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“Hey, look at me, okay?”
“I— can’t, I—“
A sharp inhale, outlines of a sob stuttering in his breath. He can’t look, he doesn’t want to, why does he have to look again? There’s so much red. So much, splattered against the floor, the body, his hair, the coat, his hands, everything in the room was bleeding. He can’t look. No one could make him.
Charles clamped his hand over his mouth so tightly, he could feel it ache. The other was tangled in his hair, digging beneath the tresses and surely scratching marks into his skin. He wheezes out another breath, abruptly yanking his hand away, barely registering how it spasmed, when he felt something trickle down his head.
“Ah, jeez, should’ve just pulled it away from the start… uh, don’t panic more, alright? I’ll— hm.”
A troubled face stares at him, shapes and blurs and an outstretched arm gently resting on his own.
“Okay— okay, yeah! You’re looking at me! Cool. Cool, cool, cool, uh. Keep doing that, hey, wait—!“
Just when Charles feels himself surface, he sinks back under. A distressed noise escapes him, a spot of blood, stark compared to the blue of his gloves, visible from the corner of his eye. He feels the person just about rip the glove off.
“It’s not there anymore! See? We’re good, you’re good… ah, crap, do I shut up? This isn’t helping…” they say, curling back into themself.
He doesn’t hear, he can only feel something running down his head, and he’s back, back to the computer lab, back to the trial room, back to— to there, gaping, open wounds replacing images of a knife and slightly visible holes. He hunches over, pressing into his face so deeply, there’s bound to be an imprint. He heaves, tears glistening down rubber gloves, falling through the empty spaces.
A muttered “God, I told you not to look,” goes unheard before—
“Charles.”
Slender fingers wrapped around his head, pulling him back up while he let out a strangled gasp at the sudden contact. Still, the touch didn’t falter, moving down from the top of his head to tuck an unruly bang back behind his ear, then to cradle his face.
“Can you hear? Please don’t throw up again. If you wanna go quiet, then go quiet, but stop hurting yourself. Okay? Focus on my hand. It’s fine. There’s nothing here,” Whit says, before his eyes flicker up for a second. “Uh.”
Charles shakes as the blood reaches his cheek, gripping Whit’s arm like a lifeline, wide eyes meeting blank ones. When the distraction is stationary, and the problem is not, what good really is it? His chest hurt.
“I— get it— off, I can’t…”
He chokes on the last word, on the verge of retreating back into himself, when Whit grabs him and straightens him out again.
“Yeah, ‘course, just wait, okay?”
Whit turns his back on him, rummaging through the drawers by his bed. Charles closes his eyes, arms wrapping around himself, and he tries to even out his breath. He can smell copper, sees tufts of purple in the haze between his vision. Small, short sobs escape him, sounding more and more pitiful as the seconds go on. Everything feels so constricting, as if sulfur began drifting through the room. He’s getting poisoned. There’s blood seeping through his clothes and venom coursing through his veins.
And he misses something. He misses it so badly, it hurts to think about. He hates it. He reaches out, and reaches and reaches and reaches until something pulls in his muscles and his fingers barely graze faux fur, and it vanishes in a cusp of smoke that makes his head hurt and eyes flare. I hate you, I hate you, why can’t you come back? Who are you? Why do I want you back?
A cloth is planted against his skull, a murmuring voice next to his ear telling him, “Don’t look.”
And Charles listens, because that’s the only thing he can do, the only thing he’s ever done. Like some dog, and he hates dogs. Stupid, drooling mutts that nag and whine and bite and can’t do anything right on their own.
His eyes blur, and everything becomes visible, and now he’s too tired to move, or speak, or think at all.
Whit hums, looking him over. “Good, that’s good.”
Whit likes dogs, doesn’t he?
Ah.
He takes in a shaky breath, loosening his grip on himself. He isn’t sure Whit wants anything from him. Maybe he’s just a temporary thing, a slight uplift to slogging through the rest of their lives in a death trap of a building. He doesn’t know what to give, what he expects, he doesn’t know.
”You okay now?”
A bob of his head communicated the only thing he knew of that mattered to the blonde.