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"I'll take care of that," she says, a hand gently pushing back on his shoulder before she kneels before him.

He must feel awful if he's admitting he needs help undressing. She gets one boot off with an ease he could never manage in this state, and glances up at him as she works on the other.

She wants so desperately to hold him again, wrap her arms around his waist and bury her face into his chest. The longing feels all the worse after allowing herself to comfort him. She misses him and now... she sees that maybe he does need her, and he knows it, too.

But they still sat in this very apartment and he broke her trust and her heart without second thought. It still hurts too much to forget or forgive.

"Thank you," he says, sitting back again. It's really more of a slouch; he has no doubt he can get to his feet again, but his head is starting to spin.

He picks at the remaining lacing on his vest, and then the lacing on his trousers. He glances at her as he does, but seeing her kneeling at his feet puts a hard lump in his throat, so he averts his eyes to not make either of them uncomfortable.

"Do you remember when we were children, and Joshua was very small," he murmurs. "And when he was frightened, he'd crawl into bed with one of us?"

Jill looks back to his boot, carefully sliding it off his foot. She finds herself mourning lost time. They should have all grown up together. They should all be together now.

"I do," she says, standing and reaching out to help slide his vest off his shoulders. "Terrible as it was, I looked forward to seeing his little face peer at me in the dark."

He trusted her as much as he trusted Clive to protect him, keep him safe. So much for that.

He hums under his breath, sitting forward just enough to help her get it down his back, slipping an arm out with a brief wince. The undershirt can stay on, sweat-slicked as it is.

"He would just stare, wouldn't he? Unable to put whatever nightmare he'd had into words, hoping you'd understand if he met your eyes long enough."

Five years isn't too much of a gap in time, but Joshua had been sickly, and that had made the years between them feel much longer.

"By morning he'd have all your blankets and you'd have bruises on your legs from where he kicked in his sleep..." Clive reminisces, nostalgia in his eyes, sureness on his voice: "But he had slept."

She wonders if his nightmares were actually prophecies of what horrors there were to come. It's not a thought she'd voice to Clive even on a good day, so she focuses on carefully freeing him of that vest and letting it drop by his boots.

She seems to think the sweaty undershirt needs to go, and she slowly begins to peel it upwards.

"I'd wake up with his head on my pillow and my neck aching from whatever angle it was at in the night," she recalls, a quiet fondness in her voice. "But it was worth it, to see his smile in the morning. To know he was no longer afraid, and that I did that for him."

He sits up a little straighter, lifting his arms up to make it easier, watching her every moment that there isn't fabric passing over his head. He likes seeing her fond. She's prettiest when she's nostalgic. Happier.

"Mm. I'd take any scolding by his nursemaids or my mother to see that smile."

She agrees with a soft hum. She misses that. She misses Joshua, and she has to take a moment after taking his shirt off to clear the lump from her throat.

"You're the one that must be tucked away safe in bed now," she says, and it's the closest thing to teasing she's said to him in a very long time. No nursemaids in sight, but she's sure Dion would have some opinion about this.

A good thing she has no intention of bringing this up to anyone.

"I'll steady you."

Clive could chuckle at that, but it just comes out as a short exhale and the slightest tug at the corner of his mouth.

"I promise not to sneak out of it later," he says. He leans forward to get momentum and gets to his feet, a hand on her shoulder, the other on the back of the seat of the chair.

"I'll be impressed if you can sit upright again anytime soon," she says, and that's not teasing. It's a sincere belief. Jill slips an arm around his middle, there to help him keep his balance as they make the short trek to the bedroom.

“I’ll sleep for days,” he murmurs, getting to his feet properly, his weight leant against her. The floor isn’t spinning so much now, but he feels every step fray the threads of his remaining energy.

And though he scarcely wants to let her go, his body decides for him, and he sinks down into bed and sprawls on his back bonelessly. Shirtless, trousers askew, bangs still plastered in strange directions.

“I’ve never laid anywhere so soft.”

(Except her ass, of course.)

The bed creaks loudly as he goes down, as if it doesn't recall the weight of him.

"Let's get some water into you before you can no longer move," she says quickly. "You've bled."

A lot. Just in case he hasn't noticed, his blood on two towels thus far and her nightgown. She looks like she barely survived an attack herself.

He wants to argue that water can wait until morning. He’s survived worse. But Jill is worried and he doesn’t want to concern her more, so he lifts his head, oblivious to what he’s lost, even stained all over her.

“I’ll try,” he says, reaching for the glass.

Jill sits beside him on the bed, and she tells herself it's only to make it easier on him. She picks up the glass for him, handing it to him, but a hand remains close in case he begins to spill.

"At least a little," she urges.

It’s tricker than he thinks it should be, mostly reclined like this, but he doesn’t want to sit up again. He attempts it as-is, under her watchful eye, and only ends up with some dribbling along his cheeks as he tilts too far. He doesn’t choke, at least.

Jill's satisfied with what little he gets down, and leans over to put the glass back and grabs another clean towel to wipe his cheek. It helps with some of the remaining blood, too.

"Is there anything else you need?" She asks, busying herself with wiping and dabbing at spots on his face she's missed. He's such a mess he won't truly be clean until he bathes.

He sags back into the pillow, gazing up at her with half-lidded eyes.

“Stay with me,” he says. “Sleep with me like we’re children again.”

Not that it had ever been permitted between a girl and an older boy, but it’s the only thought in his head.

"I can't, Clive," she tells him with a frown. A part of her is hurt he even asks it of her, but she'll blame the injury. "But I'll stay until you're asleep."

Sitting beside him. She's already slipped too far.

Clive pauses, but he nods, a hand drifting to her knee to give it a brief squeeze. Too far, perhaps.

"Thank you."

Her hand brushes over his before she leans over to pull the blanket over him, at least up to his hips.

"Close your eyes. You'll feel better in the morning."

He doesn't want to sleep, even if his head is screaming for it. He wants to lay here in her presence and appreciate it for every moment he can, knowing that tomorrow he will have to rise from bed and leave this apartment again. For now, all his guilt and shame are buried, invisible, under the mountain of his want to be with her, the woman he still loves. In this moment, he doesn't understand why that wasn't enough to endure.

But he has no other choice, at least in body. He closes his eyes with a low hum of acknowledgement, his brows knitting briefly and then easing again.

He's out like a light within minutes, his hand still on her knee.

Jill knows that if things were different, she'd have him in her arms, wounded head heavy on her stomach or lap where she can watch over him as he sleeps. She'd give in to the desire to simply take care of him, petting his hair, wanting love and comfort to be the first thing he feels when he wakes again.

But she carefully moves his hand off her knee and rises, making sure he looks warm and comfortable before she turns off the light and steps out into the living room. She should change, nightgown soiled as it is, but that means rummaging around in the bedroom. She won't wake him.

So, she goes to make herself comfortable on the couch. That means Torgal must move--and he does, with a sleepy little grunt, sliding off the couch to go plop down in the bedroom doorway where he can have a view of both Clive and Jill. He curls up and sleeps with an ease Jill forgot he was capable of.

Jill's maybe a little envious. With the throw blanket draped over the couch pulled down over her, she curls up, and after what feels like forever of trying not to think about Clive or Joshua or anything at all, she dozes off.

Clive sleeps until noon.

While it isn't unheard of for him to sleep late, given how often he goes to bed just before dawn, it's seldom been so desperately needed. With Torgal being a (beloved) nuisance and stress with Jill and Krauser keeping him out later and the fucking weed problem in this city and now the injury, he'd started to assume he'd simply never feel rested again.

When he wakes, his head throbs dully; no doubt the Phoenix sleeping in his blood has seen to the worst of it. He just rolls over and lays an arm across Jill's side of the bed, to reach for her, and instead finds Torgal, also dozing. Well, he decides, still half-asleep, that's fine, too.

While Jill is up well before noon, she does sleep in later than she normally would. She feels sore herself, waking up, a new wave of mourning for Joshua lapping at her feet. And worry for Clive is what has her finally getting up--she peeks in to make sure he looks at ease before heading back out to read.

By the time he's rolling over in bed, she's quietly stepping into the bedroom with a sandwich on a plate. If he hadn't been awake, she would have to wake him: not that she minded his presence, but she only would have been worried about him going so long without eating.

"How's your head?" She asks, coming to the side of the bed. "Do you think you can stomach some food?"

Clive rolls back over a bit and cranes his neck to look at her — that is definitely harder on his head, but his sleepy goes to her face to her hands to the sandwich and then back to her face.

“Much better,” he says, and he pushes himself up to sit, but he lingers with his weight on his hands, still looking at her. “Yes, but I hope I didn’t keep you from dressing…”

Her nightgown is rusty brown and stiff in a few parts and Jill only seems to remember when she glances down at herself and looks surprised.

Just a reminder of last night.

"Oh. That's all right, I didn't want to wake you up." As if she'd be slamming drawers. She offers him the plate and the simple ham and cheese sandwich on it.

"Here, Clive."

More important that he eat.

💋 practically a kiss when he drinks from it

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give me the other tag back this one is too sad

it lives on only in your memories now

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