve for them. He shook himself out of it, wringing out the towel slightly before bringing both of them over to Sulu. "Here," he said, laying the dry towel on the floor next to him and handing the wet one to Sulu's free hand. He moved to put his hand back on Sulu's temple, giving Sulu free range of his other hand back.

"...I'm not going to let it do anything else," Ianto said, quietly, but fiercely. "If I have any say in the matter, that thing isn't going to go anywhere near you again." The fact that Sulu was injured was bringing out a side of Ianto that rarely made an appearance outside of Torchwood business, and he wasn't sure how he felt about that, but there was very little he himself could do to stop it. "All... All we have to do is get the door open, somehow. I don't think it'll be able to follow us out, once we've gotten that unlocked."

Ianto's promise did wonders to help Sulu focus himself. He'd had people defend him before - it came with being part of a team, where you had to depend on others to help you in times of need - but with Ianto, it was different. It wasn't a camaraderie that made either of them protective of the other, but a more personal desire to protect what was, well. Theirs, so to speak.

Once he was more coherent, Sulu would probably be embarrassed that Ianto had gotten so fierce over his well-being, but for now, Sulu could only be grateful for it, using it to draw strength for himself. "I hope, uh. I hope it doesn't." He wasn't sure he could handle it if the thing followed them.

Slowly, Sulu took the wet towel, using his now free hand to try and wipe off his face a bit. He needed to clean off, get dressed and get them out. He could do that. He and a few ensigns had escaped the hostile planet full of space bears, after all...

"If we could distract it, maybe... or just, convince it to open the door? Could we do that?"

Ianto sighed, shifting his hand to get a better grip on the towel on Sulu's head. "I... I really don't know. I mean, it's not exactly listening to us. The only reactions we're getting out of it are probably based on emotion, and I'm not exactly sure how it would interpret us pleading with it, in all honesty. I mean, we could try, but. Somehow I think it's really beyond reasoning with."

He shifted to sit on the floor beside Sulu, instead of kneeling beside him and tried to think of other situations where he'd been trapped. How had he gotten out then? But that led to a dead end, because every time, someone had come and rescued him, and that someone was, more often than not, Jack, who really wasn't going to be of any help to them this time around.

"The problem is that the door isn't going to unlock. I could try picking it, but I don't really think that that'd do anything that the key hasn't done already. We'd almost have a better chance of just breaking the damned thing down than of actually getting it open," he said, frustratedly.

Sulu wiped the blood from his hairline, frowning to himself as Ianto spoke. All he could really think of was how horribly his head hurt and how much he took a team of ensigns for granted. They could use some backup right now. They could use an excorsism right now, actually - or a Ghostbuster. He wondered if Ianto had seen that movie; he had, for better or for worse, as part of a class on 21st century movies. Ah, electives.

Groaning a bit, Sulu forced himself to focus as best as possible as he could on the situation. He was fairly sure that his concussion was a lot worse than he'd originally thought, but for right now, he'd have to work through the haze and distraction.

"Break down the door?" he asked finally, frowning and moving to wipe off his chest, the blood smearing more than wiping away. "...Could do that," he said after a moment of contemplation, tilting his head in thought - careful, though, to tilt it towards Ianto's hand and the towel. "Plenty of heavy things in the room."

Ianto winced as he watched Sulu trying and failing to get the blood off. He wanted to help, but he wasn't sure how that would be taken. Ianto himself certainly didn't have get his pride hurt when he accepted help that he needed, but. Sulu was different, more like Jack than him on this sort of thing, and he didn't want to be stepping on any toes. He'd give him a bit more of a try, and then step in.

If there weren't a ghost outside their door, and the matter of being locked inside the room, Ianto might even have suggested another shower to help him clean all the blood off, but. Besides the ghost, there was the matter of Sulu's head, and just how bad things were there. He could tell that the other man was still disoriented, and the blood soaking into the towel was proof that they hadn't stopped that from happening yet. Was he going to need stitches? Well, hopefully not, because knowing this community, things would just be fixed when they reverted. Which had to be soon, right? They were running out of clothes, after all. Anyway, they probably didn't use stitches when Sulu lived, even so.

"...you mean actually try and break down the door?" Ianto asked, raising an eyebrow. "With what, the settee? That thing must weigh a ton. I really don't think I could maneuver it by myself, and you're certainly in no condition to be lifting sofas about, you know," he said softly. He hoped he didn't sound as worried about him as he felt, although he wasn't sure he could keep all of that out of his voice. Sulu did seem to be in a pretty bad way. Maybe it's just because Ianto had no sort of formal medical training that he was that concerned, but things didn't look very good from his standpoint, bleeding or concussion-wise.

Sulu was too distracted by the thought of getting away from the ghostly menace in the other room to notice just how poor a job he was doing with this whole blood thing. His mind was only able to focus on one thing, and at this point, Sulu couldn't care less if he was bloodstained and delirious; all he cared about was getting out of the room.

Ianto's comment stung a bit, even with the clear worry in his tone. He didn't want to be the one who was stuck being useless. He hated being useless. Everything could be solved with just the right, decisive action and when he was trapped he never, ever trusted anyone else to perform that action. It was his job - it had been his job with the ensigns, trapped on a hostile, inhospitable planet with monsters outside the door, it had been his job when defending Spock from Nero's ship, it had been, it had been -

Sulu heaved a sigh, suddenly aware that he was breathing a bit hard, and looked away from Ianto, eyes taking in the bright white tile despite the fact that it hurt to look at for too long. "...Just wish it would stay the hell away from you," he finally said, "I don't care what it throws at me, I just don't want it near you."

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