like any unloved thing part eight : I know how to make you sleep
Masterlist \ ao3 \ part one \ part two \ part three \ part four \ part five \ part six \ part seven
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Three months later, and Fawn still hasn’t heard from him.
They’d parted with a kiss, Tangerine pressing his lips against hers again and again, as if he couldn’t quite stop himself and actually leave.
Fawn could still feel the press of his mouth for a long time afterwards, even after he left. She would touch her own lips, carefully, even though she was literally in the middle of the café and was supposed to be working. But her mind had been stuck in some sort of daze, and she’d just let herself daydream for the rest of her shift.
Tangerine had told her he would come back, after his job in Tokyo. He’d told her so with a reverent look in his eyes, eyes wide and soft.
And yet, weeks after she last saw him, still she’s heard nothing from him. In the first weeks, she’d realized that maybe she should have asked him when he’d be back. She had no idea how long his “jobs” were. Would they take up days, weeks, months ?
So, at first, she told herself not to worry. That maybe it’s just the way it is, but after the first month, she starts to worry. She knows he has her phone number, but he never sent any text or called. Maybe he didn’t have his phone when he worked ? It could be a possibility, what with all the dangers and other disadvantages of his job.
She resolves to reach out, and sends him a single text after the one month mark.
The message goes unanswered. Doesn’t even deliver, actually.
She tries not to dwell on it. Maybe he doesn’t have service, maybe he doesn’t have access to his phone. There could be a lot of reasonable, completely normal explanations for his lack of response. Maybe he needs to lay low. Maybe…
Fuck, she has no idea how any of this work.
Now that she knows what he actually does for a living, she realizes that there’s nothing safe in this kind of line of work. She’s seen the scars on his body, and she knows most of them, if not all, probably come from his job.
With this realization comes the worry. She keeps imagining him, hurt or dead somewhere. And there’s absolutely nothing she can do about it. She tries to chase those thoughts away from her mind, because every time she can feel something weighing down on her chest, making it harder to breathe.
She reasons that he’s not alone, Lemon must be with him. That’s what he told her, that they worked together, as a team.
She tries calling him, a few weeks after that first text. An automated voice tells her the number is no longer assigned.
She doesn’t try again.
Days pass without any change. Fawn tries staying busy, ignores the now constant lump in her throat. She doesn’t cry, even though she wishes she could let it out, but for some reason, it stays there, stuck in the hollow of her chest, impossible to coax out.
She spends her days working her shifts at the café, the warmth and heavy smell of chocolate, coffee and cinnamon wrapping around her in some sort of bubble out of time. She feels safe there, mixing drink after drink, smiling to the few customers. This has become her routine, and she’s surprised to find that she doesn’t mind it. She leaves her apartment around eleven, and comes back once she’s done working at nine.
It's calming. Relaxing. There’s no… Expectation. No going out late, not knowing if she’ll be sleeping out, or if she’ll sleep at all. No unexpected call in the night. It’s a normal life, no overly exciting things, but it’s safe. Still, she keeps the knife Tangerine gave her safely tucked into her bag, always in reach.
At night, she lies down in her bed, staring at the ceiling for a long time. When during the day her incessant worry and interrogations and everything melts away, during the night it comes back in full force, and no matter how hard she tries to force herself to think of something, to count the sheep or whatever the hell people do to fall asleep, the thoughts remain.
She resolves to exhaust herself then. She reads until the words start blurring together, sometimes until the sun has already started to peak. She watches tv in the dark, cradling a cup of tea in her hands.
She throws herself into work and interacting until there is no space left for Tangerine in her mind. She meets Violet’s boyfriend. She goes on brunch and shopping outings with her.
She doesn’t call her agency.
Eventually, spring rolls in. Fawn takes walks around the city. She feels like a healthy human being doing so. Her old life seems very, very far away, and she’s stunned, sometimes, to realize that she doesn’t miss it nor does she think about it as much as she did.
Tangerine being the exception of that.
She finds a small aquarium during one of her walks, and comes home with two small fish, one with bright orange scales, and the other with golden ones. She tries not to delve too deeply into her choice, but she thinks it was cute, the way the two of them kept swimming and trailing next to each other, despite having a whole aquarium to themselves.
So now she owns two fish. She names the orange one Mango and the other Pineapple, because it would go too far to name them Lemon and Tangerine, and as she said, she’s trying not to think too much about the reasons why she thought getting those two fish was a good idea.
Two weeks later, she finds a small kitten in the alley behind the café as she’s taking the trash out. The kitten is pitiful, meowing loudly and trembling. She’s a small brown tabby with the biggest eyes Fawn has never seen. She scoops her up and takes her home. She bathes her, feeds her and lets her cuddle on her stomach.
It’s only fitting, then, to name her Bambi.
She doesn’t think about Lemon calling her that, a few weeks ago, standing in their kitchen drinking hot chocolate with him.
A few days into being a pet-owner, she realizes there is now no way that she’ll ever be able to go back to the way things were. She has a cat now, and two fish, who require her attention and depend on her for everything. No more going out at night without knowing if she’ll be sleeping her own bed or in some stranger’s.
It makes her even busier, too, which she is grateful for. She wouldn’t call it a distraction, because they are much more than that, but it’s the closest word she finds to describe it. Even though sometimes, she can’t help but stare at the fish tank and watch as Mango and Pineapple fleet around in the water.
It’s on one these nights where she can’t find sleep that she finds herself sprawled out on the couch, Bambi purring loudly on her stomach, while she stares at the fish tank. She wonders if they’re sleeping right now ; both of them are hidden from her sight, probably under a plant.
Her apartment is plunged in the dark, save from the TV where she put on some episode of a show that she’s been following for the past few weeks. The sky outside is still dark, it’s only three am, the one hour when there is almost no noise to be heard outside. She’s put on the TV very low, and the gentle sounds of it are making her doze.
Which is why, when she first hears the knock at the door, she thinks she’s just imagined it.
But on the second one, Bambi startles awake and bolts away, probably to hide under the bed, and Fawn knows that she absolutely did not imagine it, and that there is someone at her door at three fucking am in the morning.
Heart thumping against her chest, she scrambles from the couch, quickly rummaging into her bag and gripping the knife. Her palm is already sweaty around the handle. She shakes her head, closing her other hand around the door’s handle. She breathes in and out, once ; filling her lungs with as much oxygen as she can, before wrenching the door open.
She’s so stunned by the sight awaiting behind it that she almost drops the knife.
Tangerine is standing in the hallway, leaning against the wall.
He looks awful, for lack of better word.
Unkept would never be a word that Fawn would use to describe him. He’s usually tidy, clean, always in perfectly put, in a pristine suit, hair gelled back, mustache neatly trimmed.
But here he is. Hair longer than she’s ever seen him with, in unruly, messy curls around his head, dark bags under his eyes. His face is littered with bruises and cuts, one of the bridge of his nose, another on his forehead and his left cheek. There’s the beginning of a stubble on his jaw. He’s not even wearing a suit as he usually is, only a white shirt, but it’s wrinkled. His arm is in a cast.
There’s a thick bandage wrapped around the side of his throat.
She opens her mouth, but no sound comes out. She can’t help but stare at him, take him in. This feels like some sort of dream. She’s had so many of them, where he comes back, standing on the other side of the door. But here, now that it’s happening, she’s left speechless. Unable to act.
Her throat clicks, as if it’s stuck. She tries to swallow around it, to chase the sudden dryness on her tongue, but it doesn’t really help.
“Tangerine ?” She murmurs, at last.
His eyes roam over her face, almost wildly, before dropping down to her hand, and the knife she’s holding. She almost forgot she still had it.
“Can I…” His voice breaks, despite the fact that he’s speaking low, in a hushed whisper. “Can I come in ?” He tries again.
She nods, unsure of what to do, and moves aside to let him inside, closing the door behind him. The lump in her throat seems heavier than ever.
She had thought that a weight would be finally lifted from her chest if he ever returned. Had imagined greeting him. Maybe giving him a kiss.
But looking at him now, there is no feeling of tremendous joy, no fireworks. She’s relieved, yes. But the concern is still there, unmoving.
He stops in the middle of the living room, back turned to her.
“Tangerine”, Fawn calls him, gently, stepping towards him. She reaches out and brushes a careful hand against his shoulder.
He turns back towards her. There is anguish on his face, like she’s never seen before on him.
She brings her hand up, trailing it from his shoulder to lightly cup the side of his face. He closes his eyes, leaning into her touch, almost nuzzling her palm.
“What happened ?” She asks.
He shakes his head. His eyelashes are long, brushing against his cheekbones. She thinks, for a moment, that she can see tears shining on them.
“Everything’s fucked”, he says, finally.
His voice sounds different. It’s weaker, and there’s a definite rasp in the way he speaks. It’s… hoarse. Almost like it’s broken, like he screamed too much, and now has to force himself to be able to get it out.
“What do you mean ?” She asks, gently. He shakes his head again, and a tear rolls down his cheek. She wants to brush it away with the pad of her thumb, to kiss the wet trail on his face.
“It’s all fucked up”, he repeats. “I… Lemon…”
“Lemon ?” Fawn says, now worried. If something happened to him…
“I thought he was dead”, Tangerine gets out. His chest is heaving, as if each word is harder to speak than the other. “And then I thought I was dead too.”
He surges suddenly, almost startling her, hands coming up to grasp her face. His eyes seem desperate.
“I didn’t get scared”, he tells her, frantic. “I didn’t get scared, alright ? I only woke up two weeks ago. I didn’t get scared.”
Don’t be scared, she had told him, months earlier, as she kissed him. Had begged, almost.
And now here he is, almost pleading.
She realizes that, not once during all those weeks, all those sleepless nights wondering about him, she never thought that he had fled.
“I know”, she murmurs, gently cupping his elbows. “I know.”
His face crumbles then, hands falling down from her face, and he buries his face in her neck. The force of it almost sends Fawn stumbling backwards, but she stabilizes them, embracing him, her fingers on the nape of his neck. He’s trembling, his shoulders shaking. She can feel wetness against her skin, but his cries are completely silent, save from heavy breathing and hiccups.
She holds him against her. She wants to ask him, wants to know what happened, to his neck, to his arm, to his voice. To Lemon. Wants to ask what he means about waking up only two weeks ago.
She doesn’t, though.
He’s impossibly warm against her, this much hasn’t changed, despite the layers of clothing separating them. She wants to bury into him, to press her face into his chest, wrap around him, until they’re molded into each other.
This. This feels impossibly right. The relief, the sensation of finally touching him, of having him against her, like someone would feel after being thirsty for days and finding water at last.
She realizes how much she had been craving touch, his touch, only now that she finally has it.
She lets him cry against her, rubbing circles onto the skin of his neck and on his back.
She can count on one hand the number of times she’s seen him like this. Unraveled, undone. Shaking and holding onto her as if he’s afraid she’s going to disappear. The second time he hired her had been close to this. And then, there was the night where he got drunk and begged her not to leave.
After what could have been a few minutes as well as hours, Tangerine pulls away, stepping back a bit, but Fawn doesn’t let him go too far, cupping his face and keeping him there.
Even in the dark, the blue of his eyes is striking.
“Hey”, she murmurs, thumb brushing against his cheekbone. His eyes close again, and he lets out a ragged breath.
“Fawn”, he rasps. “I…” And then he cuts off, as if his voice died inside his throat. She sees him gulp and tries to clear his throat, only to cough and inhale deeply. He winces, a hand automatically rising to his throat.
She glances at the bandage on his neck.
“What is it ?” She asks him.
He tries to speak again, opening his mouth, but there’s no sound coming out. He sighs, frowning, looking frustrated, and shakes his head. She lets him step back this time, releasing his face, and watches as he seems to struggle, as he rakes a hand into his hair.
He doesn’t seem able to speak.
“You can’t speak ?”
He glances at her, looking stunned for a moment, before shaking his head in confirmation. He’s still trembling. Something about the way he’s holding himself reminds her of a caged animal.
She grabs her phone from the couch and hands it to him, notes app opened.
“Here”, she tells him, gentle.
He hesitates for a moment, before accepting it. He types away something, and turns the screen towards her.
Got shot in the neck. Fucked my vocal cords.
Oh.
This is why his voice sounds so hoarse. Why his jaw ticked every time he spoke, like it was causing him pain.
This is probably why he disappeared.
“Do you want me to make you tea ?” She asks. His face contorts in surprise. “For your throat. Maybe it’ll help ?”
He nods. Neither of them move for a moment, before she motions towards the kitchen. He trails after her, and when she glances back at him, he reminds her a bit of a lost puppy.
She busies herself putting water in the kettle, aware of his gaze on her as he leans against the counter. She settles on making him honey tea, with some herbs that she uses when she herself catches a cold. She hopes it’ll help relieve his throat.
When it’s done, she sets the steamy mug in front of him, and he drinks it obediently.
They stand like this in silence for a long time, but it’s not uncomfortable. It’s actually oddly comforting, despite it being probably four a.m. in the morning. Despite the fact that, from what she can gather, he seemingly almost died. And the fact that he disappeared from months because of it.
“Thanks”, Tangerine finally croaks out, half whispering. Fawn wants to tell him to take it easy, to not speak until he feels better, but he adds, before she can say anything. “Can… Can I stay here ?”
Her own throat closes up. Something tight wraps around her chest.
“Of course”, she replies, nodding, her own voice hoarse. “Wait here, I still have your clothes from last time. I’ll be right back, okay ?”
She doesn’t wait for her answer, slipping away quickly to her own room. She takes a minute there, breathing in deeply, in and out, trying to slow down the furious, panicked beating of her own heart against her ribcage. She feels like it’s threatening to burst out.
She presses her hand on her chest, applying pressure and rubbing to relieve the ache, even though she knows she can’t.
Bambi is sitting on her bed, staring at her with weary eyes.
“Hey”, Fawn murmurs, kneeling in front of her to scratch her forehead. Bambi yawns, and turns away, curling herself into a ball. Fawn snorts half-heartedly, rising from the ground.
She fishes Tangerine’s clothes, the ones she wore when she stayed that night in his and Lemon’s apartment, and goes back into the living-room.
She finds him standing in front of the fish tank, staring. Mango and Pineapple seem to have woken up, because they’re out of hiding spot, swimming around in circles in the tank.
Fawn carefully places the clothes on a stool, and approaches him slowly, making sure he can hear her coming as to not startle him. She hesitates for a brief moment, before fitting herself against his back, wrapping her arms around his stomach and pressing her forehead to the nape of his neck.
She feels him more than she hears him shudder, and she kisses the skin above the collar of his shirt. He makes a humming sound, so she glances above his shoulder. He wordlessly mentions towards the fish tank.
“Got them a few days ago”, she explains, watching the fish too. There is something oddly relaxing, to watch the way they move. She wonders what it would be like, to be inside, mindlessly floating. Would it feel like being in a safe cocoon ? Or a cage ? “This is Mango”, she adds, pointing at the orange one, then the yellow one “and this is Pineapple.”
Tangerine snorts. Fawn can’t help but smile against his shoulder.
“I missed you”, she murmurs then, a quiet admission against his back.
He doesn’t answer. But one of his hands find hers, and gently takes it, placing it on his chest and his own hand above it, right against his heart, keeping it there. The tight line of his shoulders melts suddenly, and he seems to finally exhale, as if something unlocked inside of him. She can almost feel his heart beat beneath her fingers.
There’s something so comforting, so unbelievably soft about this, that she feels like she’s going to burst into a sobbing mess.
She presses her cheek to the skin of his nape, closing her eyes, and breathes with him.
