#anyone who says his drip is dead genuinely has zero fashion sense

[killa-trav]

travis is sooooo

[serendipitouscontaminant]

@intearsaboutrobots asked oh g o s h, how bout forgetting to eat and ray (he's very busy ! doing science !)

This is for Bad Things Happen Bingo. This is my card. 

Bingo square: Forgetting to eat 

Content notes for grief and canon character death. Strangely enough, this is 70% comedy.

____

Guess We’ll Never Know

Ray is doing science.

Normal.

Ray is doing science in silence, literally locked in the lab.

Less normal? That's debatable, apparently. 

Nate is convinced there’s something fishy going on here. Sara agrees. Zari and Mick both say to just leave Ray to do his thing. He’s a scientist, of course he’s going to lock himself in the lab sometimes, it’s not that weird. Nate and Sara counter that, yeah, that might be a stereotypical scientist thing, but it’s not a Ray thing. Ray loves spending time with other people, and he’s gung ho about living healthy, and when he gets really, possibly unhealthily, into something science-related, he usually at least tries to talk someone’s ear off about it.

He’s not the kind of guy who locks himself in his lab for nearly a week when there’s absolutely nothing even vaguely life-threatening going on, other than the Legends all living on the same ship, which might count.

Zari says that they’re being overbearing and they should just let Ray do what he does best, he can take care of himself and she could swear that she’s seen him in the halls a few times, probably going to get food or something.

This leads to the whole team trading Ray sightings and arguing as to whether they’re actually just making things up, right until Nate points out that they’re acting like Ray’s Bigfoot or something, and once you can switch out a conversation about your teammate with a conversation about a cryptid just by changing a single detail, in this case said teammate’s name, there’s a good reason to worry. He has a point, Constantine, who has no dog in this fight and has been playing both sides for a lark, says.

Mick says that this is all stupid, and walks away. Classic Mick.

However, in spite of Mick’s unceremonious exit, it can comfortably be said that at this point all opinions have been swayed towards ‘we should be worried.’

Well, not Constantine’s, because he cannot emphasize enough how he has no dog in this fight. He saves dogs for people he really cares about, and none of the Legends are there yet other than Sara. He quite likes Sara.

In spite of this doglessness, Constantine is the one to check on Ray, mostly because everyone else is debating on how to best check on Ray even though they could always just ask Gideon how he’s doing or go down there with no fanfare, two options that they have helpfully forgotten—much like how they have forgotten to be reasonable or efficient over what should quite frankly be low-stress decisions for a prolonged length of time—in the name of the continuation of the narrative.

Besides, they’re stir crazy without any actual missions. They’ll argue about anything at this point, and since Ray hasn’t been around (a pressing issue), there’s nobody to, say, arrange a catastrophic game night, which would at least get out everyone’s pent up energy.

…This is mostly because, while Constantine is a surprisingly affable and competent board gamer, he wins every game, and Mick is a terrible loser, Sara is a terrible loser, Zari is easily frustrated and also a terrible loser, Ray has the rules to literally every board game in existence memorized word-for-word and will not budge on them, and Nate, for all his ability to remember every single major fire in the United States since its inception, secretly still doesn’t really know how to play Monopoly, and is not above knocking the entire board to the floor to keep anyone from finding out his dark secret, even though fessing up would possibly spare everyone from having to play Monopoly, which would quite frankly be one of those acts of everyday heroism the Huffington Post is always on about.

(Mick knows about Nate’s Monopoly problem, though. How? Unclear. Mick just knows a lot of things. Why does Mick not tell? A mystery.)

Anyway, Constantine goes to see how Dr. Palmer’s getting on, mostly because he, like everyone else on the game nightless ship, is very bored and has nothing better to do. He is also a bit curious. He also feels a vague sense of doom about the whole situation, though that may just be the vague sense of doom he feels roughly one hundred percent of the time.

When he steps into the lab, he finds papers tossed everywhere, three whiteboards (well, ‘whiteboards’ is a little generous for what are more large plexiglass rectangles covered in scribbles, but that is not an issue at the front of John’s mind), and no less than thirteen empty cans of a drink called ‘Monster’.

He takes a step inside the lab (a can of Monster crunching underfoot), meaning to make his presence known to Ray, who currently has his back to him and is writing some equation on a fourth and comically large high fashion not whiteboard. (Too long, John has better things to do than think all those words over something so stupid.)

John is not sure when exactly this whiteboard was created or whether it did in fact exist before Ray went into this fit, because it really is excessively enormous, given that Ray is standing on a stool to scrawl mumbo jumbo on it, and Ray is six foot three.

“Hello, Dr. Palmer,” John says genially, only not fazed by this situation due to the fact that he consistently deals with different, more life-and-limb-threatening situations that border on the absurd, or catapult over the border and into the wide field of ‘what in the bloody fucking world is even happening, look like you know what you’re doing, John, you fear nothing’. He gauges that to be genuinely fazed, the cans of Monster would have to become actual small monsters.

Ray jumps and yet somehow doesn’t fall from his perch, even when he twists around to look at John, though he does sway dangerously, and John steps forward experimentally, wondering exactly how squished he will get if he tries to catch Dr. Palmer once the man inevitably loses his battle with gravity.

Ray’s hair is mussed and unwashed, his fetching chin is covered in stubble, his clothes are several days old, he’s shaking, and his eyes are full of the pure manic energy of a man who does not consistently drink large amounts of caffeine, and yet has made the unfortunate and currently inexplicable decision to replace half his blood with energy drinks.

“Constantine!” he says, voice both welcoming and edgy. His smile is so wide that John can see just about all of his teeth. The smile, paired with the general mad scientist vibe he’s emitting, makes him look like a serial killer, the kind that dresses his victims in fun outfits and then poses them in a whimsical manner while leading the police on a wild goose chase. He will never be brought to justice. “How’s it going?”

“You’ve been here for nearly a week,” John says. “Your friends are both worried and being utterly inconvenient about it.”

“A week,” Ray says, vibrating. “Wow!”

These are the last words he says before his eyes roll into the back of his head, and he falls to the floor.

John is briefly on high alert, given that eyes rolling into the back of the head is not a good sign in his line of work, but he quickly realizes that the good doctor is lying quite still and is happily unpossessed.

Wow indeed.

John wanders over to him to see if he’s just out cold or dead. He is thankfully just out cold, because even John would feel bad if Ray were dead. His gluten free cupcakes really aren’t so bad, and he very much enjoys winning all the games. He never wins against Gary.

Ray’s pulse is impressively fast. “Gideon, dear,” John says, “I think the others may want to see this.”

“Way ahead of you, Mr. Constantine,” Gideon says.

Of course.

It takes a matter of minutes—more than one, but less than five—for the others to rush in. Well, Mick doesn’t rush in so much as amble, brow furrowed in what might be annoyance and might be concern. (It’s both.)

Ray wakes up in under five minutes, which is good. He’s bleary-eyed and rubbing his head, and he’s discombobulated enough that he doesn’t really protest when Nate and Mick bodily drag him out of the lab, though he does give his enormous whiteboard a sad look, as if saying goodbye and promising to come back soon.

John stays behind, surveying the lab. He suspects that whatever happens in the medbay will involve feelings he’s not particularly interested in, so his work here is done.

In the medbay, Ray has finally found his voice again, and his voice isn’t happy about the saline drip he’s getting. He and his miraculously nonexistent concussion would rather take some laps around the ship.

“Actually, Dr. Palmer, I would suggest you eat,” Gideon says.

“Pish posh!” an actual human being named Ray Palmer says with zero irony. “You keep telling me that!”

“Because it keeps being true,” Gideon replies, dry as the toast that Ray could at least have tried to force down the past several mornings.

It turns out that, much like Bigfoot sightings, the Ray sightings were the product of wishful thinking. He really had not existed outside of the lab for all that time except to go to the bathroom. He even had Gideon make him seven six packs of Monster before going in.

And yet no food or water.

When Nate points out that astonishing oversight after hearing that Ray did prepare himself for his science fit, sort of, Ray shrugs sheepishly. “I forgot.”

“You, Mr. Three Square Meals a Day, just straight up forgot?”

“Yeah. There’s...I don’t have another answer, I really did.”

“Okay, so why did you go full absent-minded professor?”

Ray doesn’t answer the question, though a troubled look does flit across his face for about five point two seconds.

Instead, he decides to go back to the food thing.

“I’m not hungry anymore,” Ray says, clearly in a vaguely dreamlike and yet incredibly awake state. “I’ve transcended it.”

There is a beat as the others process the non sequitur and general insanity of that statement, and then chaos as everyone starts talking over each other about how stupid that very thought is, right up until Zari’s voice manages to break through.

“You’ve transcended hunger?” Zari parrots for about the third time. “Ray, take it from someone who knows—you’re just starving.”

“I feel kind of sick, actually,” Ray says in a polite rebuttal. “So there’s that.”

“Raymond, of course you feel sick, you’ve been overworking yourself and living off caffeine,” Nate says, all long-suffering hypocrisy.

“Oh, as if you don’t do the exact same thing, Mr. Do As I Say Not As I Do.”

“Yeah, I’m vetoing that nickname. And seriously, this isn’t really like you.”

“Actually, I was totally like this. I mean, I’ve been totally like this before. I missed work because I was so focused on work.”

“Yeah, but you’ve kind of...grown out of that. Or at least you weren’t like this about it other than when you were all imposter syndrome about your suit. I mean, buddy, I get being obsessed with your work, but you fainted. You’ve been mainlining energy drinks. It’s been six days. Even when you get weird and obsessed, you usually at least interact with...anyone. And energy drinks are like...caffeine and sugar. You somehow think both of those things are bad for you. Also, it’s been six days. This isn’t Ray behavior.”

“Oh, like you really know me,” Ray snaps.

His outburst causes only vague confusion. “...I do really know you, Ray. We all do.  We’re on the same ship and the same team. We have literally met you as a child.”

Ray flounders. “Okay, you might have a point. But I’m just...this is important! I’m brushing up on nuclear physics! I mean, not that I’m not good at nuclear physics, I’m possibly amazing—it’s healthy to recognize your own talents—but I’ve really been leaning on the engineering side lately, not so much the theoretical, and now without...” he trails off and swallows hard. “Without Marty, I’m catching up. There are some questions I never got to ask him and now...” his voice breaks, and he runs a shaking hand through his greasy hair, “I have to figure them out myself.”

Silence settles over the room like a shroud, and Sara, without even thinking, looks over at the corner of the room where no one is, half expecting to see a familiar form sighing in a put upon way and pacing back and forth like a ruffled chicken.

Maybe Stein could’ve talked some sense into Ray.

Sara clears her throat and Nate looks down at the floor and Zari looks up at the ceiling in the way people do when they’re trying not to cry and Mick just stares at nothing because he’s staring at memories instead—he and the professor made a weird amount of memories in this medbay—and Ray swipes at his eyes.  “If he was still alive, I could just use the temporal communicator to ask him, but he’s not, and I never got to ask him, and I don’t know if I’ll ever figure it all out.”

“He had more...time, Ray,” Sara says, and the words sound so ridiculous (he didn’t get enough time, he didn’t) she wants to laugh until she cries and then probably never stop crying, for Martin and Rip and Leonard and Laurel and even Jax, so far away and with half of him dead and gone. She doesn’t do any of that. She soldiers on. “He had more time to get it all figured out, and when you have...more time, so will you.”

And eventually, she absolutely does not say because no one says it, you’ll have even more time than he did, if everything turns out right.

Ray laughs a little. “That implies that I’ll ever be as good at theoretical nuclear physics as Marty.”

“Maybe you won’t be,” Zari chimes in. “But that doesn’t mean you’re not a genius and it doesn’t mean you’ll, what? Let us all down because you’re not him? You’re not him. You’re you.”

“He’s never coming back,” Mick offers in a grumbling undertone from where he’s leaning against the far wall. “You can’t replace dead people, and you suck at trying.”

He meets Ray’s eyes, and Ray remembers that time that they tried. He manages a smile. “I know.”

He sighs heavily and says, “I really went off the rails for a second there, didn’t I?”

Sara shrugs. “Happens to all of us.”

“I should eat,” Ray admits. “I can’t believe I forgot. I mean, I can, but that’s why I have alarms.”

“What happened to those?” Nate asks.

“I think I spilled Monster on my phone.”

“That checks out.” Nate heaves out a sigh. “Okay. Let’s go to the kitchen, big guy. You can go back to bothering us about three square meals again. And water intake.”

Ray agrees, because hydration is very important, no matter what the Ray who’d forgotten that Marty wasn’t actually just a call away seemed to think, and he only sways a little on his feet when he stands up after getting the saline drip out.

Constantine is in the kitchen when the rest of the team traipses in, sprawled on a chair and reading some kind of velvet-bound tome with his feet propped up on one of the other chairs. He looks up at the other Legends and says, “Ah, you’re back, then?”

Ray attempts one of his usual smiles, but it takes more work than usual. “I’m back.”

He wanders to the middle of the kitchen and just kind of stands there while the others wait for him to have a cardiac event or maybe pass out again.

Instead:

“What should I eat?” Ray asks the world at large, waffling. He really is not hungry, and he really does feel kind of sick to his stomach, like one might after drinking eighteen cans of a brand of energy drink he remembered seeing on a billboard in Star City.

“Waffles?” Nate suggests. “It’s breakfast.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, bro. Six days after last time you ate breakfast.”

Ray sighs and murmurs, probably to himself, “I just haven’t been able to figure it out without him.”

Nate and Sara share a look. It’s not a happy look. Trace amounts of the absences on the ship have traveled into every part of it, including the oxygen, and sometimes it hurts just to breathe.

“Grapefruit,” Ray says decisively, distracting everyone from their separate waves of grief for just a moment. “I want grapefruit.”

Very suddenly, everyone realizes that they also kind of want grapefruit, even though none of them can remember the last time they had it. Still, all of them—other than Constantine, who’s feeling a bit odd about the whole vibe in the kitchen right now, from Mick’s surprisingly glossy eyes to the way that Gideon’s already prepared a giant bowl of that infernal fruit even before Zari comes around to ask for it—know exactly where the craving is coming from.

(It’s an attempt to at least calm that empty ache in their stomachs that isn’t hunger, the one for Martin, because grief makes everything revolve around what—who—just isn’t anymore and somehow still is everything, like all of them have become planets orbiting a black hole, only surviving getting sucked in and pulled to pieces by a miracle of metaphorical pseudoscience, or maybe just each other.)

Zari plops the huge bowl of grapefruit halves down on the table, and Ray’s the first to take one. He digs his spoon into the fruit and sighs in pleasure when he takes a bite, clearly coming to the realization that his miraculous lack of hunger paired with queasiness is indeed actually the feeling one gets when starving. He gets through two grapefruits before he slows down at all.

All of them realize, while eating their breakfast, that, objectively, they don’t like grapefruit.

It’s still somehow delicious—though, Mick says critically, his is a little tart.

(They would all be horrified if they knew that somewhere on their Earth lives a woman—one they know and love, even!—who eats her grapefruit with salt, but there’s no one here who can share that particular little anecdote, and so the story goes untold.)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/14898194