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Usually, her heart doesn’t sink quite this much on Sunday nights.
She worked hard for the job she has, and loves it even more deeply than she dreamt she would. Every now and then she wishes the weekend would last a little longer, especially when she’s exhausted, or when she’s curled up with her face in the crook where Rafayel’s neck joins his shoulder. But it’s not like this , this heavy, angry cloud of a feeling, which makes sense, because it’s not work she’s dreading so much right now.
It’s appointments. It’s medical appointments.
She should have gone to bed over an hour ago, but she’s still awake, in her day clothes, and she hasn’t brushed her teeth. The overhead light is still on instead of her dimmer, warmer lamp. She’s lying sideways on her bed, on top of the covers, legs dangling off the edge while her phone fails to adequately distract her.
First up, she has the doctor tomorrow – not Zayne, he’s away on yet another one of his mysterious research trips. They’ve organised for her to have follow-up scans and blood tests the day after, then another review later in the week. They’re going to want to tweak her medication again, she’s sure of it. In the long run it helps, but the side effects always knock her around when the dose changes, let alone how she’ll feel if they switch to something else altogether. It’ll be a new doctor, too. She trusts all of Zayne’s team, knows he wouldn’t leave her in incapable hands while he’s away, but still. It’s another variable to control for.
That’s not good news on any type of mission. The more predictability, and the less factors, the better.
Her phone begins to buzz, pulling her from her thoughts. Rafayel’s video calling her.
For a brief moment before picking up, she tries to fix her hair. Pretty quickly, she realises it’s a lost cause. It’s not like repositioning her bangs will hide how tired her eyes look anyway.
“Miss Hunter!” Rafayel exclaims when she picks up, faux-scandalised. Wind buffets him, wherever he is, and the light lays across his face in distant stripes. When she turns the volume up, she can hear waves that swell, crashing surge of water. He must be by the ocean. These things always make Rafayel feel at home, and as a sense of calm washes over her, she realises the effect must be rubbing off on her, too. “What are you still doing awake? It’s the middle of the night, y’know.”
“Says the man who just called me,” she retorts, without any real heat, “and who’s probably miles from home by now. Where are you, exactly?”
“Hey! I’ll have you know you can get a perfectly good sleep on the beach.”
Not a concrete answer, she notices. So he’s probably a little lost. “What if you slept too well and the tide comes in? Do you get washed away?”
Rafayel pauses. His beautiful brow furrows and he purses his lips. “That actually did happen to me once. I guess having gills is a bit of an unfair advantage.”
“Maybe just a little,” she allows, mostly just to see him preen the way he does whenever she gives his Lemurian nature even the slightest sideways compliment.
“Be honest with me, though.” Oh, god, suddenly his tone is disarmingly earnest. “Why are you still awake? Don’t you have the medical thingy in the morning?”
She laughs. “You mean my follow-up? At the hospital?”
“Yeah, that. It is tomorrow, right? Don’t tell me I wrote it down wrong.”
His frown and the concerned tilt of his head look so sincere, even windswept and poorly lit as they are. It makes her stomach do something strange, like the waves are dragging it back out to sea and leaving her behind. The discomfort, the circles she was running in her head before he called, return, just as powerful and resistant as before. She admits, “You got it right. It’s tomorrow.”
“I knew it,” he crows, clearly relieved that his note-taking hasn’t betrayed him. “So what gives?”
She goes to give him all the same answers she’s been repeating in her own head – that it’s such a waste of time to use all her work leave on this, and she can probably afford to delay it all for another few months since it’s monitoring anyway, and she feels… not great, but fine, as far as the Protocore Syndrome ever feels fine. Sure, she’s been more tired, and sure, she’s having more moments each day where her heart feels too fast, too hot, but she’s fine.
When she opens her mouth, the reply that comes out surprises her, small and insistent. “I don’t want to go.”
Rafayel sits down in the sand with a soft ‘oof’ and gives her his full attention.
“I don’t want to go ,” she says again, when he doesn’t reply. It’s a little whinier, this time, silly even to her own ears.
Rafayel hums, an empathetic noise in the back of his throat, and echoes back, “You don’t wanna?” In another context, it might’ve felt mocking, but Rafayel never laughs at her in moments like this.
“I don’t.” It’s all bubbling up in her now, no more mature language or rational justifications. “I don’t want to sit in any more waiting rooms, or confirm my date of birth, or rank my pain from one to ten, or tell them how my fatigue levels are impacting my job. I don’t want to be a science experiment. What’s the point of it all for a condition they can’t even fix?” When she hears her own voice getting louder, she breaks off, swallowing hard.
“I see,” murmurs Rafayel. He doesn’t seem thrown by her outburst, just thoughtful, maybe slightly saddened. “So that’s why you’re upset.”
She wants to say that she hadn’t known that’s how she felt, not til it was all tumbling out of her mouth, but even in her own head that sounds… flimsy, ridiculous, so she stays quiet.
“I mean, it makes a lotta sense, when you think about it,” muses Rafayel. He’s looking out at the sea now, but the sideways glances he still shoots at his phone tell her it’s for her benefit rather than his. “People get burnt out even doing too much of things they really love, right? Artists get burnt out of creating with no inspiration, fishies in tanks too small burn out on swimming. And even if you really love another person, we all need a chance to go for a stroll or soak in a bath with our own thoughts every once in a while, yeah?”
Blinking against the burning in her eyes, she nods. His mouth twitches into a smile, just at the edges.
“But you’re not even, like, suuuper passionate about being a patient to begin with. This wasn’t your aspirational side hustle or something.” She laughs a bit at that, despite herself, and he seems satisfied. “Right, I kinda figured. Of course you’re tired of it, cutie. Your body shouldn’t feel like a science project or an experiment – it’s your home. If someone came into my home and messed with my stuff all the time, you bet I’d be mad.”
“You sure would be,” she mumbles, and finds herself tugging Copper across the bed to curl under her arm. “You’d throw a tantrum.”
For once, Rafayel doesn’t dispute this fact. “Rightfully so!” he insists, throwing a handful of damp sand at the middle distance like that proves his point. “Like, get ouuuut.”
“Get out ,” she repeats back, meaning to tease him, but it doesn’t come out like that. It comes out like she means it, and like she’s tired. All of a sudden, she doesn’t know what to do with her face, brightly lit, or the exposed feeling of her body and all the eyes and medical equipment that have been on it recently. She tugs Copper closer and holds him against her midriff, arm heavy like a seatbelt, or a hug. The look Rafayel gives her from the shadows on the beach is knowing. She drops her gaze, focuses on raking her fingers through Copper’s fur instead.
“Besides, I’ll be there. So if they’re being, like, wayyy too overbearing, I’ll just throw sand at them. I’ll stash some in my pocket now for safekeeping.”
That makes her look up at his face on the screen again. “Rafayel, I’m not a child, I’ve had a hundred appointments like this before. You don’t have to come with me.”
“But Miss Bodyguard,” Rafayel whines, and she rolls her eyes even as she smiles at him being so himself, “I’ve got a terrible gut feeling about tomorrow, and coincidentally, about Tuesday and Friday as well! I better stick close to my bodyguard, just to be safe.”
“Some protection I’ll be from inside a CT machine.”
“Your formidable vibes alone will keep the evil at bay, I’m sure of it,” he tells her loyally. He pauses. Then he softens. “It’s okay to not want to go,” he says, gentler now. “You know that, don’tcha? You don’t owe everyone brave, cheerful Miss Hunter, even at the hospital. You can go quietly, and hating it. I’ll be by your side no matter what. Once it’s all over, we can walk down to the waterfront, yeah?”
She gives Copper an extra-tight squeeze and watches the way stray pieces of Rafayel’s hair flutter in and out of his eyes with the sea breeze. If she inhales deeply and slowly enough, she can almost convince herself she can taste the salt.
“Can we look for seashells?” she asks, voice painfully tiny.
Rafayel, sweet as he ever is, replies, “Duh, cutie. I still gotta find one that perfectly matches your eyes, remember?”
Like she could forget that promise.
Her view of Rafayel wobbles and then rights itself as he gets to his feet. He shakes sand off his slacks, the nice white ones. Thomas would have an aneurysm if he knew Rafayel was walking long beach distances in them, probably staining them with seaweed and driftwood. But anything that’s Rafayel’s has to meet him where he is, because he makes himself at home whatever he wears, and no matter where he goes.
“I love you,” she murmurs, barely above a whisper.
“Huh? What was that? God, how is there sand in my hair , it’s not like I was lying down making sand angels…”
“Nothing,” she says, rolling onto her side and curling up like a comma, Copper still clutched to her chest. “Are you walking home?”
“Sure am. If I can remember which direction to go, that is. Why don’t you get ready for bed, and when I get back, we can go to sleep together? Then we can see who got better sleep before your appointment tomorrow, and crown a victor.”
She blinks. “You want us to get into competitive sleeping now?”
“Oh, yeah. I hear it’s all the rage these days, but the judges are strict. They’ll totally disqualify anyone who’s not in their jammies, under the blankie, with freshly brushed teeth. Reddie says they’re harsher than at the Senior Hunter’s Contest.”
He’s ridiculous, and he loves the sound of his own voice, and he thinks he’s so funny. She finds herself sitting up, and then standing, anyway. Despite Rafayel. (Because of Rafayel).
“Better start running, then,” she tells him, “sand in the bed definitely gets you penalised.”
“Copper, sabotage her!” Rafayel insists, suddenly picking up pace. She can hear his feet against the sand, can hear the breathless laughs he’s trying desperately to hold back. “She’s got an unfair head start! The referee has to do something!”
She closes her eyes and exhales deeply. She finds herself giggling, too. Salt, and seashells. Before she knows it. She doesn’t have to want to go. All she has to do is turn up. And no matter how she feels, how brave or tough she is or isn’t, Rafayel will find some way to make her smile.