#going to listen to guts and freak out while i try to parse These Feelings.

[yououghtaknow]

you know what they say. at least this weird situationship i'm in applies to so many taylor swift songs.

[delimeful]

my virtues uncounted (6)

warnings: panic attack, fear, arguing

there will probably be an epilogue after this, but we're nearing the end of this story! :)

-

Virgil floated into consciousness with surprisingly little pain, considering the last thing he remembered was bleeding out from a stab wound.

He wasn’t entirely sure how the others’ returned after discorporating-- they weren’t much in the habit of randomly sharing vulnerabilities-- but for him, it was always rushed, his reformation slapdash at best. It was probably part of being Anxiety: he couldn’t stand the idea of being ‘out of it’ for long, not when anything could be happening to Thomas with his influence muted.

So, he would come back to himself with whatever injury that killed him barely knitted back together, and grit his teeth and bear it for the next few weeks while it slowly healed. One of his recurring nightmares was the Light Sides finding out about it, using it to keep him out of commission to ‘help’ Thomas. It seemed… less likely, after meeting them.

Meeting them. Right. He’d done that.

A low thrum of panic in his gut chased the lingering sleepiness from him, and he pushed himself into a sitting position as quickly as he dared, figuring that he might as well test the boundaries of his lack of stab wound pain before he snuck over to check that the core parts of Thomas had all made it through okay. Or before he encountered Remus again.

The first thing he registered was that there wasn’t any pain, none at all.

The second thing was that everything was proportionally huge around him.

The third thing was that these absolutely were not the Dark Side commons.

His heart rate spiked immediately as he whipped his head around, staring at what could only be the Light Side common area. He’d only caught a glimpse of it before, with the whole ‘bleeding out’ thing, and it looked impossibly different from where he stood on the living room table. Now that he was paying attention, he could feel the way Thomas was so much closer here than in the Subconscious, like the difference between shallow water and the depths.

He shook himself. Now wasn’t the time to get caught up in how much easier core Sides had it. There were bigger things to worry about, literally. He hadn’t discorporated, he was in the Conscious part of the mind, and he was tiny-- through no doing of his own.

Oh. They wanted revenge.

Virgil kicked away the assortment of tiny blankets around him and got to his feet, blood rushing in his ears. He’d been an asshole to them while they were stuck in the Subconscious, so they were returning the favor. Why else would they have healed him and turned him pocket-sized? It was the only explanation that made sense.

The commons were just shy of completely disorienting while empty, so he certainly wasn’t going to stick around for something as overwhelming as a Side to appear. He hurried to the edge of the table, eyeing the drop with no little trepidation. Was he lighter like this, or would he land heavily on the carpet below and break half his bones?

He shouldn’t risk it. No point in doing half the work for his captors.

If he could get a running start to the other end of the table, he might be able to make the jump to the couch, though. From there… maybe pushing a pillow to the ground. Could he even move a pillow at this size?

Another shudder worked its way through him, something small and terrified in the back of his mind shrieking at the way everything around him had changed. Had this been how the others had felt? He shook his head, stepping back from the edge and turning to face the other end of the table. He couldn’t freak out yet. Not until he was safe.

There was a distant phone alarm, the generic sort that Thomas had come to resent after using it for his morning alarm for months on end. Virgil felt a chill of foreboding pass over him, and a heartbeat later, he heard the telltale woosh of one of the core Sides rising up next to the table.

Their shadow fell over Virgil, impossibly large, and he bolted.

There was a voice, but he couldn’t pick out the words past the blood rushing in his ears, his own breathing, and the panicked rush of thoughts that came with picking flight. He focused on the jump ahead instead, the length of table ahead of him growing shorter and shorter until he was nearly to the edge, muscles tensed to leap.

The light around him being blocked out was the only warning he got before his view of the world was suddenly cut off. Half a second later, his momentum was halted by a collision with something soft, warm, and alive. He recoiled as sharply as he could, but there were already what could only be fingers curling around him, his stomach dropping as he was lifted clear off the table’s surface, his center of gravity shifting against his will.

If he hadn’t been panicking before, he certainly was now, his breaths coming shallow and shaky, barely bringing in any air as black spots started to dot his vision.

He was in someone’s hand. They could do anything to him, and he wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop it, would probably deserve it, but it would hurt and couldn’t they have just let him discorporate--

The low, calm voice that had been rumbling in the background paused for a moment, and then they were moving again, his nausea growing as everything moved too fast around him, like a car someone else was driving but a hundred times worse.

And then, abruptly, there was solid ground under his feet again. The hand opened around him.

Virgil dropped to his hands and knees immediately, pressing his forehead against the table to both quell his dizziness and find something to ground himself. He was hyperaware of the warmth emanating from the hand that still bracketed him on one side, like a shield or a threat.

The Side was still talking, though Virgil still couldn’t quite parse the words. Despite his incoherence, the hand didn’t even twitch, no underlying threat to whatever it was they were saying to him. His breathing settled a bit despite himself. The implied promise that they weren’t going to outright attack him shouldn’t have been so reassuring, but it was.

His head slightly clearer, he slowly pushed himself back up to sit back on his heels, looking up to see who had found him.

It was undoubtedly Logan, though he’d never seen those glasses and tie at such a warped scale before. He could have figured it out earlier, if he’d just been listening; neither Roman nor Patton tended to be so carefully enunciated with their words.

Logan’s words, right. He was counting, which confused Virgil for a moment-- was this an experiment? Something to see how long the local idiot spent caught up in a panic attack when he was supposed to be a survival instinct-- until he caught on to the way Logan’s chest rose and fell along with the numbers. A breathing exercise.

He was kind of surprised, in that pleasant ‘pessimist-proven-wrong’ sort of way, but it figured that the Sides up here would offer even their captive literal time to breathe. He let himself follow along with the pattern for a few more moments before clearing his throat roughly and forcing himself to speak.

“Hey.”

Logan paused, looking down at him. “Hello.”

There was a short, slightly awkward pause, in which Logan seemed to flounder while Virgil refused to apologize for being kidnapped and reduced to doll size, even if he’d just had a completely image-ruining breakdown over it.

“Are you alright?” Logan finally settled on, his gaze piercing as it swept over him as though searching for injuries. “I apologize for not warning you, but I needed to stop you from recklessly endangering yourself. I didn’t intend for my actions to trigger a panic attack.”

“Yeah, who would freak out over some little old thing like being picked up by a giant hand,” Virgil snapped back sharply, his sarcasm coming out a little less biting than usual after such a draining attack. “It’s not like I’m the embodiment of Anxiety or anything.”

“You are Anxiety, though.” Logan shifted, the motion jarring his hand slightly, and Virgil barely managed to contain his flinch. “And as such, I’m surprised that you would entertain the idea of unnecessarily trying to fling yourself off of a considerable height at your size.”

Virgil squinted at him, trying to figure out if he was serious. “Unnecessarily?”

“Clearly? I cannot imagine why your first solution would be to attempt something so risky, though it’s possible I’m missing some vital context,” Logan replied, his face scrunching up slightly in confusion. “Perhaps the others--,” he lifted a hand.

“Wait!” A surge of panic forced Virgil to his feet, but it was too late. The summons registered, and Creativity and Morality wasted virtually no time in rising up, both of them instantly looking to him instead of Logan.

“Anxiety!” they both cried, and they didn’t sound mad, but that didn’t really mean anything, did it?

They crowded forward, and Virgil couldn’t keep himself rigid this time, his whole body jerking back and bumping into Logan’s hand.The mixed signals-- hide versus get away-- left him frozen, cowering under that pitiful defense.

“Anxiety?” Patton tried, and the concern in his voice was enough to convince him to look up and meet the other Side’s gaze. “Are you okay, kiddo?”

“I’m stuck in a room with three giants, what do you think?” he spat automatically, his shoulders hunching up like they could protect him.

Patton’s mouth twisted in a sympathetic sort of way, and he moved to sit, scrunching his body down slightly so that he was more-or-less level with the table. “It’s all kind of overwhelming, huh?”

With a simple glance from the moral Side, Roman followed suit and Logan settled back on his heels, having already been kneeling. Virgil stared between the three of them, his skin prickling with nerves.

Behind him, Logan’s hand moved. Virgil immediately crouched, ducking his head down and lifting his arms in an ineffective attempt to ward off whatever was happening. There was a beat of silence, and when he glanced up, he found that Logan had simply retracted his hand, apparently convinced that Virgil wasn’t planning on a repeat of his escape attempt. Or that the three huge Sides surrounding Anxiety was enough of a cage in itself.

“We’re not going to hurt you, Jack and the Beanstalker,” Roman lied, doing an impressive job of sounding confused and harmless. “You’re not in the Subconscious anymore.”

A bitter laugh bubbled up in Virgil, one that he didn’t bother to stifle. “Yeah, right. I’m not an idiot, Princey. Remus got you all twisted up over what he did and I was an asshole and now you’re paying the favor forward, I get it. You don’t have to lie about it.”

The three of them exchanged complicated glances, ones that admittedly looked more upset and horrified than conspiring, but Virgil refused to buy the act.

“We’re not lying to you!” Roman insisted, making Virgil scoff. Patton’s face started to take on that kicked-puppy cast, and Virgil averted his gaze, feeling hot anger bubble up in him at Patton’s involvement. How was any of this right and moral?

“I live with Deceit, you’re not going to fool me. Just get whatever you’re going to do to me over with,” he forced out, grimacing when his voice wobbled slightly at the end.

“Anxiety.” Logan leaned forwards, meeting his gaze with utmost seriousness. “Perhaps it will help if you understand our motives for your current state. Can you tell me how much you remember from our escape?”

“Remus found us and turned me into a pincushion,” Virgil deadpanned, a hand moving to settle over his gut. He knew now that he probably hadn’t discorporated, but he could still barely believe that there was no pain there. Core Sides could just do that? “And then you three decided to turn me pincushion-sized, I guess. How is that not revenge?”

“It was to save your life!” Roman cried dramatically, looking very put-out. “And to keep you from going back to the Subconscious and my brother, y’know, the guy who was tormenting us for fun!”

“To save my-- we can’t die!” Virgil snarled, pushing his complex feelings about Remus down in favor of twisting the fabric of his hoodie in his hands. “You trapped me up here, no room, no powers, no height, and you expected me to be grateful?!”

“We weren’t trying to trap you,” Patton interjected, looking between him and Roman worriedly. “And we aren’t going to hurt you, I promise.”

Roman, who had drawn himself up in outraged offense, visibly deflated. “Patton’s right. You know he wouldn’t lie to you about something like this.”

Virgil hesitated despite himself.

“The problem of your current stature is one that we know how to fix,” Logan took the opportunity to add, fiddling with his tie. “Once you summon your room to this level of the mind, you will be able to find security and power within it, and we won’t bother you while you recover your lost energy.”

“Woah, woah,” Virgil held his hands up to stall further explanation, feeling thrown off. “Who said anything about putting my room up here?”

Roman raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “What, you want to be that size around a vengeful Remus?”

“I wouldn’t be this size if you hadn’t meddled!” Virgil snapped, scowling fiercely

“We weren’t going to just let you die,” Patton burst out, looking downright distraught. “You saved us. You didn’t want to rise up and you knew it would make your friends upset, but you did it anyhow. It wouldn’t be right, to just… not try to save you back!”

Virgil gaped for a moment, his next prepared retort completely upended. “No, I… that’s my job. Of course I did that. You don’t owe me for it.”

“Anxiety, Roman prevented your discorporation because he wanted to help you. Not to repay a perceived debt,” Logan informed him, his words stiff but genuine.

Roman shot Logan a look, heaving a dramatic sigh before turning back to Virgil. “All of us wanted to help, Gloomy B. Jones. Who wouldn’t choose to revive a party member who nearly perished heroically on a quest?”

In what universe was Roman calling him a hero? Inside his hoodie pocket, Virgil pinched himself, his confusion rising when everything refused to turn out to be a dream. Even a terrible plot twist like that would be more understandable to him than whatever was happening right now.

For that matter, they couldn’t really be implying what he thought they were implying.

“You really want me to pull my room up here. And be a… a core Side.”

Looking from face to face, he found no trace of anger or mockery, only earnestness. A genuine offer. He shook his head, his heart somehow racing even harder.

“What about when I have to do the other part of my job? The part you guys all hate me for?” he reminded them harshly. “I bet you won’t be so keen on my presence then.” He could easily imagine how well that would go over. Could a Side be cast out from both parts of the mind?

Patton shuffled forward a bit, his hands flapping like he wanted to reach out reassuringly but knew that Virgil would absolutely lose his shit if he even tried. “It’s like you said, kiddo. You want to keep Thomas safe, and we want that, too!”

“You’ve more than proven yourself willing to compromise when it counts,” Logan said, and then added wryly, “Statistically, the three of us already spend a fair amount of our time arguing before we come to a decision anyways.”

“Seriously?” Virgil asked, and Logan gestured to the necktie emphatically.

“That’s right! You may be as contrary as your jittery little heart desires, and you’ll still be in excellent company,” Roman piped up, gesturing to himself magnanimously. After a moment, he let the posturing fade into something more serious. “Anxiety, we don’t have to agree on everything for you to deserve better. Won’t you at least give us a chance?”

Virgil scrubbed his hands through his hair roughly, turning away despite his misgivings. Apart from that first incident with Logan, they hadn’t grabbed him, hadn’t even touched him despite knowing that he couldn’t do anything to stop them. At some point between that first disastrous meeting and now, they’d stopped treating him like an enemy.

He’d have to go back down there and explain at some point, but he couldn’t deny that the idea of not being repressed was one that seemed almost too good to be true. Deceit wouldn’t be happy, but maybe this would be the proof they all needed, that separating the Sides and hiding some of them from Thomas wasn’t working as well as they pretended it did.

It could be an opportunity. It could be… good.

“Alright,” he said, turning back to where they’d all been waiting, “I’ll pull my room up. I’ll-- I’ll try. That’s the best you’re going to get.”

And as the others cheered or smiled victoriously, he felt like maybe it was worth a shot after all.

[is-it-art-tho]

Summary: After a sudden explosion leaves Tim seriously injured, he’s forced to rely on his brothers to get him out of the jam.

The first thing Tim became aware of was the sound of someone screaming. No, not screaming, he realized. It only felt that way because the voice was so close. This person was panting, saying the same thing over and over, anxious and hurried. Tim struggled to make sense of the words, but his thoughts came and went like confetti on a breeze, quick and fleeting and impossible to hang on to.

The next things he became aware of were hands and arms around him, holding him, and a rhythmic jostling sensation. Someone must’ve been carrying him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been carried anywhere. For some reason the thought almost made him laugh. He was seventeen, after all. Practically a man.

“He’s smiling,” a young voice snapped. The first words Tim had been able to hear clearly. “Why is he smiling?”

“Calm down.” The second voice was older, more steady, but the words seemed to come through clenched teeth.

Finally the world around him faded into view. Tim was staring blearily up at Dick’s jaw as they hurried… somewhere. He couldn’t remember. Dick was sweating and covered in scrapes and bruises. A nasty gash at his hairline was bleeding heavily, forcing him to run with one eye closed.

“You’re… bleeding…” Tim croaked.

Dick looked down at him, shocked. A moment later, Damian popped into view. Half of Damian’s mask was missing; one arm was folded protectively into his chest. They both looked terrible. Tim tried to put the pieces together, to remember how they’d gotten like this, but the confetti in his mind swirled impossibly fast, offering only fragments. An abandoned office building. A hostage. Tim running towards something…

“Just relax,” Dick said firmly, apparently reading the growing frustration and anxiety on Tim’s face. “You’re gonna be okay.”

You’re gonna be okay. That’s what Tim had been hearing earlier – the phrase he’d kept hearing over and over again. But it wasn’t himself that he was worried about.

“Wait,” Damian said suddenly, stopping with his finger to his ear. “What do you mean we can’t…” He paused. Tim realized he was talking to Oracle. “Well then we’ll just move it!” Damian shouted. Then another pause as he listened before,

“Fine!”

When Damian didn’t immediately offer an explanation, Dick asked “What is it?”

“We can’t go out this way,” he said, indicating the stairwell they were standing at. Tim noticed that Damian was determinedly looking away from them. His exposed eye glistened with frustrated tears as his hand curled into a fist at his side. For all his posturing and combat experience, he was still just a child. Tim decided to try remember that more often.

“Why not?” Dick pressed.

“It’s blocked.”

“Okay.” Dick took a steadying breath. “Then we’ll just have to find another way. What did Oracle say?”

Damian ground his teeth. “Nothing useful,” he spat.

“Damian–”

“She said to wait, Grayson! Is that what you wanted hear? She told us to ‘stand by.’” Damian never used their real names in the field. He caught himself a moment later, recanting. “I mean Nightwing,” he murmured.

“Did you tell her about…?”

Damian just nodded. Dick cursed under his breath.

“What’s… the big deal,” Tim asked. His voice sounded odd. It was weak and thin. He tried to clear his throat. “You guys got dates or something?”

Dick and Damian just stared at him, horrified and anxious. It took Tim a little longer than it should have to realize that they weren’t upset because they had to wait. They were worried about him. 

“I’m fine,” he added hoarsely. “Really. You don’t have to keep carrying me.”

Tim started to climb out of Dick’s grasp, but Dick held tighter. “Tim, don’t–” he began and in that moment, Tim saw it. The reason Damian and Dick had been so stressed. The reason neither of them could stand the idea of waiting even a second longer to get out. The reason Tim had found himself wavering on the edge of consciousness since the moment he’d woken up. The reason, he assumed, he’d passed out in the first place.

“Tim…” Dick said slowly, carefully. Like an officer trying to talk someone down. “It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

Damian just stared, wide eyed.

And Tim realized they were both waiting for him to react, probably to freak out. But really as he stared down at himself, he just felt utterly confused. What he was looking at didn’t make any sense. The confetti of his thoughts kicked up again, sending images flashing through his mind.

A hostage.

A gas leak.

Tim running towards the kidnapper.

A gun he hadn’t noticed before.

A single shot.

An explosion.

An explosion, he thought. It was starting to make sense now. He looked at their surroundings as if for the first time. The entire floor looked like a warzone. Rubble everywhere, the ceiling missing, exposing the entirety of the floor above them.

“I fell…” Tim whispered. He remembered the explosion, the floor giving out beneath him. So suddenly he didn’t have time to think, to try to slow his decent.

Dick just nodded.

Tim returned his gaze to the wood fragment protruding from his abdomen, realizing for the first time how cold and feverish he felt, how the smell of blood mingled with the dust and smoke on the air to create a sickening perfume. How no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t slow his breathing. “I fell,” he whispered again between gasps.

“He’s going into shock,” Damian said.

“I know.”

Their voices began to swirl together and morph, like a song being played backwards in slow motion. The world rolled nauseatingly around him and, without warning, Tim threw his head to the side and vomited an alarming mixture of blood and saliva. And finally, Tim felt it.

The pain.

He had experienced a lot of injuries in his short life, ranging in severity. Broken bones, gun shots, even nearly lost a finger once in an unfortunate skiing incident. But the thing about pain is that after a while, memories of pain never quite do it justice. Sure you can remember that something hurt, but you’re never quite going to remember exactly how bad it really was.

So now, if you’d asked Tim if he’d ever felt anything like this before, he would’ve said no. Whether or not that was entirely true would be uncertain, but as fire bloomed out from the center of his stomach and raced through his veins, as his body convulsed and writhed involuntarily, as his head snapped back and a scream raked itself free from his throat, he couldn’t quite bring himself to care.

Dick cursed again. “He’s bleeding too much.”

“I thought you stitched him up!”

“I did the best I could with what we have,” Dick explained as Tim’s screams gave way to gritted cries. He tried to muffle the sounds in Dick’s chest.

“I know, buddy.” Dick’s voice was tight. Tim felt himself being lowered gently to the floor. He could barely see through his tears, but he saw Dick lean into view, holding something that looked like a pen. “Tim. I need you to take a deep breath, all right? This is gonna get a little rough, but we’re gonna have to cauterize it to stop the bleeding.”

Damian shoved something into Tim’s mouth, saying, “Bite down on this.” Then he disappeared from view again, and Tim felt his wrists being bound and tied to something above his head so that he couldn’t move his arms.

As his uniform was cut away to expose the wound, Tim tried to protest.

I’m all right! he tried to scream. I’m all right! Please don’t!

But his cries were muffled by the makeshift bite guard. Dick just looked at him apologetically then aimed the pen at his wound. A small beam of light appeared from the tip and the next thing Tim felt was white hot pain, centered on a single point in his abdomen, as if the entire sun hand shrunk down to size of a pinprick and lodged itself in his body.

Tim screamed against the object in his mouth, crying and thrashing, but his arms remained immobile, tied to whatever was above him. Meanwhile Damian struggled to keep his legs pinned with only one good arm.

“Damian,” Dick muttered, his eye focused on his work. The other was still occluded with blood.

“I’m trying!” Damian shot back. As time passed, the smell of burning flesh filled the space.

Tim’s flesh.

The thought sent another wave of nausea rolling through him.

“There,” Dick said at last, sitting back with a sigh. “That should keep your guts in at least until we can get you home. You did good, Tim.”

Tim tried to nod, tried to respond at all, but suddenly his head felt incredibly heavy. It bobbled as he tried to hold it up, tried to keep his eyes open and focused as everything in him seemed to be telling him to let go.

“Tim?” Dick asked, getting closer. “Tim, you gotta keep your eyes open.”

I am, Tim said. Or at least, that’s what he meant to say before everything went dark.

****

Tim dreamt of plane rides and gauze. He felt hands all around him, smelled the sharp tang of antibiotics and disinfectants. Every once in a while he’d hear a familiar voice or two, asking him to do something, to swallow some pill or bitter medicine. He always obliged, or at least he thought he did. He couldn’t be sure. Everything was a blur of moments and faces.

Occasionally he’d dream of fire and blood. Of pain so intense he thought he might die. In those dreams, hands always came to hold him down, he’d feel a prick in his arm, then sink again into blissful emptiness.

****

When Tim finally awoke, he found himself in his room at Wayne Manor. Morning light filtered through the curtains, a breeze blew through, filling the room with the smell of flowers and freshly mowed grass from the grounds. Tim tried to get his bearings, to parse through his dreams and memories. It wasn’t until he tossed aside the covers and saw the bandages across his abdomen that he realized that much of what he remembered had been real.

He stared at his bandages for quite some time, unable to shake the image of the shard of wood sprouting from his body like a ghastly bone. Finally, he eased his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up gingerly. The movement sent jolts of pain through him, forcing him to gasp and wince as he managed to get himself upright. He was sitting on the edge of the bed catching his breath when Damian appeared, his arm in a sling.

“Trying to escape again?” Damian asked.

“A…again?” Tim breathed. Had he tried to get up before? He couldn’t remember that at all.

“Yes, again. Granted, you never made it very far the other times.” Damian entered and leaned against the wall.

“Huh.” Tim could vaguely remember the feeling of the carpet on his face. Had he collapsed before? Judging by the expression on Damian’s face, equal parts amused and concerned, Tim didn’t think that was too far off. “How’s your arm?”

Damian rolled his eyes and scoffed, apparently exasperated by the question. Tim could imagine what he was thinking: Who the hell cares about my arm? He crossed to a corner of the room where there was a walker. “Father wanted me to make sure you didn’t go anywhere for a while without this.” He placed it front and center.

Tim blanched. The idea of using a walker to get around made him physically ill.

Reading his expression, Damian scoffed and sent it clattering across the room. “I told him it was absurd. Why would you need that thing if I’m here?” He said it spitefully, refusing to look directly at Tim all the while.

Tim grinned in spite of himself. “My thoughts exactly.”

The faintest color came into Damian’s cheeks as he joined Tim at the edge of the bed and slipped under one of his arms. With a pained grunt, Tim pushed himself onto his feet, leaning heavily on Damian’s small frame. They eased out into the hall where they found Dick, a few stitches peeking out below his hair.

“Look who’s back amongst the living,” Dick laughed, ducking under Tim’s other arm without hesitation.

Now leaning mostly on his brothers, walking wasn’t so hard. But he couldn’t help but feel somewhat guilty. “You know you guys don’t have to–”

“I swear to God, Drake,” Damian said, silencing him instantly. Tim smirked. Fair enough.

“So uh,” he said, still grinning. “Which one of you is gonna help me use the bathroom?”

[jujywrites]

A flipside scribble of my last (actual) fic, bc I wanted something from Eva’s POV but couldn’t make it fit.

Eva, in general, wasn’t a fan of using other people’s showers. On top of that, even though venting at Neil had made her feel better, she also felt uncomfortably open, like a raw nerve, and trying to ignore such a weird feeling was becoming annoying.

But mostly she was getting cold. Still she tried to patch up her fragile dignity.

“Neil, you don’t– I can just towel off– I mean it’s nice of you but–”

“No buts,” he said as he walked away. “I think your lips are turning blue.”

Despite probably descending into hypothermia, her brain latched onto that. By the time Neil returned with a pile of clothes she’d acquired a smirk and some sass ammo. “You been staring at my mouth, Neil?” She was shivering decently now, so the effect probably wasn’t great, and yet.

“Please,” he said with a snort. “I could tell from 10 feet away.” He shoved the clothes at her, said something rapid-fire that she didn’t catch because the more rational part of her was trying to parse where the hell she got the guts to say that, and why her chest seized at noticing a hitch in Neil’s stride away from her.

She was really cold now, so she wobbled into the bathroom, stripped off everything (even, after agonizing, her soaked underthings) and piled it outside the bathroom– that was what Neil had told her to do, she realized belatedly. If she was lucky she’d have time to throw everything into the dryer herself.

She spent a blessed ten minutes under steaming spray, then grabbed the surprisingly, wonderfully soft towel and dried off, wringing out her hair. The towel was magical, apparently, because after all that it was still dry enough to wrap her hair in. But first, the clothes.

She pulled on the sweatpants, and almost laughed upon realizing they just about fit her. Comfy, too. She picked up the black t-shirt and unfolded it.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered, and this time she did laugh, half disbelief and half mortification. How did he know?

Honestly, she should have expected this. With a sigh she put it on, eyed herself in the mirror.Not bad. Not bad at all. It was unnervingly similar to her own loungewear choices. Except. They were Neil’s clothes.

Goosebumps and then warmth spread over her skin. She snorted at herself, encasing her hair in the towel. Stop it. You’re a goddamn adult and these are extenuating circumstances. That’s all. Even so, there was a spring in her step as she gathered up her wet things and went on a laundry excursion.

The carpet was thick, comforting her bare feet as she traipsed toward the living room. A lazy heat moved through her limbs, and she realized she could finally relax now that she wasn’t cold. She watched Neil plugging away at his game, leaning against the doorway and crossing her arms casually.

“I’m only going to say this once, so pay attention.”

He gave a glance– and then he started, and really looked at her.

Her pulse sped up. She could just make out some pink rising in his cheeks, and she carefully allowed her delight(?!) to manifest in a crooked grin that still ended up wider than she wanted. “I approve of your sartorial taste, Watts.”

Five minutes passed in a slight blur, filled with banter made somehow easier by her fast heart. A survival mechanism, the thought registered distantly, so she wouldn’t melt into the couch from endless replays of Neil’s stare and the lava pit of feelings flowing in her veins. Stealing his controller for a moment helped. Throwing caution to the wind and side-hugging him briefly also helped, though she had to hide her face in the mug of cocoa he’d made her for several minutes after while her brain had technical problems.

Thunder crashed and she flinched, as much from the noise as from the ticklish wave of warmth down her spine. Her feet bumped his legs as she stretched out, but she forgot to freak about that, too busy directing Neil to more secrets in his game. He was actually listening to her. It was nice.

In fact, if she were to describe a perfect night (a silly, distant part of her brain mused)… This was pretty damn close.