Chapter Text
Felix was stirring a pot of pasta when his phone rang.
He’d been craving tortellini all day, so he’d gone to visit Jacob and picked up some of the discount dry pasta the Shell station carried. He’d made some small talk with his friend, who’d warned him a storm was coming. Felix had initially tried to shrug it off, but just in the ten minute drive back to Willsboro, the sky had darkened a considerable degree. Felix parked his car well away from the parking lot drain, hoping that would minimize the potential water damage to his tires, and headed inside. His phone buzzed with a text from Chrissy, letting him know she was headed to Costco, and he hearted the message to let her know he’d seen it. Then he’d gone inside and, after a quick round of Fortnite (his shameless self-indulgent game that he endured ceaseless teasing about from Chrissy) he’d gotten started on dinner. Partway through chopping the vegetables, his phone buzzed again.
otw home rn, got smth to tell u abt
Again, he just hearted the message, even as a few doubts began to swirl in his head about what Chrissy might wanna talk about with him. It wasn’t necessarily something bad, he reminded himself. It was sort of her habit to always text in that brief manner. But he’d shrugged it off, kept listening to Green Day as he heated the water. Once it was bubbling, and he’d poured in some oil, salt, and garlic, he’d tossed in the cheese filled pasta and began the dutiful task of stirring it. It was halfway through this arduous but enjoyable task that his music paused, and his phone announced through the Bluetooth speaker: ’Incoming Call From Mai Tranh’. The notification made Felix frown in confusion.
He had both of Christines’ parents’ numbers (at Mr. Liems’ insistence) but he’d never once received a text message from either of them. A phone call from her mother? Completely out of the blue? Sirens started going off in Felixs’ head.
Without hesitation, Felix cut the gas on the burner under the pasta and wiped his hands on a tea towel, before grabbing his phone and lifting it to his ear.
“Hi, Mrs. Tranh? What’s the—whoa, okay, wait, slow down, Mrs. Tranh…” She spoke in rapid Vietnamese, barely seeming to even pause for breath before Felix could finally cut through the chaos and get her to switch back to English. The first thing she said, however, made Felixs’ blood run cold.
“It’s Christine. She in trouble.”
“Wh-what kind of trouble, ma’am?” asked Felix, immediately going toward the door and tugging on a pair of sneakers. A quick glance outside confirmed the promised storm was in full swing, rain so thick outside the window he couldn’t make out the parking lot. There was silence on the other side of the phone, then:
“Her car spin out. You need to come to hospital. ”
*
Felix rushed into the front door of the General Emergency Clinic, water dripping from his hoodie and leaving sopping footprints on the floor as he all but slammed into the reception desk.
“I’m here to see Christine Tranh,” he said breathlessly to the nurse behind the counter. The man leaned back slightly, perturbed by Felix’s appearance, but Felix didn’t give a shit. He needed to see his girl.
“That the woman who was brought in because of the car crash about an hour ago?”
“Yes, that’s her. I think her parents might be with her too? Her name’s Christine Tranh. She’s Vietnamese American, about five foot two, long hair—”
“Yep, that’s her,” the nurse confirmed, clicking at something on his computer and then reaching for a plastic name tag. “She’s in Room 4. She’s stable for now, but we don’t know—“ Felix didn’t wait to hear the rest. He didn’t even wait to grab his plastic Visitor Tag. Before the nurse could stop him, Felix had bounded around the corner, passing the first three clinic doors before coming to the one labeled Patient Observation Room #4. Not bothering to knock, he pushed it open.
Felixs’ breath caught in his throat. There, laying on the mattress with her hair splayed around her and a mask strapped over her face, was Christine. Her parents were both sitting in plastic chairs on the left of her bed, her mother holding Christine's left hand. As soon as Felix threw open the door, both of her parents glanced up and acknowledged him. Mr. Liem nodded at a chair across the bed and Felix immediately went to sit. He shucked his jacket off and left it on a plastic side table, not even hearing the nurse come in as he took Christines’ other hand.
She looked mostly okay; there were no visible gashes or wounds on her except for a line of terrifying bruises across her forehead. Felix guessed that’s where her head had slammed into the steering wheel when her car had crashed. Mrs. Tranh had explained in broken English that Christine had been in a car crash due to the storm, that they’d heard the crash over the phone and called the police to go and find her. She’d been brought to this urgent clinic in an A&E van, and Christines’ dad had driven to where her Find My had dropped off, then ferried her car to the parking lot.
“Hey, Chrissy,” Felix whispered, his eyes tracing the lines of IV drip that had been inserted into her arm. “I’m right here.”
“You shouldn't be,” the nurse grumbled, passing Felix a lanyard with a plastic ‘Visitors Pass’ hanging from it. “Visiting ends in two hours. If she's stable, you might be able to take her home.” Felix gulped, taking the Visitors’ Pass, scrawling his name on it and looping it over his head.
“And, um, if she's not stable?” The nurse sucked on his teeth, checking something on Christines’ chart, then answered.
“We’ll have to keep her overnight.” Felix kept his eyes on his girls’ face, his thumb obsessively stroking the back of her hand as the nurse kept talking. “But the good news is, she didn't suffer any major bodily harm save the wicked concussion. She won't be able to work for about two weeks, but as long as she doesn't deteriorate in the next few hours, you’ll be able to take care of her.”
“Ay, Felick, what he say?” Mr. Liem asked worriedly. Felix glanced across the bed at Christines’ worried parents and his stomach sank. He knew they spoke English, but he also knew that it wasn't perfect. And, if they were anything like his abuelita, as soon as they were in a stressful situation, English got harder and harder to understand. Felix held up a hand, ‘Give me a second’, then turned back to the nurse and asked a few more clarifying questions. When the dude finally left, Felix turned to Christines’ parents and tried to offer them a comforting smile.
“Christine will be okay,” he said. “She needs to stay here for one night, then I can bring her home.”
“You take her home?” Mr. Liem asked. Felix nodded, turning his attention back to Christines’ face. In part, this was to try and hide potential tears from Christines’ parents.
Felix felt like he'd been ripped in half, the broken pieces left on the interstate for stray animals to slink towards and desecrate. When he'd answered the phone an hour ago, he'd felt dread worse than opening the door and seeing Kaufmo had abstracted. The entire drive to the clinic he'd driven dangerously, not caring what happened to him because Christine was in the hospital. Somewhere in the back of his mind he had the idea that Christine would tell him to be careful and ‘you're gonna get yourself hurt, idiot’ but he didn't give a single shit about himself. Not when his girl was now laying in a hospital bed, concussed and in pain, and there was nothing he could do. He'd replayed the whole day in his head; he didn't know why she'd left work early but he should have asked why she was going to Costco, should have asked to drive her, should have told her to come straight back since there was a storm coming.
This was his fault. He'd told Mr. Liem he’d protect Christine, those now distant weeks ago, and yet now here they both sat, eyes flicking between her unconscious face and the beeping of her heart monitor.
The trio sat in near total silence for the remainder of the two hours. Felix held Christines’s right hand while her mother cradled her left. Every so often, Mrs. Mai would reach up and gently smooth her daughters’ hair back from her forehead. Mr. Liem rubbed his wife's back, whispering to her and occasionally checking his phone. When the time was up, the nurse knocked on the door softly before pushing it open.
“Hey, I hate to say this, but visiting hours are closed.” He said. “Mr. and Mrs. Tranh, if you could come with me and we can get your insurance figured out? Do you know your daughters’ information?”
“In sure ants?” Mrs. Tranh asked. “We no have it.”
“I’ll help you with that, Mrs. Tranh,” Felix said immediately. Pressing a kiss to the back of Christines’ hand, he left his rainjacket on the chair and went to follow the nurse back to the desk.
As soon as they were out of earshot of room #4, Felix grabbed the nurses’ shoulder.
“Is she safe enough to be moved tonight?” He asked point blank. The nurse sighed, pushing past Felix to head behind the desk, and shook his head.
“Sorry, but no. We need to keep her overnight. She was unconscious when the EMTs found her but we've since kept her asleep. At around two in the morning I need to take her off the meds and see how long it takes her to wake up. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to come and get her tomorrow.”
For a brief few moments, Felix considered trying to fight the nurse. He seemed scrawny enough, and Felix knew he could pick Christine up and carry her home if he had to. But then he thought of her fragile body, the IV tube she was hooked up to, the thick bruises across her forehead. The nurse, as if he could sense Felixs’ violent intentions, began shuffling through files in his desk and absentmindedly tacked on, “If you get here at nine tomorrow, she should be awake, and I'll make sure the discharge papers are completely ready. But we just need to keep her overnight. I promise, I wouldn’t try and keep her here if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.”
Felix exhaled loudly through his nose, running his hands through his hair before dropping them to his sides. “Fine. Okay.”
“Thank you. I didn’t want to have to call security. Now, what did you say her place of employment is? That should be where your girlfriends’ health insurance is linked.” Despite the longevity of their relationship, Felix still felt his hackles raise to hear the nurse to flippiantly call Christine his ‘girlfriend’. He put extra emphasis on her in his head: his girlfriend. As Felix signed a few packets, his brain couldn’t tone down the idea that his girl could have died and never heard that he loved her.
Ten minutes later, Felix headed back into the room and knocked gently on the open door. “Hey, um, Mrs. Mai and Mr. Liem? The nurse said it's time to go home now.”
“We go home?” Mrs. Mai asked, digging in her purse. “I leave VapoRub for the night.”
“She not have a cold, ayy,” her husband admonished. Standing and smoothing down his pants, Mr. Liem turned and held his hand for his wife to take. She did, after leaving a small plastic pot of VapoRub on the side table.
“Come here, Mai. Felick will take care Christine.”
“Yes, sir, I will,” Felix said. “I’ll be back for her tomorrow.”
“You call me tomorrow, con trai,” Mrs. Mai declared, pointing a finger at him. Felix swallowed but nodded, promising, “I will, Mrs. Tranh.” He wasn't sure what she'd called him but he figured he'd worry about that later. Right now, his priority was getting home, in the hopes that it would make tomorrow come faster.
As the nurse escorted the Tranh parents out of the room, Felix walked forward and grabbed his jacket, slinging it over his arm. Then he bent over the rail of the hospital bed and pressed a tender kiss to Christines’ forehead.
“I’m so sorry, Christine,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry I didn't tell you that…” Felix trailed off, his throat closing. He'd be damned if the first time he was honest about his feelings was when she was too almost dead to hear him. He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, before pressing one more kiss to her face, this time on her left cheekbone. Her eyelashes didn’t so much as flutter as Felix said goodbye.
“I’ll be back for you tomorrow, Christine. I promise.”
*
The drive home was completely silent, save Felix swearing to himself the whole drive. Every foot of road that he passed by made him think about Christine. Where exactly had she spun out? He knew her car hadn’t been totaled, since he’d seen it in the parking garage of the hospital. Had she been scared when it had happened? Of course she would have, he thought, unless she hadn’t been conscious.
Unless she hadn’t been sober.
Felix shooed the thought away, but like smoke curling under the door of a burning building the doubt lingered. He was gone so much for work, the voice said. What if she’d been drinking more during the day than you realized. What if she left work early to go to a liquor store. What if she was drunk behind the wheel and she knew it was raining and—
At the next red light Felix squeezed his eyes shut, taking deep breaths and not moving again until the car behind him honked to let him know the light had changed. Now feeling on the verge of a panic attack, Felix drove straight home, completely bypassing the Shell, where he’d originally been going to decompress with Jacob. That could wait, he told himself. He needed to be alone.
Felix almost forgot his rain jacket in the car, before stalking into Willsboro and making a beeline for the elevator.
“Hey, Felix,” Cassidy greeted him. Felix didn’t so much as look at her. That was Christines’s friend, not his, he told himself. I don’t owe her anything, I can’t look at her, not right now.
“Damn, what’s up your ass this afternoon?” Cassidy snorted, before going back to scrolling on her phone. At that Felix almost whirled around and gave her a piece of his mind, but the lift dinged, so he just swallowed back his anger and stepped inside.
As soon as the apartment door was locked behind him, Felix barely threw his rain jacket onto the coat tree and kicked off his sneakers before letting out a muted scream. Stalking across the empty living room, he grabbed his pillow off the couch and pressed it to his face, before screaming as loud as he possibly could. The fabric muffled his rage, since he didn’t need him and Christine getting a noise complaint on top of everything else. Felix screamed and screamed, shouting into the pillow and yelling until his voice was hoarse. When his inhaling finally set off a fit of coughing, he threw the pillow onto the couch and went into the kitchen. He ran a cup under the tap and downed a glass of water.
He opened the fridge and, with an internal sneer, grabbed out a can of Coors Lite. It was shitty beer but he didn’t care. He popped the top off and chugged the can until it was empty.
This quickly turned out to be a mistake, as he hadn’t eaten anything since a late breakfast that day, and within a few minutes his liquor-weak stomach was expelling its meager contents into the kitchen sink.
When Felix was finally done with the episode, he sputtered a few more times before rinsing his mouth out and wiping down the sink. The beer only slightly muddled his senses, the majority of it having been thrown up before his body could digest it. He still felt like shit, but now that his initial fear, anger, and discomfort was somewhat sated, he tried to refocus. What would Christine do, he asked himself. This didn’t help, as he was pretty sure Christine was so stubborn that she would have refused to leave his side. She’d currently be asleep in the plastic chair next to him in the clinic.
So, using one of his most taboo coping strategies, Felix cast his mind back to the rest of his troupe. Despite how much it pained him to ask himself, as he stood drumming his fingers on the back of a chair, he did it anyway.
What would Ragatha be doing right now?
She was always so Goddamn eager to make sure people felt at home, so she might be…cleaning. That made sense. She’d probably be spewing some sunshine and rainbows horseshit about how Christine would like to come home to a squeaky clean house! With food waiting on the table!
That actually wasn’t such a bad idea.
Felix gave the living room a cursory glance and figured that he could at least straighten up a bit. Usually on his chore days, he would blast music (well, apartment building appropriate levels of ‘blast music’) while he worked, but today he worked in silence. His brain was mulling over far too much to add lyrics to the mix. And he was plenty sad; no need for his old pal Thom Yorke today.
He started by moving to make his bed/the couch, before giving up and stripping off all of his sheets, tossing them in the general direction of the washer and drier. Then he did the same to all of the couch cushions, beating them in the center of the room and wiping down the couch's skeleton with a wet rag. This accomplished, he replaced all of the cushions and also decided to wash the throw pillows. Then, he wiped down the TV stand and reorganized all of the drawers. He knew Christine probably wouldn’t see them but it gave him something to do with his hands that wasn’t ripping out his hair with anxiety. After this was accomplished he went and started the bedclothes through the washing machine, and stole down the hall to the community hardware closet and grabbed the vacuum. Waving at one of his neighbors as she left to take her dog on a walk, Felix vacuumed up all of the dust from cleaning the couch, as well as giving the carpets in the living room, hallway, and kitchen a thorough thrice-over. When he was finally done with this and had returned the vacuum cleaner, he put the sheets and blankets and all that into the drier and started a forty minute cycle, then went to start prepping for breakfast tomorrow.
The obsessive cleaning had finally calmed him down enough that he wanted to listen to some background music, if not just to keep the lingering worries at bay for longer. He pulled out his phone and, as he pulled up his playlist titled ‘GREEN DAY BANGERS’ saw he had one unread text from Christines’ dad. Hitting play on ‘21st Century Breakdown’, he clicked open the message. Despite the terrors of the past two hours his face bequeathed a small smile at reading it.
Hello Felix we will wait for you to call when Christine is better. Please get home safe. - Liem
Oh my Gosh, Felix chuckled to himself, responding that he’d be sure to and then plugging his phone in, he’s such a dad. Seeing the little parental display of affection caused Felixs’ mind to wander, to one of the only other ‘dads’ he’d ever met and actually liked: Kinger. He reheated the pasta he’d left on the stovetop in his frantic dash from the apartment, deciding to eat some of it for dinner, then leave the rest in the fridge to microwave for Christine.
As he diced peppers to use for an omelet the next morning, Felix wondered what advice Kinger might have given him on how to deal with Pomni. He’d always been a little…off, sure, but Jax had a few memories of when he’d first dropped into the Circus. Kinger had been slightly saner back then, and had seemed to know a lot, even if most of his energy was focused on bugs.
Now mixing a bowl of egg yolks with a handful of spices, Felix found himself trying to replicate the mans’ strange manner of speech in his head.
‘Well, I’d personally go for a nice, comfy bed if I’d just had a concussion. And an ice pack would do wonders for my headache!’ Felix almost laughed at how absurd he sounded and for the first time in a while was glad he was alone in the apartment. He felt a deep pang in his chest at the realization but, as was his wont, he shoved the feeling as deep as he could into his brain. To distract himself, he continued with the Kinger—talk in his head, straining to cast his mind back to his high school life guard first aid training.
‘Oh! And you can’t forget to let the person sleep whenever they’re tired. It’s like their brain saying, I need to heal some more!’ Felix could do that, he figured, stay at home with Christine until she was cleared to drive, take care of her as was necessary. Christine definitely wouldn’t be going back to work for he assumed at least a few days, and he was almost certain Randy would let him dodge out of the Coffee Loft for a bit. His manager at the Scarlet would be a bit harder to convince. Maybe he could call up his coworker Martin to continue paying him back for the words that still simmered his blood these weeks later. As Felix finished cleaning up the kitchen, wiping down the counter and beginning to rearrange the cabinets, one final piece of concussion advice clawed its way back through his consciousness. The consumption of alcohol is strongly discouraged, as are drugs or any medicines that aren’t for headaches, as they could actively harm the brain of the concussed individual.
Felix slumped onto the couch and dropped his head into his hands. In his minds’ eye, he counted how many cans of beer were left in the fridge, the substantial amount left in the bottle of vodka. How mad would Chrisitne be if he, hypothetically, threw away all of the alcohol before he brought her back tomorrow?
As soon as he considered it, Felix pushed the thought away, turning on the TV just to have more background noise. He remembered the single time he’d tried to intervene in his parents’ habits, putting bottles of wine into the dumpster behind their house. It was almost two decades ago and his back still ached with the phantom pains of the ass beating he’d gotten that day. While he was almost certain Chrisinte wouldn’t get violent, she might get sad, which was almost worse. Besides, he knew the thing she hated most in the world was being coddled or parented, and that action fell squarely in that category.
He can’t help her if she doesn’t help herself. And he hated that more than anything.
Felix sighed and turned off the TV, then paused his music. He carded his hand through his hair and took a good look around the apartment, allowing himself a few breaths to appreciate his hard work. Finally, he unloaded the sheets from the dryer and remade the couch/his bed, then grabbed his phone, walking back towards the bathroom to take a shower.
After he was done in the shower, he took his time to wash his face, brush his teeth, and dry his hair. He had music playing the whole time, but he wasn't listening to the songs. Like they had for the past four hours, his thoughts remained solely on Christine.
He was scared. He was so, so scared, Christine could have died. And there was nothing he could have done, and that thought absolutely terrified him. It reminded him of the Circus, when it felt like they were at the whims of a digital madman. At least Caine would have potentially reversed whatever damage. He was in the real life real world now, he reminded himself. If Christine had died, she wouldn’t have been seeing a game over screen.
Finally, Felix turned his phone off and went to leave the bathroom, turning the light off behind him. As he took a step down the hall, he paused. There to his left was the door to Christines’ room, slightly ajar. Despite feeling a bit like he was intruding somewhere private, Felix gently pushed open the door and looked into Christines’ bedroom. It was so…her.
He’d seen into Pomnis’ room a few times in the Circus, and it'd been typical Caine bullshit. Everything had been garish red and blue and all her belongings had been clown or baby themed. This room was much more muted, almost proffessional looking. Everything was in soft hues of blue or indigo and there was a plush carpet on the floor. A white-painted wooden dresser was pushed into a corner, and next to it was a small bookshelf topped with a vanity.
In the center of the room was her bed; a queen sized mattress with a carved white headboard and a sky blue comforter thrown across it haphazardly. A pair of her earrings sat on the nightstand, a half drunk glass of water next to them, along with some uncapped Chapsticks. Before he could realize what he was doing, Felix had crossed the threshold and was capping the Chapsticks. He set his phone on the nightstand and grabbed the glass, padding through the dark apartment to set it in the sink.
Then, he went back into Christines’ room and closed the door behind him. He clicked off the light, pulled back the blanket, and crawled under it.
He took a deep breath and shuddered; the entire bed smelled like Christine. Her vanilla and lemongrass shampoo clung to the pillowcase, her coconut body wash hung between the sheets, and that sweet sugar palm smell that was just Christine was nestled in every fiber of the furniture. It was like giving her a hug and burying his whole soul in hers.
Felix wondered if Christine would be mad he was intruding on her space, violating her privacy, but he selfishly didn't care. For one night, he wanted to be able to sleep in her bed, even if it couldn't be with her. He could imagine his body curled around hers, visualize his face buried in her hair, her head in the crook of his neck.
It had been hard for him to respect Christines’ wishes that they sleep in separate rooms. They barely ever touched, not hugging or kissing, and Felix tried to not initiate as much as possible. But while his girlfriend remained pretty touch averse, he had always been a physical touch lover, and he had been struggling a lot to not impose it onto Christine.
It wasn't helping that the longer he spent with her, the sexier he thought she was. Just a few days ago, she'd come back from work in a pantsuit, her hair pulled back into a bun at the nape of her neck. There's been a slight flush across her cheeks from the stairs, and she'd been getting over a cold. So, her voice was gravely and she was out of breath when she'd said, “Hey, Felix. You have a good day today?” Then she'd bent over to untie her shoes and Felix had nearly gone into cardiac arrest when he'd accidentally seen down her shirt.
What maddened him the most was that she didn't seem to be aware of her affect on him. She'd do the hottest things and act like she'd done nothing at all; throwing her legs across his lap while they were watching a movie, or just scooting a bit closer. She'd knock her arm against his when they were in the kitchen together, or flash him a dazzling smile in the rearview mirror. Every single time he felt like he was back in high school, having to stifle a boner and fighting the urge to grab her and make her his on the couch, on the counter, on the side of the road.
As Felix drifted off, he had to wonder if part of the distance was his fault. He still hadn't told her that he loved her, after all. And he’d never explained just how much he craved physical touch, physical intimacy…
But one thing at a time. The priority was getting Christine home and making sure she healed. Then, Felix consoled himself as sleep finally got her palms around him, maybe he could find a moment to tell Christine that he loved her.