I wake with a sweaty hand with sweat running down my back and chills crawling over my skin. I can make out things, and well see, but not particularly well. His hand is wrapped in mine, and the sweatiness of my hand is making me feel gross and overstimulated. He squeezes my hand, and I can't help but take a particularly deep breath and a squeak escapes me as I do. "Are you awake?"
"No," I groan. Ugh, I feel so hot and gross, and our hands are gross. He unlocks his fingers from mine, and settles my hand into a more comfortable position on the bed. You knew I was awake. As soon as our hands parted, mine began to cool. Sweet relief.
The next words to leave his lips come out fast as if he isn't quite sure how I will respond, and he is trying not to give me a chance to interrupt him: "It might help if you go back into work soon."
"Well, how? What am I supposed to do, I can't do shit like this, pardon my language. You also said-" He said I couldn't work. I had an idea the other day, and he turned me down. I might be able to make it work, it would just suck. I hate how he goes and changes his mind like this and never says anything. It has to do with me and my well-being. I do think I deserve to know.
"I know what I said." No shit you do.
"Well?" What will it be? Don't make me drag it out of you. I'm supposed to be the difficult one here!
"You could still do some cataloging, you just, might need some help from your coworkers." Cataloging: a truly Sisyphean task assignment from him. Next, he'll have me scan all the non-supernatural statements for Jon while Jon berates me and breathes louder than I like.
"Nobody likes my area. Margaret will be practically useless." I can probably manage some things alone if I use an artefact, but I doubt my colleagues will be of much help at all. Margaret is really scared of the artefacts in my area, and Carter and her go everywhere together.
"You could borrow one of the assistants?" Another reason for Jon to bully me. Are you trying to send me back into the bathroom?
"Jon won't like that."
He sighs, "Martin is literally living at the institute right now blubbering about. Quite frankly, I do not care."
"I have noticed. You don't seem to care about much at all. It's-"
"You know if you can argue like this, then you can work." I forget sometimes that he's technically my boss. Technically I work for him. I tighten my jaw, and my teeth clamp together for a moment. I can't see him very well, but I can imagine the look on his stupid face right now. I hate when he's condescending like this. I feel like he always shuts me down.
"Are you kidding me? You're crazy. I never know what you want from me," I pick at a loose thread in the blanket my fingers caught on, "because you're always changing the way you treat me." I'm glad my eyes are bad right now. I don't think I could face him like this. If my face weren't flushed with the heat of my own weakness at this point, it would betray my thinly veiled frustration.
"I'm only trying to figure something out for you." The tips of his slender fingers light upon my restless hands. He pauses, hesitates, and then takes my hand in his again.
"Gee, thanks. Sorry, I'm a burden," I have my face tilted down toward the bedding. "Make me feel worse, why don't you?" Fighting away tears, I press my free hand over an eye.
"Helen, I don't like this," the bed sinks as he settles down near me. "I don't want you to feel that way," he says, tightening his grasp on my hand. "I don't want you to get hurt. I want you to just be happy, and…," he pulls my hand away from my eye, and presses a kiss to my fingertips gathered in his, "it feels like everything is out to get you."
His lips that ghost over the tips of my fingers are softer than I expected. I forget he takes quite good care of himself. It's distracting me. I was supposed to be angry at you, you know. You have to be doing this on purpose.
I take a shaky breath and utter my long-standing concern, but my voice comes out quieter than I intended it to, "How are you supposed to look after me and make sure everything goes according to plan?" I hate giving so much of myself away to you sometimes. You've taken so much from me. I used to be so good at staying hidden.
"That's just it. I don't think I can. I don't know what to do." My hands grow warm in his again, but this time it doesn't bother me. The closeness is awkward and hot, and there are chills sparking through me, yet I cannot tell if it's because I'm unwell or if it has to do with his close proximity. It may be a bit of both if I am being honest with myself.
"I'm really sorry about all this."
"I had a plan for everything," he shifts his weight closer to me, the bed sinks where he leans, and the sudden shift pulls me closer to him. "I have been working towards this for two hundred years now," I don't need to see clearly to know how close he is now as the warmth of his breath tickles my ear. He continues at a level just above a whisper, "you came along and changed everything."
So warm. My heart is hammering in my chest in a different way than I am used to. "I don't understand what you-"
"I love you, Helen," one of his hands parts with mine, and finds the other side of my neck instead, "and it's destroying everything."
"Are you going to kill me?" The hand on my neck is starting to concern me just a little bit, but I suppose this wouldn't be the worst way to go.
His other hand finds the area between my shoulder and my neck as he tugs me against him, pressing me into his embrace, "When are you going to understand that I can't live without you?"
"I just figured feelings like that would get in your way. I'm sorry, I really am." The words escape me in a rush comparable to the pounding of my own heart right now. Surely, he must know. I can barely breathe, but unlike all those other times, it's not a scary tight breathlessness. With him, it's not restricting but magnetic. I can't help but be drawn into him.
"Stop it!" He presses a tender kiss to one of my eyelids. "Stop being sorry and apologizing to me like this." He kisses the other eye. "It's the worst." I don't know what's scarier: the gentle way in which he holds me or the way I fall into him as he does.
"I don't know what you want from me! I'll give you anything. I'll do anything, but just tell me what," a hot tear rolls out of my burning eyes while my already unsightly vision becomes more blurry.
"Helen, I don't need you to be anything. I want you." He maintains that too warm closeness with me even now. It has to be real, right?
"I-I don't understand." I don't. I don't know what to do with this information or in this scenario. What if I'm wrong about how I feel? What if you're just using me? It's so hard to form a genuine picture with you in it.
"Will you stay with me?" Of course. I will always stay. I would give anything to. I want nothing more. I–
His lips swallow mine, taking in my breath. How did we even get here? What were we talking about? Work, right. I think. What about work? He melts into me, peppering my face with kisses, returning to my lips to tear what little thoughts I try to compose together from my tongue before I can speak them. My fingers are twisted into the fabric of the bedding settled over me. I didn't quite know what to do with my hands.
He leans back a moment, releasing me at last. I did like it. It made me feel precious, loved. I would quite like to continue like this versus the alternatives I think. I feel so lightheaded. This may just be serious. I think I could at least be serious about it. I find my breath again. "What happens now?"
"I could loan you Martin? Jon usually makes him deal with the dirty work anyway."
"So, I'm dirty work, am I?" My lips quirk up into an impish smile.
"You know that's not what I meant." I don't know how I can be in such terrible shape and feel so well right now. I know we will figure something out. He unsticks a sweat-soaked strand of hair from the side of my face. I must look so bad right now. I am humbled by the idea of my own vulnerable position right now. Elias really does see all the worst parts of me.
"No. I don't know. I can't see, remember?"
"What did you do when you couldn't serve the Lonely or refused to?" He runs a hand through my hair, static tingles burn in the spots his fingers part from. Not fair.
"Went crying back to my mother," I lean into his hand as he draws it through my hair again. "Not particularly trying to do that at this point in time."
His thumb strokes over the distance of my cheek. "No, that wouldn't be the preferred solution at all." His hand really is so cool compared to the heat of my skin. I can't help but sink into him.
"You would probably never see me again if that happened." As these words leave me, his hand pulls away from my face, and I lean forward, but he pulls even farther back.
"I wouldn't say never," he says.
I am not saying I wouldn't want to see you. I want nothing more than to see you right now.
"You don't understand, Jonah." His breath hitches with an audible shift. There's a tremor in the sound, a subtle vibration that betrays the turmoil brewing within. It must kill him to not understand something, but I for once am not trying to be difficult.
He takes a moment to collect himself before responding, his voice tinged with a note of insistence:"I know there are things about you that I don't know if that's what you're referring to."
"I do," I chew on my bottom lip for a moment, debating telling him something I have worked so hard to keep out of sight, "...have an artefact I could leverage if I go to work. I think I can manage just fine actually." I did weaken it a while back, so it will be easy to influence to my own needs if I just-
"Tell me where it is-"
"No," my response is firm and quick. I cannot give him everything simply because he demands it.
His tone that was demanding and steady before rises in pitch and loses some of it intimidation, "Helen, are you being serious? I'm just trying to-"
"I want to trust you," I interject him again. "I really do, but I do have some sense of self-preservation."
"I resent that," he pulls back even farther from me. "I just told you I love you. Not to mention, I also nursed you back to health." As if to really hammer in the prior point, the dip in the bed from his weight lifts. He puts distance between us that I cannot easily close.
"I would hardly say back to health," I counter. His absence shoots a reminder through me of how weak I am in this moment.
"We'll get you to work sometime in the next few days and send Martin your way." Just when I think I have him figured out, he pulls away and discusses work again. How can he just go back to normal so easily? The instant shift sends shadows of doubt through me about all this.
Knowing him, there's more than what he has said. "What's the but–"
"But," he interrupts me, which I guess is fair game after I cut him off earlier, "I would like to keep an eye on your condition."
"If you wanted to sleep with me, you could just say so," I quip back. My attempt at humor is my feeble response to his shift in attitude.
"Helen!" The exasperation that leaks into his voice tells me that his patience with me wears thin.
"Right, sorry, bad timing." Forgive me for trying to have a little fun while I'm bedridden. You were the one kissing me with such desperation and hunger just a bit ago. I didn't think it was that inappropriate of a remark.
"So, then," his tone softens, "you don't have a problem with coming back here after?"
I can't help but laugh at the question, "And miss you making me tea in the morning?" I tease, trying to lighten the mood despite the tension between us.
He sighs, "Thank you, Helen." These words are different, they carry the full weight of everything that just passed between us.