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Catch Up

America took up space greedily and made shameless kissy faces at him, "I'll have you know I'm a serious ******** eagle, so don't you worry, honey. He knows to come when I caw."

Back

"She was," he said distractedly, sighing over another much-damaged volume and wistfully thinking of the Hemingway that was somewhere under the Sahara now, the product of Qarah's machinations. He was pulled away from the thought by the tug on his hand, and he sighed, putting the book back into the bag and trying to ignore the fact that his desk was a mess and that it had never bothered him more.

"Insufferable, demanding harpy," he said indulgently as he turned to her, giving in.

Mirror

He said nothing, but he gently resisted her attempts to make him sit, instead wrapping an arm around her shoulders without affection, as though she were a crutch, and heading in the direction of the exam room next door: the hated scale, the loathed mirror. No expression betrayed his intentions. He seemed neither stubborn nor pleading: his journey, apparently, was in his mind as unavoidable as an act of god. He went because he must. He might almost have been sleepwalking, were it not for the way he paused to catch his breath. Perhaps the liquor played a part, or maybe he had once again woken up drunk with pain.

He disentangled himself from her wordlessly when they reached the mirror, and closed his eyes: peacefully, not as thought steeling himself.

He opened his eyes and he silently observed the dim, half-lit shape of his body, expressionless save for a faint air of confusion, as though he had never before seen the person in the mirror, and he examined, watching the movements of his hands in his reflection. He ran his hands over his collarbone; he cupped in his palm the jut of his ribcage, his fingers nestled into the birdcage-furrows. He touched gingerly the sharp, butterflied points of his hipbones, the invalid-blue flannel of his waistband suspended between them like a bridge. He slipped his fingers along the gap beneath it, the concave surface below his navel, below the fatless crease of his stomach. He measured with his fingers the span of his wrist. He did all this in an intense silence, and it was obvious that even if she felt like interrupting, it would do no good.

In silence and apparently oblivious to her presence now that he no longer required a crutch, he explored with his hands the alien shape of his own ribs and arms and shoulders, his eyes that had always avoided his reflection lingering with bewildered intensity on the angles where smooth curves ought to have been, on the hollows and sunken surfaces, with a strange and unsettling combination of reverence and disgust in the movements of his hands and nothing at all in his face save that same intently-focused confusion.

He turned, finally, and when he did he buckled and reached for her. With his arm around her again, still wordless, still stoic, he made his way slowly back to his bed and he folded up into it with a noise that might have been called a whimper had it come from anyone but him, who would never, ever have made that sound in front of her. He collapsed completely, weakly attempting to once again ensconce himself, shivering and goosebumped, in the blankets, and he closed his eyes.

"Tell them," he said, his voice scraping roughly through his ruined throat, "not to put that ******** thing my arm again. Tell them I want to eat."

Mirror

It was always easier, when taking in Taym's body, to view him as a series of abstract shapes and leave the rest to her other senses, which were always keen and greedy anyway. She supposed, trying to take it all in with objective distance, that it was unattractive. But it was hard to see past the constant, gaping wound of his person. America has never been one to look for beauty in death and the dying.

She watched him inspect himself and come to terms with what he found. That first confrontation about his eating wasn't far from her mind. The indignant response to the idea that he was anorexic, even though it was written bold as you please across his body and habits. He was so, so stubborn about the shittiest things.

Helping him back she waited and hoped, and when he said the words she closed her own eyes and let out the breath she'd been holding for months. "Yeah, I'll even make sure they give you pudding, the good stuff," eyes bright, she offered him a smile he likely wouldn't see and then left to get something to clean up the floor.

In the supplies closet she took the time she needed to cry, the sudden and unexpected relief so overwhelming that while she was sure she was happy, it didn't feel like it.

Two Bits

"They'd have girl'd it up, too. Buzzette. Buzzina. Buzzacia. Like some sort of ******** bee and don't you start," she waggled a finger at the mirror. "Leslie's been making noises about buzzing a good bit of my own hair, you know. Apparently I'd look like ten times cooler." America nodded sagely, "Science fact."

Loose End

"Wherever they'll take me," he said, like he hadn't already thought about it, like he wasn't already carefully phrasing requests to Edith in his head. "I think I'd do well in Life and god knows it would make Caelius see red, but--" and he held up his hands with bitter resignation. "Don't want another ******** desk job, anyway."

A desk job that sent him to the Sahara, where he'd nearly died and blown up a Famine lair, or at least helped. Clearly Taym's definition of the term "desk job" was somewhat stretchy.

Back

He allowed himself to be tugged right down to the floor this time, and the hollow promises he'd made to himself crumpled up and blew away as easily as all his promises ever did, and he found himself pulling her arm around his waist, leaning into answer against her ear in a rasping, conspiratorial whisper, hands aching. "No supply runs. Strictly emergency scenario blanket fort making. You're being tested for your resourcefulness. We'll use this," he said, plucking at the hem of her coat.