So I'm afraid I have an important announcement to make- but before get into that, I want to again apologize for the ridiculously long wait. I'm kind of at the point where I wonder if you guys have given up this story, before I have to assure you, that I haven't. I promise you that I will finish it, I will. School has just started again recently as many of you know, so it's getting quite busy having to juggle homework and such. I'm barely on the desktop anymore, and with the hiatus, inspiration is a little difficult to channel. I'm focusing on other projects at the moment outside of fanficiton and school work, so forgive me if I don't update as often for now on.
Secondly now, I'm terribly sorry if you have been followed "Breakeven". This is me officially announcing that it will be discontinued, for the reason that it began as a way to vent out my sad Eclare feelings. Now that the Imogeli storm is over, I don't really have much business with it anymore, so I'm really sorry for that.
Lastly now, if you have any requests for one-shots, please let me know! I know I haven't written one in a while, but if you have any crazy ideas I'd be glad to put it down.
Enough with my rambling now. Please enjoy the next chapter of "Cold"!
At night begins to fall, Clare's worries only escalate. Lying in bed, spending the next few hours wondering whether she regretted her impulsive, reckless decision or not is slowly driving her to the state of insanity. She's frustrated, restless, and damn it, her head is releasing steam from all the over-thinking she's doing. In any situation, there's always one side that she'd leaned towards more than the other- one side that's slightly more appealing, a side that she secretly prefers more.
In this situation, she's sitting solely on the fence.
And as hard as she tries to remember any part of her life before, she always comes up short. It feels like she's trying to remember something that never happened, and God, it's frustrating! She has no information to fall back on, no past feelings whatsoever. It's like she's trapped in a blank piece of paper, surrounded by nothing but whiteness.
"Nurse," she calls in a strained voice, shaking her little bell. There's nothing that she wants more than company, as the constant solitariness is aggravating her more and more as the day drags on. Clare needs someone who wouldn't be biased to talk to, and desperately resorts to seeking a hospital staff in hopes that she would gladly weigh in her opinion.
When no one answers, she shakes the bell a little harder, moving her arms as well. "Nurse!" She lets out an impatient exhale, now banging her instrument against her bed with more force than necessary. Clare is not in the mood for waiting. "NURSE!"
Tick-tock.
"NURSE!" she shrieks, whipping the bell across the room. It hits the floor with a loud thud, and at the same time, her arm pops out anew. "Oh!"
The pitter-patter of footsteps draws near, and the door opens. "Ms. Edwards are you alright?" the redhead asks in distress, eyeing the thrown bell. She then sees Clare, and the left arm jutting out in an awkward angle makes it easy to detect what's happening. "Oh dear, you've dislocated your shoulder!"
And before Clare could say anything, an enormous pain courses through her in a flash. Clare screeches, unable to concentrate on anything but the white-hot, excruciating pain searing through her shoulder region. There are blurry red spots all around the room as she blinks, and her vision is half-muddled by the unbearable pain that seemed to have come out of nowhere. "What are you doing?!" she demands in a scream.
"There! How do you feel now?" the nurse asks, releasing her arm. The pain disappears at once, and Clare is left with beads of sweat rolling down her temples.
"Just peachy," she gasps, momentarily bewildered by how horrifying and quick the pain had been.
"Please refrain from throwing things again, Ms. Edwards, you are still in the healing process," she says, hurrying over to pick up the cracked golden bell.
"I called you, and you didn't come." Clare says stubbornly.
"I apologize; I'd been busy assisting another patient in the room across. Would you like some juice, Ms. Edwards?"
"Please."
As the nurse tips the jug of juice in silence, Clare watches her with a slightly critical eye. She's part of the staff, Clare suddenly remembers, and she is in some sense obligated to listen to me. It is her job to monitor her well-being, and in addition to her physical well-being is her mental wellness. Surely it couldn't hurt to try.
"Can I ask you something?" she asks, wrapping her cool little fingers around the plastic cup. She pauses to take a sip, feeling rather queasy from the feeling of cold liquid entering her empty stomach, but not letting her discomfort show. She's absolutely famished from missing dinner, but she doesn't feel like eating. Her anxieties are eating away any desire to put food in her mouth, and she fears that if she does eat, she'll throw up. "If you woke up one day and could remember next to nothing, you would do anything to find out who you were, wouldn't you?"
"The red-headed nurse smiles sagely. "I suppose I would. Curiosity is bound to drive you up a wall sometime."
"But what if people are telling you two completely different things? How would you go about finding the truth?" she presses, instantly dropping the nonchalant, theoretical air to her voice.
"Well, then I guess solid evidence would be your best bet."
Solid evidence. She'd have to keep that in mind.
"Thanks, I'll bear that in mind," she says quietly, smiling appreciatively at her.
-x—
He's beginning to wonder if she'll show up at all.
It's been excruciatingly long forty seven seconds of waiting, and palms are getting all sweaty with fear. It's their first date all over again, with the pounding heart, the jittery tummy, and the…well, sweating. He distinctively remembers sweating through a couple shirts before actually going on the date.
Every time a patient passes by , his bowl of hope overflows into a pathetic puddle beneath him. And every time he realizes it isn't her, he slouches further down behind the trolley of toilet paper. He knows he probably should be more discreet, given that he shouldn't even be here. He doesn't want to risk getting caught and being thrown out, and with that throwing away what might be his only shot and getting Clare to remember him again.
"Eli?" she whispers uncertainly, gazing at him as she walks.
Eli looks up, eyes widening. "You came."
She moves closer, and she stops close enough that Eli can see the thin ring around her eyes. Her hair looks washed and soft, and he wants nothing more than to hold a delicate little curl in his hand. "I want to know, Eli."
He smiles sadly, overcome by temptation. He reaches and brushes her cheek, letting his fingers linger, and savouring the warmness. Delight in the midst of darkness surges through him when she doesn't pull away, and he takes it. He'll take what he can get.
"I want you to know too," he says softly.
"Can I ask you questions?" she inquires wishfully, eyes fixated on the doorknob he's beginning to screw open. "I have so many."
The door creaks open, and Clare immediately grits her teeth together. There's nothing but blackness ahead, even with the hallway light shining in the room. The furnace makes a horrible sound. She shivers, and she's not even inside yet.
"Are you afraid?" Eli asks, clenching his fists at his sides. He can't help it. He wants so badly for hold her, it's killing him.
"I…let's go." She creeps in, light on the balls of her feet. The room colder, and Eli catches her hunching her shoulders together. At once, he begins to regret every asking her in the first place, and contemplates telling her that she doesn't have to do this. It's cruel, almost as cruel as when he forced her into downing that ridiculous concoction at The Dot. But as memories of holding her hand, and caressing her face come into play, his throat tightens and his fingers released the knob. With a soft click, they are in almost completely darkness.
"Eli!" she cries. And even though they're not even a metre apart, she throws herself at him and clutches his torso frantically. Her hands are suddenly grasping at him, gripping him from underneath his shirt, the other wound around his neck. It all happens so suddenly he doesn't have time to adjust, and so he staggers back a bit.
"Clare, what's wrong?" he asks in alarm, taken aback. He grunts at her struggles, as she burrows herself at him. Her hands are moving all over the place, gripping him, pushing him to her soft body. He can feel her breath in his ear, causing the hair on his arms to rise. He doesn't know how it's possible, but Clare Edwards had somehow managed to make him feel so worried but so utterly aroused at the same time. Her hands, damn it, and her lips at the shell of his ear. The front of her is kneading against his, and while to her they are movements of desperation and fear, it's turning him on. "I-ooh…"
"You're right, I'm scared," she whimpers. "Open the door, please, open the door!"
"I- you have to let go Clare," he says soothingly, putting no effort into untangling the two of them. Mostly because in some, selfish part of him, he doesn't want her to let go. He wants her to continue touching him like this. He wants her to need him like this, just like how she used to.
"Eli, please," she begs, holding him tighter. "I'm scared!"
Oh, but he's in Heaven. There are electric currents rushing through his body, and deep yearning rumbling in the pits of his stomach. The desire that never went away.
"You can hold me, but I need my arms free, okay?" he whispers tenderly. She nods vigorously sliding her arms so that they're wrapped around him.
Together, they shuffle towards the door, Eli fumbling to find the knob. He finds it at last. With one last look at Clare, he twists it open.
"Goooooo!" Clare cries, driving him forward. The pair are propelled ahead, landing in a heap next to the trolley. The toilet paper rains down on them from the impact, knocking down on them with weight that could no way be just like paper. In this state of healing, Eli's going to bruise like a peach. He expects to wake up with at least five hundred new purple spots tomorrow morning. Yay, he thinks sadly.
"Ow…are you okay?" he asks, rubbing his head.
She opens her squeezed-shut eyes, looking as if she had endured the most horrible experience in her life. And for a long second, all they do is stare at least with polar-opposite expression- Clare horrified, Eli sheepishly guilty and anxious. At first, ignoring their position, Eli looks closer in her eyes. The blueness, the perfect roundness of them- he misses it so much, They're perfect in every way possible, better than he remembered.
As soon as they begin to recover, the way they are sprawled becomes more evident. Eli is on his bum, legs outstretched and one hand on the small of Clare's back. Clare is straddling Eli, clutching onto him for dear life.
"Why did you make me do that?" Clare shrieks, pushing him away. She hastily gets onto her feet, glaring accusingly at him.
"What?" Eli says, now helplessly rubbing his injured shoulders.
"I was scared and- and I clung onto you and I felt something-"Clare buries her face in her hands. "I feel so guilty and- why am I so flustered and- why are you smirking?"
Eli immediately drops the smug smile on his face, but keeps the wicked twinkle in his eye.
"You felt something you say?" he asks innocently, hearty racing a thousand miles per hour.
"You're so smug," Clare snaps, face burning red.
"And you're flustered, you say?" he clarifies, slowly making his way up to a standing position.
"I can't- I'm with Jake!" she exclaims, as if that was the answer to everything. "I can't- oh God, why…"
She whirls around, and rushes away. Her hands, from what Eli can see, are pressed against her hot cheeks in a futile attempt to cool them down. But even as she disappears into the next hall, even though the time she was with him was incredibly short, all of it hadn't been for nothing. Because now, Eli has a ledge. And for him, there's one thing that's now certain.
Somewhere deep down inside, Clare is still sexually attracted to him. Which meant that deep below that there was the deep-seated love for him that had never faded away.
He had something to work with.