Drifting
He can sense when she's near to him.
She's muffled, as if he is hearing her through a wall, but he can tell. The drugs are strong enough to keep him unconscious, but his connection to her is so strong that he knows when she's close by, worrying over him, taking care of him. Loving him.
It's ironic, he thinks, as he drifts in the haze of sedatives keeping him – keeping them – safe from Whispers. To be so close to the woman he loves and to not be able to touch her, to show her how much he she means to him. He knows she knows, but he wishes he could show her.
He can sense the others, too, but they are quieter, unintelligible unless he focuses on them, but that's hard to do with the medication keeping him asleep. He drifts between them aimlessly when Riley isn't around, gleaning impressions, mostly, emotions, not much else. He brushes against Sun in her cell (loneliness, rage), visits Capheus as he drives people to the city in the Van Damn (joy, mostly, sometimes worry for his mother, sometimes fear). He always seems to find Lito (suppressed lust) when he and Hernando are together (time difference? He doesn't know where they are, doesn't want to know). Wolfgang (self-loathing) and Kala (analytic, always thinking) are harder, both of them keeping their emotions close to the vest . Nomi seems to notice when he visits, sometimes reaching back across their connection to try and talk to him, but all he gets is a vague sense of happy-to-see-you and a noise like mice scrabbling in the walls when she tries to say something. He never holds on to any one of them for too long, lest Whispers choose that moment to drop in and try to pry from Will where they are in the world.
Except Riley.
He is drawn to her, has been from the first moment he saw her, through the window of his police car while his partner talked about... something (he's not sure what, had been too distracted by her visit at the time to pay attention). They had grown closer each time one visited the other, the bond between them somehow different than between them and the others. And he had heard her voice on the phone, the same as in the visits, yet different, tinny through the digital line and the distance between them. But it had been her and she was real, and he had wanted all the more to meet her in person (if it's like this now, what will it be like when we meet?).
And then first time they had met, truly met, physically, she had been sedated and trapped in her own mind, and he had hesitated only briefly before extending a hand to caress her face (so familiar to him already, so dear to him). And in that moment of contact (his hand in her hair, fingertips tangling in the strands), he had been her and she had been him and he knew she could sense him, knew he was there, and knew he was never going to let anything happen to her. And while they all loved her, had all helped to save her, he had been the vessel, the one they all acted through. He'd done it for all of them, but he did it for her.
He's still doing it for her. He will never stop. He will always protect her.
She moves away, and he sighs as her presence withdraws. But she is back soon, smoothing the hair back from his forehead, planting a kiss there, another on his lips. He can't really respond as he wants to, but the surge of love/affection/understanding he gets through their bond is enough to tell him that he managed to broadcast just enough for her to know he is still here, still waiting for their Cluster to be whole again.
He feels the pinch and burn in his arm that tells him she's dosing him again, followed by a wave of love/guilt/sorrow for having to put him back under. He understands. They can't be too safe.
As the medicine takes hold, he drifts away again.