Hello everybody! Today I'd like to present to you a story that I've been chipping away at for a few years before actually writing it all down. This will be my first published multi-chapter fic—I usually tend to favor oneshots, but this one is too big for just one chapter. It's been a long time coming, since I wanted to handle what's being covered here with as much dignity as possible and didn't want to accidentally trivialize anything.
A warning, as this is a little heavier than my normal stories: if you're sensitive to scenarios where alcohol is involved in near-sexual situations, then please use your judgment on reading this one. The scene in question is in the first chapter and will be referenced in later chapters.
Felix startled awake to what sounded like a small explosion, followed by the shattering of glass and a series of hissed profanities. In a daze, he felt around for his special lady, who was absent from her usual spot beside him in their bed.
"Tammy?!"
He grabbed his hammer off his toolbelt hanging next to the nightstand and jumped out of bed, running towards the source of the sound that had awakened him.
"Tamora?! Are you okay?"
Reaching the bathroom, he flicked on the light switch. Tamora stood behind the remains of the bathroom mirror, her right hand still balled into a fist. Blood coated most of her hand and dripped into a small puddle on the tiled floor. She blinked and stared blankly at the floor as she adjusted to the light, a glaze having just recently cleared from her eyes, watching the inky red fluid channeling into the tile grout.
Looking over to the wall, Felix noticed an impressive fist-shaped crater where the mirror had hung.
"Here, darlin', let me help with that..." He guided her to the sink and scooped handfuls of warm water from the stream to rinse out the cuts. Tamora only moved to lean on the counter with her other arm, stone-faced and unresponsive to any apparent pain, with her injured hand completely limp.
Once the bath had cleared away the blood and stray debris, it revealed ribbons of torn skin peeling off her knuckles, flayed by the glass shards. Felix's stomach wrenched at the sight and he tapped her hand with his hammer, immediately healing her. He patted her hand dry with a towel and took it in his for a kiss where the injuries had been moments before.
"All better!" he piped, with a hesitant smile.
The pleasant tingle of the hammer snapped her out of her statue-like state, and at the contact of his kiss she reflexively held his hand more tightly.
She raised her other hand to her face and rubbed her eyes, getting a clear look at what once was the mirror.
"Aw, Felix, I'm sorry." Her voice came out in a low rasp, a tinge of shame in her tone. "Guess I wasn't runnin' on full batteries. I saw movement and didn't wanna take any chances..."
He shook his head.
"I'll have that mirror good as new tomorrow mornin', don't you worry about it. Just watch out you don't step on the pieces."
—
Her muscles had already tensed when she woke up. The one reassurance she offered herself was that at least she hadn't accidentally clocked her poor little guy in the face or tossed him off the bed in the waning hallucinations of the nightmare.
Too overwhelmed to scream, she could only watch the neon-green entrails flooding the cab of the long-suffering old pickup truck and gumming the moving parts to a stop. What started as a drive into town on an errand from Mama had corrupted when the cloudy sky turned to charcoal, split down the middle with a thundering tear, and poured the disgusting green metallic slurry into every orifice of the vehicle. The doors worked but she couldn't leave, not with him still in the passenger seat, and the liquid contents of the cab stayed suspended inside despite the opening available.
Brad couldn't move, and couldn't breathe through the thick sludge as she somehow could. It dripped out of his nose and mouth whenever he tried to talk to her, and he fearfully refused her attempts to push him out of the truck. The struggle lasted for hours until her hands phased through him and she couldn't physically touch him anymore. 'Aren't you freezing?' he'd nonsensically sputtered out, before the cy-bugs climbed in through the open doors and each began gnawing on a different part of him…
She bit her hand to keep from vomiting at the memory of it. If Mama's land on the outskirts of town wasn't safe then neither was a game right across the station from those monsters—at least that's what her instincts would not stop screaming at her. She wilted slightly at her self-assigned post, head lightly knocking against the glass pane in front of her.
Felix awoke to see her silhouette by the window, leaning on the sill.
"Is something wrong?" he whispered.
She glanced back at him.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, Lady Love. What's going on?"
"Thought I heard something," she shrugged.
He joined her at the window and looked out into the familiar surroundings of his game. The perpetual midnight sky lay peacefully above as it always had. Everything was still; Niceland wasn't the sort of place where anyone was out and about at this hour. Beyond the screen, he could faintly make out the flickering lampposts by the buildings across the street from the arcade, and the flash of the streetlights illuminating the occasional passing vehicle.
He placed a hand on hers and almost recoiled at how cold it was.
"We're okay, Tammy. Everyone's okay."
She sighed.
"I know."
He paused for a few minutes, quietly sifting through his collection of uncertainties to try and figure out how to respond.
"Why don't you come back to bed? It's awful chilly tonight," was the best he could muster. The only pajama clothing she wore was an oversized T-shirt, and he had no idea how long she'd been standing there. She didn't even seem to be aware of the temperature.
The sergeant turned over her hand to grasp his, but said nothing.
"Tamora, everyone's safe and we're not goin' anywhere. I'll be right here when you wake up. That's a promise."
In the low light he saw the shadow of a smile.
"I'll hold you to it."
They returned to bed and Felix made sure to pull the covers up over her shoulders. She tucked him into her arms and planted a soft kiss on his forehead. The thumping of his heartbeat—quicker than hers as expected, but steady and reassuring—lulled her to sleep.
He had thought it was just one bad night for her. But in the morning light when he went to open the curtains, he noticed overlapping sets of her handprints on the part of the windowsill where she had been keeping watch.
—
Several nights later he woke up to a harsh, low scratching making its way down the hallway outside the apartment. He froze in terror—Tamora had stayed late for work and gone out afterwards, telling him not to wait up for her. He broke into an instant cold sweat at the thought of a cy-bug evading her watch and coming into the game.
As quietly as he could, he rolled out of bed and rummaged around in his toolbox next to the closet. Finding a heavy wrench, he clasped it tightly and snuck towards the entryway. He hesitated only a moment to pick up his hammer as well.
The distant rumble rose to a horrible, continuous scraping as it came closer and closer to his door. Felix's heart pounded and shook his limbs, making his grip on the tools tremble.
The sound reached his door and stopped. Felix's ears rang in the sudden silence and his mouth went dry. He almost fell backwards at the sudden forceful knock afterwards.
"Felix? Babe?"
"Tammy?"
A long pause.
"Yeah?"
He collapsed on the floor, panting in relief.
"You...you really scared me, honeybadger! Give me just a second and I'll let you in."
After composing himself, he opened the door and nearly hit the floor again when Tamora fell into the room, landing on her hands and knees.
"Tammy! Oh my land, are you alright?!"
He took her hand to help her up, and she snickered.
"Wanna...come get comfy down here."
The sour smell of alcohol broke over him in a wave. For the second time that night, he put a hand to his chest and caught his breath. He chanced a peek out the door and saw a long gash running down the hallway at about her shoulder height. It was impressive that she even had enough physical and mental acuity left to make it all the way to the apartment.
"Tamora, you're going to bed."
She cocked her eyebrows and grinned.
"Can you walk?"
"Kinda stupid question...issat. Watch."
She slowly rose to her feet and stumbled again, but ran with the forward momentum and charged right through the bedroom doorway.
Felix rushed into the bedroom and turned on a light to find her hunched against the wall, fist in the air, as though she was celebrating a victory. He placed his tools down on the nightstand, and with some effort he guided her to the bed.
"Tammy, listen to me. I'm gonna bring you some water in case you need it later. If you have to go to the bathroom, yell for me. I don't want you falling down in there and hittin' your head on anything. I'll be on the couch."
She stared at him for a few minutes and nodded.
"You're...the best. Take such good care a' me..." she grabbed his face in one hand and lightly shook his head back and forth by the chin, squeezing his cheeks."Cute little fella. Very pretty."
Felix chuckled and a blush crept onto his cheeks. He picked up her hand off his face, running a thumb over her watched him leave for the kitchen and return with a large mug of water, then gratefully downed it in seconds when he handed it to her.
"There you go," he sighed, placing the empty mug back on the nightstand. "Now, I don't know how you can ever be comfortable in all this armor, but let me at least make sure you don't have to sleep in it."He removed her boots and got to work unlatching the plates covering her torso.
"I have to...you need to know. You're…" Tamora put her hands on his shoulders and stared at him, desperately trying to overcome her temporary lack of verbal communication ability.
"I'm not sure I understand. Can you show me what's going on?"
She hugged him and kissed the base of his neck, patting his back.
"Need to do...something here. It—the words,"she sputtered in frustration.
"You're all right. Do you wanna think about...the words while we get ready?"
Tamora nodded and released him.
After a few minutes of decoupling and shifting around the various pieces of her armor, Felix noticed that she had become unusually quiet. Taking his eyes off his work, he looked up to see her staring at him again, pupils dilated. He tried to ignore it and pulled the now-disconnected chestplate off of her, but the action set something off.
"It was this...!" she trailed off as she whipped around, startling him, and pinned him down to the mattress with a sloppy kiss.
The taste alone told him she'd had some of Tapper's strongest, a concoction that had knocked him off his stool from just a sniff when he'd curiously sampled it. Her attempt to unbutton his pajama shirt was quickly abandoned for lack of coordination, in favor of rolling it up.
"You wanna do...like that, Fix-It? Sssomeone's bold today..."
Alarmed, Felix pushed against one shoulder and pulled at the other, trying to roll or twist her off of himself. He could hardly get the leverage to even shift himself around, let alone move her.
"Top, huh. Hafta work for that…"
He shook his head and managed to pull his legs out from under her on either side. Feet flat on the bed, he heaved himself a few inches up and away, causing her to slide off of him and onto the quilt. The motion put enough distance between them for him to brace his hands against her shoulders and nudge her backwards.
"We're not doing that right now! Tam, for goodness' sake you're in no condition for any of this!"
Something about the panic in his voice and expression stopped her. He very rarely shouted, and realizing that she was the cause of his fear chilled over her amorous room pitched from side to side as she propped herself up on her hands and shifted further away from him.
He worried that his heavy breathing and the inadvertent redness of his cheeks from the kiss would drown out his words. But for an instant, Felix saw realization and shock pass over her face before she grunted out a soft embarrassed noise and rolled over. She shuffled to the far side of the bed, facing away from him.
Catching his breath, the situation caught up with him and made his insides churn. He refused to have that sort of experience with her in her current state, and if she'd regretted it he wouldn't have been able to forgive himself.
He kissed the top of her ear.
"I'm sorry for yelling. But you're not doing very well right now. We'll talk about it in the morning. For now I just need to get you settled."
"Hey...hurts?"
"What hurts?"
She shook her head and pointed over her shoulder at him.
"Me? No, you didn't hurt me. I'm okay. You just...gave me a bit of a fright."
She turned around and fumbled for his hand, kissing his fingers.
"Sorry...brain's bad. Thought you wanted...I'm sorry."
Of course. She was still Tammy. But he couldn't name what he was feeling. She'd never have gotten to this point in a normal state and she even had the awareness not to hurt him now, inebriated more than he'd ever seen her before.
He ached to communicate, every fiber of him wanting to come up with some right combination of words that would fix this, but he had to remind himself that she wouldn't be able to process it anyway. Felix gave Tamora's hand a squeeze before tucking it into her chest, and smiled feebly.
"I'm going to finish getting you ready to go to sleep, is that okay?"
"Yeah," She nodded."S'okay...I won't move."
Over the next several minutes he removed the rest of her armor and laid it in a neat pile by the foot of the bed. By the time he left and came back with the refilled mug of water and empty bowl, she was already asleep. He left the items on the nightstand and pulled up her covers, tucking all of the available pillows under her head and shoulders to elevate them and keep her from rolling over.
Seeing her in the condition she was in that night twisted and stabbed at him. If she'd just been injured or gotten into a fight then it'd be obvious how to help. And if it wasn't, he could ask. But this...a constant background noise of low-grade anxiety grew louder at the sight of her obscured vulnerability made physical.
"I don't know what happened out there but have a nice rest, sugarplum," Felix whispered, wiping his eyes before they could produce any tears. He kissed the tip of her nose and left for the couch with an armful of extra sheets.