Chapter Text
The only thing keeping Alex from keeling over onto the cushions was a vision of Dawes scrubbing furiously at the couch. Alex didn’t know what substance coated her clothes and arms–blood of a sort, she supposed–but she didn’t imagine it was fun to try and get out of upholstery. So she just sat, perched on the very edge, elbows on her knees, face in her hands. She could fall asleep like this, she thought, exhausted as she was.
“You are covered in blood.” So it was blood. Darlington had reappeared, presumably from the bathroom, and moved to sit next to her.
“Hardly unusual,” Alex mumbled, staring at the floor. The image of the demon’s chest and skull caved in wouldn’t leave her. The sound of it, the feeling of the bones crunching beneath her fists, her boot. It was too reminiscent of things past. Then the grey had left her and left her weary. It had taken more energy than she possessed to make it here to the Hutch and she didn’t have any left to wrestle her memories into behaving.
“Be that as it may, Stern, you don’t have to go to bed sticky.” She looked over to him then and saw he was holding a towel, damp from the sink. Neatly folded and stacked next to him was a set of Lethe sweats. Oh. “Shirt please.”
Alex sighed and sat up, considering him for a moment. He looked infuriatingly fine–eyes alert and posture easy–as if he’d just come from a particularly interesting lecture and not a fight with a monster. Alex supposed being a sadistic despair sucking fiend had its perks. She pulled the offending garment over her head.
Darlington took it from her, untangling it from her arms, and dropped it on the floor. He was unsurprisingly gentle with what came next. The cloth was warm and Darlington took his time, not scrubbing so much as letting the water seep into the drying viscera before wiping it away.
When Alex agreed to join Lethe, she had anticipated having to fight, to feign, to keep her guard up in order to fool everyone into thinking she was entitled to be there. She hadn’t anticipated learning how to allow herself to receive care. It was so nice, but what shocked her most was how easy it had become to let Darlington (and Dawes, and Turner) go to bat for her. Or put her to bed, in this case.
Darlington was examining her second arm now, nearly finished, turning it this way and that. He found and removed one last streak of blood from between her fingers and then let the cloth fall to the floor as well. Alex slipped her arms into the clean sweatshirt when he held it out for her, and he pulled it over her head and into place. When Darlington gathered up her hair to free it from the collar, she leaned into the touch unselfconsciously, eyes drooping.
Darlington chucked, “Nearly there, Stern.”
Alex felt something drop into her lap and opened her eyes. Pants. She sighed and gathered what little energy she had to stand up. Quick as she could manage, Alex shucked her stained jeans, pulled on the soft sweats, and slumped back onto the couch.
Darlington pulled her feet up onto his lap and she was only too happy to lay back on the armrest and close her eyes. She was distantly aware of the couch shifting, then Darlington was next to her, arm looping around her waist and pulling her onto his chest. “Sleep.”
As if she had a choice. There was no need for a blanket, swaddled as she was in warm cotton. Darlington was warm, too. That might be her favourite thing to come of the gentleman turning demon. He was like a space heater. Good for cold nights and aching muscles. She snuggled in and drifted off.