Page 90 of Marked by the Demigod

When Trixiefinally leaves for her own bed, it's more like it's the next morning and Aimes is wide the fuck awake.

She breathes, hard, in the hospital room in the back of the office for too long, before Iakov appears next to her, quiet.

She raises an eyebrow at him, and he still looks put out.

"Your friend punched me," he says, as if that’s the grand tragedy of the day.

"You put me in a hole in the ground with no contact." She challenges him back, sitting up past the ache in her chest.

He scowls at her, but it lacks the heat that it usually does. "I had my internal organs removed."

She reaches out and feels the bandage. It feels normal, his breathing fine, like nothing ever happened. "How is --"

His scowl deepens. "They gave me stitches and I hate it." He complains, but it's a normal complaint. "I would've been fine."

"You passed out on my lap."

He waves her off. "It's not a big deal, I pass out all the time."

"That's not helpful." But she can feel the edge of a smile on her lips, and she wants so hard to be so angry at him.

His face clears , and he sighs, slumping against her cot, eyes still open, just...attempting to do something resembling rest.

In the slow, quiet moment that follows, he breathes out, then reaches for her hand, and she has a brief inner war on whether or not to take it. "They know about me now," he says, and she no longer has to strain to understand his accent. "Your registration, the government shebang. They know about me."

Her eyes drop to where she knows the bandage hides the stitches. "Sounds like you needed the backup."

He sighs again, as if truly exhausted. "Let’s run away," he whispers in the small room. "Let’s run away, let’s get out of this country, find a faraway town and disappear."

Her mind is immediately full of the lavender fields of France, and the smell of the espresso in the shop, and she shakes her head to clear the image. His face falls at her motions. "That's what you've been doing, though," she whispers back, the conversation feeling too important to be loud. "I don't want to do that for forever."

He blinks at her, before slowly nodding.

She's still wide awake, and itching to go home, but instead she just sits with him, both of them alert but not talking.

"Doesn't it get tiring?" She asks, soft still.

When he looks up at her, it's with something resembling surprise. "I guess."

"You always seem so tired when I see you."

He nods, quiet and face drawn, and their conversation lapses.

There's the long moment of silence, and his hand moves idly in hers, at the same time perfect and very out of place. "Besides, my job moves me around a lot."

His eyes snap up to hers, a smidgen unbelieving and a smidgen appraising. "You like the job," he says, and it's more of a tentative statement than a declaration.

She nods.

The appraising look comes back. "I can ...take you to the conventions. And libraries." He offers. "No more plane flights?"

She doesn't know if she should be flattered or not, cause it's not exactly like any of her previous boyfriends ever wanted her to actually do her job. Hell, Rocky wanted to leverage their previous relationship to get her to stop and...

Under her gaze, he sort of slumps over, exhaustion lining his eyes, and they lapse into silence once more.

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