Decompression
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Category:
+S through Z › Silent Hill
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
3
Views:
2,965
Reviews:
9
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
I do not own Silent Hill, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.
Part 3
Okay. Note to self: wherever you're going to stay
for now, make sure it's on the ground floor.
stuff right on the floor and limped straight to the kitchen in search of something
milder than the contents of the doggie bag the pharmacy had sent her home with.
A hurt leg and a third-floor walkup were not a good combination, and by the
time she got to her front door it seemed like she'd turned into one gigantic
walking ache. Still, she had things to do, and spending the next six hours minimum
zonked out on painkillers was not on the list. There was a bottle of Advil in
the kitchen last time she'd looked; it would do until she followed Henry's example
and packed up whatever she couldn't live without and got the happy hell out
of this building. There would be plenty of time for flying the friendly skies
of Percocet or whatever after that.Once Eileen took care of that, she glanced over at the
answering machine. The little "you've got messages" light was blinking
merrily, as was a bright red number "5" on the little LED thingy.
She poked the "play" button and hobbled to the couch to have a little
sit-down and listen to her messages while she waited for the Advil to kick in."Saturday. Nine. Forty. Three. PM," said the
machine. It then rattled off the first message--from the friend whose party
she'd missed. "Eileen? Eileen, are you--Jesus, would you turn
that down!?--okay, please pick up the phone and tell me this crazy stuff
we just heard on the radio is, like, not about your building and not about you
and you're still going through your closet trying to find something to wear.
Please? ...oh my God--" Click.Oh crap, they'd mentioned it on the radio. Which meant
that her next of kin would surely have been called. Which meant at least one
of the four remaining messages was going to be--"Saturday. Ten. Fifty. PM.""Honey, it's Mom, I just tried to come see you at
the hospital but they gave me some baloney about 'no visitors right now blah
blah blah--' ""Hi, Mom," Eileen sighed, wishing that Advil
would hurry up and work. "--so I'll probably see you before you get this,
but--oh, honey, I told you that place was a pit.""Yes, Mom, it's a--""--festering pit.""Yes, Mom, we've been over the festering--""Promise me you're going to move out. I'll help
you. I'll pay for the moving van. I'll hire a forty-piece band. I'll bribe that
cute neighbor of yours to help--""Mom!""Just move out of there. Love you bye." Click.Well, that was a promise she'd have no trouble keeping,
that was for sure."Sunday. Three. Eighteen. PM.""Hi...Eileen? It's Henry..." Calm, cool, and
collected as ever. "I, uh... didn't want to wake you up or anything, and
it's not like you can really go anywhere right now, so I figured I'd just leave
you a message--""Oh crap--" The pen nearest the phone suddenly
decided not to work. Aches and pains forgotten, Eileen scrambled back to the
kitchen and ransacked the designated Pens-And-Misc. drawer for a pinch hitter."--I'm at the Sunrise Inn. The one on the corner
of Dean and Chambers by the Waffle House and stuff? Anyway, I'm in room, uh--"Ah, there was a pen. That was the good news. The bad
news: she'd missed the room number."--can call first if you want, but I'm probably
not going anywhere anytime soon, so..." A pause, then: "...uh, don't,
y'know, kill yourself running over here or anything. Take care of yourself first,
okay? Um... anyway..." Another pause. Eileen could practically hear
him debating whether or not to slip a "love you" or some such in there,
and she decided it was one of the cutest things she'd ever heard. Or, well,
not heard. He didn't. At least, not this time. "...bye."
Click.She replayed the message once to catch the room number
(137--oh, bless him, he'd gotten a room on the ground floor! Eileen made a mental
note to give Henry the biggest hug ever for that whether he'd meant
to do it or not). Then she replayed it again because she'd managed to miss the
phone number. Unknown to her conscious mind, her subconscious took this opportunity
to add yet another item to its steadily-growing list of Nice Things She'd Never
Really Noticed About Henry. No. 28: gorgeous eyes. No. 29: soft hands.
And now No. 30: v. sexy voice.Sunday, Six O Two PM was her boss. Don't worry about
coming in this week, we've got it covered, stay home and take it easy, see you
next Monday, bye, click. Stay home? Pft. Right. More like find a home,
because she wasn't spending one more night in this--"Monday. Three. Twenty. Seven. AM."...what? When!?Eileen gave the machine a very odd look. It wouldn't
be the first time the machine threw a fit and lost its temporal bearings, no.
It had done so before, it would do so again, and perhaps a trip to Best Buy
for a replacement was in order. Still, its announcement of the alleged time
this last message was left gave Eileen a sudden and serious case of the creeping
willies.Who would have called her at all, let alone bothered
to leave a message, at half past three in the morning? It had to be a wrong
number. Or a heavy breather. Or someone wanting to know if her refrigerator
was running. Or--"Uh... hi, Eileen... it's Henry." --or none of the above.To the casual listener, still calm, cool, and collected.
Eileen was far from the casual listener, though, and right away she could tell
there was something not quite right about that tone. It sounded--well, it sounded
the same way the makeup on a dead body in its Sunday best and laid in a pretty
casket looked, plastered on to bring some semblance of life and normalcy to--okay,
that wasn't the most pleasant analogy, no, but it fit. And it was every bit
as unnerving."I'm, uh... really sorry about this, and I know
it's late, but I just... I need to... I don't know, vent or something."
A pause. "...don't worry, I'm okay, it's just... I, uh..." Another,
longer pause, followed by Henry clearing his throat. "I just woke up, and
I don't think I'm going to get back to sleep anytime soon, and I don't think
I want to after..." Deep breath. "I, uh... I had this nightmare...
well, it wasn't at first, but then it... um... it..." Long pause. "...you
know what, let's just say it got bad and leave it at that. But it...it
just felt... so real. Like all the other stuff that happened. It still
does. I keep thinking any minute now I'm going to wake up in 302 again and that
scares the hell out of me. And it's not just the nightmare. I'm--"
Henry cleared his throat again; when he picked up his
train of thought, he did so in that same flat forced calm tone. Eileen wasn't
buying it. Not for a second. No, she didn't know Henry all that well,
that much was true enough. She knew a guy fighting to keep his cool when she
heard one, though, and Henry was fighting like hell."I'm getting all weird about stupid stuff.
Like the windows. I drove around all day looking for a hotel and I kept passing
them up because the windows didn't open. That's the first thing I did
before I called you this afternoon. I opened the windows, and then it started
pouring down rain and I had to close them, and I keep wanting to go over and
make sure they'll open again. And the room numbers. The first place I went to
gave me 302, so I asked for another room. You know what they gave me? 1121.
Yeah. ...well, I guess it could have been worse, at least none of them had enough
floors to have a 2121..." Fighting like hell, and losing ground fast."...or they didn't have any rooms I could smoke
in... like I said, I didn't smoke much till this morning. Now I can't stop.
I keep thinking about this line from Blair Witch. The one about 'as long as
we're still smoking we're still alive' or something like that." A short,
soft, and completely humorless laugh. "Blair Witch. God. Talk
about getting weird about stupid stuff... I feel like I should be--I don't know,
sitting on a log eating a dead leaf or something..." He shut up and cleared
his throat again. "...sorry, I'm babbling. I just--It's really late and
I'm really tired and I'm scared to go back to sleep and I should be starving
but I'm not hungry at all and I want it to stop raining so I can open the
damn windows again and I--" Pause. "I--" Longer pause. Then Henry's voice went beyond "calm"
and way off into "deadpan." Forget about pancake and rouge on the
dead body--this was closing the casket, shoving it in the ground, and filling
in the grave, and God was that ever not the right thing to be thinking
about, but if the pine box fit..."You know how scuba divers have to come up slow,
and if they just bolt for the surface they get sick--something about the pressure
making the nitrogen bubble up in their blood or something? I've never been diving,
and I've never seen it--I just read about it somewhere, but--that's what my
head feels like, okay? I kept it together while all that stuff was
going on, I was okay then, but now that all the pressure's off it's like it's
all hitting me at once and I keep freaking out over stupid stuff
and I--I feel like I'm losing my goddamn mind--" There was another pause, much longer. "...hang on..."
A soft rustle and the scratch-click of a lighter. Twice. Three times.
"...dammit--sorry." Four times. Then a long, deep
shaky breath--presumably a mighty drag off the cigarette he'd just taken four
tries to light. "...sorry. I just--" His voice didn't trail off that time, it just stopped.
Like he'd choked on the words (which really wasn't so far from the truth). "I--"
There was a quiet but strange sound there, like a particularly loud swallow
or half a hiccup or something. "--ohgod--I'msorryIgotta--" Click.The door slammed. "End of messages," said the machine, oblivious
to the absence of human ears.---A sudden burst of knocking on the door startled Henry
out of a dream that was, if not exactly pleasant, at least only mildly creepy.
Something about the Gideon's Bible stashed in the nightstand drawer starting
not with In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth but
with In the beginning, people had nothing, and the medallion he still
had in his pocket bearing the inscription Mater Dei, Filia Dei on its
back. Weird. Yes. But strange scriptures and random flashbacks to high school
Latin weren't going to hurt him. He could deal with--The knocking resumed and crescendoed into pounding. Henry
lifted his head from the pillows, shook it a bit to clear out the cobwebs, and
blinked fuzzily at the door. He tried to will his legs to move so that he could
answer the damn thing, and his legs told him where and how far to stick it.
Henry decided he didn't blame them a bit, made some undecipherable drowsy mumbling
noise, and flopped his head back down onto the pillow. He'd almost gone back to sleep in spite of the ungodly
racket at the door when said ungodly racket suddenly stopped. There was a second
or two of silence... and then a voice."Henry?" Another few seconds of silence, then
another volley of knocking. "Henry, I know you're here, please open the
door..."Now much more awake, Henry lifted his head from the pillow
and blinked at the door again. His legs decided they weren't that tired,
and now they were more than willing to get him upright and walking. ...okay,
upright and staggering, but they still got him to the door. His fingers
weren't quite as awake as his legs and for a moment, they couldn't remember
how to work the locks, let alone whether they needed to turn the little knob
to the left or to the right to undo the deadbolt. At least he'd left the useless
little chain thing undone (and even now, when Henry was half-asleep and not
thinking about these things on a conscious level, the concept of door +
chain, however tiny and frail a chain it might be, still made his skin
crawl for the barest fraction of a second).The rain from the previous night had stopped, and the
clouds that had brought it were gone. Now the sun hung unobstructed in just
the right position to aim straight at Henry's unprepared eyes when he opened
the door. Before they could adjust, a very relieved Eileen threw her arms around
his neck."...muh!?" Henry's arms wrapped loosely around
her waist, more out of reflex than any conscious decision; his conscious mind
was still trying to wake the rest of the way up and figure out what could have
brought this on. "God, Henry--" Eileen's hand curled over the
back of Henry's head, and he gratefully hid his sun-lanced and aching eyes against
her shoulder. "Don't scare me like that!""Like wha--" Henry lifted his head a little
and tried to open his eyes again. It was good to see the sun, of course it was,
but did it have to be pointing this way? ..and now that he thought about it, didn't his room face
west? "...what time is it?""Little after four, but--""Ugh." Henry gave up and dropped his head back
to Eileen's shoulder. "...didn't sleep much last night, I guess."
"Uh, yeah, I know. You told me."Henry lifted his head up again and blinked. "...I
did?" "You don't remember?" Eileen fixed him with
what he'd later remember was the same look she'd pinned him with in the hospital
when he'd started stammering about holes and other worlds and people getting
killed, that distinct is he just messing with me, or is he batshit insane?
look. "Henry, you called my machine at three in the morning--"What the hell was I doing up at three in the morning?
Henry asked himself, frowning as he tried to account for the hours. He remembered
checking in roughly twelve hours prior to that and calling Eileen's machine
to tell her so... shower... pizza... bed and TV... eleven o' clock news... lights
out...The nightmare. The message.Oh man.Henry made some noise--part sigh, part groan, not so
sleepy, and hid his face against Eileen's shoulder. Yeah. Definitely one of
the most ridiculous things he'd ever done. Maybe the most ridiculous.
It was probably a good thing that he barely remembered two words of whatever
he'd unloaded at the poor machine, and, in turn, at Eileen. His arms tightened
a little around Eileen's waist, and hers tightened around his shoulders. "I'm
sorry."Eileen let out a warm sigh against Henry's shoulder.
"It's okay." He didn't think it possible for her to hold him any tighter,
but she managed it. "It's okay. I just--you sounded like--and then you
just hung up like that--I thought you were going to--to do something
stupid--"It didn't take Henry long to figure out exactly what
level of stupidity she meant by that, and the realization wrenched a wince and
a groan out of him. "No. No." He lifted his head from Eileen's
shoulder again, forcing his eyes open despite their protests and the piercing
sunlight so Eileen could see them. The look in hers hurt more than a hundred
blazing suns could have hoped to. "Never--I just--I don't know
what I was thinking, it was just that nightmare on top of everything
else--oh Jesus, Eileen, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to--"That was all he could say, because Eileen had given his
lips something else to do. Shutting me up with a kiss, Henry thought, now
that he was awake enough to remember some of the finer details. Just like
in that dream--Which led him to thinking about what he and Eileen had
done after that. Which in turn led him to thinking about what Walter had
done to him after that. Quickly, Henry swallowed back that train of thought and
the panic it threatened to stir up. Down that road lay madness, and damned if
he was going to freak out again, goddamned if he was going to freak
out right here in front of Eileen while she was ferchrissakes kissing
him--He must have made some tiny sound, or twitched back just
the slightest bit, or otherwise telegraphed that momentary panic, because Eileen
drew back much sooner than he normally would have liked, studying his face with
no small measure of concern. "That bad?" she finally asked him, very quietly.Henry opened his mouth to answer that with an offhanded
"nah, not really" or some such. It wouldn't come out. Nothing else
would, either, and it was then that he realized what had given him away.He was shaking. Not violently, but still noticeably, and it wasn't just
his hands or just his knees. He was shaking all over, like there was some kind
of low-grade electric current running through him (don't go there, Henry warned himself, don't
even start, not here, not now, do not go there) and before he could derail that train of thought, the
image reminded him of other things he didn't want to think about. Like the smell
of ozone (stop it) and burning hair (stop it) and cooking flesh (STOP
IT) and the more Henry tried not to think about that, the more he did think
about it. Which did nothing to help him get his voice back, even
less to help him get the shaking under control, and everything to answer Eileen's
question in the affirmative. Embarrassed by his loss of control in front of Eileen,
not caring how minor or understandable that loss of control really was, he simply
gave up and nodded. He'd never in his life been so frustrated or so ashamed
of himself, and he'd never wanted so badly to cry. He didn't, because--well,
because he didn't cry, file that under Just The Way He Was. Instead,
he huffed out a sharp, hot sigh against Eileen's shoulder and shivered even
harder.Eileen let out a softer sigh of her own and reached up
to stroke the back of Henry's head. An exercise in futility if she was actually
trying to tame his bed-snarled hair, but just fine for calming frayed nerves,
even if only for the moment. "Want to tell me?"Henry shook his head; with his eyes hidden against Eileen's
shoulder, it was more like a snuggle. "You really don't want to know.""That's not what I asked you." Eileen's stroking
fingers nudged at Henry's forehead, guiding it up off her shoulder, making him
look her in the eye. "You were strong for me... it's the least I can do
for you." She let go of Henry and gently unwrapped his arms from around
her waist, taking hold of both his hands in the process and leading him back
inside. "C'mon."The only seat roomy enough for two was the bed, and although
the thought of sitting there with Eileen next to him made Henry nervous
on a number of levels, it was that or the floor. So there he sat, with his elbows
on his knees and his eyes on the floor and Eileen's warm hand stroking his back,
trying to figure out where to start, trying not to think about what he might
end up telling her. After a few interminably awkward minutes of silence he told
her everything.Everything.Everything.Not that he didn't try to water some of it down or leave
some of it out entirely. It was as if Eileen could tell he was about to pull
a crop-and-retouch on some part or another, and no matter how long he stalled
or how deftly he tried to tiptoe around it, she wouldn't let him. Every time
he tried, her hand stilled on his back until he relented and told her. That half-full bottle of vanilla vodka that had been
in his freezer untouched for months, the one he took down to a quarter-full
the third night he was trapped in the apartment, slamming down double shots
that hit his nearly-empty stomach like napalm in a horribly failed attempt to
keep the recurring nightmare at bay, for example. Cynthia's promise of "special
favors," not too long before she died in his arms. The other hole,
the one in the living room, the fear that he himself might have carved it out
on that third night, what he had seen through it, and what he'd had
the decency to make his eyes look away from but couldn't stop that spot in the
back of his mind from filling in.Why Eileen didn't give him a piece of her mind for that
last one, or slap him, or just get up and leave was beyond him, but
she didn't. In fact, not five minutes later, he was lying on his back with his
legs hanging over the foot of the bed, his head in her lap, and one of her hands
stroking his hair back from his forehead while her other hand held his. And
though he still left out as many brutal details of the murders as he could get
away with, the warmth and comfort of that position made it easier for him to
talk about all the things he didn't like to think about.But oh God, he didn't want to tell her anything about
the latest nightmare. Especially not the very un-nightmare-like beginning. And
especially considering the fact that the thigh he was currently using as a pillow
was the very one that had been pressed between his in that dream.He stammered his way through a brief and heavily abridged
version of the transition from "just kissing" to "really kissing,"
but he just couldn't go any farther than that. It was enough of a miracle that
Eileen hadn't gone off on him when he'd told her about that one vision through
the hole, the one where he'd unwittingly caught her in the process of removing
the towel she was wearing to change into her party clothes, the one he looked
away from in a hurry once he realized what was going on. Surely she would
give him that piece of her mind (at the very least) if he told her exactly how
his brain had chosen to exhume the thoughts that had put in his head, the ones
he'd tried so hard to bury.Sure enough, before Henry could muster up the courage
to describe the transition from "really kissing" to "bed,"
Eileen stopped him. If she was about to kill him, she'd certainly picked
a strange way to shut him up; two soft fingertips pressed to his lips weren't
exactly a standard precursor to murder."Okay," she said, very softly. "Is this
part going where I think it's going?"Henry swallowed hard and nodded, shutting his eyes and
bracing for whatever was going to follow that silent confession. "...we,
uh, still had our clothes on, if that helps..." He was fairly sure that
was the lamest thing that had ever come out of his mouth, quite sure that Eileen
really was going to shove his head out of her lap, slap him, and leave, and
dead certain that he wouldn't blame her a bit if she did any or all of the above.Eileen let out a long sigh, and Henry flinched, just
the slightest bit. "Okay," she said again, not quite as softly. "For
one thing--Henry, relax. It's okay."Henry's eyes snapped open, wide and a little bewildered.
What!?"Anyway. For one thing, you have, like, no
control over what you dream about." Henry started to say something; Eileen
shushed him with another gentle press of fingertips to his lips. "So if
you think I'm going to be mad about it, you can stop worrying. It's not your
fault.""But I--the hole--I was--" Henry stammered;
that rated Eileen's whole hand over his mouth."Are you that sure you made that hole? I mean, you
said something about a note on the wall with it. Did it look like your handwriting?"Henry frowned a little. "Not really--but--it was
scratched on the wall, in this little cramped space, and if I was drunk enough
to not remember any of it in the morning--""--then you were probably too drunk to move a heavy
piece of furniture out of the way, chip at the wall with a screwdriver or whatever
for a couple of hours, scratch a perfectly legible note on the wall next to
it, and then move that heavy piece of furniture back before you passed out,
don't you think?" Well, when she put it that way..."You didn't do it." Eileen patted Henry's forehead,
and then put that hand back over his mouth when he tried to say something to
that. "When we were there before... when we saw it like it was when Joseph
lived there... it was there."Henry's eyes widened a little. "Are you sure?" "Well, I mean, you'll have to take my word for
it. It's not like we could go back and look even if we wanted to, which
I sure as hell don't. But you didn't do it. Whatever drunken tunnel-digging
might have gone on in there, you weren't in on it. You just--you just found
it. That's all."Henry let out a sigh of relief that was as profound as
it was short-lived, because however the hole had come to exist in his living
room wall, he'd still used it. "...but--I saw you--""And that? That was an accident. If you're
being honest with me, and I think you are, it's not like you camped out and
waited for it or anything. You said you didn't mean to see that, and you said
you looked away, and I believe you. As for thinking about it--" Eileen
shook her head and breathed out an incredulous little laugh. "Jesus, Henry,
give me some credit here, okay? I understand. You were going through
stuff that'd drive most people crazy. Like, certifiable, funny farm, padded-room-and-straitjacket
insane. You think I'm going to blame you for having a nice
thought pop into your head once in a while? Besides... if it'd been the other
way around?" Maybe it was just Henry's imagination, but for a second, it
looked like she might be blushing a little. "I totally would have
kept thinking about it. Uh. Anyway. My point is, maybe I don't know
you all that well, but you've been nothing less than a perfect gentleman to
me, I don't think you're a pervert, in fact I think you're even more of a perfect
gentleman for being so honest about all this, and I'm sorry I interrupted you,
but I just thought you needed to know that and I'm going to shut up and let
you finish now."Eileen shut up, and Henry finished.The actual nightmare had been the hardest to think about,
but after those kind words from Eileen it was strangely easy to talk
about. Still, there was one detail he had to leave out. Maybe sometime in the
future, if and when their relationship progressed to a point where they could
comfortably talk about that sort of thing he'd tell her, but not now. Fortunately,
Eileen let him get away with that one small omission. Then there was nothing left to tell. And as Eileen bent
down and kissed his forehead, Henry slowly began to grasp the significance of
what he'd just done. He'd told Eileen the whole story--well, almost the whole
story, minus the parts she'd seen for herself and that one other part, but close
enough, and he'd gotten through it. If he could talk about it without freaking
out too much, then he could think about it without freaking out too much. And
if he could think about it without freaking out... Well, maybe that meant he wasn't losing his mind after
all. If nothing else, at least he'd stopped shivering. That,
and he--There was a noise there, not terribly loud, but loud
enough to disrupt Henry's train of thought. A very familiar and distinctive
noise. Eileen's hand abruptly stilled on his forehead again--she
must have heard it too. It was nearly dark outside now, but just enough light
pushed through the curtains for Henry to open his eyes and see the nearly comical
expression of bewilderment on Eileen's face."...was that your stomach!?"Henry flopped an arm over his eyes, breathed out a soft,
embarrassed laugh, and nodded. Eileen patted his forehead and sighed out a laugh of
her own. "Henry..." She reached over and clicked the lamp
on. "Where's the phone book?"---Two weeks ago, Henry never would have believed that the
combination of Spongebob Squarepants reruns and ludicrous quantities of Chinese
food had such amazing restorative properties. Sure, there'd be a few crumbs
in the bed later, but it was a small price to pay. He might not be completely
okay yet, and probably wouldn't be completely okay for a long time,
but he was certainly better.Having Eileen snuggled against his side with her head
on his shoulder didn't hurt, either. "So... wait." Henry paused to scrape the last
few grains of fried rice and the last dab of the best General Tso's sauce ever
out of one styrofoam box. A similar box that had once contained the best pepper
steak ever lay empty on the floor in front of the nightstand. Stacked
on top of that was yet another styrofoam box that had once contained the best
pork dumplings ever If they'd delivered shoe leather it probably
would have been the best ever too, as long as they put sauce and random
vegetables in with it and served it with fried rice. "They're underwater,
right? Like, at the bottom of the ocean?""Riiiight..." Eileen offered him another styrofoam
box. "Fried stuff, sir?"The selection of "fried stuff" included, among
other things, egg rolls, sweet-and-sour chicken, and those little cream cheese
puff things. Henry transferred one of each to his box; the cheese puff and the
chicken barely hit foam before they got inhaled. "Thanks. ...how are they
blowing soap bubbles at the bottom of the ocean?"Eileen picked through the fried stuff herself, found
a shrimp, and dipped it in sweet-and-sour. "Someone hasn't been
paying attention." She ate her shrimp, dropped the tail into Henry's empty
General Tso's box, and feigned a great pained sigh. "It's the technique.
You know, go like this, spin around, stop--""Oh, God." Henry squinched his eyes shut and
took a bite of egg roll, which he nearly choked on when Eileen got to the "pelvic
thrust wooooo wooooooo" part. "Okay. Okay. I--oh, hell--"
He dissolved into silent but incapacitating laughter, covering his eyes and
shaking his head. Eileen continued, poking through the fried stuff and sounding
very pleased to have gotten that reaction out of him."Then they bring it around town. Bring it aroooouuuund
tooooown. Then they do this, then this, and this,
pardon me--" Here, she paused to eat a cheese puff thing. "Mmm. I
love these things. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Then that, then this
and that--and voila, bubbles. ...or there's the short answer."
Eileen beamed up at him. "Cartoon physics."Henry cleared his throat and tried to compose himself,
though he still didn't quite stop snickering. "Right. I'm sorry I asked.
Um..." He eyed the box of fried stuff. "Could you pass the--""Here, why don't you just keep it over there--"
Eileen took away the empty container and set the whole box of fried stuff in
Henry's lap. "--because I cannot eat another bite." Henry held up
a fortune cookie and quirked an eyebrow. "...except for that. Gimme.""Yes, ma'am." Henry passed her the cookie with
a little grin and turned his attention to the fried stuff, packing away bits
of chicken and pork and cheese puff things like popcorn as Eileen unwrapped
her cookie and cracked it open.She pulled the little slip of paper out, uncrinkled it,
and snickered a bit. "'You are an artistic person--let your colors show...'"
She ate one half of the cookie. "...in bed.""What!?" Henry dropped the other half
of his egg roll into the box. Crumbs and a couple of cheese puff things skittered
out of its way on impact. "It does not say that. ...does it?""What, you've never heard of that?" Eileen
settled back against his side and ate the other half of her cookie. "Sticking
'in bed' on the end of the fortune?"Henry sputtered out a laugh and shook his head. "No...never
heard of that.""God, that's how we always read them in my
family." Eileen nudged the remaining fortune cookie at Henry. "Here.
Do yours.""Nuh-uh. That's dessert," Henry protested,
though he couldn't quite stop the beginning of a grin. "And I'm not finished
yet." As if to illustrate, he picked up his egg roll and pretended to ignore
the cookie."Okay, so you finish that egg roll, then you eat
the cookie, and then you have a really big snack of fried stuff."How could he argue with that logic? "Okay. Okay."
Henry rolled his eyes (and chuckled a little), put the butt end of his egg roll
down, and unwrapped his cookie. He made a great show of breaking it in half, pointedly
<i>not</i> looking at the fortune, and eating the cookie in very
small pieces, and Eileen rewarded him with her own rolling of eyes and giggle.
"Henry.""What? You can't read the fortune until you eat
the cookie." Henry popped another bit of cookie into his mouth and tried
very hard not to laugh."You're just stalling--""Well, that's how we did it in my family,
and it's my cookie. So there." And, okay, maybe he was
stalling a little, which was silly. How perverted could a fortune cookie possibly
be, even with that particular phrase appended to its pearl of wisdom? It couldn't
be that bad, could it? Of course not. He finished off his cookie and
took a look at the fortune. Okay, maybe it could be that bad. He took another look at the fortune... then he folded
the fortune up and shook his head. "Uh... no.""Oh, come on--" Eileen made a not-too-serious
grab for the fortune, and Henry held it just out of reach for a few moments--then
he cleared his throat, handed it over, and suddenly became very, very interested
in a Toys 'R Us commercial as Eileen looked it over. "Uh..." One hand
went to her mouth to stifle a fresh crop of giggles, and Henry braced for the
inevitable. "'You will soon receive a pleasant surprise...' in b--oh, jeez,
this is--Henry, you're blushing.""No I'm not." Henry very pointedly did not
take his eyes off the TV, though he did swallow a little louder than was strictly
necessary. "I don't blush. I just--got a Thai pepper or something in that
chicken." Eileen spluttered out an incredulous laugh. "Oh,
right. A Thai pepper with a ten-minute delay--" She sighed
and shook her head. "...okay, no, I'm stopping. I'm sorry. I know you're
kind of shy about that stuff." She draped her arm across Henry's stomach
and laid her head against his shoulder again, perhaps as a peace offering. "But
if it's okay with you, I really don't want to stop the cuddly stuff."Henry rested his (still warm and still quite red) cheek
against her forehead and wrapped his arm around her shoulders with a little
laugh. "No, I'm fine with the cuddly stuff." After a moment's thought,
he leaned his head down and brushed one soft kiss against Eileen's lips. "...and
the kissing stuff. Give me a couple of months on the other stuff.""Mmm. I am totally okay with that."
Eileen craned up and returned that little kiss. "Like I said. Perfect gentleman."
She snuggled against Henry's shoulder again. "I just noticed something."Henry closed up the box of fried stuff and carefully
added it to the stack on the floor, trying to do so without jostling Eileen
around too much. "Hm?""You haven't had a single cigarette since I got
here. I don't mind, y'know."For a moment, Henry actually considered it, going so
far as to reach over to the nightstand and lay fingers on the pack--after all,
under normal circumstances, he usually did have one after he ate. Then
he thought of the last cigarette he'd had, the night before... ugh.Henry shook his head. "Thanks, but no. I think I've
had enough of that for now." His hand still hovered over the pack of cigarettes,
and he started to pull it back. Then he reconsidered and poked the "power"
button on the TV remote--and yawned hugely. God, he couldn't possibly be sleepy,
could he? It seemed like he'd done nothing but sleep for the last two
days--granted, he hadn't slept all that well last night, and he hadn't so much
slept as passed out in the car the day before--but still. Food coma,
perhaps. That was it. Food coma and nice warm Eileen snuggled against him. Who
needed warm milk and honey when you had that?"You, uh... don't have to
work or anything tomorrow, do you?""Nope." Food-and-cuddle coma appeared to be
contagious; Eileen seemed to be melting into a happy boneless puddle next to
him. "They gave me the week off. You?""Nah. I kind of make my own hours." Henry thought
of the cameras he'd left in the car and wondered if maybe he should get up and
bring them in before someone decided to ransack his car, and he decided he couldn't
be bothered at the moment. He'd deal with it in the morning. "I was just
thinking... I mean, if it's too soon for this, I understand, but I'd, uh...
really like you to stay." He cleared his throat. "I'll sleep on the
floor if you--""No you won't." Eileen's arm tightened around
his waist. "You can stay right here. If I can trust you with my
life, I think I can trust you in bed."Henry laughed, just a little, as he turned the lamp off.
He couldn't help but think of fortune cookies.