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And it happened because I’m losing it.
I’m not losing my mind, per se. I’m losing my filter. I start the day on edge and go to bed exhausted. It’s getting harder to recover from the seizures, which is…also my fault.
There’s a quiet knock on the door, and it opens.
I keep my eyes closed.
Footsteps cross the floor, and then the side of the bed dips.
He waits.
I wait.
I get sick of waiting and open my eyes. A plate with scrambled egg sandwiches on it hovers in front of my face.
“I’m sorry for being an asshole,” I say, mostly to the plate.
Hercules uses the plate to nudge my shoulder, so I sit up and take it from him. He’s brought both plates in here. As soon as I have mine situated on my lap, he starts eating like we didn’t revert to our previous habits.
I eat, too.
The eggs are good. He made them the way I would.
“I wasn’t alone when I jumped out of the helicopter.” Hercules mentions this in a way that’s so casual it has to hurt.
“Isn’t…” I have to swallow a bite of scrambled egg sandwich that suddenly feels dry and unwieldy. “Isn’t that usually how it goes? I don’t know that much about secret Army stuff, but I thought people usually went with teams.”
“I was with a friend. My best…” He puts a section of his scrambled egg sandwich down on the plate, then picks it back up. “Ollie.”
My heart slows down as if it thinks it can slow down time, too. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. His parachute didn’t deploy. And his backup one was fucked somehow.” Hercules meets my eyes, and it’s a shock. He looks how he did when I first met him. Angry and desperate and—and grief-stricken. “Mine wasn’t enough to get us both to the ground in one piece. I’d have taken it off midair and put him in it, if I could, but I couldn’t.”
“God.” There are plates. And he probably wouldn’t like being hugged, so I don’t. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s what’s wrong with me. That’spartof what’s wrong with me.”
“You don’t have to tell me the rest.”
“You don’t have to tell me at all. You don’t have to tell me anything.” Hercules goes back to eating, his shoulders tense. “But you can if you want to.”
* * *
That nightI fall asleep too early. Ridiculously early. Exhaustion comes on fast. One minute I’m eating the best chicken salad I’ve ever had, and the next I can hardly keep my eyes open.
It means I’m awake too early, too.
That’s how I find out when Hercules wakes up.
Before sunrise. Early ashell.
I pad out of my room, thinking of the couch, and almost run into him in the kitchen. The scent of his skin hits me first. He’s freshly showered, smelling so warm and clean and good that I could keep walking until my face was pressed to his chest.
His bare chest.
Because he’s shirtless.
And he has the lights up enough for me to see his skin.
