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Max doesn’t need to open his eyes to know it’s happened again. But he can’t avoid the day, so he opens them anyway.
The first thing he sees is the pool of wax around the base of candles he had lit last night. The wax has hardened overnight, and as it did so, it did it in a very familiar pattern: three circles, connected together.
He closes his eyes again, just for a second, but the symbol is still there when he checks.
It’s happening all the time now. When he spills water; in the dirt beside the Jeep wherever he parks it; in the firepit after he lights it. It follows him, and the more he tries to pretend he doesn’t see it, the more it shows up.
Behind him in the bed, Liz breathes deeply and evenly. Still asleep. He leaves her that way; rising as quietly as he can and tiptoeing out in the living room on bare feet.
He hasn’t told her and he’s fairly sure she hasn’t noticed what’s happening around him. He should tell her; he knows he should, given where lack of communication led them last time. But it feels too soon, their wounds having only just healed, for them to make fresh ones. He wants time just to be together. For them to be a couple without the unearthly drama that always seems to consume them.
And truthfully, he’s a little afraid—of himself. Jones hadn’t exactly been a font of information before they’d resealed him in his cave, and Max has no idea what the recurring symbol means. Is he becoming dangerous? Is it a warning sign of something bigger coming?
He only wants a little time. That’s all he’s asking for. Time to love Liz without anything getting in the way, this go around.
He has plenty of time. It’s funny how much a day and a night can contain, when you aren’t sleeping. When you find yourself watching the clock, waiting for the sun to drag itself up over the horizon, to give you an excuse to get out of bed.
Liz doesn’t notice at first, but it doesn’t take long before the shadows under his eyes are obvious. She perches on the edge of the coffee table in front of him while he nurses his first mug of tea of the morning.
“Maybe you should cut down on caffeine,” she suggests.
“What?” It comes out more brusque than he intends, but his head feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton wool, and he’s pretty sure there’s a little gray cartoon cloud hanging over him.
“You aren’t sleeping, are you?” she asks, and she takes his face in her hands, brushing her thumbs under his eyes.
“If I don’t get any caffeine, I can’t make it through the day.”
“But then it stops you sleeping too. You should cut back for a couple of days to break the cycle.”
“I’m fine, Liz,” and it’s more brusque again.
“Clearly.” Her mouth presses shut into a tight line and she rises from her perch, grabbing her jacket from where it’s been slung over the back of the couch.
“Liz—“
She pauses, and softens as she takes him in. He softens too. It’s been a handful of weeks, and he’s already messing this up. He definitely doesn’t want her leaving for her shift and taking her own dark cloud with her. Time with her is precious, and fleeting, and he never wants them to part on bad terms again.
“I’ll switch to decaf,” he agrees. “For a couple of days, if you think it will help.”
She nods. “Is there anything that’s keeping you awake?”
“If I said my girlfriend sounding like a chainsaw, how many nights do you think I’d have to sleep on the couch?”
Her mouth drops open, but she’s smiling despite that. “I do not snore!”
“If you say so.”
When she’s gone, he curls into himself, realizing how easy it was to lie to her, to fall back into old patterns. He can’t go down this road again. He knows where it leads, and it’s nowhere he wants to end up.
It takes another sleepless night before he finds the words to tell her what he needs to.
This morning it’s the ashes of the fireplace in his bedroom. He blinks at them, then turns his back on them, not wanting to face it on so little sleep. He’s surprised when he rolls over to find Liz watching him, her eyes glazed with sleep but open.
“Still no good, huh?” she asks him, her voice thick and scratchy. He likes hearing it this early. It feels like a secret between them—he knows other people, other men, have heard her voice when it's like this, but he never expected to. It’s something she’s gifted to him, a rare side of herself for him to bask in, along with all other aspects of her presence.
“No,” he admits, reaching out to brush her hair out of her face. “I’m sorry, Liz. I lied to you yesterday.”
It seems she’s too tired to frown or push him away. Instead, she mutters back to him. “I figured.” And then around a yawn. “I was waiting for you to tell me.”
“I know, but we promised no more secrets.”
“We did.” She reaches out and traces a lazy finger down the bridge of his nose, and then it comes to rest on his mouth. “But it’s hard to stay mad at you when you were clearly freaking out about something.”
“It was that obvious?”
“Oh yeah. Rosa was wondering if you were planning on proposing.”
“Did she now?”
“She did. But I told her you wouldn’t lose any sleep over that. If you decided to do it, you’d know it was right.” She’s smiling at him, softly, highlighting the dimple in her cheek. And it makes him feel ready to ask her then and there—but he won’t. She’s right; he knows it’s not the time yet. He will ask when it is.
“It’s not you keeping me awake,” he confirms. “Not even your snoring.”
She screws up her face and glares at him.
But then the gray cloud returns. “It’s alien stuff.”
“Makes sense. The perks of having an alien boyfriend.”
“It’s—“ He sighs. “The symbol.”
She raises a lazy eyebrow. “Symbol?”
“My tattoo. The one on my back.”
“Show me.”
And so he shifts again, rolling to show her his back. At least he didn’t throw a shirt on before going to sleep—Liz likes it when he doesn’t. She says she likes being able to rest a hand on his bare skin and be reassured by his warmth. He gestures at his shoulderblade.
“Oh, that tattoo.” Liz begins to sketch it with her finger, and he shivers at her gentle touch in such a sensitive place.
“I’m seeing it everywhere. It’s drawing itself into everything and I’m worried that I’m doing it, somehow. Or if I’m not, it’s a sign—an omen. Something I should understand, but I don’t.”
“What makes you say that?”
So he tries to explain, as quickly as he can. It’s easier, facing away from her, to let all his fears come rushing from his mouth. It’s the first time he’s ever laid it all out, how tied to his past—to the cave he’d once been locked away in—the symbol really is. And when he’s done, he holds his breath, hoping she’ll have some wisdom for him. A suggestion, a logical explanation for what it might mean, what might be causing it. A plan to figure things out. For her mighty brain to take all the information and sift through it until she manages to distill the truth from what remains.
Instead, she hums, pressing a gentle kiss to the tattoo. His body reacts to that in the way it nearly always does at affection from Liz, though he doesn’t bring it to her attention.
“I don’t know what it means, either,” she whispers. “But we can try to find out.” Her fingers come to weave into his hair, scratching at his scalp and tugging through his curls in a way that soothes him, sending his breath shuddering from his lungs.
He feels her moving, then she presses her hand flat between his shoulderblades, maneuvering him until he’s lying down on his front, face pressed into the pillow and turned towards the window. She climbs over him, straddling his hips but keeping her weight off of him.
“In the meantime,” she tells him, her fingers finding the knots in his back, starting to rub soft circles into them, “you’ll never sleep if you’re this tense.”
He intends to answer with words, he really does, but all that comes out is a long, low groan. She chuckles, hands working up his spine rhythmically.
“Is this science?” he asks her, letting his muscles loosen under her touch.
“Or magic,” she teases, and every press of her fingers causes something else to come apart inside him. Telling her the truth helped, lifting the weight of the secret from his shoulders, but this—she knew what he needed. Even if she didn’t have the answers he wanted, she knew what to do anyway.
Her hands move to his shoulders, digging in hard enough that he’s sure she’ll leave bruises, but he doesn’t care. The dark cloud has dissipated, floating off to ruin somebody else’s day, and his problems melt from his muscles and down into the mattress. Within minutes he’s floating somewhere above his body, only Liz’s touch keeping him anchored to reality.
“I love you,” he tells her groggily, with a mouth full of pillow.
She doesn’t reply, but she doesn’t need to. He can feel her love pouring into him from her fingers. And when he drifts off to sleep moments later, he’s never felt safer in his life.