The Futility of Sheets

[Tess Abrahams]

To wait idly is the worst of conditions.
- Robert Falcon Scott

This was becoming a pattern. Tess didn't realize it until the morning sun reached that particular slant that had it slipping through the curtains in slivered bands, ribbons of light that stretched languidly over the mussed bedcovers like a yawn. She was surprised to find that she'd been waiting for the moment, for that precise shift that tipped the scales purposefully toward a new day and away from the ambiguous hues of earlier hours, where it was possible to ignore the call towards productivity.

Being familiar with the rolling light wasn't unsettling in it's own right, but the fact that she had marked and memorized the progression as it lay in Aidan's room made her pause. How many times had she sat up just like this, mind restlessly twisting around thoughts potent enough to keep her from the easy, rightful consolation of sleep? Granted, it wasn't always anxious musings that kept the alarmingly pliant mutant awake, but lately... lately it seemed like all she did was wonder or worry. Lately, all the talks that she anticipated having with Aidan felt like talks.

To be fair, it hadn't been an easy night for any of them. With a ragged array of injuries and Anna in the hospital, it had seemed somehow obscene to go to bed, and so Tess had done what she could to settle things down in the wake of sirens and paramedics.

Which had somehow turned into folding linens in Aidan's room while he slept, perched at the end of his bed. With a household as big as Redencion, there was never a shortage of laundry. It was almost a joke, the way they could never quite get on top of the pile. With everything else going on - like car bombs, for example - one would think that the impossibility of folding a fitted sheet into an even square oughtn't even make the list of things to worry about.

And yet it did, somehow. It was an easy thing to worry about. It was the sort of thing that kept Tess's eyes from lingering too long on Aidan's sleep-smoothed face, because doing that made something in her stomach clench and something in her chest catch.

Yet it was not the sort of thing that held her attention so wholly that she missed the first subtle shifting of blankets. That was the problem with sheets: beyond the difficulty of their folding, they were terrible company.


Tess let the limp cotton fall back into the basket at her feet and drew her legs up, linking them in a cobbler's pose. "Is this a false alarm or can I go ahead and get you coffee and a side of aspirin?"

[Aidan Fox]

Morning was a battle in the best of times, and these weren't the best of times. The slanted beams of sunlight in the window were searingly bright in his squinting eyes, and the basso rumble of traffic down on Mondeo Boulevard and the staccato notes of birdsong were an imposition on a state of blessedly silent oblivion.

"What time is it?" he asked blearily, looking for his alarm clock. 7:45 was earlier than he liked to get up when he had a day off, but the sight of Tess perched on his bed next to a stack of folded sheets shamed him into moving. He peeled down the covers and lifted himself onto his rear, not without a few bright notes of pain from the muscles surrounding his ribs and spine. The pillow had molded his hair into a rakish crown of spikes, and when he rubbed it back he took care not to disturb the butterfly strips over the cut in his forehead.

"Nah, don't worry, my head's fine," he lied. "So how long have you been up?"

[Tess Abrahams]

Loose habit made Tess reach out toward the field of Aidan's bedhead, hand twining through the debris fondly and sorting out the tangle that he'd only made worse. Her fingers ghosted over the neat patchwork of bandages and stilled there, fluttering gently. It looked better in the light of day than it had when the paramedics finally left; which wasn't saying much, really.

"Seems like you'd be almost unrecognizable without bandages of some kind, these days," Tess murmured, smiling a way that wasn't really a smile at all but rather the rounded curl of something soft and sad. The girl withdrew her hand and wrapped her arms across her stomach.

Maybe Aidan's head was fine. But hers wasn't. Not by a long shot.

Remembering that he'd asked a question, Tess gave a short shrug. "Oh, you know. By the time everything settled down, it was just easier to stay awake. Everybody's been pretty restless; I think Jake already left to go check in on Anna."

[Aidan Fox]

Aidan's whole manner tightened up and focused. "Any word yet? How's she doing?"

[Tess Abrahams]

"She's fine, as far as I know. Tycho was going to head over there and they're monitoring everything; the baby's okay," Tess replied, her voice pinching high and rough as she glanced away to watch the curtains shift. "Obviously she's shaken up, but ..."

She trailed off with a shake of her head. The room felt hot, swelling with the promise of humidity already. The sprinklers would need to be turned on before lunch if they wanted to avoid the garden being burned to a crisp.

Tess blew out a short breath and rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand, clearing them of the sudden sheen of tears that had blossomed. "Man, I think I need some coffee. Maybe Irish."

[Aidan Fox]

"Hey..."

Aidan shifted across the mattress and reached up to rub at the curve of her back. He could feel the tension knotted over every vertebra, which for her really meant something.

"It's my day off. If you don't mind my ten o'clock shadow, I'll throw on some jeans, and we can both grab some coffee."

[Tess Abrahams]

"I don't mind anything about you, Aidan. That's the problem," Tess turned her face to him, lips drawn in a thin line as she swallowed back the urge to give in to a good cry. "I actually really don't mind anything about you, so it'd be nice if you stuck around for a while. That's harder to do when you're imitating shrapnel, of course, but maybe you could give it a whirl."

It surprised her, how sharp the words sounded. Tess hadn't intended for them to be land quite so violently but she found in the same moment that she meant them, that the sick weight in her stomach had less to do with being exhausted and more with the fact that she was terrified.

"Go and get coffee." Tess repeated, incredulous. "Do you even remember what happened last night? Look at your face, Aidan. You can't even move without grimacing, " not that he wasn't giving it a valiant effort, "so, no, I don't want to go out for coffee. I want you to rest. I want to finish the laundry. I want you to say that the next time some psychopath is running loose in the neighborhood, you won't take off into the night after him and I want for you to be able to mean it."

[Aidan Fox]

So they were way past back rubs and coffee. It was just as well; Aidan didn't need the coffee anymore. But he thought he might have gone for an aspirin.

He slowly let the air back out of his lungs, staring at the sliver of the parched front lawn visible under his window shade. "Yes, I remember what happened," he said. "I really didn't want to dwell on it."

He looked toward her and could tell he'd just missed catching her chestnut eyes.

"He wasn't running loose in the neighborhood, Tess, he was here. In the house. Twice in the last forty-eight hours. He hurt Jamie, he hurt Anna. I can't let him hurt anyone else."

[Tess Abrahams]

Of course he couldn't. That would make Aidan someone that he wasn't, someone that Tess didn't love. The tireless way that he lent himself to others was one of the things she found most attractive about him, even while it simultaneously stripped her patience to a wisp.

Because Aidan didn't just give: he never stopped giving. Sometimes it felt as though he held himself personally accountable for everything that befell their little community, which was ridiculous.

"I know," Tess said, scrubbing at her face. It felt grimy, even though it was bare of makeup, like she'd finished a hard run and left the sweat to dry tacky patches. "We all take care of each other, Aidan. We all should take care of each other. But that doesn't mean you have to run headlong toward danger, it doesn't mean that you throw yourself out there without pausing to look. Why are you always the one coming back with war wounds?"

Tess reached for his hands and wrapped hers around them, felt the disparity in the size of their palms and the deft strength that clung to his fingers even now, when they were still.

"Why is that always your job? You and Jake, I swear to God. It's like you want to go out hard and fast and young."

[Aidan Fox]

Aidan curled his hand around hers, and his eyes dropped to study the mesh of fingers. The fact that she'd pegged him and Jake together made him wonder just how transparent their extracurricular activities with La Raza had become.

"I don't, particularly," he said, a delaying tactic as he hunted through mental mountains of intrigue for the scraps of truth he could safely share. "It just..."

He lifted his hand, and hers with it, up to his chest. The steady pressure felt good as he took a deep, bracing breath.

"Well, if it isn't us, then who? Tess, it feels like this place is under attack. Just a couple weeks ago, it was the Three Elevens, and then the Brotherhood, and now this... It's like people look at Anna's charity and they see an easy target. I'm not going to let them think that."

As soon as he'd said it, he realized he'd just gone a bridge too far.

[Tess Abrahams]

"By making yourself a target, instead?" Tess countered wretchedly. The half-moon bruises under her eyes where insomnia had curled seemed to darken as the tension in her face increased. A muscle in her jaw jumped.

"What's that going to accomplish, Aidan? There has to be order. You can't combat persecution by charging at it with a pitchfork and a war whoop. I'm not saying that you should just pull up a chair and let it all unfold, but..."

She trailed off with a sigh. Was this how Aidan had felt when she'd gone campaigning against gang warfare in a gang-controlled community? The sense of hopeless frustration and milling anxiety was almost intolerable.

"Being cautious doesn't mean rolling over," Tess persisted. Her hand tightened in his reflexively as she bowed forward and rested her forehead against his shoulder, voice muffled by the line of Aidan's collarbone. "You're not invincible. There are a hundred different ways that last night could have ended with you not waking up this morning; how much good do you think you'd be able to do then?"

[Aidan Fox]

Aidan found himself echoing her sigh. The fact was, she was right from so many perspectives. And the ones that most effectively refuted her were the ones he couldn't share, because they were founded on machinations between organized crime and black box organizations he had no right to know about. These were lines of thought he couldn't process this early in the morning. Especially when lying next to Tess felt so good. The way she folded in beside him somehow helped take the edge off the aches and bruises he accumulated during the day.

"I'll admit that last night was a stupid risk," he said. "All I could think about was putting that bastard down before he could hit us again."

He wound his arm up and back around her shoulders. "And I never should have taken Julian with me. I led him right into the same trap."

[Tess Abrahams]

There was a comforting weight in the subtle tangle of scents that clung to Aidan's skin; sweet curling soap and sweat, the last sharp reserves of his aftershave, and underneath it all a note that was wholly Aidan, something singular and indefinable that made Tess think of new leather and speed and an open, dusty road. She hadn't realized just how much it had begun to smell like a homecoming until now, when it was near enough to get lost in. Even with all that had happened, just that small hint of solid familiarity managed to loosen the tight band of tension that had snaked around her lungs.

The alchemy of caring for someone, Tess mused idly as she soaked in the sensation.

"Julian's not a little boy," she murmured. "He could have said no. Don't carry that, too."

Because even admitting that he'd acted impetuously didn't change the fact that Aidan still spoke with the possession of a man who believed his shoulders were rightfully charged with bearing all of them: I can't let him hurt anyone else; I'm not going to let them think that; I had to put the bastard down. It was him against the world and, more importantly, between them and the world.

Not for the first time, Tess wondered what had happened to sow that seed of protective instinct so deeply into the heart of who he was. To be so defined by it at such a young age - and they were young, though it didn't feel like it very often - hinted at a story that she simultaneously yearned to pick apart and didn't want to know.

By now, it wasn't the sort of thing that she could just ask about. Aidan's past was a slippery creature. It revealed itself in quicksilver glimpses and fireburst snatches... trying to hunt it down only drove it deeper into hiding. Tess worried sometimes that she had stopped digging simply because she was afraid of what might be unearthed; but then she remembered that this was Aidan, that he was good and kind and nothing could change that.

No amount of not knowing could change that.