A/N: Heyo! This is going to be the first in my collection of little E/C shorts/ficlets/vignettes/whatever you want to call them. I figured it'd be a good thing to start keeping them organized, rather than making a new story every single time. Just to be clear, the highest rating for these will be T, anything M-rated is going to be a separate doc in case anyone just wants to follow my non-M-rated stuff.

As for this piece itself, it's the first I've written in something like two weeks, so I'm very happy and relieved that it exists pffff.

Waking

The voice that rouses Erik from his numb and dreamless state is crystalline. It is clear but he can't quite make out the words as they scatter like rainbows from gemstone facets in the blackened caverns of his skull. It is familiar, but he can't see the form of it, can't trace the cut of it. It hangs onto a very specific thread of memory but he can't call upon it. He tries, he tries, he tries, but his mind feels just as leaden and impossible to move as his limbs. And so he lets them all lay wherever it is they lay, unable to feel whatever cushion is beneath them or if there is one there at all.

He must be dead.

He has a memory, or rather a notion, that there was something to make him think this. Some distant echo of temperatures, of bitterness on his tongue, of rattling aches in his chest. He doesn't detect any of them now. He doesn't detect anything at all, in fact, save that voice and its hand-polished smoothness.

Not only a voice, but a voice in song. The words surround him in breezes of sweet lavender, of honeyed chamomile and warming sage, and he thinks what he is laying on must be a field of wildflowers. The blossoms cradle his head, lift him from the hard soil and pillow his limbs. He has never felt a softer bed, never breathed a sweeter scent, never heard a purer song.

If this is death, then the universe and its machinations are far kinder than he ever gave them credit. An eternity in a blissful blackness, with faint auras of a tender contentedness warming what had already been death-cold skin… It is a soft eternity indeed, an unexpected one. There are worse places to be. Perhaps there is no hell after all, if he of all people can be given the grace to lay his head here. Perhaps it is simply rest. Soothing, blessed rest.

A void, with nothing to echo save the sound of that ever-singing voice in his head.

There is a warmth on his forehead now—does he have a forehead? A warmth where his forehead might be, might have been, and the song becomes a formless susurration. The warmth travels, down along what might have been his cheek, his jaw, his neck. He wants to turn into the melting caress, to kiss whatever it is, to whisper his thanks, but what might have been his muscles don't obey. He is left immobile, but even in that he can't find complaint as the ghosts of fingertips brush what was once his temple. Somehow, in his nonexistent throat, he manages the quietest of purrs.

"Erik?"

His name cuts through the haze like a sunbeam to the forest floor, and he knows that voice now, could recognize its water-clear perfection anywhere. It sends a familiar shiver through him, a renewed sense of calm that blooms in his chest with those same petals of chamomile and buds of lavender. He isn't sure if it is seconds or hours later when he hums a response, trying to urge more, his name again, another song.

He gets neither. In their stead, something frigid replaces the delicate warmth at his temple, shooting shards of ice into the marrow of his bones. He gasps in a breath and all at once, feeling and weight and movement return to his arms and legs. He wishes they hadn't because with them comes an awful, creaking ache in all of his joints. It spreads to just behind his eyes, where a toothy light slips between his eyelids to gnaw through what had just been that wonderful, blanketing darkness.

He shifts and the wildflowers become a just-too-warm bed and the stickiness of fever-licked skin. He hadn't thought his tongue to exist and he should have been grateful because it is coated in gluey film that tastes of sick, of laudanum and some other lingering mélange of medicines that he couldn't possibly identify in his current state. He scrapes it against his teeth, grimacing and flexing his hand against the wrinkled bedsheets at his side.

"Good morning. How do you feel?"

The question is gentle and he can hear the smile in it but he can do nothing but groan in protest to it. He hisses when that wet chill returns and spreads over to his forehead, wiping at raw nerves. It makes his muscles contract and he desperately wishes he could go back to just a moment before, when he couldn't move them at all in his welcome torpor. It feels biting when it moves down to his neck and a scratching sound that was meant to be a word claws out of his throat.

"Maybe it's best you don't speak. Your fever has only just broken." He wants to argue, but he doesn't need to when the chill retreats, replaced by something softer, dry to wipe the remaining trickles of moisture away.

It brings with it a relief and he just manages a sigh, just manages to turn his head to allow the care. It is diligent, loving in its slow strokes, and when his head is turned by dainty fingers and the shock of cold returns on his other cheek, he bears it with only a quick inhale. The warmth is quicker to return this time and another sigh escapes him.

The blankets that anchor him to the bed are adjusted over him. They are pulled up properly over his chest, patted and smoothed down, tucked at his sides. He shifts with it, sinking further into the bed, and he finally gathers the strength to force his eyes open.

The light stabs into his head and he has to squint against it to stop the pulsing at his temples. He blinks, half to adjust and half to clear the blear from his eyes, and he brings a heavy hand up to wipe the grit from them. When they are clear, the sting fading away, he finds himself in a familiar bedroom, lit only by the light that filters through sheer curtains.

Christine sits, haloed by that diffuse light. There is a smile that dimples her cheek, turns her ballet-pink lips up at the corners. Wisps of hair are falling from her pins, stray curls framing her face, and beneath heavy-lidded eyes, he detects the faintest hint of darkened colour. She is almost bedraggled, her shoulders slumped and a rag held loosely against her lap. But even so, she tilts her head, smile widening.

"Two days, before you try to ask," she says, and now he can see the movement of her mouth to accompany her voice. There is more weight in his chest at the sight, but a grounding one, his head sinking deeper into the pillow. Two days? "You woke once or twice, never for long."

"What…" Before he can try to rasp out any further words, she leans forward to squeeze his forearm, cutting him off. Her smile twists just slightly in exasperation, but doesn't disappear.

"You caught a chill." She trails her touch down his arm to his hand, where she wraps her fingers around his, giving another soft squeeze. He closes his eyes, returning the pressure as best he can, allowing the warmth to spread up his arm and into his chest. "I've told you not to go out in the rain so often. I ought to be angrier at you."

Her words carry no heat, only a playful chiding, but he can hear the fatigue behind them. He frowns but she must have seen it because she hums, lifting his hand up. He feels lips against his knuckles, a smooth cheek being pressed to his palm.

"You won't be leaving bed for a week, at least." She says it with a warning promise as she presses his hand firmer to her cheek, as she nuzzles into it, kisses his palm. He shivers, and he isn't sure if it is the minute remnants of his bygone fever or the action. Whichever it is, it makes his muscles go liquid.

When she is sure that he is comfortable, when his pillows have been fluffed and some water has washed the bitterness from his mouth, she sits on her stool, his hand pulled between both of hers. No more words are spoken as the morning light shifts to noon. They are instead relegated to a folk song, something Swedish and hushed, lilting and floating.

He settles into it, sighs between the verses and his suppressed coughing. He allows himself to go boneless, allows that curling voice to cocoon him as he drifts in and out between syllables. He lets his hand go limp in both of hers, so warm and doting as they run fingers over his sore knuckles.

Perhaps he has not quite met eternity, but when he slips back into that dreamless blackness, the glowing presence beside him feels blissful all the same.