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“Okay,” he agreed, his thumb sweeping across the keyboard on his screen.
“Are you googling ‘elf nausea’ or some shit?” I asked him, trying to make myself less freaked out with bad humor.
“No,” Doc replied, his tone magnanimous as always. “I’m asking Taavi to come get you so that you don’t even think about driving yourself home.”
I scowled up at him, although not as furiously as I wanted to, because scrunching up my forehead made it hurt more.
Goddamn it.
I hated being helpless.
I felt a surge of sympathy for Taavi—both because of the whole debacle last year and because of his more recent encounter with the bigots and their pickup. I wondered if he’d feel comfortable driving my car with one arm. If I was comfortable with him driving my baby with only one arm.
Not like I was in any better condition to drive, since presumably Taavi wouldn’t yarf all over my car or pass out, both of which seemed entirely possible if the task were left to me. Hell, I might do one or both of those things anyway, even without trying to concentrate on actually operating a motor vehicle.
Fuck.
By the time Taavi got off work and took the bus over, I’d managed to drink a glass of water and eat half the donut, very slowly. I was also sitting up, even though I’d only managed to scoot myself a few feet to lean against the wall, and only with Doc’s help.
Doc brought Taavi in, and I decided that I wasn’t terribly fond of the expression on his face when he saw me.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice soft and almost… disappointed.
Which made me feel like shit, although I certainly hadn’t done this to myself on purpose.
“One of the murder victims was a witch—unbeknownst to us, of course,” Doc explained. “He tried to resist Ward and drained Hart’s magic to do it. We stopped him, but he’d already done some damage, obviously.”
“Damage?”
“I’m fine,” I interrupted them, earning myself two incredulous looks.
“I don’t think it’s anything permanent,” Doc continued, his big hand coming to rest on Taavi’s bicep, causing a small and completely irrational curl of jealousy in my intestines. I chose to ignore it, since I knew damn well that Doc wasn’t hitting on my boyfriend—he was trying to be soothing because Taavi was worried that I’d gotten myself magically kneecapped. Or something.
“So what should I do?” Taavi asked softly, his mismatched eyes studying my face.
Doc shrugged. “If it’s anything like what happens when Ward or I overextend ourselves, he needs rest and food and water.”
I saw some of the tension leave Taavi’s shoulders. “I can do that,” he said.
Doc smiled, letting those lower fangs show just a little bit more than usual. “Then let’s see about getting him into the car.”
“I want to try on my own,” Taavi told him. “If I can’t get him into the car by myself, I’m not going to be able to manage getting him up the stairs.” Neither Taavi’s shitty old building nor my somewhat-less-shitty old building had an elevator.
That gave me some motivation, because I didn’t want to stay here and I didn’t want to impose myself on Doc and Ward—if anybody was going to get stuck with my pathetic ass, it should at least be my boyfriend, because he’d sort of signed up for me. I also selfishly wanted to go back to my own apartment.
Convalescing somewhere that wasn’t your own bed made everything so much worse, and I was already going to be an irritable sonofabitch as it was.
I hauled my feet up, bending my knees so that I could—hopefully—get my weight over my own two feet.
“You’re going to want to get under his arm,” Doc advised, and Taavi nodded, coming to stand on my right so that he could put his good shoulder under my armpit.
He crouched down, and I did my best to get myself into the most advantageous position for hauling me back to my feet.
While I’m pretty sure Doc could throw me over his shoulder without much of a second thought, I’m not really used to people being able to actually manhandle—well, okay, elfhandle—me. I know, intellectually, that shifters are a lot stronger than humans, but apparently Taavi’d been holding out on me, because I really didn’t have to do too terribly much at all before I found myself mostly leaning on his shoulders, one arm around my waist.
I didn’t want to be this helpless.
I wanted to brush off his help and walk out to my car like the clearly manly elf I was, but I had to settle for barely managing to put one foot in front of the other, Taavi taking most of my weight as he guided me out the back door to the passenger door of my car, which Doc very helpfully opened with the keys he’d stolen from me.
