I'm sure you're all wondering why I have gathered you together here today! This year I picked some prompts at random from the Tropetember list, and I'm combining them with some picked at random from Fictober, and I'll be posting each Friday in October. This week, we have:
Hurt/Comfort/Sickfic/Whump
-and-
"Don't worry, I got you."
Set between Small Favor and Turn Coat. Veers slightly toward infidelity. Dedicated to the harrowing hour I once spent stuck inside a broken MRI machine.
The door to my apartment creaked open and a shaft of morning light burned down the staircase, falling across my face. Cold air followed, wind howling at the threshold.
Oh, good — the bleary thought materialized in the mush that had once been my brain — someone's here to make sure you're not dead.
I rolled away from the light, burying my face in the scratchy plaid upholstery of the sofa, in the cat hair and dog hair and cheese puff crumbs and god only knew what else was stuck between the cushions. Even that much motion was enough to set my head to throbbing again, like a razor sharp, white-hot poker being jabbed through my right eye and out the back of my skull.
Repeatedly.
A small, strong hand landed on my shoulder, fingers on my throat to check for a pulse. I didn't have to look to know who it was. "Heya, Murph," I muttered into the couch cushions.
"Harry." Her hand moved to my forehead, a steady, reassuring pressure. I grabbed her wrist and held it there, shamelessly, nearly on the verge of tears. "You okay?"
"Fine," I croaked, rolling over again. "I'm fine. Just a headache."
"How long have you been like this?"
I squinted at her and tried to focus. "Since yesterday. No… day before yesterday?" I tried to sit up and made it onto my elbow before a tidal wave of nausea slammed me back down.
"Easy." She caught me by the shoulders. "I'll get your coat, and we can go to the hosp—"
"It's just a damn headache," I said sharply, loud enough that my own ears rang. She didn't flinch or pull away but her brow creased, blue eyes serious. Worried. Snowflakes glittered in her hair, meltwater beaded the collar of her slate-colored coat, sparkling. Everything was too sharp in the bright, overcast light coming through the door and the high basement windows. My retinas felt like they were on fire, like I'd been using the Sight for days on end. "Sorry," I whispered. "Not usually this bad."
She sat down on the very edge of the sofa and took my face in her hands, leaning down to peer at me, undoubtedly looking for signs of some neurological problem. Dog tags jingled as Mouse padded to the door and shouldered it shut, and the room fell into blissful half-darkness again. "This is what, the third time this month?"
"I stopped counting. Why are you? It's not like I get paid sick leave from CPD—"
"Because I'm worried, you… ass." Murphy poked me in the ribs, right in a tender spot left over from my last tangle with the Red Court's goons. "Why didn't you call me?"
I winced. Guilt and nausea go together so well. "The phone isn't working."
She frowned at the rotary phone on the floor, receiver off the hook, dial tone droning. "Have you seen a doctor?" She bent and scooped the phone back onto the end table but hesitated, the receiver in hand. "Do you need to see one?"
"Butters says he couldn't find anything wrong. He tried to give me a scan but I broke the machine."
"Yeah, he told me it caught on fire."
"So much for doctor-patient confidentiality." I almost felt too shitty to joke. That would have really worried her. "What are you doing here?"
"You weren't at your office, and you weren't answering." She wiggled the receiver before setting it in the cradle. "So I thought I'd drop by."
"You don't have to babysit me on your day off," I said, watching as she stood and slipped out of her coat, tossing it onto the back of the recliner. Underneath she wore a baggy sweatshirt, black leggings and running shoes — on her way to or from the dojo, judging from the peppy practical ponytail and the gym bag near the door. "Don't you have some grown men to publicly humiliate?"
She rolled her eyes. "Have you been sleeping on the couch like this for three days?"
"Three…ish." I cleared my throat, dignified. "I believe, madam, that a good part of it was spent on the bathroom floor." Karrin made a face as she picked up an empty liter bottle of Mountain Dew. "The caffeine helps."
"On the bathroom floor." Her eyebrows climbed as she left the bottle on the coffee table. "That's not better."
"Better than cleaning puke out of upholstery." You really get a perspective for how often a restroom should be cleaned when you pass out after throwing up and wake up cuddling the bath mat.
"You're going to hurt your neck sleeping like that, we need to get you in bed."
"Was that an invitation?" I tried for flirty innuendo and failed miserably — she could see right through my lame attempt to hide how godawful I felt, and was waiting with crossed arms for me to own it. "Please don't make me sit up."
"... Okay." Murphy grabbed a blanket from the floor and shook it over me. "You just hang out there for a while. Don't worry, I got you."
"You always do," I mumbled into the corner of the blanket. The couch springs squeaked as she sat down again, and I drifted off to the feeling of her fingers in my hair, falling asleep fast as a sinking stone.
--
I woke to a dim apartment, morbidly surprised to be awake — the last few times it had gotten this bad, I just assumed I might have an aneurysm in my sleep, like my father, or that my head would simply explode, like the guy in that episode of The X-Files.
Snow had piled up against the basement windows, muting an orange sunset. Only a handful of the candles around the room had been lit and a little fire flickered behind the grate. Mister and Mouse were curled up together, snoozing peacefully in front of the fireplace. Murphy's running shoes were drying on the hearth next to Mouse's harness and leash, still slightly damp from a walk. A mug sat on the coffee table, steaming slightly, the tag of a tea bag dangling over the rim. My babysitter was still here, and I had been out for hours.
Murphy herself was parked in the recliner, about halfway through one of Molly's incredibly smutty (and highly inaccurate) faerie romance novels, her stocking feet tucked up beneath her.
"Bob likes that series, too," I rasped.
"Feeling better, are we?" She turned a page before meeting my eyes over the book's bright pink cover. Hers glittered with amusement. I sat halfway up without blacking out or dry heaving and counted it as a success. My apartment had been tidied, a few paper grocery bags sat on the kitchen table, along with a laundry basket full of clothes. I hadn't been out of the house long enough in the past few days for my cleaning service to do their thing, and per the rules of the arrangement, I wasn't allowed to say "hey, don't clean up after me, if I can make it out to the curb for ten minutes, the faeries will handle it."
"Too soon to tell," I said, blinking against the drowsy haze that slowly gave way to a rising tide of more teeth-grinding debilitation, more nausea, more guilt.
Murphy marked her spot in the novel with a scrap of paper and tossed it down on the coffee table. She crossed the room to sit next to me, helping me sit all the way up. "Hungry?"
"Definitely not."
"Come on, then. Time for bed."
"Finally." I pressed the heel of my hand against the pounding around my eye. The room seemed to tip from one end, then the other, like being in a small boat in tall waves. "If I had known all it would take is my being in abject physical pain for you to say that, we could have done this years ago."
She produced a blue plastic bucket as if by magic and put it in my hands and helped me to my feet, holding my arm as I swayed like a drunk. "Don't kinkshame me, Dresden. I like what I like."
Laughing was a bad idea — for a second I thought my eye was actually going to pop out of its socket and roll across the floor, where Mister would immediately bat it under the icebox, never to see or be seen again.
"You good?"
"Dizzy," I replied. She tapped on the bucket, giving me a knowing look before stepping out of the splash zone.
"Do you think you can manage to clean yourself up on your own, or do you want some help?"
"I think I can take it from here." I zombie-shuffled into my bedroom. I could hear her doing something in the kitchen, dishes clinked and the kettle whistled softly.
My room had been straightened up, too; the bed freshly made, dirty clothes piled in a basket in the corner, empty drinking glasses removed to the kitchen. The basement window had been covered, newspaper temporarily scotch-taped to the glass. Dull sunset light filtered through a Peanuts strip and page of horoscopes. I left the bucket by the bed and grabbed a towel from the hook on the back of the bathroom door.
I thought, or I used to think that I was good at pain. Good at building those mental defenses, walling it off and dissociating myself from it, but this was different. There was no escaping, it felt as if it twined through my head like thorns, something alive, parasitic in how it drained both energy and will. I had been through worse, I reminded myself. Shot more than once. I leaned on the sink and steeled my nerves.
You've been napalmed. You can do this.
I turned on the tap and reached for my toothbrush to scrub the taste of bile and flat Mountain Dew out of my mouth. Then I took a deep breath and stuck my head under the faucet. Leaning down felt bad enough. Combined with the icy water, the reflexive full-body clench amped the torture up to eleven, but after a couple seconds my skull was numb. I drank as much as I could stand. A massive headache and dehydration is a mistake even I will only make once.
"You okay in there?"
"Yrllggh," I gurgled. "Yeah," I repeated from beneath the towel I draped over my head. The faucet creaked and shuddered shut. Icy water trickled down my neck to soak the collar of the flannel shirt I'd been wearing for the past three-ish days. Ew. With hair as dry as it was going to get, I ditched the towel and tried unbuttoning my shirt as I stumbled towards the bed. My hands were numb, too — not that the left is very serviceable on a good day. One of the buttons snapped free and bounced across the floor. I reached for it, but reaching down made my stomach turn and my head pound like a war drum.
"I'll get it," said Murphy. She leaned against the bookcase near the bedroom door, quiet and concerned, and my stomach did an entirely different kind of flip. She held the kitchen cutting board, pressed into service as a makeshift tray bearing a lit candle and a mug, a dishcloth. She put the tray on the dresser and took a step towards me, moving my hands out of the way with a gentle flick of her wrists. For a moment I thought I was about to find myself on the receiving end of another unsolicited sponge bath.
… Not that I'd mind. It might be fun to be conscious for it.
"You're freezing," Murphy said, unbuttoning the rest of my shirt for me. She was dizzyingly warm. Her fingertips brushed against my chest but they felt like molten metal. She tugged the shirt down my shoulders and tossed it into the laundry basket in the corner. "What happened here?"
I have my fair share of nasty scars but the one her finger landed on was new, still healing, a raw slice following one bottom rib where she had jabbed me earlier. "Ghoul."
"Oh?"
"In Utah, last month. With — with the Wardens."
"Mm-hm," she murmured, a little too nonchalant, understanding who I meant without me having to say it. She glanced up at me, something heated in her eyes that couldn't be mistaken for candlelight. Maybe it bothered her that I was sort-of in a relationship with someone who was technically my boss, after I had insisted for so long that I didn't want anything casual. Maybe she thought I was a hypocrite. "This needed stitches."
Maybe… maybe she was jealous? Now there was a thought. The rush of adrenaline that accompanied it was almost narcotic, stomping out that last little ember of guilt. We were both seeing other people, but for the life of me I couldn't remember either of their names.
… Or maybe my brain had finally dissolved and I was hallucinating, but at least the distraction and confusion were taking my mind off of the urge to bash my face against the wall. She turned away before I could say anything, towards the tall dresser wedged between the bookcases. "Pants, too."
"Pants," I echoed in a pain-induced processing delay. "Huh?"
"Don't be a prude, Dresden." She searched through the drawers until she found what she was looking for. "I've seen most of what you've got, anyway."
"Most?" I wrestled with the zipper of my jeans like a nervous high school kid. "What's most?"
"Well, the main exhibits, but not, y'know…" she glanced at me over her shoulder, grinned and gestured in a vague, southerly direction. "The gift shop."
"When?" I demanded, my jeans around my ankles. I kicked them off one foot at a time and stood there shivering indignantly in boxers and the hand-knitted socks Charity had given me for Christmas last year.
"In the hospital." Murphy handed me a pair of sweatpants, politely looking away. "Those gowns only come in one size, and it's not yours." I hopped into the pajamas one leg at a time. The contents of my skull seemed to slosh, possibly replaced with battery acid. "Did you know the effects of concussions are cumulative? How many have you had, anyway?'
"It's not a concussion if you remember it." I collapsed face-first onto the mattress and she pulled a blanket up over my hips. "In the interest of full disclosure," I mumbled into a pillow, "when you said you were taking me to bed, this is not what I was hoping for."
I heard the click of her tongue against her teeth as she fluffed the other pillow. All of the bedding had been freshly laundered, clean and crisp and smelling like her place, not mine, all wildflowers and sunshine. "And I'm disappointed these aren't Spiderman sheets, but that's life."
"You mock my pain."
"Life is pain," Murphy quoted, patting me on the shoulder. "Move over. When I get a really bad one, this always helps."
I felt the mattress dip as she knelt next to me and draped something damp and steaming hot across the back of my neck. Her fingers skimmed through my hair again, then sank into the tense, knotted-up mess of my back and shoulders, burning with the menthol and camphor of muscle rub. As she did, she talked softly without expecting a reply — about work, about the latest drama in her family, commiserating with a wry joke about how she sometimes gets the monthly-subscription type of migraine, and how hard it is to deal with when you live alone.
I buried my face in the crook of my arm and might have cried a few manly tears, and it might have been embarrassing if it had been anyone else, or if I could have summoned up a single fuck to give. Her hands on me felt so good I could have died. Though to be fair, I might have died hours ago and just not realized I'd gone directly to Hell, where it would make sense that the only time we ended up in bed together, I was in blinding agony.
Her hands stilled and for one panicked second I wondered if I had said all of that out loud. "Are you sure you don't want me to take you to the ER? I bet if we tell them you're claustrophobic, they could sedate you and actually do that scan."
"And suffocate in fire extinguisher foam again? No fuckin' thanks."
"Just a suggestion."
"Nice try, Murph. I know you just want to see me in a hospital gown."
"I like what I like," she said, and I could hear the way the corner of her mouth turned up.
"If you really want to help, get that prescription out of the drawer," I said, sitting up with effort. The dish towel across the back of my neck had gone cold. I tossed it in the general direction of the laundry basket as she got the little amber bottle out of the night stand. Karrin frowned at the label; prescribed for Thomas and only slightly expired. She cracked the child safety lid off and handed me one chalky white tablet.
"I'll get you some water— okay," she cringed as I swallowed the pill dry. It felt about as pleasant as it looked. I pulled my knees up and leaned my elbows on them, squeezing my temples. Between my fingers I watched as she slipped off the bed for a moment, then sat down next to me again and put a warm mug in my free hand.
Murphy motioned for me to drink, and I downed the entire cup of ginger tea in one gulp. "You don't have to stay—"
"Excuse me, but you're not exactly famous for taking very good care of yourself." Her tone softened when she said my name, gently scolding. "Harry, you told me about your dad, and Butters said sometimes that can be genetic—"
"I don't think that's what this is." Sunset, real sunset shivered against my overtaxed nerve endings; the shift of power from day to night. The wards hummed like quiet music at the edge of my senses, the room darker with every heartbeat. "And if that is what it is, I don't want to know."
She was quiet as she took the empty cup and put it aside. "You don't want to know." Murphy sat down next to me, not looking at me. She pulled her knees up to her chest, mirroring me. "But it's okay if I find out the hard way. Or your brother. Or Molly, god forbid."
I didn't have a reply to that, so I just covered her hand with mine on the bed between us. She pulled away with a huff, then put her hand down on top of mine, small and warm, scuffing her thumb across the scars on my knuckles. "I get it. Doesn't mean I have to like it."
I turned her face towards me, haloed in amber candlelight, her features wreathed in shadow, an inverse — a photo negative of the way she looked with the Sight. I felt her eyes on mine in the dark, felt her jaw unclench under my fingertips, the lines of worry smoothed away as I pressed my lips to her forehead. Admitting defeat was its own kind of misery, its own mercy. "Stay. Please."
She didn't say anything, just slipped her arms around my neck, pulling me down until the bridge of my nose found her collarbone, down onto the pillows and into bed together.
… Together, but still apart.
"Whenever you want that gift shop tour, just let me know," I said, drowsy, already feeling too miserable to wallow in self-pity about everything our relationship wasn't. Too thankful for everything it was.
The way her lips curled into a smile against my temple felt as good as any drug.
"Go to sleep, asshole."
see you next friday ;)
