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"I'm okay, you know."
"Huh?" Stone looked up at Cassandra from where he sat on the office stairs, his brow furrowed.
"My sugery. Clean bill of health. 100% recovered." She glanced away, percentage meters flickering on the edges of her vision. "110%, even, though it'd be nice if it was easier to turn back off. . . ."
Stone kept frowning. "I know."
Cassandra clasped her hands behind her back and climbed the first couple stairs towards him. He looked . . . tired. Run down. And — maybe kind of constipated?
No, that wasn't it.
"Okayyyyyy," she said. She twisted her shoulders back and forth, swinging her arms. "Then what's up?"
Stone looked down at his hands, his left thumb running along the inside of his right wrist, between the cuff he always wore and his shirt. "What's up with what?"
His shirt was much too warm for the office, just now. Jenkins' latest experiment had the place set to 25°C (77°F), and Stone had kept his sleeves rolled up in much cooler temperatures before. And though he was clearly trying to look nonchalant, his brow stayed furrowed.
It had been like that a lot lately, actually.
"What's with you?" She leaned forward and peered up at him, still a few steps away from their heads being level. "Ezekiel and Eve are chasing down an ancient lost temple in India, usually you'd be all over that."
Stone smiled faintly, though he wasn't meeting her eyes. He kept picking at his wrist. "I do like India."
"You could be brushing up on your Urdu."
"Majmuu chaukañna raehna."
"See, that totally needs work. Your accent is terrible."
Stone snorted, then let go of his wrist to rub his temple. "Yeah, I don't even know what I just said."
Cassandra hopped up the rest of the stairs to sit next to him. "Headaches will do that to you."
Stone snapped his head up. "How did — I mean, I don't have a —" Cassandra cut him off with a wave of her hand.
"Please. For someone who spent his whole life lying, you're kind of terrible at it." She tucked both hands beneath her thighs. "Besides, I'm former Brain-grape Girl, remember? And I worked in a hospital. I know a bad headache when I see one."
Stone dropped his head into his hands, kneading both temples now that he wasn't trying to pretend to be fine anymore.
"It's nothing," he said. "I'm fine."
"Sure. You ditched an ancient temple and foreign language fun because you're fine." Cassandra scooted up another few stairs and settled in just behind Stone, waving both hands in his face and making "buh buh buh buh!" noises at him when he tried to protest. "Please. What could I possibly be doing here that would be bad?"
Stone's answer was grumbled, belligerent, and probably something dirty in Urdu.
"Relax," Cassandra said, and tugged back on his shoulders to get him situated comfortably between her knees. "There is a 90% probability that what you have is a tension headache." She pressed her hands together, nice and warm after being clasped and tucked under her thighs, and gave the back of his neck a gentle squeeze. "I'm helping."
"This is stupid," he told her, even as he leaned back a little, following her touch. She moved her hands up into the short hair at the nape of his neck, then spread her fingers and combed them up and out against the grain. "Are you petting me?"
"Scalp massage. Relax."
"You know what really helps someone relax," he said, tipping his head back and giving her access to the longer, carefully coiffed hair up front. "Being ordered to."
His eyes were closed. Cassandra smiled and rubbed his temples for a few seconds before going back to combing through his hair. "You've been tied in knots since the vampires. I figured someone had to remind you."
Stone sighed and straightened his head. Cassandra pulled back to just lightly tickling his neck. "Not the vampires. Or your surgery. Not everything is about you." He dropped his head forward, but didn't pull away any further. Cassandra moved on to rubbing his shoulders while she thought through the admittedly fuzzy timeline following her tumor being removed.
"It's definitely something," she said. "I'm no massage therapist or anything, but I'm pretty sure shoulders aren't supposed to be made of cement." She dug her thumbs in harder, eliciting a soft grunt. "Oh!" Her right hand came down a little too hard on Stone's shoulder and he jumped. "Oh god, of course! Shangri-La! The tattoo!"
She wouldn't have thought it possible, but Stone locked down even harder at the mention of his new magic body art. As though he was trying to turn into his namesake.
"Hey." She dug her thumbs even harder into his shoulders and considered using her elbows. "I know you're not into using magic, but it's not like it's firing off every which way, right? You had total control over it when you used it on Apep."
"That's me," Stone said, and this time he did shift out from under her hands. "Mr. Control." He stood and started down the stairs. Cassandra pressed her knees together against the lack of his warmth, and bit her bottom lip.
"Hey."
He stopped, half turned, and looked up. Cassandra couldn't help but notice he'd stopped the same number of stairs away she'd been from him when she stood below him a few moments ago.
"It's okay not to be, you know. In control." He tilted his head and she rushed on, trying to get it all out before he closed back up the rest of the way. "I mean, I know it's hard. God, I spent so much of my life just desperately holding onto what little control I did have. And now I'm having to relearn it all over again. But trying to control everything? All the time? You're going to burn out." She wrapped her arms around her stomach and gave him a small, rueful smile. "So just . . . learn to let go. At least a little bit, every now and then. Okay?"
Stone watched her silently, tiny expressions she didn't know how to read flitting across his face. When she stopped talking he looked away, out across the office towards the back door. "Yeah." He licked his hips, his thumb rubbing and picking at the skin on his wrist again, shoving up his sleeve a couple inches. She was too far away now to be sure, but she thought the skin there looked red. Irritated. Cassandra wondered if maybe the tattoo itself was bothering him. If it — itched. He let go again before she could decide if she wanted to ask, looking back up at her.
"When we did that spell or ritual or whatever on Apep." He paused, taking a breath and rolling his shoulders back. "When you gave him thought." His voice trailed off and he went back to looking at the back door. For an escape, maybe. Hoping someone would interrupt. Cassandra curled a little further over her knees and tilted her head.
"Yeah?"
"Did it maybe feel — did it seem at all like something might have been sent back? Into your head, from him?"
Cassandra shook her head slowly. "No. Not at all." It was her turn to furrow her brow. She thought about his shoulders, all knotted up and stiff, like he'd been bracing himself to hold up the world. "Did you?"
He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. She wondered how many people he'd fooled over the years with that guileless, deceptively open expression. Everyone he knew, according to him. For almost his entire life. She didn't understand how his family and friends didn't see how much he hurt, beneath it.
"Nah," he said, his accent subtly thicker. "Just — worrying, I guess. You know, an open door goes both ways."
"Don't think of it like a door," Cassandra suggested. "Think of it like — a faucet. When you open the tap, the pressure of the water coming out keeps anything from going in."
He nodded firmly, more to himself, she thought, than to her. "Yeah." He smiled again, tiny and tired and real. "Thanks, Cassie. That helps."
"Good." Cassandra smiled back. "Now go try Mama Cillian's cure for everything except brain tumors and bad grades." She ticked the list off on her fingers. "Take a pill, take a shower, and take a nap."
Stone chuckled. "That doesn't sound very scientific."
"Don't make me get technical on the effects of NSAIDs, hot water vapor, and reclining inactivity on stress in the human body."
Stone started down the stairs again. "Yes ma'am."
"And stop picking at your tattoo!"
Stone twitched, but didn't look back or stop walking. He stuffed his hands into his pockets. "Yes, ma'am!"
Cassandra kept a fond smile on her face until he'd disappeared down the hallway, then looked down at her hands and frowned.
It wasn't entirely true that water from the tap didn't let anything into the system. There was no return flow of water, of course, but the escaping liquid had to be replaced with something. Stone knew that as well as she did, after spending so much of his life working on pipelines,, and would spot the holes in her analogy as soon as he spent any time thinking about it. The spell in the tattoo didn't have to obey any normal laws of physics, of course, but magic abhorred a vacuum almost as much as nature did.
And they'd been standing over a breaking seal holding back true evil.
Cassandra felt her shoulders tighten as she hunched in on herself on the stairs.
Jesus. No wonder Stone had a headache.