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His heart caught in his throat as her thumb rested against his chest, her fingers coiling lightly around his back.
The beat of her pulse surrounded him, thrumming gently against his torso through her fingers and up into his legs from the other hand beneath him. Henry’s blue-green eyes jumped to lock with her massive hazel orbs as the question continued to hang in the air between them.
Her eyebrows were raised in concern, and he marveled at the flicker of her pupils as they danced over his body in worry, dashing through the giant glass panel door she had slid open and closed as they re-entered the house, the noise of the fight outside still happening. Her eyes met his again, her worry building so much that he could feel it resonating through her body, and as her mouth opened to speak again he gasped for a breath he didn’t know he was missing and spurred himself to answer her.
“I’m fine,” he panted, his chest rising and falling, the feeling of her fingers in her giant hand getting tighter around him as his torso expanded and deflated with the effort of breathing.
“You’re in shock,” she whispered, “you’re shaking– I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have grabbed, I’m sorry–”
“No, no–” he replied in panic, realizing she was right; his hands and arms were quivering, nearly quaking in the aftershocks of what occurred. “It would’ve killed me if you didn’t.”
“Henry,” Melanie breathed, and he felt himself drop just barely as her body slumped; his words were anything but reassuring to her. “I’m so sorry– I usually keep an eye to it, and I just… I wasn’t paying attention. If I had been looking–”
“It’s alright, I’m fine,” he repeated, his heart and breathing refusing to slow as the memories flashed back to him. The raven’s aggressive cries outside snapped the giant woman’s attention back outdoors again, before the hissing scream of the cat came streaking along with the terrorized thing across the patio, running toward the next property. She pulled him closer to herself instinctively, her body going tense.
In the brief quiet as she watched through the door again, he realized he could hear her own heart beat like a distant drum, pounding away just past where his feet were dangling over the back corner of the hand beneath him, near her chest. His voice escaped him almost involuntarily, his least favourite self-preservation response: talk until the possible heart attack ends. “I’m more keen on the idea of you feeding our raven friend now, at least.”
Her eyes blinked in surprise before she turned her attention back down, holding him further out from her body again. A faint smile crossed her lips but refused to reach her still worried, nearly-terrified eyes. “He’s gonna get the fancy bread, I just hope he’s ok.”
A very brief pause passed between them before she spoke again, her voice still tense and her pacing still frantic. “I’m sorry, did you want me to put you down somewhere?”
He shook his head, his fingers feeling numb from the panting, though his shaking had begun to finally subside. “No, please, I don’t think I can stand right now. This is fine,” he pleaded, letting his head fall back against her fingers and closing his eyes.
“Are you sure?” She asked quietly, worriedly. Her fingers had flexed around him delicately at his weight, but straightened out almost immediately, as if scared. He nodded, opening his eyes to look at hers just long enough to reply before closing them again.
“Very, this feels very welcome, especially right now,” he called before letting his body relax heavily into her. The feeling was coming back to his fingers, and he started to rub against the faint corduroy texture of her palm and finger next to him, mostly to help ground himself but it did it’s work in helping to soothe her as well.
He didn’t panic as she began to move carefully to her usual kitchen chair, sitting down slowly and letting her hands fall carefully to her lap. The last time he had been cradled like this had been during that disastrous day a month ago, in the public washroom they had hidden in after he had finally been able to communicate with her.
Both of their pulses finally began to slow, his breathing returning to something much closer to normal as he reached his other hand up to grab the back of her thumb. Her reaction, instantly, was to try and flinch away but he simply hugged it tighter to him, letting her pulse press rhythmically over his own heart. The images of the massive cat flying at him, its eyes black and focused solely on him, the long arms of it swinging out at him with giant claws extended threatened to send him back into a spiral, but she was here.
He felt safe here, again. These terrifying, giant hands– the ones that he hated the idea of having wrapped around him, gripping him– were a safe haven among fear and chaos. A sheltered harbour from everything that had just happened to him. He grimaced as more flashes, these ones more distant and of the storms that had taken his friends and his crew, threatened to send him spiraling again.
Her fingers curled around him tenderly, pressing just barely against and around him, holding him steady. Why was he so scared of these hands? Hands that had never hurt him, hands that treated him with such kindness and support. Hands that had so rarely faltered, even in the worst of the situations they had been in together. He squeezed her thumb to him again, bringing his second arm up to hold it tighter, gripping it in his own calloused fingers and palms.
Tears spilled down his cheeks as the clearest image from his nightmares hit him; Forbes’ hand slipping out of his grip and falling overboard into the frigid waves just before dawn.
It wasn’t the strength of her hands that he feared.
It was the weakness of his own.