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Like all things, it starts small.
A pressure behind his eyes, a faint fuzzy feeling of a headache soon to come. It reminds Jon of the one he used to get when he was stressed, dehydrated, or just overall sleep deprived. It’s not a proper headache, likely won’t be one for a while based off the dull throb he feels, but the warning is there -- that slow building of pressure like dark clouds before an incoming storm. The poor lighting of the Archives’ aged fluorescent bulbs and squinting as a result (because it’s not like the Beholding fixed his vision perfectly. It’s only when it’s convenient for it apparently) likely only adds to the problem, but as the Archivist -- capital A and all -- Jon brushes it off. He’s plowed through ones like this before with hardly much thought, and besides, he’ll take a break later. Drink something too.
After he finishes his research.
They don’t call it an intervention. In fact, when Daisy slips into his office with an expression that screams guilt, Basira close behind, she says those very words: This isn’t an intervention, Jon. Her words are soft, tone gentle, nothing like the Daisy that was once snarls and sharp teeth and bloodthirst, and perhaps that’s why it stings more. Because between the two of them -- Daisy now the good cop slouched on his couch to Basira’s stern, upright bad cop at the door -- Daisy knows what it means to feed your god, and also what it means to be the one it feeds on.
He swallows thickly as the two of them dance around the word, calling this conversation anything but the obvious. And obvious it is. His eyes dart between the two of them to the door that Basira conveniently blocks, and feels distinctly cornered. Maybe it’s the fact that they’re both in some way blocking the only way out, maybe it's their tones, Daisy’s guilt-laced and Basira’s steady one that leaves no room to argue. Maybe it’s because of how they entered, Daisy like a peace offering, Basira on her heels the moment Jon’s guard was down.
Regardless, Jon knows what an intervention feels like -- from numerous failed attempts at quitting smoking to the raging paranoia post-Prentiss that lead to him stalking his co-workers, to his workaholic tendencies and lack of work-life balance. It makes his shoulders hike up, makes his palms sweat as he feels the brute of their scrutiny, their disappointment, and it makes him feel like a child, scolded by his grandmother or an animal trapped in a corner. Now, normally, Jon gets defensive. He gets snippy, scoffing, rolling his eyes, snapping back to try and displace that nervous energy, to try and make himself feel bigger. It never ends well though, and even as Jon’s gotten older, gotten better at trying to school his reaction, it never quite comes out right.
But this time, Jon doesn’t snap or scoff or roll his eyes.
Instead, he sits still, and just takes it.
He lets Basira point out what he’s doing is wrong, how they need to fix this with the implication of more drastic methods lingering between unspoken words, and Jon just nods along. He agrees to stop taking live statements, to cut back on the number of paper ones too. He lets Daisy reassure him that she will be there to help, sympathetic the whole time. It’ll be a slow transition, she explains softly, not cold turkey, not like how she did it.
“And if it gets too much or too bad, we’ll stop,” she finishes, reaching out with a thin hand and placing it on Jon’s arm.
Her cornflower-blue eyes are sharp, even with that lingering urge of hunger he can sense in their depths, and Jon wants to believe her, so badly. He wants to believe that this could work, that it’s just like quitting cigarettes only a bit more involved, and he wants to believe so badly that if it gets bad enough they’ll call this all and try something else.
So he forces down the snide remarks that come natural when he’s feeling defensive, and tries to not make empty promises this time around. Because he doesn’t want to be a monster, doesn’t want to hurt people anymore as their own personal boogeyman.
And when Basira brings up how well Daisy is doing, staving off the Hunt, Jon pretends to not see her gaunt cheeks, her thin frame. He Knows it’s not the same, the Hunt’s claws aren’t buried as deep as the Eye’s now are into Jon’s flesh. But he wants to believe that maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe he could still be saved, too.
“Okay,” he says, the only word he utters through the entire conversation.
It’s hours later before Jon actually stops, and by that point, it’s a full blown headache -- the type that throbs behind his eyes, heavy and persistent, making even the dull lights burn like fluorescent spotlights.
Jon grits his teeth, clenching and unclenching his fists. He tried to read a few paper statements to shake it off, but it did nothing except cut into his weekly limit, so he caves and takes some paracetamol for it, swallowing it dry.
(He can picture Georgie’s wince, her remarks about what it does to your stomach lining, and he banishes the image with a reminder that the Archivist doesn’t need to worry about gastric ulcers.)
Then he goes back to work. Afterall, there is still so much to do, so many rituals to stop. He can’t stop now just because of one messy little headache.
But, like all of Jon’s luck, the headache is only the beginning. It gets bad enough he goes to grab some water from the breakroom and eat one of the scarcely eaten granola bars he keeps in the bottom drawer of his desk. The water does little but slosh uncomfortably in his stomach, and the food tastes like ash on his tongue. Even the drugs, which realistically should’ve kicked in hours ago, have done nothing but left him feeling worse. Perhaps it’s an Archivist thing, perhaps it’s a Jon thing -- he doesn’t know. All he knows is that the headache is worse, and now his leg has joined in on his suffering. Much like how his headache started off, it’s a dull, deep ache. No matter how he moves it or massages it, the pain doesn’t go away.
It lingers.
Jon glares at it as best as he can through the pain, and decides, fine. He’ll stop for now. He’ll lie down on his cot, get some meager sleep he doesn’t need, and spy in on the nightmares of those he feels bad for, and maybe, just maybe, when he wakes whatever this is will be gone.
He sleeps six hours, and likely could have slept longer if it wasn't for the fact that when Jon wakes, he’s gasping and choking as if he can’t breathe. Feeling like he’s suffocating, Jon shoots upright, grasping at his chest and neck. There is nothing there, and yet he cannot breathe. He hacks and coughs until his throat feels raw, hunched over and expecting something to come up. Dirt, gravel, something.
When the hacking does subside, his chest feels bruised and battered. Each wheeze is painful and adds to the misery he is in. He doesn’t understand why it all hurts -- he can’t get sick anymore, the Eye shouldn’t make it possible, wanting it’s Archivist to be in the best shape. And yet, here Jon is: Throat raw, mouth dry, chest and leg sore. And, on top of this, the headache is still there. It doesn’t make any sense.
He sits there for an hour or two, taking slow, deep breaths as he rubs his chest until his leg hurts too much to stay still, and limps out of Document Storage. He'll brew himself some tea, something soothing for his throat -- he knows there has to be something in one of the cupboards -- and try to ignore all of this.
As if the headache, leg pain, and coughing fits isn’t enough, two days later, his hand begins to act up. Jon wakes one morning to find it stiff, warm, sore, but as the hours pass, it gets worse. By lunch, it hurts to move, fingers protesting, and a few hours later, it feels as if it’s on fire. The nerves scream, the heat pulses up and down his arm, and to try and move it even slightly is hellish. Jon can only liken it to the early days with the burn, the raw, damaged palm with angry blisters that made even the most miniscule of movements feel torturous.
Jon has to bite his tongue to keep from screaming out, especially when he accidentally uses that hand to try and pick up a pen, and each time he glances down, he expects it to be red and inflamed. Be it from when he initially shook Jude’s hand or the day after with Daisy when the shovel had broken the blisters and the dirt got them infected. But it looks normal -- or as normal as a burn like that could be.
He spends an hour running his hand under cool water in the breakroom, nearly in tears.
It does not help.
By nightfall, Jon finds himself curled up on his cot, burnt hand clutched and cradled close, feeling absolutely miserable. Everything hurts, screaming out at him, and he doesn’t know why. A bitter laugh slips out from clenched teeth, weak and airy. He feels a tear slip down his cheek.
All this knowledge and he can’t figure this one out. Figures.
The sleep he gets that night is horrible.
Daisy doesn’t say anything when she sits with him in his office the next day, but he can see the concern in her face, the furrow in her brows. Her eyes dart to his hand, the burnt one, the one on fire that he rests on a (useless) ice pack in his lap, on the way he uses the one awful lamp as the only light source for his office. He Knows she wants to say something though. But she doesn’t. And maybe it’s a blessing, because he doesn’t know if he could handle her voice right now. Not when he feels twitchy and nervous under her gaze, not even when trying to turn his head makes the skin at his throat pull and sting at that spot.
He rubs at the scar with his good hand, careful, because even after all this time, he expects the skin to split and spill blood down his front. With how much it hurts right now, he’s convinced it wouldn’t take much at all.
The vertigo when he gets up from his desk later that evening, long after Daisy’s left is hellish. And to think he thought the coughing fits or the hand were bad. This is so. Much. worse. He can’t stand, can’t even move as the room spins violently, and when he tries to catch himself (he’s falling, he’s falling, he’s falling and there’s no end), it’s with his bad hand.
He barely makes it to his waste bin before vomiting whatever meager bits of food from lunch still remain in his stomach. His stomach growls, worse than usual, but trying to shift makes the world flip on its axis, makes his leg protest, makes his head throb, so he stays lying down. Just until the vertigo goes away.
It’s a decision he regrets the next day when he wakes up as on top of everything else, his wrist and ankles now are acting up. They feel swollen and hot, and it's right at this moment that Jon thinks maybe he should tell someone about this. But in order to do so, he needs to get up, to call out for help, and it all hurts too much to do so. So he decides instead he’ll just lie here, curled up under his thin blanket, whimpering and wondering if he got cursed.
Was there a hidden Leitner he didn’t realize he read? He doesn’t know. Trying to ask the Eye is a mistake, the pain piercing through his head like someone jammed an ice pick through his skull. Tears roll down his cheeks, and he lets them, unable to brush them away with his wrists protesting. At some point, Jon thinks he passes out from the pain, or maybe he’s just so sluggish now and the pain is leaving blank spots in his memory. He feels hazy, feverish, and it’s hard to tell if it’s still the same day or not. Not that it matters when his skin begins to itch. Everywhere. His face, his neck, his torso, his arms… it all itches, and through the pain and the need to itch, he swears he can see the skin moving, as if there’s something underneath, writhing, eating away at muscle and sinew.
But, torturously, he can’t scratch at his skin. Not with his wrists, and so he just has to lie there, begging and pleading that something puts him out of his misery. It won’t be the Eye, this he knows, because the Eye wouldn’t be kind enough to grant him that mercy.
Tim would’ve known how to fix this, his brain suggests, and Jon finds himself agreeing. Tim would know how to fix this. He did before, when they were in Research and Jon caught a nasty strain of the flu. He sat by his bed, brought him soup and meds and a cold compress. Tim is patient and he knows how to help, and he would know how to fix this. And if he doesn’t, Jon knows Sasha will be able to figure it out. Brilliant, smart Sasha, who loves puzzles. She’s good at putting together clues, so maybe between her and Tim they’ll see what Jon missed. Maybe even she’ll call Martin to bring him some tea and soft blankets, and together the three of them will be able to help.
Jon frowns. He doesn’t know where they are.
Are they upstairs in the library?
No. No, it’s still too early. Jon just woke up, so obviously it is morning. Therefore they must still be on their way. Unless…did he send them on field research? He can’t quite remember, brain fuzzy.
Silly Sims, he chides, why would all three be out at the same time?
He squints at the bare wall near his head, straining ears to try and hear something. They must be somewhere, but he can’t remember where exactly. Then, Jon hears a noise outside, and it all feels so simple. Of course, they’re just outside, in the bullpen. His feverish brain comes to the conclusion far too slowly, and it takes Jon twice as long to sit up properly once he does. Like always, the room spins and his chest hurts, and he contemplates just lying back down. Maybe try again later when it doesn’t hurt as much. But he powers through it, grits his teeth when his ankles threaten sending him to the ground the moment he puts any of his meager weight on it.
“Tim?” He calls out weakly, quietly, words struggling to escape his ragged throat. “Sasha?”
No luck, he knows his voice is too shot to get their attention. So, slowly, he heads to the door. Honestly, he’s impressed he doesn’t immediately collapse, though with how the room spins and how lightheaded he is, he doesn’t think that achievement will last long. His stomach churns with every step, his ankles protest, and Jon’s pretty sure he’s going to throw up. But he doesn’t remember when he ate last, and if there’s even anything to come up beyond stomach acid. He thinks he might have had some water yesterday…or was it tea? No, the tea was…a few days ago. It was after he first started coughing, so that was when he had his last statement which was…some day ago. He blinks slowly. It’s hard to focus right now. Been hard recently, if he’s honest. It’s all just too muddy.
Jon shuffles forwards. The room spins and spins and spins. Everything hurts. When he tries to open the door, it takes two hands wrapping around the door knob to even have enough strength to get it to budge, and when it does, he has to bite his cheek to keep from yelling out. It’s hard to tell what hurts more at this point. Maybe it’s just everything.
The door creaks open, and Jon, out of breath, leans against the doorframe. He needs…someone. He was looking for someone -- that he knows. But who? The names rest on the tip of his tongue, but they evade him too quickly. Then he spots a woman at one of the desks and he remembers.
His assistants, of course. That’s who he was looking for.
The woman curses loudly. “You look like shit. What the fuck happened to you?”
Jon doesn’t remember Sasha swearing this much, but he knows he probably doesn’t look great if he feels as awful as he does, and so it’s likely justified. “Sasha,” he rasps, shuffling closer.
The woman backs up. “I told you not to bother me,” she snarls, and Jon stops, confused.
He doesn’t remember Sasha saying that, but Jon’s been forgetting a lot recently so maybe he forget that too. Maybe she’s in the middle of a tough case -- she never liked to be interrupted when one causes her a lot of trouble. But, she’s his friend first so maybe, Jon thinks, she’ll forgive him for this. Once he feels better he’ll even offer to help her.
“Sasha,” he whispers again. Jon attempts to clear his throat, to try and raise his voice, but that only sends him into a coughing fit. This time, Jon swears he can feel the gravel in his lungs. The woman waits, watches. Glares. “Sorry. I think ‘m sick.”
“No, you don’t say.”
The sarcasm goes right over his head as he focuses on what she says before it all slips away. Again.
…How long has Jon been standing here, trying to talk to her?
“I need…Do you have some…” he blinks, the rest of his words slipping through his fingers like sand. Jon tries again, swallowing thickly. It feels like swallowing glass. “I think I need to go home.”
His voice is small, and the woman, who is spiky and angry and makes Jon’s shoulder throb with every glare goes quiet.
“What did you call me?” she then asks, voice strange.
“Sasha,” he goes on, not quite hearing her. “I…could you…could you ask Martin to make some tea. First. Before I go. I, uh. It’s the…Martin will know. It’s the purple label one. I think?” He pauses, shakes his head, then regrets it as the room spins worse and his stomach lurches. “Orange. It’s orange, yes. Sorry. I just…I can’t reach it.” The words spill out of Jon like the dirt he’s tried too hard to cough up.
So focused on his pain, on trying to tell Sasha what’s wrong, he misses the sad look the woman gives him. “I’m not Sasha,” she explains, and it’s ridiculous to Jon’s brain because of course she is. If this isn’t Sasha before him, he’s not sure who else this woman is. Not many come down to the Archives, just Jon and his assistants and occasionally Elias or Rosie. But this isn’t Rosie. Rosie wears lipstick. Jon squints at Sasha through the pain, head heavy, trying to puzzle out why Sasha is acting so strange.
When Melanie came down to the Archives, her plan was simple. Come in, grab her spare charger and the jacket she forgot on her chair, and get out, preferably without anyone seeing her. She didn’t get much sleep, and it’s left her temper even shorter than usual and paired with the fact she forgot her stuff at the one place she can't stand to be in …Melanie’s one step away from stabbing someone. Not literally. Probably.
So for her to barely have her jacket in hand when the door opens and out waltzes Jonathan fucking Sims, monster and horrible boss extraordinaire, Melanie wants to scream because can’t just once she catch a bit of a break? But before she can snap and snarl back, Jon says, “Sasha.”
He says it as if noticing Melanie for the first time, a bit surprised and a bit relieved, and it takes everything in Melanie to restrain her anger enough to not say more besides “You look like shit. What the fuck happened to you?” Because, now that she has given him a good look, the guy does actually look awful. Sweaty, pale, leaning and swaying.
She backs away when he shuffles closer, both because she wants him to leave her alone and also because she didn’t think monster bosses could get sick but if they can, she sure as fuck doesn’t want whatever he has.
He continues to talk to her, to call her Sasha, and when Melanie stops responding, he takes a shaky step forwards, supporting himself against the wall. One of his legs moves stiffly in comparison to the other, and she can see how each breath is laboured. He looks sick, really sick, and as he tries to keep himself upright with one shaky hand, it almost makes Melanie feel pity for him.
She doesn’t like being around sick people. It makes her feel uncomfortable, and a bit awkwards, but somehow this is worse. Because Jon’s still talking, words scratchy and soft, and he’s asking her if she knows where Martin is. Melanie wants to roll her eyes, but then he asks for Tim, Tim who is currently six feet under (or at least whatever was left of him that they found), and she pauses.
“Sasha,” he begins again, and it's then that he stumbles, tripping over an errant box corner. Before she can think too hard about it, Melanie quickly reaches out to catch him.
"Sorry," he slurs. "Leg hurts. It…all hurts."
With some difficulty, she eases him into Basira's chair. Jon's light, too light, she realizes with a sinking feeling. She knows he's about her height, and so realistically, they should weigh something similar but he's like skin and bones, the skin hot under her hands as she moves him.
He's babbling and rambling, words tripping and stumbling over each other. Only half of it is coherent but what she does pick up is unsettling.
"Jon?" She begins, interrupting the steady stream of words from his mouth. Melanie tries to tamp down her anger, her frustration. Something feels wrong.
Those hazy eyes meet her own, and there's a distinct lack of recognition when they land on her. "Sasha?" He repeats, confused.
She wants to remind him that she isn't Sasha, that Sasha isn't here but bites her tongue. Where she first thought of this as some joke, she now begins to realize that Jon thinks this is one hundred percent real. Somehow, in his sick, feverish mind, Jon is convinced she is Sasha. And, that Tim and Martin are still his assistants.
"Yes, Jon?" She says after some hesitation because she can't remember reading if it's better when someone is hallucinating to go along with it or to correct them. She thinks for Jon it's better to play along for now though.
"I need…it hurts."
"What hurts?" Melanie tells herself to keep calm, to not snap back at the short, jerky response because she doesn't want to be here and doesn't want to be the one with a sick Jon and why couldn't Basira or Daisy be here instead?
"My…" he trails off for a moment, a frown as eyes stare distantly across the Archives. Jon blinks. "Ev'rything," he then slurs. "My head and my…my hands and it itches and…" Another pause, and here Melanie can see how he holds his wrists stiffly, keeps shuffling his bad leg. "I…"
Whatever Jon means to say next he forgets, words slipping away from him.
Shit, Melanie thinks, taking in his sorry state. "Okay," she begins, with a mantra of ‘stay calm King. Stay calm and go find Basira. She'll know what to do,’ running through her mind. Melanie repeats herself, hoping her voice is steady, "Okay. How about I get some ice? And Paracetamol?"
That's what people do when things hurt, right? Take some painkillers and put some ice to soothe swelling? Or is it hot packs and pain killers? Melanie isn't panicking -- she isn't.
Sluggishly, Jon blinks. "Won't work." He says it so quietly, so defeated and lost.
Melanie swallows. "Yes it will," she nearly snaps before taking a deep breath. "It will work. Because when have I ever been wrong before?" She hopes that Jon, clinging to the belief that she is one Sasha James, will believe that she is as smart as Melanie briefly remembers.
"Oh." It comes like an exhale, breathy. "It will help?"
Nodding frantically, Melanie says, "Yes! Yes, it will." Already she's digging through the drawers of her desk, looking for painkillers. She finds them at the bottom, alongside a bottle of stronger stuff that Basira gave her after the surgery. They had made her loopy, and she had hated them, but she thinks they might work better for Jon right now. After all, he's already a bit loopy so it can't get much worse. At least, she hopes it can’t, because she is barely handling this already. Melanie shakes out two into her palm and then snatches a water bottle from ontop of the desk to help wash down the pills. The instructions say to take only one unless the pain continues but she figures if Jon's spooky powers aren't being much help currently then he probably needs the off-label dose to start off with.
She helps him take the pills and wash them down after watching how much his hands shake. Jon swallows stiffly, but it goes down, as does some extra water when he confesses he's so thirsty. Ice packs are next. Melanie considers leaving him here to run to the break room to grab them, but considers otherwise. He looks like such shit she's afraid of what might happen if she leaves and-- look. She hates the guy and all but he looks like he's on death's door. She's not going to go to jail because he died on her or something and made her complicit.
So, slowly, Melanie wheels him into the break room. It's a challenge, and she's grateful she had the foresight to put him into Basira's chair where all the wheels actually work like they should. Jon asks after Tim, after Martin, wondering when they'll be back. Melanie lies and lies and lies.
("Oh they're just finishing up some follow up.”
"I think they're grabbing lunch from the cafe down the street before they get back, they should be here soon."
"Oh Tim just texted me, he's gotten a bit held up talking with Rosie, you know how it is."
And so forth.)
The lies fall from her lips each time he asks her, from the moment they leave the bullpen until she wheels him into the break room right beside the old battered table.
Jon hums and mumbles and winces the whole time, but Melanie hardly notices, now a woman on a mission. She digs through the freezer first, finds cheap ice packs and half a bag of frozen fruit that she doesn't really want to know the origins of. Each are wrapped in a paper towel first (she remembers that from one first aid class in school -- never to put something frozen directly onto bare skin) and haphazardly places them on Jon. On his wrists, his ankles, his shoulder. There are no hot packs but Melanie has paper towel and warm water and figures that will do the job.
It's awful, truthfully. She's not sure if she's helping or causing more issues, especially when Jon bends over and begins coughing like he's hacking up a lung (please don't actually be, she frets. Please don't be blood or something because she doesn't know how to help with that) and pulls out her phone to call someone.
Her brain first jumps to Georgie, because Georgie always seems to have the answers when Melanie's panicking or afraid, level headed in comparison, but this isn't something Georgie's expertise will work with. This is a brand of spooky, and it's Jon, and no matter how much better Georgie might know Jon, even she knows this isn't the person to help. So she calls Basira instead.
The phone rings and rings and rings, and Melanie's cursing and praying and pleading for her to pick up. All the while, she's rubbing Jon's bony back, hoping it might help with his coughing fit. Her eyes don't leave him, watching carefully for any specks of blood. His coughing fit soon passes, and Melanie offers him some water. The phone goes to voicemail.
Rather than leaving a message, Melanie hangs up and tries again. And again. And again.
Basira answers by the fifth call, and Melanie nearly shouts with glee when she hears her voice.
"Oh thank fuck. Where are you?" She demands.
"I'm on my way back from Daisy's physical therapy," Basira answers, her tone suggesting that Melanie should know this and maybe they did talk about this, but in Melanie's defense, her brain is focused on other things.
"How far away are you?"
A pause. Faintly she can hear Basira say something to Daisy. Then: "About fifteen minutes? Ten if we don't catch a light? Why?"
Fifteen is still too long but Melanie can take what she can get. "Okay, okay."
"Melanie," Basira begins, concerned. "What's wrong?"
She can probably hear the fear in Melanie's voice, or maybe the manicness behind her every word, and is probably expecting some other entity to be attacking the Archives. Or something of a similar nature -- all of which are valid and fair assumptions. "It's Jon." She can hear how the two of them on the other side get ready to speak but she cuts them off. "He's… something's wrong with him. He's feverish and forgetting this, and fuck, he thinks I'm Sasha. I don't know if this is some Leitner or spooky Eye shit, and I don't want to be involved with this but look, I'm not that mean to walk away when he looks like he's on death's door. Just --" she sighs, eyes darting from him back to the wall and swallowing. "Hurry. Please."
"We'll be there in less than ten minutes," Basira promises and then she hangs up.
With relief, Melanie pockets her phone and focuses back on Jon. He's staring at her, eyes wide, and for a moment they don't seem as hazy. Before she can question why, it hits her that he is probably enjoying her fear, feeding off of it like all those statements he pulls and reads. She wants to snap, to snarl and bare teeth because he didn’t get to have her fear, didn’t get to steal her security and her anger and now her fear. It all boils up, hot, but it catches in her throat when he whimpers, shrinking down.
"Sasha," he calls out, "it hurts. I don't…it's not helping."
He glances down at the ice packs, at the warm compress and the anger in her dies swiftly. It's not worth it, being pissed at someone who is that pathetic, she tells herself. Because she doesn't care about him, and anything she does isn't altruistic -- it's for Georgie. Or for selfish reasons of not going to prison for murder. Yes, that's why she's doing this. Not because she cares.
Melanie King does not and will not, ever, care about Jonathan Sims. Monster or not.
She gets more warm compresses, wets some paper towels with cold water as well to swap with the ice packs (to which she tossed back in the freezer to try and regain their chill). The bottle of painkillers are in her pocket, but it's too soon to try and give more.
"It's okay. It's okay, Jon. They're just…" she's floundering, struggling to sound confident. "They're working, just slowly."
Tired, sad eyes meet her's. "You promise?" He sounds like a child and fuck, Melanie's heart drops.
"I promise," she says fiercely, nodding quickly.
(Okay, maybe Melanie does care. A bit.)
(For just right now.)
He closes his eyes and nods, like he trusts her. And that terrifies her, that he trusts her. She grabs more paper towels with shaky hands, praying Basira and Daisy will get here soon, because she isn’t Sasha James, who according to Jon’s ramblings, can fix anything.
“You’ll be okay, it’ll be okay,” she tells him, and the words are just as much for him as they are for her. “You’ll be okay.”
Please be okay, she doesn’t say. Just please be okay.