A/N: Happy holidays, everyone! I can't seem to stop writing lately. It must be all the candy I've been eating. I hope you enjoy, especially all biology lovers :)
She is the heart of the operation, of the Group, of the man who stood with her and built it from nothing. She is the heart and she is pumping her all into everything, pumping all she has out of herself.
He's been feeding her more and more blue blood lately, and like a sponge too close to the mess, she has no choice but to absorb it, let it soak into her skin and get pulled in by her veins, let it carry into her heart too big.
He knows what it's doing to her. He knows she can't keep up with it forever. But he just takes and takes and takes all the oxygen from their shared air and breathes it in (quickly, so quickly). Adrenaline rushes through him at the prospect of danger he can't ignore and his heart rate speeds up so, so fast. And he's just pumping blue blood, blue blood all into her. And like a dialysis machine, she filters out all that he can't, all the mess he leavss behind, all the guilt and regret and misery, before pumping red back into him, pumping healthy red blood so, so full of the saccharine sweet molecules that energise his body, the saccharine sweetness of her empathy, her bottomless capacity for forgiveness, her loyalty, into his body. He couldn't live without her, without what she does for him every day and so much more on days like these (he didn't mean to get drawn so deep, didn't mean to end up in a mine with people who couldn't be trusted, with methane building up and making it so hard to breathe), on days when his adrenaline spikes high and he pumps too quickly, and she has to work so hard to keep up with it all.
She is his heart. And breathing would be meaningless without her. It'd be meaningless because oxygen could never get into his arteries without her. It wouldn't get to his suffocating cells. It just wouldn't happen without her.
She is the heart of the group, too. She takes its blue blood, its bills and financial mess and lawsuits against its namesake and everyone's, everyone's problems (where's an HR department when you need one?), and makes it red, gives it so much of her oxygen that it drains her, cold hands and feet, shaky, shaky body. She filters for it, too. She takes the negativity, takes the numbers in red, and makes them black again, takes the disgruntled employees and makes them pleased to work there (with her, never ever him), takes the problems he creates (why, oh why, does he choose to be so stupid, gambling with criminals as if he's a nobody, when he can be exploited for his talents so, so easily) and makes them disappear. She pours in all of her optimism, all her happiness, makes blue blood into red, makes sick blood so pure again.
She is so, so tired. When everything he does puts him in more danger, the company under more stress, how the hell did it end up her responsibility to fix it all, to fix it all when the processes drain her so? She is so, so tired. Her body is wasting from this poor circulation. She is so damn cold. She is so deficient in oxygen, what even is the point in breathing? She is so, so tired. She needs her happiness and optimism and empathy and forgiving nature. But it's as wasted as she is. She is so, so damn tired. And she can't keep up this constant pumping, can't keep filtering and cleansing and destroying herself in the process.
But, sometimes, just once in a blue moon, he'll do it for her, even breathe for her. On days like these, when her exhaustion is clear to him. He'll let her own his body as they hold each other, sway together (he's holding her up, won't let her fall). He'll tell her words that put saccharine sweetness back into her blood ("Thank you for cleaning up my mess, Gillian"), pump the red blood she'd given to him back into her, pull out the poison (he knows he deserves it anyway). He'll let her be okay again, let her recover. He's going to need her later, but she needs him now. So for a minute, he'll be her heart, he'll beat for her when she's to tired to do it herself. He'll breathe for her, so her blood can be red again (she's so tired of the blue, so so tired). And it can be enough. Enough to refresh her, so she can go back to saving him when he needs it, go back to being there for him because no one else is enough.
"No more blue blood. I can't pump it anymore," she tells him.
"You're out of your tree," he replies.
No, no she's not. The only thing she's intoxicated on is his touch, and one movement, one backwards step, could clear her mind further. She's not drunk. He's already filtered the alcohol out of her system with all his other poison.
"No more. Promise me?" she insists.
"Okay, love. I promise," he says.
She takes it as a new beginning (forgives him for what he's made her to do) and for a while, they find symbiosis again. But it's not long until he's pumping blue blood in her direction again, and like a sponge too close to the mess, she has no choice but to take it in (she'd squeeze it back out again, blue and cold, if she didn't feel so loyal to him, if hurting him like that wouldn't break her, too). She knows now, just knows, that someday he'll suck her dry (and she'll be nothing but blue, blue blood).