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“Come with me, Emma. Come with me and be my one and only.”
His hand extended toward her. A perfect hand, really. Big. Rough, a little calloused but so clearly so tender that she knew its touch alone would bring her on journeys she never imagined. His scalding blue eyes bore into her own, affection and desire etched into every twitch of the iris, every bat of the eyelids. His once tight stretched shirt had long since been vandalized in the battles he had so fiercely fought on her behalf, just barely clinging on for dear life to the water soaked skin on his chest. That wouldn’t last long with the brilliant, hot sunrays beating down on the beautiful earth around them, with its vibrant, everlasting flowers and luscious grass an impossibly beautiful shade of green.
“But why, why me ?” Emma wondered, watching with heart aflame as the lips above his chiseled jaw danced into a smirk.
“Because, Emma..” he moved closer still, arms encasing her in an embrace of delicate passion.
He brushed some hair behind her ear so that she might be able to fully see the next words he spoke.
“Because I l-
clack clack clack
He smiled, relieved to finally get the words from his chest that he had awaited so many years just to tell the perfect woman.
“You-you what?” Emma’s eyebrows lifted and she tried to retain her dwindling smile.
He chuckled softly, ghosting two fingers up her neck and supporting her chin to look at him. Lips parted to draw a noiseless breath.
clack clack clack
The sunlight flickered like a broken lightbulb. His warm embrace lightened and shifted while the grass at their feet seemed to shrink.
clack clack clack
Those mesmerizing blue eyes were the only things left of him, of anything amongst the evaporating world. Then one of them faded away too and Emma was left gazing hopelessly as the iris and pupil faded to leave nothing but a white ball.
clack clack clack
The ball became a lightbulb and connected itself to the white ceiling above.
clackity clack
Emma shot up straight and instantly regretted it, clamping her hand to her head in an attempt to ward off the static building up behind her eyes. Once cured she dared face the far too bright numbers of the bedside clock. Three fucking thirty AM. In the morning. The early morning. The time of the morning where absolutely nothing anywhere in the world should be awake and young women in need of beauty sleep should be allowed such things without being woken up by incessant keyboard brutality.
‘Don’t get mad.’
The bedcovers were cast asunder and her bare legs were tickled by the cold.
‘You promised you would support him all the way. Don’t get mad.’
Her toes met the floor and hands clamped into the edge of the mattress were the only thing stopping her keeling over forward in exhaustion.
‘Who am I kidding? I’m too tired to be mad.’
Sleepy muscles that demanded more rest begrudgingly carried her toward her wardrobe and helped her lift out a thick white dressing gown. Far too cold in December to be stumbling around in just a t-shirt. Some horrid nightmare creature watched her tie the band at her waist from the mirror on the wardrobe’s door, a rest deprived thing with bleary, unfocused eyes and a half assed ponytail tugging its hair back.
‘Sexy.’
More clack clack -ing brought her attention to the bedroom door, closed over tight in its frame. She was certain she had left it open before she went to bed, because she had expected a certain someone to be joining her. No such luck. She pulled it open again and padded down the short hallway, footsteps muffled by the carpet that led her to the living room. Sitting on the couch, with back to her and pressed against the cushions, Piers stared at the screen of the laptop he had placed on the coffee table. His curled up right hand supported his head above the armrest, pressing into his temple while the other glided around the touchpad.
A sigh of many emotions escaped Emma’s lips and her weary eyes struggled to take in the contents of the webpage as she approached, instead deciding to blend all the glaringly bright blues and whites and every-other-colours into one indiscernible blob of retina burning. It didn’t help that the rest of the room was still shrouded in the early morning darkness. Couldn’t have been good for his eyes either, and Emma was fairly certain snipers needed a functioning pair of those to do their job.
“Piers, have you slept?” want of sleep didn’t let her voice amount to more than a wispy groan.
She could place a fair bet on the answer, even though all Piers did in response was cough up an apathetic grunt. He didn’t do much sleeping whenever he was back home from another fruitless search. Didn’t do much of anything , really. Except look for more dead ends and obscure chances through any means he could. Hadn’t even changed out of his day clothes yet, and the way his shoulders sagged was all too telling of how exhausted he really was. Not that he would ever admit that to anyone. Especially himself.
“Did you at least eat something?”
The hand on touchpad duty very briefly flicked a finger toward the emptied box of chinese across the table and then fell to rest on his leg as he scavenged the contents of whatever he was looking at. Emma recognized the box; She had been there when he had bought it, when they had both bought their own. Hours ago. Yesterday, technically.
‘Come on, girl. Wake up. Be some help. Make him sleep, do something. Be there for him.’
She turned and brushed a hand on his shoulder as she began the journey to the kitchen, leaving it there just long enough for his free one to reach up and stroke it a single time.
‘Well, that’s the most intimate we’ve gotten in days.’
A yawn forced her jaw open as she pulled out the bread, squinting through her blurred vision and lifting a hand to scrub at her eyes while the rest of the ingredients were taken out.
‘Jesus, I just can’t wake up.’
The kettle attacked her senses with blue light when she flicked the switch, deciding to bring on an aural assault too by gurgling increasingly loud while she fixed up a sandwich. Ham folded up at the end with the rounded crust. Only butter on the top slice, but twice as thickly to compensate. Cut vertical, not horizontal. Piers’ mother’s recipe for a happy ‘Piersey-kins’ , even if the man in question liked to insist that he stopped asking for it that way before he even started high school.
‘I should call Meredith. Let her know how Piers is doing. I wonder when’s the last time he did that himself.’
The kettle clicked and ceased its light show. She pulled out a mug.
‘What do I say, though?’
The teabag hit the bottom of the mug with a soft thump.
‘Oh, he’s just looking for his friend. Who might not even be alive.’
The water attacked the teabag and made it bleed a smoky brown.
‘But don’t tell him that because it would crush his soul and I’m not sure if he could take it.’
She threw the bled dry teabag away and lifted out some milk to stir around while she tried to shake her train of thought off its rails.
‘What’s the matter with you? Chris is out there. He’s out there and he’s fine and Piers is going to find him and everything will be okay again.’
She yawned again while returning the ingredients to their homes, a persistent yawn that made her hands tremble and temporarily blinded her with tears.
‘Stay awake. Stay awake.’
Piers hadn’t moved an inch in the time it took her to start making her way back over, snack in hands. Even when she stood behind the laptop to place it all in front of him his eyes only dared to jump away from the screen for a fraction of a second, like it was going to up and run if he didn’t keep close watch on it. No verbal acknowledgement.
‘He’s just focused. He’s not doing it on purpose.’
She hugged the gown a little closer and tightened the band before stifling yet another yawn. Her hands came up to her face and dug the heels of their palms into her eyelids, desperate to claw out whatever demon inside wouldn’t let her brain come to life.
“Go back to bed, Em.”
‘So, he speaks.’
She shook her head and let her hands fall again. His eyes were back on hers, looking more like a glare than the soft and tender look she had grown used to. Not an angry glare, though. More apathetic than anything. The glare of a man who refused to acknowledge how much he wanted to sleep.
“No. I want to help.”
She pulled up behind him again, watching his shoulders heave and listening to him sigh as she leaned her elbows on the backrest and struggled to clarify what was going on on the laptop. Couldn’t sit beside him. Not on those plump, comfortable couch cushions.
“I’ll come to bed soon. I promise.” his head only tilted toward her slightly, offering just less than the profile of his head. The half of the eyes she could see was pointed down toward the seat beside him and didn’t even try to meet her. Wouldn’t have been as easy to lie if he had been staring her in the eye.
“Wow, that almost sounded a little convincing.” she managed to make out a barely started email.
“So, who are we emailing?”
“Emma, please.”
“You know Stacy? From work? She is awesome at finding people.”
Piers’ sudden stand might have made her flinch had she the energy to do so. Instead, she continued singing Stacy’s well deserved praises and trying to decipher the computer screen while he stepped off to the side.
“She once found out where Jennifer Aniston was staying for a film shoot and we went to see her an-”
A force at the back of her knees made her fall backward with a breathy gasp, only to have her descent halted by Piers’ hand snaking around her back. The other arm hiked up her legs until he was carrying her and she managed to pouty mewl at his stony face above her.
“Put me down.” her intended demanding growl came out sounding more like a whiny child.
He didn’t answer while the ceiling started sliding above his head and the even thuds of his shoes against the floor sounded. Emma mustered up the energy to fling her arms around his neck and look a little less dead with a fair attempt at righting herself. Then his footsteps stopped and she was sinking down with him while he sat back on the couch.
His face, illuminated by the laptop, turned in the direction of her legs and she felt the hand assigned to them nudge her more comfortably onto the cushions. Once done there, both hands elevated her upper body ever so slightly to give him space to scoot his chest directly above her head, and gently lowered her back down so that her head rested in his lap. And just like that he was completely absorbed by the laptop again.
‘Sweet Jesus this is so comfortable. Don’t fall asleep.’
She watched the rise and fall of his chest, obscured in part by his arm extending over her to reach the laptop and hoping in vain that the movement would keep her awake.
‘Don’t fall asleep.’
The steady rise and fall was too calm, too rhythmic. Only made it harder. Instead she exerted herself to rotate and face the blaring white screen.
‘That’s better.’
After a few moments of silence barely penetrated by the laptop’s quiet fans, Piers’ hand lifted out of the way and sent chills under Emma’s skin when it came to rest on her head, just behind her ear. That would have been fine. Would have been bearable. But then his thumb began to stroke across her hair with such tenderness that she might have been a newborn. Repeatedly.
‘Don’t fall asleep. Stay up and help.’
Her eyelids disobeyed her and managed to close halfway before she caught on and snapped them open.
‘Don’t fall asleep..’
Piers continued stroking her hair.
‘Don’t..don’t..’