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All in all the day had been remarkably peaceful. With Trucy spending the weekend at a friend's house, Phoenix had been free to engage in other pursuits; namely, getting Kristoph Gavin out of the city.
He'd been anxious of late, playing with his hair, picking off flakes of clear nail polish when he thought Phoenix wouldn't notice, flinching at loud noises.
Well.
He didn't flinch, per se. Kristoph wasn't a man who flinched. But he'd close his eyes and sigh and run his hands down the length of his hair.
Phoenix's official diagnosis was overwork, though his actual working theory remained darker, less defined.
Something.
Kristoph had always had a great 'something' lurking in his shadow, like he lived his entire life under the Sword of Damocles, just waiting for it to drop. Like he was never comfortable, though he could certainly hold the pose.
He hadn't wanted to leave the city, but Phoenix had all but forced him, employing every trick up his sleeve until Kristoph had finally lamented with a strained, ironic smile.
The subsequent misadventure had involved getting lost in the desert on cracked backroads and stumbling across a spectacular wildflower bloom.
Phoenix had never considered himself sentimental, but he'd unearthed his ancient mobile phone to take a picture on the low-res camera: Kristoph smiling in genuine wonderment at the brilliant sea of rainbow blooms before them.
And Phoenix had realized something with an unpleasant chill that counteracted the bright desert sun: he'd never seen Kristoph smile before. Not that smile, with teeth on display and light in his eyes, the smile of unburdened innocence.
They'd stopped for lunch at some tiny café attached to a decrepit motel and, after purchasing a road map for a dollar fifty, carried on.
"What's your favorite flower?" Phoenix asked, still musing on the desert blooms, and having grown tired of Kristoph's obscure German operas.
Kristoph turned the volume down. He'd been unusually quiet and stiff since lunch, and even now, he looked a little ill at ease. "Forget-me-nots," he said after a brief, contemplative silence. He glanced at Phoenix for a moment, just enough to parse his expression. "Do you know them?"
"I'm a pianist, not a botanist," Phoenix said, unashamed.
Before them, light reflected off a weathered speed limit sign. Kristoph slowed the car accordingly. "They're little blue flowers," he said, "five petals, small."
His easy expression faded and he shifted in apparent discomfort, swallowing.
Phoenix knew better by now than to ask what, if anything, was wrong, so he sat back and tried to picture forget-me-nots.
What happened next happened so quickly, that he only processed it in retrospect, when the shock had worn off.
The sight of a sun-bleached stop sign loomed in his mind's eye. Kristoph had stopped for it, and then… Then a nasty jerk forward and a terrible crunching sound, and Phoenix was afraid his head might strike the dash before his seatbelt locked up and held him in place.
A car zipped past them, so quickly that Phoenix couldn't even think to process the color or model and then they were moving again.
Swearing under his breath in German, Kristoph pulled over. There was no shoulder to speak of, just a flat expanse of rocky dirt studded here and there with mottled green brush.
"You okay?" Phoenix asked.
Kristoph let out a shaky exhale, face and knuckles the same sickly shade of yellow-white. A thin, white scar stretched over the skin on the back of his hand, but that was old, Phoenix knew. Nothing to worry about. "Fine," he muttered, sounding very unlike himself, and got out.
He stumbled, his hip hitting the door with a thump, and Phoenix unbuckled his seatbelt. The shock was wearing off slowly and he knew better than to stand right away. He moved slowly, letting the startled animal of his body adjust to the new positioning. Then he took a deep breath and got out of the car.
The heat wrapped around him in a many-armed embrace, driving a pained sigh from his lungs. The exhaust smell didn't help matters, so he made a wide arc, kicking up small dust clouds with each step.
He found Kristoph staggering forward to brace himself against the ruined trunk of his white Buick, his palm square on the shining metal.
"Kristoph?" Phoenix asked. He hadn't seen any blood, still didn't, but… something clearly wasn't right.
Only the wet, unpleasant sound of vomit hitting pavement met his ears. Kristoph didn't say a word. Didn't make a sound. Or if he did, Phoenix couldn't hear it over the thrum of the engine.
"You okay?" Phoenix asked. "Did you hit your head?"
Kristoph straightened for half a second before doubling over again, clenching his fist against the car's surface. It had to have been burning him, but he didn’t even flinch.
"Okay, hold on." Phoenix opened the back door and led Kristoph over to it so he could sit in the air conditioning without the pedals and steering wheel obstructing his ability to get comfortable. "Talk to me, Kris."
"I, ah…" Kristoph took a few shallow breaths, one arm resting gently across his stomach. "I've asked you not to call me that."
Phoenix laughed despite himself. "So no head injury, then."
Kristoph shook his head. "I think…" He gagged into his knuckles, looking utterly disgusted with himself and perhaps the whole situation. "Food poisoning."
"Ohhh." Phoenix thought for a moment. "How's the car?"
Kristoph took his glasses off and ran a hand down his face, blinking away the remnants of discomfort lining his face. "The rear bumper is pretty much kaputt— falling off." He shook himself, mouth twitching in irritation. "I don't think it's safe to drive, not all the way back to town. I'll have to have it towed."
His accent was creeping out a little, Phoenix noticed with a very misaimed frisson down his spine. It was like he didn't have the energy to school his mouth into the correct shapes to hide it, sinking back into the familiarity of a mother tongue he'd tried so hard to abandon.
Phoenix checked his cell phone. "No signal." He shifted his weight only to nearly fall backwards as Kristoph darted forward.
He crumpled at the back tire and braced his palms in the dirt and Phoenix held his hair back without a trace of disgust.
It was hard to keep the doubt at bay, however. Now that he had a moment to think, the strange quality of Kristoph's smile ran circles in his brain. Was Kristoph really never happy? Or was Phoenix reading way too much into something innocuous?
Below him, Kristoph shuddered and stilled, muffling a groan behind closed lips.
One thing was undeniably clear: he certainly wasn't happy now.
In the end, they limped the car back to the motel and the café that had caused a solid half of the mess in which they found themselves. Kristoph had to pull over once to get sick again, throwing his door open and ducking his head over the fog line while Phoenix winced and tried to focus on the latter half of Liederkreis.
Kristoph was pale and shaky when he got back in, but he kept the car between the lines, and that really was the best Phoenix could hope for without giving himself over to total delusion.
They parked up front, under the massive neon sign that might have been a work of art when it was turned on, but was nothing but an eyesore now. The gray lines spelled out "MOTEL" and traced the contours of a saguaro cactus.
"Stay here," Phoenix said, running his hand over Kristoph's brow.
Kristoph held up a finger before reaching into his breast pocket and passing Phoenix his wallet.
Since only one other car sat in the lot, Phoenix had his pick of rooms. He chose the one they'd parked in front of to make things simpler.
Once inside, Kristoph made a beeline for the bathroom, leaving Phoenix to stand there with his hands in his pockets.
"Uh, hey, Kristoph?" Phoenix gently knocked on the door. It was cracked, but the fact that Kristoph had shut it all meant he likely didn't want to be disturbed. "Can I come in?"
"...I'd rather you didn't."
"Why's that?" It couldn't have been that gruesome.
Kristoph was quiet for a long time, so long that Phoenix began to fear that he'd passed out. But when Phoenix shifted his weight and reached out, the answer came. Quiet, abashed, the answer came: "I'd really rather no one saw… this. Me."
"Aw, Kris." Phoenix leaned against the doorframe, a sympathetic smile on his lips. Kristoph always had been preoccupied with appearances, but he hadn't known just how deep the fixation went. "You know I've seen worse. Hell, I've been worse."
It was true. Phoenix hadn't handled the loss of his badge well and Kristoph, being the nearest sympathetic ear, had borne the brunt of it. They'd barely known each other and Phoenix had leaked snot and tears all over the front of his suit like he'd regressed back to college age.
"C'mon, somebody has to hold all that hair back," Phoenix said.
The door eased open with a creak, revealing a deathly pale Kristoph propped up against the edge of the yellowed bathtub. His hair had come unstyled in spectacular fashion, hanging in golden ropes around his shoulders and in his face.
"Handsome as ever," Phoenix said, kneeling in front of him. At Kristoph's reproachful look, he put up his hands in surrender. "Really!"
"Now's really not the time for jokes, Wright," Kristoph muttered. A tremor ran through him and he pulled his arms in and swallowed.
"Ah, now I know I messed up." Phoenix scooted closer and began to brush Kristoph's hair out with his fingers, pulling it back from his face. "You only call me 'Wright' when you're irritated with me."
"I'm not irritated with you," Kristoph said slowly, drawing in erratic breaths between words, "Phoenix."
He still shivered persistently, growing somehow paler with every passing moment. Only the washed-out olive undertone of his skin remained, tinting his face a nauseated green.
Phoenix shifted his attention, digging in his pockets for one of Trucy's hair ties. He always had one or two floating around his person; she never remembered to grab one on her way out the door and inevitably wanted one when they were out.
Aha. There it was, a magenta scrunchie zipped inside his inner hoodie pocket. Kristoph's breath hitched and Phoenix got a move on, hastily pulling Kristoph's hair into a low ponytail. He finished just as Kristoph made a lunge for the toilet, spitting bile and not much else into the water.
When he was done, he stayed curled in on himself. Shivering. Forehead pressed to the toilet seat.
Phoenix put a hand on his back. "Hey, Kris?" Testing the waters. When no response came, he began to stroke Kristoph's back. He was a little warm against Phoenix's hand, probably running a fever. "Does your stomach hurt?"
Kristoph nodded as much as his cramped positioning would allow.
"Let's get you into bed, okay?"
Kristoph said nothing, but his shoulders shook, and panic struck Phoenix like a lightning bolt before he realized that Kristoph was laughing. It looked like it hurt,
“Kris? I’m gonna help you stand, okay?”
The laughter petered out when Phoenix braced his hands under Kristoph’s armpits, died entirely when he got to his feet. Kristoph steadied himself on the wall. Pale, sweaty, but stable, one hand clutching his stomach. His glasses had slid to the tip of his nose, and he squinted at Phoenix even across the tiny expanse of the bathroom. “Sorry,” he breathed, then winced and held himself tighter.
“Hey, better laughing than crying.” Phoenix hooked an arm around Kristoph’s shoulders. “C’mon, lie down. I’ll see about getting a heating pad for your stomach.”
He helped Kristoph out of his layers, leaving him in briefs and a fitted T-shirt. The fine weave was soft under Phoenix’s fingertips and he let his hand linger, tracing small circles over Kristoph’s sore stomach. Try as he might, he couldn’t help but admire the view. Kristoph, it seemed, simply could not be made to unravel. Even now, sick as a dog and one layer from naked, his commanding presence filled the room. He didn’t blush or avert his eyes, didn’t cross his arms to cover himself. Like diamonds, unbreakable.
Phoenix had never really had an eye for nice things. When Kristoph’s lionesque assurance pushed up against him, he pushed back. Abandoning his efforts to be covert, he looked languidly up and down the length of Kristoph’s trembling body and whistled.
Kristoph looked at him askance but said nothing, eyes flashing behind his glasses.
“Sorry,” Phoenix said calmly, “I couldn’t help but admire the way you managed to find briefs and a shirt in matching shades of white. How’d you pull that off?”
Kristoph curled up on his side on top of the covers. “Trade secret,” he said softly. “You were just leaving, weren’t you?”
“Point taken.” Phoenix retrieved the trash can from under the small wooden desk that served as a TV stand. He set it on the floor on Kristoph’s side of the bed and paused. The tremors wracking Kristoph’s body could have been from the fever or from the pain he was in but regardless, it was hard to watch Kristoph shake like that. This level of vulnerability looked wrong on him. “If you’re gonna hurl, aim for the trash can, okay?”
“If you’re going to go,” Kristoph said pointedly, "aim for the door."
“Alright, alright, understood.” And Phoenix went out, blinking in the sunlight.