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Paul’s most of the way to convinced his head is about to explode by the time Sarah’s pressing her face to the car window and screaming at Felix to unlock the doors. The alley they’re in is damp and dark and his fingers are still twisted, tight, tight, through hers. He can’t gather together the memories needed to illustrate the point in time they became the type of people that held hands, but it seems so achingly right at this moment that he can’t begin to imagine what letting go will feel like.
“Paul-”
There are hands on his face now, and the release of limbs that he’d been so dreading appears to have come and gone by without him even realising.
“Hey, are you okay?”
Sarah.
“Is he conscious?”
Felix.
“Do you think he needs a hospital?”
Felix again. Panicked now. Panicking.
He struggles to upright; wraps his fingers back into place around Sarah’s wrist and uses her solid presence as a means to ground himself. Again.
“No.” He’s answering Felix, but his eyes are locked firmly on her. “No hospitals, I’m fine.”
She doesn’t look like she believes him, but she doesn’t move to protest either because they both know hospital’s not an option anyway. Not now. Not anymore.
No use pretending anything but.
***
“Where to, Sarah?”
Felix keeps asking her questions, slotting them into the myriad other vocalisations he keeps making, things like fuck and shit and oh my god, and she forces breath into her lungs steadily in a bid to calm down enough that she can think straight, organise her own thoughts into some semblance of a considered response.
“Paul-” she says, distracted as he shifts awkwardly.
She runs her free hand down the side of his face, he’s breathing and had mostly managed to stumble unaided from the club to the car, but she has no clue what they pumped into him or what the fall-out from that might be and-
And his eyes open, piercing, momentary terror schooled via confusion to feigned calm in an instant. He looks at her like she might know exactly what to do.
“Hey,” she says, stalling, “You okay?”
He blinks once, twice, more awake now as he inhales, gets ready to speak. It’s Felix who gets there first.
“Is he conscious? Do you think he needs a hospital?”
There’s movement then, sudden and disconcerting as Paul’s hand wraps around her wrist, a strangle-hold of sorts as he struggles to get himself upright.
“No,” he says, vehement, determined. “No hospitals, I’m fine.”
His pupils are pinpricks and in the low light his skin is ghost-grey.
“Take us back to your place, yeah?” she says to Felix finally, gets a nod of agreement from Paul as she lets herself sink slowly back into the seat, his hand still wrapped around her wrist. Staring at the point where his fingertips reach the top of his thumb, she tries to put silent words to the shift that has occurred between them.
Can’t.
Just knows that she’s different now.
Somehow.