Title: Fortification WC: 1000
The EMT tosses him a blanket as he fights his way through air that’s several times thicker than it should be to exit the ambulance Sluggish, he thinks, as his feet hit the ground. The impact shatters every bone in his body. It feels like that, anyway, and if she weren’t standing however many yards off, her smile wide in the blue–red sweep of the squad car lights, he doesn’t think he could go on.
But she is standing however many yards off, smiling—alive and smiling—so he does go on. He works out the maddeningly complex logistics of wrapping the blanket around his shoulders as makes his way toward her. It’s a shitty blanket. It’s warm, but somehow thin, and even in pre-dawn black he can tell it’s the sickly pale blue-green of hospital gowns and walls and food. It’s a shitty blanket, and she has a matching one, and he doesn’t think he’s ever been so attached to anything in his life.
He clings to his own fiercely enough that people notice. Esposito and Ryan, from a distance, catch him desperately trying to close his shaking fists more tightly around the fabric. Even Fallon gives his white-knuckled grip a curious look as he scolds the two of them.
She notices, but she understands. She flicks a glance from his blanket and her own as she makes her way toward Josh. She hunches her shoulders to get more of her body underneath it, she casts another slightly apologetic look over her shoulder, and he knows she understands.
He doesn’t give it up at home. He can’t make himself, though his mother and Alexis add their concerned looks to the gallery. He wraps the second, infinitely superior, blanket over the first, needing the terrible thing close to his pale, shivering skin.
It’s something like a talisman by then. It’s contagious magic that connects him to her and her to him, because she has one, too, wherever she is right now. But it’s even more than that. It’s his armor. It steels him to say the terrible things he must. His fingers curl hard, practically tearing at the stitching along the blanket’s edge, and he sends them away. He forbids them to ask questions, to say anything to anyone. He begs them, with his shoulders hunched and his eyes averted, to believe the lie that he’ll come along when he can.
It’s agony to let it go. He stands alone in his bedroom with it still wrapped tight around his body. He straightens his spine. He tries to roll his shoulders, and he feels again like every bone in his body is shattering. But he sees her again, in his mind’s eye this time. He pictures her fighting the same battle over this stupid, shitty blanket, and again he goes on.
He folds the blanket neatly and lays it on the foot of his bed. He dresses himself, practically sobbing as he uncovers his body, bit by bit. He stands with his head bowed for the space of one, shaking breath as the door closes behind him on an empty loft. He goes on.
He brings her coffee and jokes about warmth. He wears his heart on his sleeve even more than usual, because who can help it under the circumstances? They almost died. They might die yet. He loves her, and she might be the only person in the whole wide about-to-end world who doesn’t know that, and he doesn’t have his fucking blanket. So, yeah, his heart is on his sleeve, but they have to go on.
So they do.
They do the work. They pull against what seems like it must be true. They pull against each other’s perspective until they see every one of the players involved as people, until they can envision events through their eyes. And in a moment of absolute desperation, with his hand holding hers tight, they save the world.
It’s a bit of a blur from there. He has a distinct memory of her throwing herself into his arms, of the force of her smile in full sunlight on an unusually warm February afternoon, but then they’re back at the precinct somehow. The boys mock them. Montgomery chuckles at their blind luck. They’re not hailed as heroes, because that’s not how this goes in their little family. Instead, they give in to the giddy laughter that has its hooks in all of them. They poke and prod and tease one another and it’s almost like normal again.
Almost.
They have a quiet moment, just the two of them, courtesy of Fallon, oddly enough. She stands facing him, however many inches away this time, and the shiver that runs through him has nothing to do with the cold. Courage surges up—determination—and there’s a rush of silvery fire all through his veins. It’s a wonderful, not-about-to-end world, and his heart is on his sleeve, because why not?
He feels a riot of words inside him. He thinks of the neat square of sickly place blue-green folded on the end of his bed, clashing with everything. He wonders where hers is. He has a sudden, urgent need to know, and he almost laughs out loud when he realizes that he needs to know because the very first thing he wants to do is ask her if she wants to build a blanket fort with her. He wants to tell her that he’s great at it. That he’s had more practice than she can possibly imagine.
It’s silly. It’s utterly ridiculous, and it’s the perfect way to let her in on the secret everyone else in the whole wide, not-about-to-end world knows: He loves her. He’s in love with her, and won’t she please do him the honor of building a blanket fort with him?
It’s the perfect, perfectly ludicrous way to tell her.
But he never gets the chance.
A/N: Those are some terrible, needful blankets, fam.And this is dummmmb. Hmmm.
image via homeofthenutty
