I found my voice. “Have you been sitting here all night?” I asked, trying to decide if I found that disturbing or not.
“No.” He shook his head, and I felt a weird mingled sense of regret and relief. Elliot continued. “I—I came by. But you weren’t here.” He shrugged. “None of my business. But I wanted to give you those,” he nodded toward the paper bag. “I came back this morning because I thought maybe breakfast?”
I swallowed. “I’m—really tired.”
He nodded, then shuffled his feet. “I could make breakfast for you while you take a nap,” he offered, almost shyly, although I’d never known Elliot Crane to be even a little bit shy. “Or… not.”
I had to go back to work by one. I also needed to eat, because nobody had been even remotely in the mood for dinner last night. I’d eaten two vegan protein bars when it started to feel like my body was trying to eat itself, but I’d very nearly thrown them back up. I knew that I wasn’t going to make myself enough food—I was going to have cereal and maybe a banana, if they hadn’t turned brown already. Or if I hadn’t eaten them. It was hard to remember—I was that tired.
“Okay,” I said to Elliot. I wanted him here. I wanted to pretend that he was here for reasons that he couldn’t possibly be here for. But I wanted to pretend. Even if only for a few hours.
He looked up, his expression was clearly surprised at my answer. “Really?”
I nodded, and even that felt difficult. “I didn’t really eat yesterday, and…” I didn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t have to—Elliot’s face told me he understood.
“Come on, let’s get you a nap, showered, and fed. Okay?”
I nodded again. “Okay,” I agreed, then shuffled toward the stairs, each step up sending pain shooting through my knee, despite having used Henry’s cream religiously. There was only so much it could do, after all. My legs weighed as much as lead, my back ached, and it felt like it took me at least ten minutes to climb the flight, although it probably only took one or two.
Elliot followed, and he took the flowers from me so I could unlock the door and let us both inside.
“I’ll put these in water,” he told me, also taking back the brown paper bag. “You go get some sleep. I’ll make breakfast.”
“I have to go back,” I told him, and he frowned.
“Today?”
I nodded. “One.”
The frown deepened, but he didn’t say anything else. “What time do you want breakfast, then?”
I thought very hard about that. “Elevenish?”
“Okay. Go get some sleep.”
I was about to tell him that I didn’t actually have much in the apartment. Cereal. Almond milk. One banana that I could see on the counter. There might have been other things he could make. Maybe I had eggs?
I shuffled into the closet-sized room that passed for my bedroom and closed the door, leaning back against it and letting the combined emotions of last night’s case and Elliot’s inexplicable kindness wash through me, tears that I forced to stay silent running down my face.
I clenched and unclenched my fists a couple times, trying to keep myself under control—not to stop from shifting, because I’d gotten good enough that I didn’t think I would be in dangerof feral shifting unless I was afraid for my life or something like that. This swirl of emotions was chaotic, but didn’t quite trigger the fight-flight-feral response.
Thankfully. I didn’t need that shit on top of everything else right now.
Fumbling with my phone, I set an alarm for eleven, then plugged it in. Much as I didn’t want to go back to work, I did need to be there.
I stripped off my clothes—clean, at least, since I’d showered at work along with everyone else, as we’d all been freezing cold and covered in mud and ash—and left them on the floor while I crawled under the covers. The tears didn’t stop until I lost consciousness.
My eyes werecrusty when my phone went off, informing me that what little sleep I’d gotten was over. I pulled in a breath to sigh out and was hit with the smell of something baking, turkey bacon, eggs, and spices.
Elliot.
In the few seconds after I’d awakened, I’d forgotten that Elliot was in my apartment, cooking me a breakfast that couldn’t possibly have been made from ingredients in my kitchen. Which meant that he’d either brought all of it with him, which seemed unlikely, or had gone grocery shopping. Just to make me breakfast.
I swallowed around the lump in my throat, rubbed the salt out of my eyes, and dragged myself out of bed. I didn’t need another shower, but taking one would wake me up, so I grabbed clothes, threw on a pair of sweatpants, then quickly scooted frommy closet-bedroom to the tiny bathroom next door and took a quick shower.
Dressed and feeling almost like a person, I came out of the bathroom, hair brushed back, beard trimmed, wearing a pair of grey corduroys, a light yellow button-down, and a navy blue sweater. I liked the cream cable-knit better, but you really can’t wear cream-colored anything to work either in a lab or at a crime scene and not expect it to be absolutely ruined.
I was still in my sock-feet, so the sounds of cooking must have masked my approach, because Elliot didn’t look up, giving me a chance to observe him as he moved through my surprisingly-not-as-tiny-as-you’d-expect kitchen. Elliot was frowning down at something on the stove that smelled a little odd and maybe a little burnt, the dangling silver feathers in his ears swinging slightly. He had on a dark red long-sleeved t-shirt, the sleeves pushed up over his muscular forearms, exposing the bottom edge of the tattoo on the left.
