His hands felt like ice against her hot skin. She felt like she couldn't catch her breath each time his hand would brush against her, and she became aware of how badly she wanted him to just press his hand against her cheek or arm or chest and leave it there. How badly she wanted that cold to leech into her. His voice was smooth and soft, it reminded her of the snow that would fall each winter where she grew up.
But his hands kept moving. First on her throat; then they were placed gingerly on her chest, feeling her heartbeat. Then she felt one of his hands slide down her arm to gently touch her wrist, his fingers pressing against it and sending a delicious tingle up her spine.
She moaned under his ministrations.
He just sighed, his hand moving back to rest lightly against her forehead. His voice, cool and soft, came from miles away as he spoke again.
"You're sick." There was a brief pause, as if he was waiting on her to speak or respond and he sighed again. "You're very sick. You're running a dangerously high fever; your heartbeat and pulse are high. I haven't taken your blood pressure, but I don't need to- I know it's going to be high as well. You should have told me as soon as you realized you were getting sick."
"You take such care of me, I'm going to marry you someday…" she said slowly, almost as if she was forcing the words out, as she rolled her head to push against his hand. Stein sat motionless for a second, her words resounding in his mind. She could feel the heat from her skin leeching into his and ruining the wonderful clinical coldness of his touch. Tears pricked at her eyes as silence seemed to stretch on for weeks.
Suddenly his face was close to hers and she met his gaze with a bit of a laugh; his lips were moving but she couldn't quite make out what he had just said.
Then he was gone, his hand slipping from her forehead and the wind from his passage breezing against the sweat that dotted the death scythe's face. She sighed and struggled against the blankets, finally succeeding in pushing them off of herself and into the fire that was roasting her from under her bed. She lay there panting and staring up at ceiling for what seemed like years before he came back. To her sorrow he pulled a blanket back up and over her, leaving just her left arm exposed to the deliciously cold air.
She couldn't help but giggle. His normally stern or disinterested look was replaced by one of concern as he sat beside her bed, a syringe in hand. It was different than his other needles though- it was shaped like a teddy bear and bright pink.
"This should bring down your fever."
She screamed and jerked upright the instant it touched her skin, the bear's teeth latching into her arm and sawing as it chewed; the skin tore and blood flowed down her arm as she struggled against him, jerking violently. His hands latched onto her shoulders and pushed her backwards onto the bed; his voice, which had been smooth and soft, rose into an ear piercing shriek as he called her name.
The arm that crossed her chest and pinned her to the bed felt like a steel bar. She strained against it, flinging her head from side to side as she scrabbled at it with her free arm. His other hand caught her chin and forced her to look at him.
His voice drawled into a mockery of slow motion, her name drawn out into so many syllables she didn't recognize it. It echoed oddly in her mind, almost familiar yet utterly terrifying. His face morphed into a demon's; his eyes were pinpoints of light and his teeth were razor sharp.
Her heart was beating so fast that she thought it was going to burst out of her chest. She squeezed her eye shut, praying that when she opened it again he'd be gone. A long moment passed where she didn't breathe, her heart thudding against her chest, before she opened her eye again.
Stein's face was still in front of hers, his green eyes staring at her in concern. His voice was muffled as if she had cotton in her ears, "Death, Marie. I'm the one that's supposed to lose it, not you. You can't let yourself get this sick again."
She sniffled, apologies in her throat but not making it to her lips, and looked over his shoulder and towards the ground where the offending syringe had fallen in their struggles. It was a normal syringe; the only thing even remotely pink about it was the small amount of blood that was now on it.
There was pain in her arm, and she hazarded a glance down at it. His hand was covering it, and she could see her blood smeared on his fingertips. Her world twisted and she closed her eye again, everything seeming to fall away from her and she screamed as she plummeted, her hands grabbing at his arms as she fell and the world went black.
She screamed until she felt herself jerk to a sudden stop, something wrapped tightly around her back, her chest and face pressed against something solid and firm; something real. She trembled, tears falling from her eye as she curled up against whatever it was that was anchoring her.
She sobbed, certain that if she let go of whatever she was clinging to she would fall to a bloody death, dashed apart on the rocks that she could see below her with the tattered remnants of her bed. The wind made an odd hushing sound as it whistled against whatever she was holding tight to; she was too afraid to open her eye and see.
Stein held the trembling death scythe close to him as her screaming subsided and sighed. He had done everything he could already to bring her fever down- she would simply have to ride it out. Eventually she relaxed her death grip on him and he lowered her back into the bed, readjusting the cooling blanket he had on her. She was already asleep.
Marie's fever raged for the next two days, Stein barely keeping it at a manageable level. He knew that he was doing everything he could for her, but something that he didn't quite understand was still upset and angry about the lack of results.
She would wake him at odd hours screaming about the fire under her bed, throwing the cooling blanket off of herself and resisting his attempts to put it back on her. At other times she would dart past him, her hair billowing behind her as she ran from something that only she could see, deep in the delirium of her fever.
He had to restrain her on the second day because of it.
At the end of the third day, though, her fever finally broke and Stein breathed a sigh of relief. She lay complacently in bed, sleeping for the most part, though she ate the small amounts of food he brought to her for the next two days. He placed an IV now that she was calm enough to help her sleep- and it also served as a convenient entrance site for the medications that he had never stopped giving her.
It took nearly a week for him to finally deem her over the illness.
She was still weak, and didn't remember much of the first few days that it had been necessary for him to take care of her. He didn't push- he wasn't entirely certain that he wanted her to remember her proclamation.
What bothered him though, was that he wasn't quite certain that he didn't want her to. What had Marie Mjolnir done to the barrier that he had put up, the barrier that kept his emotions carefully locked away and from interfering with his experiments?
He sat beside her bed, a laptop balanced on his knees as his left hand scrolled down through the study that he was reading. Reading was too strong of a word- the scientist was staring blankly at the webpage, his mind desperately trying to analyze his actions.
When Spirit had become ill and threatened to disrupt his experiments he had taken the teen to the hospital and foisted him off on them. Why should Marie be any different? Granted, he was older and wiser, but his experiments had only become more involved and less tolerable of interruption.
The woman was asleep in the bed, lying on her right side to face him. She had rolled after she had fallen asleep, and Stein wondered if it was her subconscious causing her to face him. Looking down at his right hand and suddenly realizing that his fingers were interlinked with hers, both her hands wrapped around his, he wondered if his own were working against him as well.
Cautiously he moved his left hand and brought it to the screw in his head, giving it a crank.
The confusion that he felt didn't change.
A/N: I believe that I shall flush this out, yes. And yes, I know. Lia! You have so many chapter fics going already, why are you starting something else?!
Simply put… when something demands to be written, I have to let it out. If I don't, I won't get anything other than it written. I'll try to update some other things soon. Take the poll in my profile, please.
I don't own Soul Eater. The picture was done by the talented DracRaz from deviantart :3