Tethered
2008, November. Sunday morning.
Her thumb traces lazy circles around the knuckles of Taylor's hand, absentmindedly modifying their bio-lipstick to be only visible in complete obscurity now that they are going down for breakfast. No need to give Danny a heart attack so early in the morning just after Tay got out of the hospital.
The thought of seeing Taylor's work on her only when she went to sleep sent a pleasant tingle down her spine, making her grip on her girlfriend's hand a little tighter.
Taylor turns slightly and takes a look at her with one eyebrow softly arched, glittering eyes drilling into Amelia's and making her pulse jump all over the place. She leans in and rests her head on her arm, softly rubbing her hair into her shirt until Taylor's hand disentangles with hers, sneaking around her shoulders and using them as support for her arm, shortly after she starts to scratch softly at her scalp, melting any form of coherent thought into a puddle of goo.
They sat close to one another, Taylor still scratching and pampering her. She hears Danny ask what she wants for breakfast and her answer is a simple shrug, more concerned about getting all that she could of the moment before having her shift at the hospital.
A cup of coffee landed in front of her, the aroma rousing her of her scritches-induced coma and making her sit straighter.
She heard Danny mutter something along the lines of 'finally' while looking at them, proceeding then to sit with them while taking a sip out of his own coffee.
"So," he says while putting down his mug, gesturing at the two of them with his free hand, a small smile - and a rare thing indeed - tugging at the corners of his lips in a way that tells he is trying to keep it down without a lot of success. "Did you two sleep well?"
At the same time that he asks that he looks for the first time in the morning directly into Taylor's eyes, jolting slightly while gesturing at his face.
"Um, Taylor, honey, you have something… Are your eyes okay?"
Taylor looks at him, confusion flitting across her face that settles into realization seconds later, her cheeks burning a shade of scarlet Amy loves while her girlfriend looks accusatorily at her.
Amy raises her hands in surrender. "Don't look at me, I forgot you had them like that."
That was a lie. They both knew it.
Taylor snorted and turned to look at Danny. "It was a… Let's call it a cosmetic side effect that came about while Amy was healing my eyes. At least they are a shade that I like, so." She shrugs, while Danny blinks and notices that, indeed, Taylor is looking at him without her glasses.
He looks at Amelia appreciatively, a genuine smile blooming across his face - this time unrestrained. "Well, I'll have to thank you for that Amy. I've always wanted to find some treatment for her eyes but…" He winces, and she understands. The money was already tight without adding costly treatments or expensive parahuman healing on top of the pile.
"It's nothing, really." She smiles at her, once more leaning against Taylor's warmth once she has finished her mug of coffee, a sigh fleeing her lips.
The landline rings and Danny stands up and picks up the phone in a couple of long strides, his voice acquiring an edge that she had only heard in voices owned by hardened police officers or veteran doctors.
Whatever he hears, it's quite clear that he's absolutely not happy with it, a notion reiterated by the jerky movements he used to put on his coat and a manilla folder from the living room after forcefully hanging up.
"I have to go early, Taylor. You stay here, okay?"
Amy opens her mouth to ask what was happening, only for Taylor's fingers to dig a little more into her scalp, halting her question.
Taylor looks like she wants to object, but a single glance from him is enough for Taylor to deflate and nod, leaning herself more into Amy.
"I will be back by night," he said as he left some money on the table. "Order some food if you want for dinner if you don't want to cook, otherwise you can make something simple with what's in the fridge, okay?"
He doesn't wait, already closing the door the moment Taylor speaks. "Oka-and he's gone."
She sighs, a bitter murmur escapes her lips shortly after. "Fucking Empire…"
Amy arched one eyebrow and shot Taylor an inquisitive look, a prod and pinch here or there to get her to stand up so they could be on the couch.
Once she sits with an 'oof' and a rush of displaced air, Amy climbed into her lap and started playing with her hair. She started to braid one of the locks that framed her face and split it into three, doing it to pass her fingertips across her hair more than anything else.
"So," started her girlfriend, "the Empire has been getting handsy the last couple of weeks." A sneer curls Amy's lip. They were on both of their shitlists since the death of Jess, and now that she remembered that she made a mental note to put the entirety of E88 in her 'no-heal' list.
"And they have been trying to get into the DWU lately, both by trying to get someone inside and with more direct violence, so that call probably meant that there is trouble, be it some mooks trying to barge into the Docks, or some suited-up asshole trying to pay them to fuck off or get them dissolved."
Her small rant grew more agitated at the end, her sneer almost as pronounced as Amy's, her ire echoing off their Link and feeding into Amy, doubling up on the sensations.
Amy stilled, trying to breathe slowly and cool off. She thought that the wound that Jess had left was at least partially healed, but it was clear that it wasn't the case.
Taylor mirrored her, both of them slowly cooled off while finding comfort in each other's arms.
"I don't want to talk about those scumbags, so…" Then Taylor attacked her neck without warning nor mercy, biting and kissing in all the good spots she had found the night before.
Amelia gasped while she tried to keep her hands still and finish the small braid she started. "Tay-lor, Sarah is," a sharp intake of air, "going t-o get here… soon."
She hmmed, mouth still pressed into the skin of her neck and sending strange vibrations all over the tenderized spots near her lips.
She surrendered to her caress, hands too shaky to do anything but lean into Taylor and tug at her hair softly whenever she left a hickey.
Well, she could spare some time…
Both of them were out on the porch, with Amy leaning into Taylor while checking out her phone, trying to gleam why Aunt Sarah was taking so long to pick her up.
Not that she minded the extended cuddle time, mind you.
It was then that Amy noticed something blooming in Taylor's emotions, a sort of bubbly thing… Amusement? But why would she…
Her thought process short-circuited the moment Tay grabbed her cheeks and gave her the deepest kiss she had experienced to date, her tongue shyly asking for permission to enter and receiving it whole.
It wasn't until she heard someone behind her that she broke the kiss with a slightly dazed look, lips glistening with Taylor's flavor.
And speaking of Taylor, she was giving her a look and smile that wouldn't be out of place in Chesire's face.
She whirled around and found Aunt Sarah not a couple of meters from her, a soft look on her eyes framed by a mischievous smile. "Having fun?"
Amy sputtered incoherently, turning towards Taylor and punching her shoulder, getting an 'ow' out of her. That smile wasn't wiped out, however.
"You," she says as her index pokes her repeatedly in the sternum. "And I will have words over this."
Taylor smiles and raises her hands in surrender with a snort of barely restrained laughter.
Amelia stomps towards the car that she recognizes as her Aunt's but is stopped by a hand on her shoulder, a pair of arms hugging her from behind at the same time that a voice whispers in her ear. "I love you."
Amelia blushed, twirled, and hugged her back. "Dork."
Taylor laughed as she let her go and started walking towards the door of her house. She huffed and resumed approaching again in the direction of her Aunt's car. She froze.
Her aunt, who she forgot was there.
She looked at her while she opened the door to the driver's seat, her smile stretching and widening. Amelia pointed at her.
"What?" She had the absolute balls to ask. "I'm not saying anything."
Amelia's eyes went completely dead, all traces of warmth gone in an instant as she seethed, "Carol knows nothing of this."
It wasn't a question nor an affirmation, it was a statement and a threat all in one.
Sarah's smile drooped, an involuntary shiver crawling down her back, a sentiment of unease clawing at the base of her skull as she stared at eyes that were so much like that one man when they took her from him.
"I wasn't planning on telling her, Amy."
The aforementioned held unblinking eyes to her own, until she relaxed, life blooming again in her irises, expression coming off that coldness and morphing slowly into her usual boredom if tinged with a trace of genuine happiness.
The ride to Brockton General was awkward, at least for Sarah, but she held on and eventually asked what had been gnawing at her for the last half-hour.
"Why shouldn't Carol know?" As her gaze snapped at her and turned baleful, she rushed to explain. "What I mean, Amy, is that I think she should know that at least you have a… partner."
Amy snorted and giggled, almost doubling over the seatbelt. "Really? She doesn't approve of anything I do. Why would who I choose to cuddle with be different? I honestly prefer to just leave her in the dark about this, I don't want her sniffing around Taylor's life. With my luck, she will try to pull some random excuse about how I should not be near her because of my Trigger."
Sarah's eyes widened in understanding. "I didn't quite know. I know that you triggered when someone got injured near you, not that it was… Her. Carol didn't share that with me."
Her smile turned ugly. "Yes, it was her. I Triggered because I couldn't imagine seeing her, d-die, in my arms after taking a bullet that was aimed at me."
Amelia turned towards the window, clearly not up for more conversation. Sarah could see unshed tears glistening softly in the corners of her eyes while she muttered something about stupid hero complexes.
What she had said was concerning. Just how badly was treating Carol, her adoptive daughter, for her to be more comfortable around Sarah than her, and even wanting to hide the fact that she had a girlfriend?
As she mulled things over, she came to a conclusion. She would have to watch Carol more closely…
Touch. Undo. Walk. Repeat.
Hospital work was as dull and drab as ever, not much too dissimilar from the building itself, really.
After some hours of work, her hands started to twitch and she was tried to keep herself to just healing and undoing whatever clusterfuck the Bay had concocted today as she internally chanted about how she shouldn't enhance people who weren't Taylor with or without consent.
Beacuse of course, she had tuned her up as best as she could. Later she would revisit some ideas she had to keep her safer.
Speaking of her, she tugged fully at the Link she had and brought it to the forefront of her mind now that she had a small respite in one of the break rooms. It always was present at the back of her head, but she couldn't spare the mental processing power that came with having two bodies in her mind's eye. It gave her a headache and not a small one to boot.
As she gave Tay's biology a fast scan, she noticed that her temperature was higher than normal and that her muscles seemed to be burning with exertion and creating microtears, first her legs, then after a while her arms, then back to legs, then her torso.
She was… exercising? It looked like it.
Amelia smiled cheekily, trying out how much influence she had over her body, maybe… Yes, she definitely could affect nerves remotely now. Not change them nor touch the brain, but she could tell them what to send, so she tried to simulate the pressure of something the size of her lips touching Taylor's cheek, making her jump if the heighened heartrate was anything to go for.
She stopped exercising, then started moving. A minute later the feel of paper on her fingertips ghosted across her mind. She was reading a book?
Taylor stopped turning pages, apparently reading in peace until she started tapping her left wrist with her index and heart in a strange pattern. Three taps, a small pause, three taps with a longer space between them, another pause, three fast touches again.
Where had she seen that before? She knew she had, the answer tantalizingly close to her mental grasp…
Taylor repeated the touches once again. What was she doing, asking for something…?
Her mind snapped around the answer like a beartrap. It was morse! Morse for… SOS?
At that Amy entered a slight state of panic, revising and rescanning Taylor for the smallest sign of distress and finding none.
If she wasn't in danger, why did she… Of course. She wanted to learn the language with her so they could communicate if they were separated.
It honestly was an idea that wouldn't have crossed Amy's mind even in her most lucid moments. Point for Tay and her beautiful brain.
She should know, she could see it.
She took out her phone, and checking out that she still had five minutes of break, she called the phone at Taylor's house, her girlfriend picked up at the third ringtone.
"So, morse? Where did you get the idea?"
She could feel her shrug. "Well, I was doing some exercise in the basement after clearing it up a little, and found this chart about it."
"So you thought we could use it to communicate if something went wrong? Honestly, great idea. It didn't cross my mind even once. And why were you exercising again?"
She could feel the smile radiate even through her phone, Amy almost didn't need the window at her biology to know that Tay was extremely amused, and she didn't know if that was good or bad. Or both.
"Well, someone mentioned once how they liked abs, so I took it upon myself to start cultivating them."
Amy's cheeks went beetle red, a mental picture of a muscled Taylor picking her up and propping her against the wall as if she weighed nothing proved to be nothing if not incredibly hot.
When she snapped out of it she could hear giggles on the other end of the phone at the same time a nurse offered her a handkerchief.
Apparently, she drooled.
The nurse told her she could keep it.
"Brat."
Late afternoon.
Amy was panicking.
She had forgotten about the hickeys just before she rang the bell of her house, so now she was trying to collect biomass from nearby grass and other ubiquitous plants. Once she had enough, she started crafting a protective film that would hide how marked her neck was to everyone, only removable by her.
Only once the film was applied did she start to relax, though not by a great margin. It was Carol the one behind those doors, and she never could be careful enough about her.
The doorbell rang once, twice. She waited, and then the door opened.
Carol was looking at her with a creased frown, scanning everything she could see with a hint of suspicion. "Where did you go last night?"
Amy muttered out the answer as she tensed. "With a friend. Why?"
Carol's eyes once more searched for something, and apparently didn't find what they were searching for. "We will speak later."
Just that? No explanation nor motive?
She should have expected it. Her mere existence seemed enough to send Carol reeling in some of her truly bad days.
She went upstairs, intent on catching a small nap before dinner when Victoria burst into her room just as she was getting into bed.
Her sister opens her mouth just as Amy grounded out a harsh "no."
She points to the door and grumbles. "I want to sleep. If you want to enter my room, you knock and wait until I tell you to come in. I don't charge into your room, ever, I don't know where this habit comes from but I'm too fucking tired to care."
Victoria made to start speaking again, and Amy just pointed at the hallway. "Out."
Her sister looked crestfallen but complied and closed the door, a few seconds later a pair of knocks rang inside her room accompanied by Victoria's voice asking to come in.
"No," was her answer. "I told you that you would have to ask, not that I would tell you that you could come in. Now, please, let me sleep until dinner."
She sighed, noticing that she may have been too rash if she was going by Victoria's silence. "If you want to ask me something, do it over some food and when I have some rest, not when I'm half dead."
"...okay."
"Thank you for understanding, Victoria."
A pair of feet shuffled away from her door as she succumbed to sleep, submerging herself once more in Tay's body.
Dinner was an uncomfortable affair at the best of times for her, but now it was being downright asphyxiating. Between Carol's gaze and Victoria bouncing over almost asking something and at the same time drawing into herself was, to be honest, something she didn't want to be a part of.
That is, until Carol decided that the silence was too good for her.
"Where were you last night?"
She forced herself to relax, picking at her food. "I was sleeping at a friend's house. I told Mark and Sarah, and both were okay with it."
"But you didn't ask me."
The silence could be cut with a dulled finger, thick as it was. Carol scoffed, and leaned against one hand. "Was it the Herbert girl?"
"It's Hebert," she ground out. "And yes, to check on her as well as to ensure that everything was accounted for."
Carol's eyes bore into hers, all movement at the table all but stopped except for Mark, who went on obliviously.
"Did you know that the Empire has somewhat of a strong presence near her house?"
This time it was Amy's orbs the ones who bore into Carol's like an industrial drill, warmth leeched off them and expression set into a stony, monolithical expression. Slowly, she spoke.
"Your point, is, what, exactly?"
Carol looked at her intently once again scanning for that thing that seemed to elude her.
The tension mounted and increased with each moment in complete silence, this time even Mark had stopped eating, noticing that something was wrong.
"Nothing." Was her adoptive mother's eventual answer.
Amy didn't look away until Carol did, and then she started eating her food as fast as she could without being seen as impolite, quickly leaving the dish at the dishwasher and practically running upstairs towards the bathroom, intent on brushing her teeth and going straight to bed. She was too tired right now to deal with Carol's passive-aggressive shit.
Once at her bed and everyone in the house asleep, did she allow herself to fall back on her link, savoring and relishing the experience, letting it wash away all the stress of the hospital work and her mother's petty ribbing.
She noticed how Tay was pressed against something soft, so probably in bed too. She noticed how her index finger was doing lines at her chest that once decrypted spelled "I love you."
Amy sighed, sending her the feeling of being hugged tightly, and she could feel her girlfriend giggle at that.
Then, her hand started forming nonsensical patterns at her own belly, swaying there and away, and Amy herself giggled.
Then, Tay smiled, and that hand went lower.
Amelia gasped.