Chapter Text
“I thought you said you were tired of playing house.”
That’s all she says when Caleb shows up on her doorstep just before midnight, bag in hand, two-week medical leave from the Fleet secured.
He smiles at the sight of her in her pajamas, despite the frosty reception. He’d been expecting worse — the door slammed in his face, at the very least. He knows it’s unreasonable to show up unannounced like this, but he needed to see her again, needed to spend more than just a few tense hours with her. And, to be perfectly honest, he needs to replace his surveillance camera and get his hands on her phone. But with the planned integration of the Tuum Fleet in full swing, days off were hard to come by. Caleb couldn’t find a way to disappear for more than a night or two without attracting unwanted attention.
So he’d put his thumb on the scale. All he had to do was brain the first sorry bastard to drop his tray in the officers’ dining hall. Nothing against the guy, just bad luck. Medics had intervened in time to save his right eye, and from what Caleb hears, you can barely tell the left is a prosthetic.
Caleb’s not worried about it. Everyone in the Farspace Fleet knows their new colonel is wound a little too tight. Jumpy is the polite word for it. Paranoid, his few detractors might say, not that Caleb would disagree with them. A bundle of frayed nerves their chip wouldn’t dare touch, lest their absence render him a less effective weapon. Best to let him rest before the Tuum arrive, the Fleet’s doctors had said. We don’t want any surprises.
Besides, he really hasn’t been feeling well these past few weeks. His back aches, everything tastes like batteries, and sometimes his tongue feels too heavy for his mouth, which is always dry no matter how much water he drinks. The little rest he’s been able to get is punctuated by screaming nightmares, and his head’s been killing him for days now. He’s not sure he can sleep under any roof but hers.
Caleb knows she’s still mad at him. About that boy, the pills to make her sleep, the way he hid from her for the better part of a year, happy to let her think he was dead and buried. She gives him what she probably thinks is her most indifferent stare as she looks him up and down, the effect slightly ruined by her fuzzy pink socks. But she steps aside to let him pass over the threshold anyway.
They’re family, after all.
He lets out a breath, his eyes following her as she turns away and walks into her kitchen. He’s only been here once before, to help her move in. The open floorplan is the same as he remembers, but the apartment is now so lived in it’s almost unrecognizable, the stack of boxes unpacked to fill overflowing bookshelves, the windowsills crowded with plants. Caleb sets his bag down near the door, but doesn’t move from his spot in the entryway.
“You gonna tell me why you’re here?” she says, retrieving an apple soda from the fridge and bringing it to him. Not a peace offering, but it’s something. He takes it, letting the hiss of the popped tab serve as his reply, hoping the infusion of sugar and bubbles will ease the throbbing pain behind his eyes.
“You look better than when I saw you in Skyhaven,” he says. “Healthier.”
She rolls her eyes and walks back to the kitchen.
“I wasn’t that sick. It was barely a cold.”
“Well, you look better now.”
“Is that supposed to mean something?”
Yes, he wants to say. You should be a wreck. You should be crying in my arms. You should have begged me to come back to Linkon with you. You should be begging me to stay with you now.
He doesn’t say any of that. Instead, he shrugs.
“Just an observation.”
He surveys the room, finding the wall outlet he’d hidden his camera in the year before, even though he knows it won’t be there anymore. He’d thought it was pretty much foolproof to disguise it as a plug-in fragrance diffuser, but in the end, he only had a few weeks of footage to review. He can almost laugh about it now. Almost.
Pathetic as it is, it had been his one solace in the months following the explosion, once he’d earned the right to use a computer and phone again. The camera’s live feed was down, which made Caleb’s blood boil, but everything it had ever recorded was stored safely on his server, just as he’d originally intended. At long last, he could see her again, hear her voice, hear her cry for him. He spent so many nights going over everything he missed, the mixture of shame and elation churning through him like an ill-advised candy binge.
It hadn’t lasted nearly long enough.
The last thing the camera recorded was a young man picking it up and studying it, his eyes turning to angry slits when he realized what it was.
“I’ll find you,” he’d said in a soft voice before the feed died with a static crunch.
Ooh, tough guy. What an empty threat. The camera was untraceable, Caleb had made sure of it. He didn’t know what the guy was so upset about, anyway. It wasn’t like he put anything in her bedroom or bathroom. That would have been too far. He just wanted to know what she was up to, her comings and goings, the friends she had over, the things they talked about. How else was he supposed to keep up with her interests and schedule? He’d been doing it since she was in college, it wasn’t a big deal.
Caleb knew the guy was Xavier, his sister’s hunting partner and upstairs neighbor. (A hypocrite, too, because in Caleb’s opinion that’s quite a coincidence.) His clone of her phone gave him encyclopedic knowledge of her life, but that had also stopped updating by the time he got out of the hospital. Caleb figured she’d shattered the screen and bought a new one — she was always doing clumsy shit like that. Angry shit, too. The final text had been from Timothy, one of his suitemates in flight school.
Let me be the one to tell you this, since no one else will. Your brother was a fucking headcase. Or your boyfriend, whatever that sick shit you dragged us all into was.
He curses himself for not carving out the time to bug the new one while she was in Skyhaven. Xavier turned out to be the least of his worries.
“Are you staying?” she asks, still not making eye contact with him as she moves a few stray dishes from the sink to the dishwasher and swipes at an invisible mess on the counter. If she’s bothered by the one-sided nature of this conversation, she doesn’t show it.
He’s not used to this practiced disinterest from her. When they were younger, she was his little shadow, stepping on his heels, always eager for his attention and praise. But now she seems content to put space between them, something that bothers him more than he’d like to admit, even if he does deserve it.
He watches her scrub at her spotless counter, resisting the urge to take the dishtowel from her. He’s never seen her like this, cleaning up without him or Gran chiding her into doing it. It’s kind of funny.
Come to think of it, this whole place is oddly pristine. For her, anyway. He adds it to his growing body of evidence. His headache is getting worse.
“If you’ll have me,” Caleb says, allowing himself to step toward her. He takes a sip of the soda, the sweetness not quite cutting through the sour taste in his dry mouth, before setting it down on the counter across from her. He leans against it, arms crossed. He wonders if the distance between them feels as forced to her as it does to him.
Her eyebrows knit together, more annoyed than confused.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Because you won’t look at me. Because you’re pretending scrubbing an already-clean kitchen is more interesting than seeing me again.
“I dunno, Pipsqueak,” he says, drumming his fingers against the counter. “Got this funny feeling you’re pissed at me.”
She rolls her eyes, lets out a noncommittal huff of a laugh. Her movements are so painfully familiar they make his chest ache. She hasn’t changed at all, despite the unnaturally organized state of her apartment. Her hair is still long, her eyes still sharp, her mouth set in the familiar, stubborn frown Caleb would give his other arm to bite off her face.
“Me? Mad? When have I ever been mad at you, Caleb?”
He hates it when she talks to him like that, all mock clueless, like she hasn’t spared him a single thought in the two months since she snuck back into his life. Fat chance. But he can’t resist the bait. He never could.
“I can think of a few times. Don’t you have a list somewhere?”
He thinks he sees the corners of her lips turn up before she schools her features back to perfect indifference. He scans her face. She really does look good: color in her cheeks, bright eyes. No shadows or sallowness. There’s no indication that she’s lost any sleep or skipped any meals since they last met. He tries not to resent it.
She scoffs and maneuvers around him, back to the living room. She hovers over her couch, like she can’t decide if she should sit down. As if it would make her too vulnerable in his presence.
This isn't how this was supposed to go. He had a whole routine planned out. She would yell at him. They'd argue about the kid. She’d cry. She might even throw something at his head. Get herself so worked up he could put her in air jail. And then, finally, when she tired herself out, she'd forgive him, fall asleep in his arms, and then they could work on finding a new normal.
“You can stay as long as you want,” she says, her back to him. “You know that.”
Do I? He wants to ask. Would I be interrupting anything?
He follows after her, but he doesn’t sit either. Instead, he takes a stroll around the room, looking at the new knick-knacks she’s collected, her books, the art on her walls. It’s nice, he thinks. Warm. Homey. It looks like a grown woman lives here, not the surly little girl he remembers.
She’s grown up in the time he was gone. She was always so messy before. Caleb loved that about her, he cultivated it, finding each act of learned helplessness more irresistible than the last. But this apartment is spotless. Well-furnished, too; all her sidewalk and thrift store finds replaced with stylish, matching pieces. There’s no sign of her bad habits: no empty pizza boxes sticking out of the trash, no tangle of party dresses on the floor, no lingering smell of smoke from the cigarettes he always let her think she’d successfully hid from him. It feels like another life, another her, and Caleb hates how much it unsettles him. He rubs his hands over his face, trying to push down the rising sense of loss.
He has a bad feeling he knows exactly who’s behind this.
He walks over to the little side table where she displays a few framed photographs. His favorite picture is there, the one of her peeking out at the camera over his shoulder, and a photo of them as kids, tongues out on the swing set. There’s a couple of her with her girlfriends striking stupid idol poses — Caleb doesn’t care about those. It’s the one in the silver frame, farthest on the right, that sets his heart racing.
“This is nice,” he says, picking it up, careful to keep his voice neutral. “When was this?”
It’s a photo of her and Zayne, sitting on the stone ledge of a large outdoor fireplace. They’re wearing snow boots and ski jackets, and his arm is around her shoulders. Her face is pink from the cold, and Zayne is smiling down at her like she just said the funniest thing in the world.
Since when did he have a fucking sense of humor?
“Zayne’s parents invited me to go skiing with them over the holidays,” she says. Her voice is calm, but her eyes flash with something that says, because I didn’t have anywhere else to go, remember?
He sets the photo back down with deliberate care, adjusting it so Zayne’s half of the photo is hidden behind another frame.
“Cute,” he says. “You guys see each other a lot these days?”
She rolls her eyes and shrugs.
“We’re both really busy, so…”
It’s a yes or no question, Pipsqueak.
Does she think he’s stupid? Think he didn’t have eyes and ears in that hospital? It had taken every ounce of self-control to keep his face blank when his soldier told him he saw his new adjutant collapse into the arms of a visiting surgeon from Linkon City — an expert in pediatric cardiology the little girl’s doctors hadn’t hesitated to call in. Supposed to be the best in the world.
He had only one suspect in mind.
He tried to tell himself it was fine. He already knew they were back in each other’s lives. Hadn’t it been on his mind, the last evening they spent together in his former life?
If not me, who could you possibly turn to for—
Zayne, Zayne. Of course it was Zayne. Zayne and his perfect life, his perfect family. Zayne could give her everything he couldn’t. Stability, space, parents. Zayne doesn’t spend all his free time tracking her location on his phone. Zayne doesn’t pick fights with her just because the sight of her in tears kind of turns him on. Zayne had spent more than a decade learning how to fix her heart, and what had Caleb done in that time? Learned how to make chicken wings? Got himself captured and conscripted?
Fuck.
Caleb turns to watch her as she picks at a string on one of her throw pillows, anything to avoid looking at him. Her eyes always give her away. Little liar.
“Riiiiight. So. Ski trips. Nice dinners. Furniture shopping.” He gestures at her immaculate apartment. “He get you a cleaning service too?”
Her lips press into a thin line.
“Yep. You caught me. Zayne comes over and mops.”
The soda can in Caleb’s hand crumples with a sharp crunch before he even realizes he’s still holding it, fizzy liquid dripping down his fingers and onto the floor.
“Shit,” he says. “My bad. Didn’t mean to give him more work to do.”
She stares at the mess for a second before sighing and grabbing a roll of paper towels from the kitchen to clean it up. Her expression is unreadable.
“It’s fine,” she says.
She works in silence, blotting up the spilled soda, and Caleb’s never felt more powerless in his life, robbed even of the ability to appreciate the sight of her on her knees in front of him. He’s not used to her cleaning up after him. It should be the other way around. It’s always been the other way around.
She tosses the soaked towels in the trash and turns back to him, finally meeting his eyes. It makes his knees weak.
“You look horrible,” she says, crossing her arms.
It’s the first real thing she’s said to him since he got here. A part of him deflates, and he laughs despite himself.
It's not all that funny, considering how bad he feels. Dizzy, exhausted, and so nauseated he can barely keep himself upright. But hearing her snipe at him is enough to lighten his mood. It's familiar. It's normal.
“Still such a sweet girl,” Caleb mumbles. “Not even gonna ask how I’ve been.” He exhales through his nose, rubbing at the tension in his neck.
“Do you actually want me to?”
“Not really.”
He sways a little on his feet, the room spinning for a second before he catches himself. Fuck, this is horrible. He hasn’t been able to keep anything down since yesterday morning — or was it the day before? His skin feels like it’s crawling off his bones, and his good hand keeps shaking no matter how hard he clenches it.
He should probably sit down. No, he should definitely sit down. But she’s already closing the distance between them. The irritation in her eyes is gone, replaced by something sharper — fear.
“Enough,” she says, grasping him by the shoulders and marching him to the couch. “Sit. Now.”
He does, his body angled toward her in a childish plea for her attention as she sinks into the cushion beside him.
He wants to crawl to her and bury his head in her lap, beg her to pet his hair and scratch his scalp and hold him close. He wants to make her scream and cry and fight with him until she looks like the wounded bird he knows she still is, so he can scoop her up in his arms and comfort her, spirit her away to Skyhaven, never to return.
“I’m fine,” he says. “I just—I’m tired, baby.”
She lets her head fall back against the couch as she watches him, her expression softened by the endearment. Her eyes look sad. She reaches toward him slowly, gently placing the back of her hand against his forehead. He leans into her touch, letting his eyes flutter shut.
“When was the last time you slept? Or ate?”
Caleb blinks at her, suddenly aware of how clammy his skin is under her touch. He swallows the urge to lean forward and lick her palm. The only thing that sounds remotely appetizing to me is the salt of your skin. That okay, Pipsqueak?
He could lie. Tell her he ate a macrobiotic poke bowl at the station and slept like a baby on the train. It’s a prettier picture than the three crackers he managed to choke down between bouts of vomiting. But her hand feels so good on his face, and he is so, so tired.
“Uh. I don’t remember. Sorry, honey. I’m sorry.”
She pulls her hand away, but only to grab her phone off the coffee table. He stiffens. Who’s she calling? Zayne? His stomach heaves at the thought. She unlocks it and starts typing, brow furrowed.
“I don’t have shit here. But there’s a bunch of places open late. What do you want?”
Oh.
He stares at her, the dull ache in his skull momentarily forgotten. She’s...ordering food. For him. Like it’s not almost 1 in the morning. Like she cares.
Caleb swallows hard. “Anything spicy,” he croaks.
She gives him a skeptical look.
“You look like you’re about to puke.”
“I think that might feel good.”
“Caleb.”
"Okay, fine. Congee. Soup. Whatever.” He slumps further into the couch, letting his head tip toward her shoulder. She doesn’t move away, so he lets it fall, nearly whimpering with relief at the contact.
Her fingers find the back of his neck, kneading the tight muscles there. He lets out a pitiful moan, nuzzling into her warm skin.
He wants to say something. I miss you. You look so pretty. I love you. I’m going to throw up.
He doesn't realize he's dozed off until he's startled awake by a knock at the door.
He jerks up, confused, his heart still racing from whatever irretrievable dream he was just yanked out of. He looks around, disoriented, before he remembers. He's still with her. She's talking to the delivery guy near the door. She glances back at him briefly, bag in hand, and he rubs his eyes, trying to look more alert than he is.
She brings the bag over to the couch and starts pulling out containers, setting them on the coffee table.
“Can you settle for plain rice, soup dumplings, and ginger ale?” she says.
He eats in silence, taking small bites and washing them down with alternating sips of water and ginger ale, his stomach immediately churning in protest. He hates this, how weak and gross and pathetic he is in her presence. The warmth of an actual meal is comforting though, and he can feel the nausea slowly subside as the bland food settles.
“Caleb,” she says. “Why are you here?”
He flashes her a smile he doesn’t feel.
“Can’t a guy just miss his little sister?”
He rubs a weary hand across his face as she gives him an unimpressed look. There are too many answers, and he can’t give her any of them. The Fleet is suffocating me. I don’t want to sleep unless you’re nearby. I don’t feel safe. I can’t get the image of you and Zayne out of my head.
She scoots closer, her knee pressed against his knee, her eyes fixed on his face.
“Fine,” he says. “I needed to get out of there for a little while.”
She sighs and shuts her eyes for a moment.
“I was hoping you were gonna tell me you quit.”
He could tell her the truth. That he’s been running himself ragged the past two months trying to put himself in a position where he could quit. That he’s been lying to EVER, hiding the fact that his body is falling apart, because the moment they figure it out they’ll discard him like a rusted toy solider and go after her instead. That he’s been pulling rank to gather resources, extract useful allies, dig through classified files — anything to make sure that when he finally walks away, they won’t be able to drag him back.
But it’s not enough. Not yet.
“No can do, Pip. Not my call.”
She lets out a low groan and runs her palms over her face. There she goes, those little gears in her brain working overtime. Before she can push him again, he leans in, pressing a kiss to her forehead. She tenses in surprise, her hand coming up to grip his wrist.
“Don’t worry about it, alright? I got a plan.”
I’ll get us out of this, baby. If it’s the last thing I do.
She pulls back, searching his face. He hopes the exhaustion makes him harder to read.
“Whatever,” she mutters, dropping his wrist.
He tries to ignore the sense of unease that settles in his gut as she leans away from him, but it’s impossible. She pulls a throw blanket from the back of the couch and tucks it over herself with an air of indifference that feels pointed.
She looks so small beneath it, huddled into herself as she stares straight ahead. He wants to shake her and tell her to stop acting like this. He wants her to curl into his side the way she used to. It would make everything so much easier.
“I think you should see a doctor,” she says.
“Okay. You know any good ones?”
She turns to stare at him, and Caleb manages to summon a proper grin.
“You’re not funny,” she says.
“What? I’m saying I trust your judgment.”
Her lips twitch, just barely.
“Then shut up and go to bed.”
He doesn’t argue, letting her lead him to her room. He hesitates in the doorway, glancing at her bed. It looks like she hasn’t slept there in a while, the sheets taut and crisp as a hotel’s.
An ugly, bitter thought occurs to him, but he swallows it down.
She notices his hesitation, shooting him a weird look as she steps past him and throws the duvet back.
“I’m not going to make you sleep on the couch.”
Thank god.
He exhales sharply through his nose and flops face-first onto the bed, limbs sprawling out in all directions.
“This is better,” he groans into a pillow, his voice muffled.
He can hear her moving around, the soft sounds of her padding in and out of the bathroom, getting ready for bed. He closes his eyes and lets himself inhale the scent of clean sheets, her familiar detergent. Something loosens in his chest, and it feels like too much. He hasn’t felt safe in bed like this in a long, long time. He squeezes his eyes shut tighter, and tells himself the dampness that escapes is just exhaustion.
He feels her sit down next to him and nudge his shoulder. When he doesn’t respond, she digs her elbow into the middle of his back, poking at him repeatedly. He grunts and tries to shift away from her, but she latches onto his hair and tugs until he’s forced to look at her.
“Shower first, please. You’re getting train germs in my bed.”
He stares at her, bleary-eyed. His entire body aches with the thought of having to stand. He knows he’s disgusting, coated in a day’s worth of cold, clammy sweat. He wouldn’t want to sleep next to his sorry ass either. He forces himself to sit up, making a pathetic noise in the process.
“And take these,” she says, smirking as she presses two pills into the palm of his hand. “Sorry, it’s just Advil. I don’t think what you have at your place is commercially available.”
He dry swallows the pills without looking at them, flipping her off for good measure.
“You don’t have to make me feel worse about it.”
She watches him shuffle toward the bathroom like an old man, reaching out to steady him when he sways after two steps, her hands on his waist, leading him the rest of the way. He tries to shut the door on her, but she’s too quick for him tonight. She sits down in front of it, blocking his exit, and starts scrolling on her phone.
“What are you doing?” he says.
“Making sure you don’t fall and crack your big dummy head open.”
His vision swims. She’s going to watch him shower? He’s going to be naked in the same room as her? Even under these conditions, he’s going to have to work to keep from getting hard. He thinks about the time Timothy got conjunctivitis in both eyes as he peels off his shirt, tossing it at her head. She doesn’t even look up.
Caleb strips methodically, his body protesting every movement, and steps under the scalding stream with a groan. The heat sears away some of the ache in his muscles, steam filling the small bathroom. He leans his forehead against the cool tiles, letting the water slide over him. It feels good, washing away all this misery, even if he still feels like someone stuffed cotton balls in his skull.
He can only make out the vague shape of her through the steamed-up glass, but he can feel her eyes on his back when he turns to scrub up with some fancy, peppermint-scented body wash she’d never pick for herself.
“Missed your hospitality,” he says over the spray. “You have two different shampoos, two different soaps. It’s like you knew I was coming.”
She hums noncommittedly. He can hear her fingernails clicking against her phone screen. What’s she doing, giving Zayne a full report?
He shuts off the water with a sigh, the temporary relief fading as the air hits his damp skin, making him shiver. He wraps himself in the plush towel she’d provided: pure white with a navy border, obscenely high thread count. The last time he needed to shower at her place, back in college, she handed him a ratty beach towel with a cartoon princess on it.
He smiles at the memory despite himself.
“Wow,” he says as he dries himself off. “The pipsqueak got too rich for my blood. Or was this a gift?”
Her eyes flick up to his bare chest before darting away, a faint flush creeping over cheeks. He savors it, tucks it away for later.
“It’s just a towel, Caleb.”
She tosses a bundle of fabric at his head — clothes from his bag. He slips into the sweatpants and ignores the t-shirt, letting it lay on the floor. He wonders if she still has any of his old things, all the stuff she’d stolen over the years. He always liked the idea of her wrapped up in his clothes, wearing them around her apartment while he was gone.
Then she’s behind him in the mirror, standing on her toes as she works a towel through his hair. He leans forward against the vanity to help her reach, trying not to dry heave at the sight of two toothbrushes in the cup by the sink. She used to be the one standing on the bathroom stool, squirming under his hands as he dried her hair after baths, swatting away his attempts to comb through the tangles. Gege, don’t pull! You’re the meanest!
“Feel any better?”
He swallows hard. His throat feels too tight.
“Little bit,” he murmurs. He watches her reflection as she works, her nose scrunched up in focus.
“There,” she says after a few more minutes, deeming his hair sufficiently dry for bed. “Need anything else?”
You, naked in my lap. Zayne’s head. A lobotomy. Another lobotomy after that. Five more minutes of your undivided attention.
He doesn’t answer.
Instead, he catches her wrist before she can go, pressing his lips to the inside of her palm for a brief moment before pulling away.
“Nah,” he says. “Thanks, Pipsqueak.”
He crawls into bed ungracefully, letting his head fall heavily into her pillow. It’s soft and cool against his skin, and his eyelids droop. He tries not to look too pathetic as she stands on the other side of the bed, watching his prone form. Please touch me, he thinks. Please get in bed.
She shuts off the lights, plunging the room into darkness. He tries to control his breathing as he hears the rustle of sheets, feels the mattress dipping next to him.
He shifts, careful to keep his limbs to himself. His foot nudges hers under the comforter before he can stop himself, seeking even that tiny point of contact. She doesn’t pull away.
He holds his breath as her legs brush up against his. A year ago, he’d complain about her freezing toes, make a show of shoving her off, but now it feels like a miracle. They don’t speak, the only sounds in the room are the faint hum of her fan and the distant drone of city traffic outside.
He nearly jumps when she reaches across the rest of the divide and places her hand on his forearm. He can feel her hesitation as she trails it up and down, a gesture he knows is meant to comfort him. He doesn’t know what he did to deserve it.
“How come we didn’t do this when I was in Skyhaven?” she asks in a near-whisper.
He stares into the dark, his mind sluggish. It takes more effort than it should to put words together. When he does respond, his voice is thick with exhaustion.
“Didn’t think you’d want to.”
She lets out a small, humorless laugh.
He looks at her, barely able to make out the shape of her in the darkness.
“Did you want to?” he asks.
She’s quiet for a long time. The hand on his arm disappears. He counts the seconds, trying to decipher her soft breaths, the rustle of sheets moving closer to him. He feels her hair tickle his shoulder, and then her face is pressed against his skin, nestled into the crook of his neck.
“You know I hate sleeping alone,” she says.
Oh, he thinks slowly, stupidly. He wraps one arm around her waist on instinct, pulling her tighter against his side, suddenly not too tired to feel a smug flash of pride at how well she still fits there. His fingers find her hair, carding through it like he used to when they were little and she couldn’t sleep. Her leg hitches up, settling over his thigh. Pink eye Tim. Tim’s crusty, oozing eyelids. Itchy, yellow eye crusts. Tim in general. Your brother. Your boyfriend. Fucking headcase.
He focuses on his breathing, wondering if she can hear any change in his heartbeat, if she remembers how it used to sync with hers when they were kids, pressed together in the same bed after a nightmare. He wonders if she still has nightmares. Maybe not, not with Dr. Perfect around to chase them all away.
He frowns in the dark, pulled out of that line of thinking by the sudden, uneven hitch in her breathing, the slight tremor in her shoulders. She sniffs, and he turns toward her, bringing a hand up to touch her face. It’s wet.
“I’m so mad at you,” she says in a thin, high voice.
His brain finally registers what’s happening, and he pulls back to try to get a better look at her. He can barely make out the glint of her watery eyes. She tries to turn away, but he keeps his hand on her face, wiping at her cheeks with his thumb.
She burrows into his chest, a quiet sob tearing loose from her. His own eyes burn, and he squeezes them shut, swallowing the lump in his throat. He tucks his chin over her hair, kissing the top of her head without thinking about it.
“I know, baby.”
He rubs her back, her hair, his stomach lining working its way toward his esophagus, his whole body tight with guilt. Maybe that’s why he’s sick. He let the Fleet take that kid, and now his own body hates him even more than she does. He’s repulsive down to the cellular level.
“When you get better, we’re gonna fight,” she says thickly.
He laughs weakly, swallowing down the nausea creeping up on him. She shoves at his ribs, and his stomach lurches. He shuts his eyes so the room can’t spin, and holds her tighter to him.
“You promise?”
She nods against his chest, sniffling again.
“Good,” he says. “Can’t wait.”