claire temple (mynightoff) wrote in saveatlantisic, @ 2018-09-24 23:15:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, *chel, *laura, claire temple, matt murdock |
16 september (backdated)
CLAIRE TEMPLE (EM) ✦ MATT MURDOCK (MICAH)
Hints of another life sneak in. Low Complete |
Still in the hazy area between awake and asleep, Em rolled over and reached out an arm, only for it to fall on an empty bed. Micah must have gotten up early, she thought with a heavy sigh. She wished he’d stayed. A lazy early morning in bed was one of her favorite ways to spend a day off - or not so lazy, depending on their moods. As sleep slipped away, she could hear noise coming from the kitchen, and the smell of bacon finally registered. Em sat up and dragged herself out of the bedroom, her mind focused on how damn lucky she was. How lucky they both were. “Hey, Ma- Micah.” A frown flickered across her face. She’d wanted to call him Matt, but that didn’t make any sense. Right? Except she could see it clear as day: him standing at a counter, the smell of breakfast filling the apartment, a deep sense of safety and comfort that she hadn’t felt in a long time. It was just a fragment, just a flicker of a memory, but she couldn’t place it and she hoped he didn’t notice her hiccup. “What’s on the menu?” “Eggs, bacon, toast.” Micah looked up, smiling at his wife. “And everything’s drowning in butter.” He had begun to feel more positive, as if he had finally fallen somehow beyond the black market dealings of the men around him. An egg flipped neatly in the pan. “Pour the OJ?” “Mmm. You spoil me.” Em stepped up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing her face against his shoulder. She’d get the orange juice in a second, she thought. She wanted to savor this moment for a bit longer, trying to shut out the part of her that wasn’t sure how long it’d last. Life was so fragile and so fleeting. Em closed her eyes, unsure of where those feelings and thoughts were coming from. “Te amo,” she murmured, right under his ear. Micah grinned, turning to press his lips against her temple. Em’s warmth was only superseded by the strength of her heart. And Micah’s needs were simple -- a house with her and the long train of their life spread out before them. “I love you too, but you won’t be so happy when I burn the bacon.” “You should know by now that I’m very forgiving,” she reminded him, but she still pulled away so she’d stop being a distraction -- after stretching up onto her toes for another kiss. “Even when it comes to bacon.” She still felt like something was off, like they should have been doing something else, or like they had, once upon a time. As she opened up the refrigerator to get the orange juice out, she tried to figure out where her weird feeling was coming from. They’d done this dance in the kitchen a hundred times. “Do you ever feel -- I don’t know. Deja vu? Or - I don’t know. I must’ve slept funny, don’t mind me.” “You mean … you’ve eaten my eggs before?” Micah asked this as he turned and transferred two eggs from the skillet to a plate. He turned to add a light skiff of salt. Only to realize belatedly, that he’d chosen sugar. He frowned. “Um.” He squinted. “You might not have had these eggs before, deja-vu.” “No, that’s not what --” Em had just set the jug of orange juice down, and she turned back to look at him, confused. “Did you do something different this time?” “ … I think I need glasses, I just put sugar on the eggs,” he explained and rubbed one eye with his knuckle, as if whatever had been happening could be fixed. He shrugged and threw them away, preparing to start over again. He couldn’t shake the feeling of dread, though. And the more he thought about it, the more his eyes began to burn. He shook his head and cracked two eggs into the frying pan. “Musta been some night.” Frowning, Em left the juice on the counter to approach her husband. He was busy, but she was concerned, now. “Babe,” she started, reaching out to turn his face towards hers. “How long has that been going on?” Sudden problems with eyesight rang alarm bells in her head, but she didn’t want to worry him too much. “Just now,” he told her and let her handle his face, though he kept his blurry gaze on the pan below. These hands skating along his face felt so familiar. But not in the correct way. He tilted his chin back toward his body and focused on the frying eggs. “It’s okay. I probably slept hard.” “Hmm.” It wasn’t really the answer she was looking for -- but then again, did she really want to hear that he’d been struggling with his eyesight for a while and hadn’t told her? Em didn’t think there was any good answer for that. After a moment, she conceded. “All right.” Was she meddling too much if she made the appointment for him? Probably. “Tell me if anything else feels off, okay? Or if it gets worse. And make an appointment with the eye doc. It’s not uncommon for boxers to end up with eye injuries.” He slid the newly fried eggs onto her plate and gave a crooked smile. “You grab the salt yourself. I don’t trust me this time.” But her warnings and concerns had already been answered with a kiss to her cheek. “Sit down. Tell me about you.” Obediently, Em grabbed the salt shaker - not before giving him a roll of her eyes for being so dismissive of her concerns. She could indulge him, though. There wasn’t much she could do than that, other than sit him down for an exam herself, and Em knew her husband well enough to know he wouldn’t react well. She set the salt down at their table, and then returned for the glasses. “Tell you about me. Baby, you saw me, what, fifteen minutes ago? How much could be different?” She could indulge him this, too, though. “I don’t know. I feel -- I woke up feeling strange, I guess.” Turning, he picked up his own plate and joined her. Scooting close to her chair, he let his arm drape over the back of it while he idly cut at his eggs. “We talk about me all the time lately. Me morally speaking, health speaking, whatever. I want to know why you are feeling strange.” He paused. “We can go to the Urgent Care?” Em scoffed. “Okay, not that strange.” She was a worse patient that she was wife of a patient, in all honesty. She knew herself and her body well enough -- or so she told herself -- to know when she felt strange because something was wrong, however. This didn’t feel like anything that urgent care could fix. He did have a point, though. “I don’t know if I can explain it. I just woke up still feeling like I was in my dream. Took a second to shake it off. But I promise, I’m okay.” “Isn’t there a term for that kind of thing?” he asked, mildly picking at his eggs. He blinked again, shocked to see the typically crisp vision continue to waver. “Vivid dreaming? Hopefully it was good …” “Something like that.” It wasn’t an area that she was well versed in, but Em was pretty sure she remembered reading that extraordinarily vivid dreams were sometimes tied to anxiety and sleep deprivation, or to hormonal changes. Hadn’t some of her friends reported weird dreams when they were -- Nope, she wasn’t touching that. She shook her head. “Not unless you count superheroics and lots of blood good.” She took a bite of her eggs, in part to distract herself and to play it off as less serious. They were both good at that, she noted. “You were in it. I mean, it wasn’t you, not really. But he looked like you. So that’s good. It was probably just me bringing work home again.” Micah shook his head. “Sounds like you need to load up on the bacon. Just dry that dream up with all the salt …” But something stuck with him out of it. The blood. It was like the alkaline tint of blood welled up in his mouth at the description. He turned and stuffed a few slices of bread into the toaster to ground himself again. Finally, looking at the counter, he muttered -- “Babe. It’ll be okay.” Micah’s statement surprised her. It was almost like he’d been reading her mind, like he knew she was still stuck on his blurred eyesight and her own disrupted sleep. “I know,” Em answered, her voice a little rough as she tried to shake off her emotions and steady herself again. Did she really believe that, or was she trying to convince herself? She didn’t know. “I’m sure this is all no big deal. But we’ve got each other either way. We’ll be fine.” |