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Todd can feel it when it happens. Like a shiver, feather-light, tracing down his spine. A sixth sense— but the feeling arrived too late. By the time he registered that the bathroom door was cracked, he knew. She had seen it all, she had seen him, if only for a moment.
But a moment is all it would take for everything to crumble around him.
He closes the door after a long moment, mechanically finishing his nighttime routine that had become so familiar to him. So familiar that he had grown complacent. He brushes his teeth. He takes his hair down, combing it out into smooth locks, and ties it back up for the night. And he retrieves his cloaking device, a thin ring on his right hand, and slips it back on, watching in the mirror as his form shifts from Wraith to human.
That’s what she had seen, too. He feels something squeeze in his chest.
He opens the bathroom door with more caution than he had used in the past years he’s been with her. He was expecting anything— shouting, yelling, aggression. Any kind of confrontation. Something. Anything. Somehow, her silence was worse.
The tang of her fear is heavy and bitter in the bedroom’s stagnant air. But she remains motionless in bed, eues closed like if she can’t see the monster lurking just a few feet away, then it can’t see her. Can’t harm her. He pauses in the doorway, his thoughts eerily blank. And then, as if on autopilot, he clicks off the light and pads quietly to the bed. She stirs— the perfect mimicry of a drowsy, half-awake state, eyes blearily opening, clumsily flicking the comforter back to allow him space to join her.
Again he pauses, at the edge of the bed. She was never his intention, she was a means to an end— that’s what he had told himself when he involved himself with her, when her pursued her. He never expected this. She hasn’t spoken a word, and yet it feels like his insides have been ripped out. The idea of losing her is a worse pain in his chest than even years of starvation.
This house of cards he’s so carefully built feels like it’s one strong breeze from crumbling around him.
Wordlessly, like he’s expecting her to suddenly rage against him, he sinks into the bed. And as his long-standing habit dictates, he lays next to her, his body pressing into hers.
Her breathing stutters. And he so badly wants this moment to last before it all fizzles away like smoke in a breeze, that for a moment, he selfishly wonders if he should simply ignore it. That’s always been his weakness, he supposes. He’s soft for humanity, for their grit and stubborn determination, their resilience against all odds.
In some small way, it’s due to being captured by the Genii. Though tortured and starved for a full human lifetime, everything that’s happened to him since then, since he was freed, every human he’s met— it’s changed the way he’s looked at his people’s food source. He hasn’t underestimated humans, since then. Humans will always choose to fight, standing on both feet, whether they’re armed or not— and if they cannot stand, they will crawl. And if they cannot throw a punch, they will bite; teeth gnashing and eyes full of something dark and primal, carried deep within them, inherited from their bloodlines.
That’s what he expects, he supposes, when he gently pulls her to his chest. He expects teeth gnashing, punching and kicking and claws raking across his skin. He wouldn’t fight it, wouldn’t protest— it’d be well deserved for his years of deception. Instead, though, he is quietly surprised when she willingly lays her head on his chest, her face obscured by her hair falling in a halo around her. And in total contrast, every part of her is lined with tension, even as she throws the comforter back over top of them both, pretending nothing is wrong. Again, the urge to be selfish rears its ugly head.
But he can’t do that.
Not to her.
It takes everything, every drop of willpower, every ounce of strength, for him to ask the simple question in as soft a voice he can manage. “Are you okay?”
Her scent flares, a new burst of fear and added anxiety, swirling into something acrid and not at all like the scent he’s grown so used to, so fond of. She opens her mouth, and he can hear her breathing tremble as she pauses. Her hands clench into tight fists against his shirt, and that’s when he realizes.
She’s seeking comfort and safety from the very thing she is suddenly so afraid of.
She wants this moment to last, too.
A moment passes, and then another— her grip loosens against his shirt, and her scent subtly shifts into something sweeter. She presses her face against his side. “Feeling a little nauseous, actually,” she murmurs, and though he wishes it were, it’s not an olive branch.
An opossum has an involuntary biological reaction that causes it to faint in times of great stress, for so long that it seems dead and unappealing to predators.
He is at the top of the food chain, and biologically— she knows it.
Trepidation, anxiety, disbelief. The scents are cloying, heavy in the air. She’s second guessing herself, doubting herself. She’s playing the part of his girlfriend, and so, with a heavy heart, he’ll play his part too.
“Do you want me to get you some medicine?” He asks gently, futilely, rubbing his hand in slow circles on her back. He hopes it’s at least a semblance of comfort to her. Whatever she’s feeling right now, he knows, nausea medicine won’t be enough to fix it.
And then she pulls herself closer to him. He stills, then resumes, afraid of breaking her reverie. She doesn’t reply for a long time, so, in a moment of unreigned selfishness, he lifts his other hand to card through her hair, now-blunted nails scratching gently at her scalp. It might have been perceived as the affectionate gesture he intends it to be, twenty minutes ago. Maybe, to her, it still is. Even now, he feels her relax, breathing him in as if to memorize this moment.
Finally, she breathes out, her hand splaying flat across his chest, over his heart. The camoflauge device makes it feel, to an outside observer, like it’s beating to the tune of a normal heart. So she doesn’t feel the flutter in his chest at the gesture.
“Nah,” she murmurs, and he breathes out silently in relief. “I think I’m just gonna sleep it off.”
He can’t tell if it’s an act or not, but whatever this moment is to her, he refuses to shatter it. “Alright,” he whispers. Cautiously, he presses a kiss to the crown of her head, worshipping the way she sighs and leans after him as he pulls away, as if chasing the contact. “Let me know if you change your mind.” He hates the way he pauses before his next words. “I love you.”
Her heart skips a beat. He can hear it, feel it in the press of her body along his. There’s the faintest tremor to her voice, like she’s unsure and trying to convince herself of normalcy. “I love you, too.”
It feels final. Like the last nail struck into his coffin, like he’s already been buried six feet under the earth, left to rot in a place forgotten. It’s a roiling wave of devastation, but one that he keeps a careful lid on, one that he doesn’t let show. He’s had ten thousand years of practice.
Todd never realized how much he loved her, until he was faced with losing her.
Even as her tense form relaxes, and her eyes fall closed, and her breathing evens into a true, unfakeable state of sleep— all while wholly against him, her hand on his chest, the most vulnerable she could ever be with someone like him. It’s over. That’s all he can think.
It’s over. It’s over.
So, he takes in the moment, for however long it may last. She’s always been an early riser, and he doesn’t sleep, not in the way humans do. He prepares himself for when she wakes— when she looks at him under the morning light, lit by the rising sun creeping through their bedroom window. When she looks at him not with love or joy or happiness or fondness, but with... Disgust. Hate. Fear.
The very idea that she would ever fear him, for any reason, leaves a sour, bitter taste in his mouth.
He can only banish the idea, focusing on her— he spends the night memorizing each breath she takes. Charting her heartbeat into his soul. Drinking in her scent. Every shift she makes against him, always to move closer, drawn in by his warmth like a moth to a flame. Every small sigh that slips from her lips in her sleep; every tiny noise.
As a Wraith, he was living— day to day, task to task. Cull to cull.
With her, he felt truly alive.
So this? This feels like it’s his last night alive. And he intends to remember every single millisecond, down to each individual detail. The way her eyelashes catch the starlight. The way her skin looks iridescent in the darkness. The way her heart skips a beat even while asleep when he brushes a finger on her cheek, down her neck.
He’ll deal with tomorrow when the sun rises.
☆