Grayson's arm comes around my shoulders. He's crying silently now, and that almost breaks me more than the machines behind the door. "He's going to hate us for a while."
Luther lets out a breath that sounds like it scraped him raw. "Then he can hate us from a bed, breathing. I'll take that over burying him because we were afraid to make him angry."
I press both hands to my face, but the tears come anyway. "I never wanted this to happen."
"I know," Grayson says, pulling me closer. "None of us did."
The nurse lets us in a few minutes later.
Blake looks smaller than he should in the hospital bed. I know that's partly the gown, the blankets, the wires, the oxygen, the way the bed's raised around him. I know he's still Blake under all of that, still brilliant and impossible and mine. The knowing doesn't stop my knees from weakening when I see him. Luther's hand closes at my waist before I can sway too far, and together we cross to the bed.
The room's too clean. Too pale. Too full of machines that know things about Blake before I do. I hate them and need them. His hair's messy against the pillow, and someone's taken his glasses off and set them on the rolling table beside the bed. His face has more color than it did in the hallway, though not enough to makeme feel safe. Nothing'll make me feel safe until he opens his eyes and complains about something.
Luther stands behind me and wraps both arms around my waist, holding me upright while I take Blake's hand. Grayson curls into the chair near the side of the bed with Rosalie pressed against his chest and Samuel tucked against his leg. James sits on the floor beside him with his back against the wall, watching the monitor in silent concentration. Maceo takes the place near Blake's feet and slips one hand beneath the blanket, resting it around Blake's ankle like he needs contact and refuses to make it difficult for the nurses.
Rosalie lifts her head from Grayson's shoulder. "Can Bear hear me?"
"Yes," Quentin says from the doorway. "Maybe not clearly, but you can talk to him."
She holds her blanket out to me with trembling hands. "Put it by him."
I tuck the edge of her blanket near Blake's side, careful of the lines, and then I take off my sweater and lay it over the part of his chest that's safe to touch. It smells like the Nest, like Rosalie's hair, like my skin, like the morning before everything broke open. A nurse glances at Quentin. Quentin glances at the monitor, then at me, and says nothing.
That's permission enough.
The first hour in the room passes in pieces. Quentin checks him. Dr. Aris returns to adjust something. The children are taken out for food and brought back quieter. Luther never stops touching me. Grayson keeps one arm around whichever child needs him most at that moment. Maceo reads the printed discharge guidance before discharge's even a possibility because he needs the future in his hands, even if it's only a list of restrictions Blake'll hate.
When the room settles, I climb onto the bed.
A nurse starts to object, then stops when Quentin shakes his head once. I move carefully, keeping away from the IV, the monitor leads, the places where other people's hands need access. I curl along Blake's side the way I do in the Nest, one arm across his waist below the wires, my cheek near his shoulder so I can feel him breathe. He's warm. Not as warm as he should be, but warm enough that my body starts shaking all over again.
"I'm going to take good care of you, Bear," I whisper against his gown. My voice sounds ruined, but it's steady enough for him. "You're going to be with me, and you're going to get better. We're going to go home. We're going to have more babies someday, and a huge family, big enough for a soccer team, and you're going to complain about everyone's shoes in the hallway because there'll be too many of them. Do you hear me? You're staying for all of that."
Luther's hand covers my ankle at the edge of the bed. Grayson makes a soft, broken sound from the chair. Maceo looks down at Blake's feet and presses his thumb once against the bone of Blake's ankle under the blanket.
Blake's eyelids flutter.
I stop breathing.
His eyes don't open fully, but they open enough for me to see the dark line of them beneath his lashes. His mouth moves once under the oxygen, then again. I lift my head, careful and terrified, and Quentin steps closer without touching him yet.
"Bear?" I whisper.
Blake's gaze drifts toward me. It takes too long to focus, and when it does, his face changes by the smallest amount. The corner of his mouth moves like he's trying to smile and doesn't have the strength to finish it.
"Maybe," he breathes, the word barely there beneath the mask, "not a soccer team, cupcake."
I kiss Blake softly, just above the mask, my tears falling onto his cheek. "Fine. No soccer team but no more standing in front of everything by yourself."
I lay my cheek back against his shoulder and keep my arm around him while the pack gathers close enough to turn a hospital room into the only kind of home we're allowed tonight.
24
Grayson
Blake wakes angry, though it’s mostly exhaustion, worn through at the edges by medication and pain and whatever his heart's been forced to survive in the last twenty-four hours. Still, it's there in the way his mouth tightens around the oxygen tubing, in the way his eyes track the monitor beside the bed like he's personally offended by every number it displays, in the way his fingers twitch against the blanket as if they're looking for a keyboard no one in this room's foolish enough to give him.His color's better than it was when they took him behind the glass doors, but better's a word I don't trust yet. Better still has wires taped to his chest and an IV in his hand. Better still has Quentin's warnings sitting in the room with us like another person.
Luca's asleep in the chair pulled close to Blake's side, his cheek resting against the mattress near Blake's hip because he fought sleep until his body chose for him. Luther's in the hallway with Quentin and Dr. Aris, getting the latest medication instructions in a voice low enough that the children won't hear the parts that'd scare them. I stand by the window with a paper cup of coffee going cold in my hand, watching my mate wake up and decide that the fastest way back to safety's through the same door that almost killed him.
