Never know how much I love you Who: Luke and Reagan What: A booty house call When: Saturday, July 2nd into Sunday, July 3rd Where: Reagan’s place Content Warning: Illness (just a cold, though!)
Luke was pleased when he received Reagan’s journal note. You need to come see me. Short, direct, to the point, as clear a message that she wanted him -- or at the very least, wanted to see him -- as he had ever gotten. The events of the previous night had drained him more than a little, but he did his level best not to think about his trip to the Marshal’s office the night before. Instead, he focused on combing his hair and finding clothes that suited him well. He almost considered wearing the jacket he knew she liked, but it was too hot for that. Besides, he figured that that’d just be one more layer to take off.
He did his best to be as stealthy as possible as he approached her apartment. It was a shame, really; if his Gift had been responsive, he’d have tried to fly in her open window (which, for some reason, he thought would have attracted less attention than simply going in the door). But the air, though it still felt good on his skin, was still dormant. There were moments where he thought that he could discern its familiar prickle just at the edge of his consciousness, but that could have been his imagination.
But he chose not to think about this as he knocked on Reagan’s door. There were other things to think about today. Pleasanter things. “You wanted to see me, Pigeon?” he asked, his smile wide when she opened the door, though it quickly faded into concern when he got closer and closed it behind him. “Hey, are you okay? You look a little pale.”
***
Reagan was standing by her small stove, one arm draped across her middle while the fingers of her other hand traced an anxious path along the curve of her bottom lip. She was staring through rather than at the coffee she was brewing there, her mind a preoccupied whirl. It was perfectly acceptable to be distracted after the events of the past two days, she reasoned. She had to keep telling herself that.
The small, white pills she’s secured from the stolen stash felt like lead weights in the pocket of her breezy, casual printed blue sundress, a far cry from the dark ensemble she’d sported the night before. They were a betrayal, she knew… a breach of trust. A lie. But one that was for a good cause. She was at least certain of that much, no matter how much the guilt of it gnawed.
Or perhaps that was simply the aftereffects of the Ellevra continuing to fade, returning her to helpless frailty under the effects of the Faidoux still coursing through her veins. Already she could feel the effortless connection with her Gift being severed, unraveling like a spool of thread. Clinging to it was like trying to hold on to a loved one as they dangled from the precipice of a cliff with only her fingertips.
The knock at the door startled her, a physical jolt of her body bringing her from her reverie. She crossed to the door, the aroma of strong coffee greeting him along with the genuine, if not slightly wan, smile she offered in return to his beaming one. She stepped aside to grant him entry, her glassy green eyes sliding past him only for a moment to see if anyone was present on the street outside to have seen him come before he closed the door behind him.
She was visibly unimpressed by his observation, her smile sliding into a diagonal slant. “That’s rude,” she huffed, slinging one of two long, haphazard braids over her shoulder and straightening in emphatic defiance. But she still took him by the arm to lead him over to the table, fingers curling over the now-familiar musculature of his bicep through his sleeve. “I’m fine. Here, sit. I made coffee.”
She crossed back over to the kitchenette and retrieved two mugs from the top shelf of her pantry before she finally came back to him, setting them down on the table before she paused, considered, and then took his face between her palms to kiss him lightly. Then she was bustling off again to pull the pot off the stove, her trajectory a restless back and forth as she poured and then returned it back to her counter.
“I didn’t sleep last night. I heard there was… some sort of explosion. It woke me.”
***
Luke’s smile dimmed but didn’t fully fade as she called him rude and then let him come in. “Sorry,” he said, and then followed her into the house. The smell of coffee sang on his nose, and he sat obediently when she directed him toward a chair, which he plopped down into. He made a soft, happy hum sound when she kissed him and drummed his fingers lightly on the table as she scooted away.
“I didn’ get very much either,” he confessed. “Yeah. It can’ta been good, I guess. I was in the Marshal’s office when it happened and they were all pretty skittery.” He picked up the coffee and blew on it. “You get a little break today now that that carnival thing is done?” He knew it was unlikely but hope for Reagan to have a break sprang eternal. Besides, why else would she have invited him over?
***
Her rapid movements slowed as she carefully lowered herself into her seat, her eyes fixed and searching on his face as he told her where he’d been. “The Marshal’s office?” she echoed, sounding casual, intrigued. She reached for the sugar bowl and began a methodical shoveling of cubes into her own mug. “What were you doing there? Don’t tell me you went and got in trouble last night.” How he could have possibly managed that was beyond her, but then he did tend to surprise. Her focus was darting but deliberate, taking him in, seeking out any abnormalities or new injuries. If they were there, she couldn’t see them.
Setting the lid back on the sugar bowl after an unreasonable contribution of sweetener to her black brew, she slid it back away from herself. “A small one,” she confessed, head tilting and brows furrowing as though she didn’t much like saying it out loud. “Just until tomorrow. Then I have to get back. I shudder to think what my assistant has been getting up to down there without me. But the store is still standing so… I figured one more day couldn’t hurt.”
Her dull fingernails rapped cadence against her mug. As though reading his mind, she suddenly blurted, “I know this isn’t our usual… time for meeting one another. I appreciate you coming anyway. I’ve been thinking a lot about -” you “-your condition. We haven’t discussed it in a while, but… have you noticed any improvements yet? With your Gift?”
***
Luke shook his head quickly in answer to her first question. “No, but Sy did. He went to the party and got in an altera--altercation with Leese, so I hada go bail him out. Then the explosion happened and so we signed the paperwork and Winnie let us go.” There was also the matter of the five gold that Winnie thought he’d stole, but that was too embarrassing a story to tell at this moment.
Half a smile ticked upward on his face as he watched how much sugar she poured into her coffee. For Luke’s part, he reached for the cream. “Good to know you’re takin’ it easy,” he said, dipping his spoon in the coffee and starting to stir. He stopped abruptly, though, when she asked about his Gift, his eyes dropping down to his cup. “No,” he said softly. “I think… I can feel it wanting to come back, sometimes. But that’s maybe just wishful. I dunno.” He looked up at her again, his eyes big and sad. “Guess there’s nothing to do but wait, really. See if it comes back on its own.”
***
It was hardly a graceful transition, she knew, but the Ellevra against her thigh buzzed like a battery. It was perfectly reasonable for her to be anxious. His answer was disappointing, but not unexpected; if his Gift had made some sort of triumphant return, for some reason she was sure he would have told her by now. Three words, murmured sleepily and softly against her neck rankled at the back of her thoughts, but as she always did, she buried the distraction down.
Focus.
Looking between those melancholy, dark eyes, she nodded slowly, her fingertips still and curled around her mug. The heat of the ceramic warmed through her palms, steadying her. The timing was wrong. Suspicious. But Luke was never good at putting two and two together, and besides, the Cloves would have to be mad to advertise just what, if anything, had been stolen from them. She took a deep breath, one that puffed her cheeks on the exhale. She masked it by blowing into her coffee, sending soft undulations against its black surface.
“Luke.” She said his name in the firm, stern way she did when she needed to know he was paying attention. “I… wrote to someone. About what happened. An old friend, from Castyll.” Why did it feel so wrong, to lie like this? To lie to him? “I didn’t mention you by name, but… but I thought he might be able to come up with something that might help.” There went her fingers again. Tap dancing to the song of her falsehoods. Her heart was rioting despite the calm, steady lilt of her voice. Nothing was wrong. Everything was fine.
“There’s no guarantee, of course.” Another stutter of her traitorous organ. Lying to Lachlan on a crap shoot, no guarantee… “But I think… I think it might be worth a shot. If you wanted.”
***
Luke did actually focus more when she said his name like that. He knew her tones, her gestures and expressions. He knew when she was really calling him rude, and when she was about to say something serious. Disappointment rose a little in his stomach as he realized that she hadn’t actually invited him over for sex, but this was… actually nice, in its way. She’d done something important for him. Reached out to someone and gotten him some sort of solution that, even if it didn’t work, would make him feel better.
“What is it?” he asked, his hands tightening reflexively around the coffee mug. “Some herb or something?”
***
“Not quite. It’s… medicine. But before I give it to you,” and here she captured his eyes, her expression broaching absolutely no nonsense, “you need to promise that you won’t tell anyone about this. I mean it Luke.” She paused, and then for emphasis, deliberately added, “Not even Simon. It’s highly confidential. Secret. Do you understand that? Terrible things could come about if anyone found out. For my friend. For me.” She stressed that last pronoun, and allowed a shred of the earnestness she felt welling in her core to show onto her face.
“You have to promise.”
***
Luke tipped his head back, then, his brow furrowing deeply. What kind of medicine was a secret? He thought for a second, and then his eyes went wide. “It ain’t… pelydryn or nothing is it?” he asked, half in awe. “I heard the Leese can get stuff like that but I never tried it. Don’t think it would be right.”
***
Her stern, eager expression faltered, incredulous confusion giving way to something like fond exasperation. “No,” she said with more patience than she felt, “It’s not Pelydryn.” And even if it was, she thought, would you really refuse it?
She knew he would.
Sighing, she tried again, her tone hardening a little. “Do you promise? I need to hear you say it.”
***
Any resistance that had welled up in Luke vanished at the assurance that it wasn’t a religious drug that he shouldn’t be near. “I promise,” he said, nodding firmly. “But I don’t understand why it’s a secret. Is it…” he squinted, trying to remember the Belmont Talk about drugs from his days at Belmont Manor. “Still in… development?”
***
She searched his face for signs of deception or falsehood. It was an old habit, but she seemed satisfied. Tilting in her seat, she released her mug to rummage for the small handful of pills in her pocket, opening the cage of her fingers to inspect them one last time herself before holding them out to him. “Yes,” she murmured, “They’re still very much in development.”
Palm extended, she watched him for a reaction as she went on, speaking slowly, deliberately, to make sure he understood. “If it works, it should take hold fairly quickly. The effects aren’t permanent… but they should last a good while.” It was unclear if Viola had gone ahead and requested that Luke be exempt from his injections… she hadn’t exactly cleared the air with the doctor after their last conversation through the journals. “It… My friend said it might help to activate your Gift. To… wake it up, as though it were sleeping.”
***
Luke reached out to take one of the pills she extended on her hand, little white ones with a divot in the middle. His brow furrowed deep again as he turned the pill over in his fingers. “Is it… Clovennian medicine?” he asked uncertainly. “Like… the opposite of Fade?”
***
She pressed her lips between her teeth, and after a moment she shrugged. “He didn’t say,” she lied, and the helplessness in her response was far from fully-feigned. She kept her hand there, steady and unwavering, watching the pit dig itself between his heavy brows. The urge to smooth it away was distracting.
“He just said it was something that might help.”
***
“Okay,” Luke said. Reagan wasn’t a doctor, necessarily, he trusted her completely, and if she believed this friend of hers, he would too. So he popped the pill in his mouth, took a swig of coffee, and swallowed it down.
For a moment, he blinked, trying to assess if he felt any different. Then, abruptly, he got up from the chair and crossed the room toward a window. “Gimme a second,” he said softly over his shoulder, turning his face up toward where the breeze filtered in, closing his eyes. He sat there for several minutes, exactly like that until, all the sudden, there was a particular ruffling of air through his hair, and then around his the ankles of his pants and he turned to Reagan with a look of wide-eyed, dizzying wonder and exclaimed, “I think it’s working!” and then, looking at sugarbowl, urged, “Throw a sugarcube at me.”
***
She watched him cross to the window and carefully curled the remaining pills back into her hand. They were too precious to lose, and so she’d hold onto them for now. Muffling a cough into the crease of her elbow, she simply… waited. For her, the effects of the pills had come on faster than she’d anticipated. In mere minutes it had completely wiped away any trace of Fade in her system, leaving her better, stronger than she’d been before. But it could be different for everyone, she reasoned.
Or, it might not work.
Pushing that pragmatic, negative naysayer to the back of her mind, she took careful sips of coffee, liking the way the warmth slid down her throat. She’d maybe kept that window open too long… she had a bit of a chill. But now was hardly the time to consider closing it.
Moments later saw him turn to face her again, and she was helpless but to mirror his wondrous expression with a growing, uncertain smile of her own. She tisked. “Must we throw things?” she muttered, even as she plucked a sugar cube from the bowl and lobbed it in his direction.
***
Luke made giant, windmilling arm motions to direct airflow toward him. Typically his gestures weren’t this big, but his was hardly a typical situation, and enthusiasm had certainly gotten the better of him. Though the breeze gusting through the window was clearly much stronger now, there was no hint of the sort of air shields that he could (with far more limited success than Reagan) pull from the air. Instead, the sugarcube hit Luke directly in the nose, but he just laughed, undeterred. “Again, again! I’m getting it, I think.”
He wasn’t, really, but at least the air was moving. But at least he wasn’t trying to fly already.
***
Her eye roll was immediate. “I most certainly will not. I’ll have a floor littered with sugar cubes. I’ll get ants.” She went to put the lid back on the sugar bowl, choked back another cough, and then seemed to reconsider. He looked… so happy. And excited. She could remember that feeling, even as the last of the Ellevra left her body feeling ravaged and depleted. And his power hadn’t just been suppressed, it’d be gone. She could indulge him a little, right?
“Maybe...just one more. But you’re picking them up, Lukas.”
She showed him the cube, then again sent it sailing his way before primly snapping the sugar bowl closed. She watched its trajectory keenly, hardly aware that she was holding her breath.
Maybe it would work.
***
Luke was about to protest that he’d pick them all up so she wouldn’t get ants, but then she seemed to soften a little as she drew another cube from the bowl and chided him to do exactly what he’d been about to volunteer to do. He nodded vigorously and made a few more wild gestures with his arms as the sugarcube flew toward him and--
Bounced off his forehead.
But then, just as it was about to hit the ground, a swell of air buoyed it up and Luke leaped in the air, crowing for joy, a break of concentration which immediately dropped the cube back to the floor, and then accidentally crushed beneath his boot as he landed. “Oops.” He said, squeezing the back of his neck. “I’ll, um! Get a dustpan!” He whipped around one direction and then the other before turning back to Reagan. “Where… is your dustpan?”
***
She’d caught the way the small cube had bobbed there in the air, and before she’d even been fully aware she’d vaulted from her own chair in excitement as well with a gasping “Oh!” The moment of celebration, however, was cut short by the distinct crunch of the sugar beneath his boot, and both of their attention seemed to drop onto the crushed white dust left in its wake at the same time.
“Luke,” she sighed, a little exasperated, but as she was already up she went into the kitchen to retrieve the desired dustpan herself, returning back to him with it extended out in front of her. “Here,” she chided, and when he relieved her of it her arms crossed over her chest to ward off another shuddering chill that raced gooseflesh over her arms.
“It did work though, didn’t it?” She was supervising, making sure he got all of the particles off of her floor, but she could not keep the excitement from her voice. If it worked, then… it would have been worth it, what she’d done. She couldn’t deny the jolt that had gone through to the core of her when he’d cried out like that; was one dose of Ellevra really all he’d needed to start recovery.
***
The exasperation in Reagan’s voice was no match for the elation that had begun to build in Luke, and he was bouncing on the balls of his feet when she came back to hand him the dustpan. “It did,” Luke squealed (and it really was a squeal), and dropped to his knees to sweep up the sugar. He was so excited, though, that he immediately tried to sweep it up with a targeted gust of wind, and while it was partially successful in getting some in the dustpan, it mostly succeeded in spreading the sugar around the floor even further.
“I got it, I got it!” Luke decared, trying to head off another exasperated expression of his name. “I’ll do with the brush I promise.” And he did, making sure that he got all the sugar (and the errant cube) off the floor before he shook it out into the trash. Then he put the dustpan down, swooped over to Reagan, and kissed her enthusiastically on the lips. “Thank your friend,” he said. “And thank you. I thought.... I thought it’d gone away for good, but you were right. It was just asleep.”
***
Realizing that she was going to be frustrated if she continued to stand there and watch him, Reagan made the executive decision to remove herself from the situation, crossing past him towards her dresser so she could retrieve the shawl her mother had knit her years ago. She was just making her way back into the main room, drawing the wrap about her shoulders tighter than the balmy summer breeze might have warranted when she found him racing towards her. Her eyes widened.
Her body tensed in surprise before she yielded into his kiss, lips parting, body arcing in the way that came so naturally when he put his arms around her. A blush rose high in her cheekbones, and she grinned, letting her forehead rock against his. “I’m glad,” she told him honestly. “I’ll pass the word along. Don’t worry.” Putting enough space between them so that she could grasp his wrist and guide his hand in front of her stomach, she carefully deposited the remaining medication into his palm, closing his fingers around them. “You hold onto these. In case it goes to sleep again. Keep them hidden and safe, do you understand? And remember, no one can find out.”
***
The light in Luke’s smile hadn’t been nearly so bright in the past week as it was right then. For a long moment he just looked at her, grinning like an idiot, and then slipped the pills into his pocket. “I will,” he said. “Some magic stuff, right here. Real effective.” He kissed her forehead. “Like you.” It was only at this point that he realized she’d gone to get her shawl, and he tilted his head. “You goin’ out somewhere?” he asked. “Or did my breeze make you cold?”
***
She had to admit that she rather liked being on the receiving end of that smile, and this time when she rolled her eyes it was in fondness more than any real sense of agitation. He kept insisting she was magic… it was silly, but it didn’t irk her the way that might have, once. Maybe it was because she finally believed that he thought so. At the very least she wanted to believe it.
Glancing down at her shawl, she shifted uncomfortably and rolled her shoulders up to her ears, looking a little defensive. “I wasn’t planning on going anywhere. I think maybe the draft got to me. That’s all. It’s alright.” She hesitated, then craned to tiptoe to kiss the underside of where his jaw curved. “Besides, why would I run off when you’re here?”
***
Luke tilted his head, ready to ask another question, to propose that maybe it wasn’t just the draft. She was still a little pale, but there was really no good way to ask how she felt without her brushing him off. But then she said that thing about why would she run off with him there, and his skin got all warm and happy, which was a more than sufficient distraction.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he reminded her, nudging her a little in the ribs. “You remember that Ceddon Turning before you left for Castyll? You were real good at running away from me that night.” The chuckle in his voice made clear that there were no hard feelings. “You’re so good at hiding you’re practically a spy.”
***
She huffed a little, her brows folding as she strained to remember just which Turning he was referring to. Not that it mattered, really… she was almost always running away from him back then. “I’m not running away now,” she noted, and another shiver saw her lean a little further against him, her mouth working the spot beneath the lobe of his ear.
...you’re practically a spy.
She did laugh this time, wry humor quietly muffled into his skin until it broke apart into a short cough. You have no idea…
“And I do not hide.” The objection sounded indignant, and she tilted back to fix him with A Look, defiance tempered by spots of color that flushed the apples of her cheeks. “Name one time that I hid.”
***
“No,” Luke agreed. “You ain’t.” He felt that shiver, though, unusual when it was so warm, and filed it away. “I’m pretty sure I saw you duck behind a bush once or twice at services,” Luke said, chuckling. “But alright. You don’t hide. You just kinda… evade.”
He reached his hand up to push it through her hair, purposefully feeling her brow as she did so. “Like, for example, you’re prob’ly gonna fuss at me when I tell you your head’s warm and you should definitely lie down.”
***
“That was…. I was not ducking,” she muttered, embarrassed that he’d seen her all those times she’d actively tried to avoid him at Service. Her eyes half-lidded, she looked remarkedly unimpressed by his observations, especially when she was doing her best to be distracting. Of all the times for him to not be susceptible.
She tilted into his caress, craning up for another kiss but freezing halfway there when he diagnosed her. A petulant sigh heaved her shoulders, and she swatted his hand away from her forehead. She didn’t like fulfilling his predictions, but he left her no choice. “It’s Heuris, we’re all warm,” she pointed out. She, the girl wrapped in her mother’s shawl in the middle of that very season. She didn’t want to admit that she was maybe feeling a little under the weather… she was sure it was just the withdrawal that Lachlan had warned her about setting in.
Impatient and with a hint of offense, she tugged at him, head canting in a way that might have been imploring and cute if not for the agitated line of her mouth. “You’re being difficult.”
***
There was no hint of smugness in Luke’s expression when Reagan did precisely what he’d said that she would, only concern as she pursed her lips and called him difficult. “I’m always difficult,” he pointed out, tucking an arm around her. “This ain’t different. But I still think you should lie down.” He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t have to be alone, though.”
***
She snorted. “That’s true,” she conceded, and lifted her arms to drape them loosely about his shoulders. “Oh, and are you a doctor now, Lukas Fox?” She was being deliberately obstinate, a pest, a brat, and she was even a little aware of it, too. The spike of his eyebrow saw her mirror the gesture. “And who might you suggest to join me?”
Yes. She was leaning fully into making this as difficult for him as she could; deliberately, she muffled another cough behind pressed lips to prevent it from developing fully.
***
“I ain’t a doctor,” Luke conceded amicably. “And everyone knows that if your head’s warm and you’re shivering you should prob’ly lie down. That’s just common sense.” He looped his own arms around her waist and lifted his brows at her pointedly. “And you got way more sense than a Fox, don’t you Pigeon?”
***
“I used to think so,” she sighed, only half joking. Certainly many of her choices of late would indicate otherwise, not least of all the sample of Ellevra rattling in his pocket. Bouncing up to tip toe and raking her fingers into his hair, she elevated her brows right back at him. Unwavering eye contact ensued until finally, and for once, she yielded first, rolling her eyes a little as she settled back to flat soles. “What’s to say this isn’t just a ploy to get me into bed?”
***
Luke looked right back at her and wiggled an eyebrow. “What’s to say it isn’t?” he agreed, coaxing her gently toward her room. “I sure do like getting you into bed. I thought I was pretty clear about that. Or do you need a refresher?”
***
She resisted, heels digging stubbornly into the floorboards until she finally she surrendered ground, shuffling off towards the bedroom at his insistence. She was doing a fair bit of sulking about it, too, though she did wind her fingers down over his chest through his shirt. “You’re not very subtle,” she admitted, and tilted her forehead against his chest. The fabric felt cool against her skin. Maybe there was something to what he was suggesting. “If I were getting sick, though, wouldn’t you be worried about catching it?”
***
Now that Luke had a whiff of his Gift back, he pushed her back not just with his fingertips but with a small gust of air. Because he could, now. His curls ruffled madly as he began to make a little progress with her, and when he was close enough to the bed, he wrapped his arms around her and fwumped down onto it, easing her down with him.
“Nah,” he said, leaning his chest back a little, opening an inviting space for her to slip her head onto his lap, “If I catch it, I catch it. Either way, you’re gonna need someone to make you soup and fuss atcha so you stay in bed.”
***
It was an internal chill more than the winds he’d summoned that saw her shudder, clutching tighter to her shawl and, when he wrapped his arms back around her, to him. She squeaked a little as he so ungracefully deposited them down on her mattress, still humming and hawing her skepticism even as she adjusted herself beside him, scootching herself so that she was effectively curled up against his lap. She brushed curls of dark hair from her reddened cheeks, puffing them indignantly. “I will not be fussed over,” she argued petulantly, but some of the stubborn tension was already draining from her shoulders.
She was quiet for a time, then began to lift her head to give him a very pointed look. “And I’ll not have you making a mess in my kitchen. I don’t even think I have any groceries.” This time it was more than fever that pinked her skin. “I… didn’t have time to shop. Which is beside the point. That being I do not need a babysitter.”
***
Luke didn’t really have to look in her kitchen to tell that she didn’t have groceries. He knew Reagan well, and even if he hadn’t been present with her during her time in Castyll, he had a pretty good sense of how those days must’ve gone. How many meals she’d forgotten to eat, or how many were made out of the barest ingredients because she didn’t have time to shop or cook.
“Well, I got lotsa time,” Luke said, in a tone that was too firm to be an offer, but soft enough not to quite be an inevitability. “And I don’t need to be your babysitter to be your…” the very briefest of pauses before he said, “Friend.” He dragged his fingers gently through her hair. “Okay?”
***
That heartbeat of hesitation might as well have been a chasm. Looking up at him, her lips puckered as though she were about to come back at him with another refusal, fueled by a small bout of discomfort stemming from the ambiguity of just what they actually were now. Friends. It itched like a scab.
Instead, though, the drift of his fingers through her hair saw her settle a little more securely against him, fingers walking over the back of his forearm, tracing the curve of his elbow, clutching gently at his sleeve. She made a humming sound as ambiguous as their predicament. “Fine,” she finally murmured, low and pouting, though her lashes drifted to fan against her cheek.
Just for a little while.
She was out, her breathing even and shallow, in minutes, her grip loose and lifeless and tangled in the fabric of his shirt.
***
Luke rose early, but he could tell, by how hard Reagan slept, that she’d likely sleep in. Still, he wanted to have as much time with her mostly-unconscious as possible, since he was pretty sure that she’d scold him as soon as she was awake. Luke didn’t particularly mind the scolding, but it did often slow him down, so he was quick and efficient at the market, picking up all the necessary ingredients for chicken soup, plus a few extra groceries, including bread, tea, honey, and a couple of (cheap) extra handkerchiefs, whistling as he did so.
He was quiet again, though, when he returned to Reagan’s house. He put the kettle on, put the handkerchiefs beside the bed, and began chopping onions and garlic for the soup. He grinned as he flicked the onion ends and garlic peels onto a little gust he conjured, meant to float them into the trash (which almost worked). He’d meant to get to the kettle before it began to sing, but he was too engrossed in making his stock to remember before it began its shrill whistle. “Hush up, willya?” Luke admonished the kettle as he lifted it from the burner and poured the water into a waiting cup of chamomile and honey.
He carried the tea into Reagan’s room and set it near the handkerchiefs, looking down at her with a little smile to check if she was still awake. “Morning, Pigeon,” he said softly, when he established that she was conscious. “How’re you feeling?”
***
The piercing whistle of the kettle dragged her with torturous slowness from the depths of fevered dreaming. Like she was moving through treacle, it was a slow process, her face turning deeper into her pillow while she groaned denial and her limbs strained to motivate. Everything hurt. The light of the sun filtered through her drapes was revelry in the midst of a funeral, offensive and unwelcome… she cracked her eye and peered up at him with a focus gone glassy and dim when he entered.
She was irrefutably and simultaneously both very glad and very annoyed to see him.
“Morning…?”
She ran her fingers over her eyelid and rolled over to face him, dragging herself up against her headboard and making a small sound of dismay to find herself still in her clothes from yesterday. “Why are you still here?” she croaked, her throat on fire. Eyeing the tray he’d made for her, she gave him a half-lidded, piteous look.
“I feel awful,” she confessed, and squinted back down at the tea as though she hadn’t noticed it at her first glance. “Where did you get that?”
***
Luke grimaced in sympathy as he watched her eyes crack slowly open, noticing the laboriousness of her movements. “Toldja I’d stay,” he said, without judgement or smugness, just a simple statement of fact. “So I did.” He extended the cup to her. “This’s chamomile with honey. You got willowbark tablets somewhere? Good for a headache.” He sat down on the bed next to her. “Chicken stock’s simmerin’. Soup should be ready in a couple hours.”
***
The hard, squinting grimace upon her face softened as she ticked her focus between him and the tea tray, bottom lip disappearing between her teeth. Absently, she pushed her hair back again from where it had fallen loose from her braids and leaned over the cup to inspect the fragrant brew. “That doesn’t answer my question,” she noted pointedly, scootching over with no small amount of effort to make room for him.
“Soup?”
She shook her head, dropped her hand from the futile task of trying to make herself look presentable, and huffed. “Did you go shopping? Lukas Fox, I told you I wouldn’t be fussed over…” She turned her head and coughed into her shawl, an abrasive bark that shook her shoulders. “You never listen to me.” The high, pointed look she’d used to cow him countless times in the past fell flat; she looked too tired, too pained to really muster the proper displeasure. “...Willowbark is in the bathroom. The cabinet.” She flagged a limp hand in the general direction, sounding defeated.
*** Luke, having anticipated these precise protestations, leaned back on his heels and listened patiently as she aired her predictable grievances and then said, “That’s why I said you needed someone to fuss at you. I know you, Pigeon. You don’t like fussin’ ‘less you’re the one doing it.” He dropped a kiss on her pale brow. “Drink the chamomile.”
He got up and stepped to the bathroom, a soft breeze trailing after him through the window, nuzzling Reagan’s face like a cat. There was a faint sound of scuffling, bottles clinking as he rifled through the cabinet to find the right one (including the distinct sound of one falling over, and Luke righting it again) and then he returned, small white tablets in hand. He shook a few out onto his palm and offered them to Reagan in a gesture that uncannily (but not purposefully) mirrored the one she’d made to him the night before. “What hurts?” he asked.
***
He bossed her, actually bossed her, and for a moment she merely blinked at him in some confusion as though ill-prepared for such outright defiance. “Luke-” He’d bustled off to retrieve the medication before she could so much as utter another word, and she was left staring after his departing back with an uneasy sensation, the sort of anxious anticipation of resuming a fever dream after only having woken from it.
Glaring sidelong at the cup of chamomile, she deflated a little, head rocking back against the headrest while a breeze slid across her damp skin.Luke’s voice, drowsy and soft, breathing three words against her throat. They hadn’t discussed it. Hadn’t even mentioned it again. Yet he insisted on being here. Forcing her to drink tea. Making her soup. Being her friend. What did that even mean, anyway?
Her eyes fluttered open. She hadn’t even realized they’d drifted shut until he came back into the room, rattling Willowbark tablets into his palm. Struggling a bit more upright against the headboard to maintain at least some semblance of dignity, she accepted the pills and reached fumblingly for the cup of tea with a sigh of defeat. “My throat,” she confessed, eyeing the tablets with a scrunched expression that suggested she’d been handed razor blades to swallow instead.
One last time she attempted to reason with him, altering her tactics since outright refusal was not working out. “You really don’t have to do this. The tea, the medicine, it’s enough.” She looked at him, blinking slowly, and was quiet for a time, simply processing, wondering, internally debating on whether or not to tell him to leave. That seemed unfair, even in her own head. Maybe if she turned the conversation away, he’d stop fussing over - sorry, at - her enough that she’d be able to get him to be more reasonable.
She bounced her brows at him as she spooned the pills into her mouth, talking around them. “Your Gift… is it…?” She took a sip of tea, grimacing it down before she set the mug back aside, absently raising her fingertips to her cheek where the air had cooled against her just moments prior.
***
Luke watched closely as she put the pills on her tongue and then immediately began talking around them, his eyebrow lifting as he watched her gulp down some of the tea. “It’s better,” he told her, perching lightly on the edge of the bed. It had occurred to him this morning that whatever progress he’d made last evening would probably be immediately reversed by his Fade injection the next day, but for now, it was more than enough for him to know that his Gift wasn’t lost forever. And he even had a few more pills to take if he needed.
“I reckon you’re not too used to folk taking care of you when you’re sick anymore,” Luke said, a warm breeze riffling through his hair and then Reagan’s. “Figured maybe it’s time to change that. Besides, it ain’t no trouble. I’d much rather be making soup and fussing at you than moping around the Thrush.”
***
She watched him carefully, shifting her body slightly to make more room for him where he sat. Some of the tension left the knit of her brows, and she nodded definitively. Better. That was good.
His observation that she was unaccustomed to being fretted over earned him a sideways tilt of her mouth that was only partly a grimace. It was, she knew, an understatement, bringing to mind how the town’s milk maid had been forced to physically tow her in for help the last time she’d gotten sick.
The last time she’d withdrawn from the Fade.
The breeze felt good and she turned her face into it, lashes resting against her cheek for a moment like she was savoring the caress. Eyes dulled to stormy seas fixed on him, noting the gentle sincerity and stubborn refusal with a mounting feeling that was a tangled amalgam of frustration and fondness. “Well I’m glad this was preferable to that, at least” she retorted dryly, turning her face into her elbow to stifle a cough and wincing as it tore at her roughened throat.
Her fingers curled into the blanket, a restless manifestation of energy as a quiet fell between them. Her bottom lip tugged between her teeth, and she rocked the back of her neck against the headrest while her gaze held his, visibly deliberating what she next wanted to say. He had told her, the other night, that he loved her. In true fashion, she hadn’t sought to bring it up again, and nor did he seem intent to revisit it. But he was here. He was always there, though. In those moments where she was weakest and crumbling, ever since her return, his was the presence that had kept her company through nearly every one.
“Luke?” She sat up a little straighter, digits twitching at her coverlet in a fit of indecision to reach for him. “Thank you.” It felt insufficient, perhaps a little defeated, but it was no less genuine despite that.
***
Luke expected thanks from Reagan about as much as he expected apologies, which was not that much at all, really. But when she sat up and looked at him like that, sweet in her uncertainty, wavering for only a few seconds before saying it, her thanks touched him all the more for its rarity.
He smiled his trademark, happy grin, and leaned down to kiss the top of her head. “Happy to do it, Pigeon,” he said. “I’m gonna go check your soup. You wait here.” The tone he used, as he rose from the bed, was casual, like it was a joke. But given that it was Reagan he was talking to (fussing at) it could just as easily have been a command. Or at least half of one.
He sailed off into the kitchen, a weak breeze trailing behind him (thanks to her magic pills), whistling the tune of her favorite waltz.