Sid leaves a message on Ginger. Hawksley is there - well, god only knows how fast he can drive that Porsche 911 when he intends to be somewhere ten minutes ago - not long after. A physician's office in the middle of the night, the loose sprawl of the city unknotted around him. Quiet in the way that cities can be, which is to say: full of the sort of ambient background noises one never notices until there is nothing else to hear. The good doctor likely does not offer Hawksley tea, but some intercourse passes between them. Enough at least that Luke is assured that Hawksley is no threat to his latest patients. Enough that Luke may attempt to reassure Hawksley in the slow, sympathetic drone of a family practice physician used to delivering news, good and bad, in that same deep and soothing voice, that they don't look well, but Sid's cure is working. Give them a few days. The symptoms can still be intense, but the cure is working. Patience.
Patience.
what a fucking thing to say.
The place is well-appointed in tasteful neutrals and we are assured that there is nothing hospital-like about the exam rooms except they are still that: exam rooms. With hospital beds and solid surface, easily-disinfected counters and white cabinets on the walls full of absurd things like tongue depressors and cotton swabs. With wallpaper maybe and without windows and with that closed-building-at-night hum to them the only counterpoint to the labored breathing of the patients.
He finds Sera in Exam Room 1. She is curled up with her back to the door, a white sheet pulled over her body, fists wrapped in the hem. There are blankets tangled at the foot of the bed where she has kicked them off and there is a strange, breezy whistle in the room, which will soon resolve itself to be the sound of her breathing. Wet and crackling and rheumy.
Sera looks: terrible. Verge-of-death terrible, though the finer points of how near-starvation and blood-soaked flu look on her familiar body are hidden beneath those sheets. Still he can see that she has lost weight; can see the articulations of her spine knuckling prominent beneath those sheets where the sweat from her fever makes the cotton cling to her body. Her hair has not been washed in god-knows-how-long, hangs in lank, oily, sweaty snakes on the cheap pillow, and the sour scent of sickness soaks the air around her.
Sera doesn't stir when the door opens, and he might think her sleeping until or unless he approaches her. When his shadow cuts across her legs or he says her name or what the fuck ever. Regardless, as soon as she stirs, as soon as he comes into view. As soon as she turns and catches him at the edges of her field of vision, half-rising over an unsteady hand flat on the plasticky mattress of the hospital bed, Sera
just
starts
crying.
Like she can't quite believe that he's real.
HawksleyHe really has no idea how to react once he comes inside. Truth be told, his instinct is to recoil. He wants to get out of there and take a very hot shower and somehow scrub the sight of it from his mind, the sound of that rattling breathing. His gut tells him this, but sometimes Hawksley trusts his intellect more, or his heart. It's not tough to say which one has him crossing the room after he enters it, shadow falling over Sera for only a moment before she begins to weep and he sinks down to sit on that bed, curving his hand over her skull, his warm hand that feels like sitting out in the sunshine not because of its warmth, not because he is like Sid, but because when he is nearby,
the spirit, if not the body, is in sunlight.
He cradles his hand there, frowning tightly, and does not beg her to stop crying, or start crying himself, or grab her in his arms and run out the door, or start demanding to know who did this are they dead can he kill them because... well. Whether or not any of those things even enter his mind, he is not unfamiliar with sitting bedside for someone who is... not well. And perhaps a bit delirious.
His hand feels the grease in her hair, his palm a soft pressure to her crown, but he strokes her hair a bit anyway, even if his palm never lifts to do so. It just moves her hair on her scalp, his fingers curling slightly, almost a scritch, but a terribly soft one. If he needs to, he urges her to just lie down, lie down, don't move, be still, but he doesn't say these things. Nothing aloud, not until:
"I told Dan. He'll probably be on his way soon, too," Hawksley says quietly, like all of this is totally normal and no big deal really and she just had like, the flu or something, which sucks, sure, but come on, let's be realistic, you're an adult and I know you feel like you'll never ever ever be better ever again but you're gonna be fine and all of this is implied and all of this is suggested by his tone because for Hawksley: all will be well. Everything always does work out for him, after all.
Including people he cares for not dying horrifically.
"I brought you presents from Paris and Barcelona," he goes on. "When you're not looking like a Holocaust survivor --" oh Hawksley you douchebag "-- you can come over and get them."
SerafíneMaybe it's the warmth and immediacy of his presence. The soaring brightness of his resonance, the beat of wings around the edges of her battered psyche. The way, this close, she can feel him no matter how much she tries to close that part of herself off, because everything about her right now is raw, wounded, abraded, spent. Delirious, absolutely. Hallucinating sometimes, things crawling beneath her skin, tearing her apart.
He does need to urge her to lie down, lie down, a bit of pressure, a quiet, wordless cajoling, though there's not much urging necessary. Or rather: she is so utterly spent that she is compliant as a sleepy child with the familiar rituals of bedtime. So she drops the hand on which she was rising and settles back against the mattress with it curled beneath her. Knees drawn up, his hand cradling her filthy hair, her shoulders stiff with the promise of tears she cannot quite keep up because there is so very little left in her.
It works. That steadiness. That quiet normalcy, to pull her back from the edge of hysteria. Sera nods wordlessly as he assures her that Dan will be on his way soon, too. Then her mouth twists a bit and her face sort-of crumples like a cake left out in the rain without ever falling, entirely, over presents perhaps, or Holocaust survivor, or something that is written into the space between all those things, or the warm pressure of his hand in her hair.
There are no miracles here. Not tonight, not yet. Not the way that virus works.
"I wanna go home."
Her voice is dry and dull and tired and raw. She wants a shower. Wants to drown herself in hot water. She wants to sleep for a thousand years. Or at least seventeen.
HawksleyThere is something comforting about his inherent... aloofness to the earth. The way he is sunlight and flight, but not earth-bound things like touch or love or compassion. There is perhaps a little bit of comfort in looking up at a sky that asks nothing of you because it needs nothing of you. Because it barely even sees you in its own ecstasy of ascension, and does not worry about your pain, but its existence somehow lifts you up into its own beauty.
She is very weak, and he is always so very strong. She is so wasted and he is so much like the golden sky god she once saw him become in the periphery of her second sight. It takes so little for him to ease her back down, to make her curl up even if she cannot relax.
"Well, sucks to be you," he says softly, mildly. "Cuz I think you should stay here until you can say hello without crying like a big baby, and I'm bigger than you so I'll probably win."
SerafíneSera gives this narrow jerk of her skinny shoulders. It could be some spell of dry not-quite-laughter, or a spell of resistance to anyone telling her what's good for her right now, no matter how round-about.
"I'll scare you off," Sera threatens, but there's no push to her voice. Just a resistent, adolescent sulkiness slipping into sleepiness. Slipping into sleep. "And then Dan'll take me home."
Hawksley"You'll try," he scoffs, in part because he has never seen her scare anyone off the way she can, the way she does. He leans over her, kissing her greasy, disgusting, unwashed hair that smells like hints of vomit and blood she's let loose, that smells like panicked sweat, like fever-sweat, like sick-leaving-the-body sweat. She is repulsive right now, she's so totally gross, and he moves back that gross hair and kisses her temple softly, warmly, breathing in all those nasty little scents and letting it exhale in a gentle curl across her brow.
Hawksley scrapes his teeth, ever so tenderly, across the upper curve of her ear, and then rests his head on hers, closing his eyes.
"Dan'll do what Dan'll do. Pretty sure I can take him or you in a fight, but maybe not both at once."
There's a beat.
"We're gonna come back to that 'both at once' thought in a few weeks when you're up and running again," like she's a broken computer or something waiting on an LCD replacement though honestly those don't take weeks to come in, seriously.
His hand has moved down to her back. "If you seriously wanna go," he says quietly, in a whisper, "we'll go tonight. We'll just get whatever you need from this Luke guy and let you get back in your own bed." His hand is rubbing her back, in heavy circles. "People recover faster at home," he whispers,
because he knows.
SerafíneSome weak rejoinder is gathering itself beneath her skin; in her spine. You'll try he scoffs and she's breathing in - one of those wet, wheezing breaths - to throw something wholly inane and straight from the third-grade playground back at him when he's closer, leaning over her, kissing her temple. That half-drawn breath stills and he can see in his peripheral vision the flicker of her lashes as her eyes open and she is trying to turn to take him in but there's no strength in her and he's so still,
so soft, and warm, and tender, no matter how gross she is right now.
She hates these places.
Hates these places.
Does not tell him that but maybe he can feel it in the shaking tension in the small of her back that is all things at once: fear and gratitude and relief, such fucking relief she can hardly stand it when his tone changes, slips into something else entirely, and he assures her so quietly that they'll get her home, out of her, back in her own bed. Can hardly contain the sensation of it within her own broken body, does not know, exactly, how she can bear it.
Sera starts to cry again.
These tears are different, though, shed soundlessly over the tight twist of her mouth and that is a grimace but nearly-a-smile, as she nods yes or thank you or whatever it is she needs to say to him.
All of it, everything.
Because he knows: people recover faster at home.
SerafíneCharlotte: Per + Empathy: blood-on-hands?
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
HawksleyFor a long time, they would not let him see her. The doctors, nurses, caregivers. His father. He agitated her. Even mention of him would drive her to dizzying heights only to drop her, crashing, to the earth, and there were sedations and there were,
sometimes,
restraints.
But they could not, would not let him see her. And he wanted to tear the place brick from brick, tear the people limb from limb, but he did not. He waited. And in this way, this patient way that does not seem like something Hawksley could ever be capable of, he got what he desired.
"Well not if you're going to freak out," he says gently, softly, not quite laughingly because he's still somewhat afraid, deep down and cold in his belly, that she's about on the verge of death. He lies down beside her, facing her, sharing that crinkly pillow, because he was assured that nothing is contagious now, he's okay, and he is unafraid of her. He covers her with his arm, and he's close, closing his eyes, waiting for Dan to come to get Sera out of here. He'll send Collins for the car tomorrow or something. For now, this jobless young man who can do what he wants when he wants with whomever he wants and does not take kindly to being denied anything,
will just stay with her.
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