Five Times Coreen Fennel Didn't Kiss Henry Fitzroy (And One Time She Did) ~ 6/6
Title: Five Times Coreen Fennel Didn't Kiss Henry Fitzroy (And One Time She Did)
Author: WiliQueen
Pairing: n/a
Rating: T
Bookverse or TVverse: TV
Spoiler: "Wrapped"
Disclaimer: None of these people, places, or things belong to me. I promise to return them in more or less the condition I found them, with no money of any kind changing hands.
Warnings: n/a
Summary: A sampler platter of scenes from a friendship.
[If you missed them: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
6: Eye of the Storm
Coreen had been standing at Henry's door for at least five minutes, trying to muster her courage, when it swung open. "It's generally considered more efficient to knock." His tone was completely neutral, giving nothing away.
She couldn't meet his eyes, her focus bouncing between his shoulder and his bare feet as he stepped back from the threshold for her to enter. She walked several paces past him, turning around when she heard the door click shut. Taking a deep breath, she addressed a tumble of words to his shins. "Henry, I know you probably don't want to hear it, and it's not going to fix anything, but I still have to tell you I am really, really sorry. I know you hate me, and I don't blame you, I'd hate me too, but -- "
"Coreen, stop. I don't hate you."
"You wouldn't even look at me!" This was all coming out way more pathetic and melodramatic than she had hoped, but she couldn't help it.
"Will you look at me?" She dragged her eyes up to his face; it held none of the disappointment or condemnation she had expected, only sadness and worry. "I was betrayed and hurt and, yes, angry." He spoke slowly and clearly, as if he wanted to make sure she absorbed every word. "I was and am afraid, for Vicki and for you. I could not hate you. All right?"
Not trusting her voice to make it past the lump in her throat, she nodded.
"All right, then." He took a closer look at her. "Have you slept at all?"
She must look worse than she thought. But then, there was no fooling his senses, was there? "Sort of. Some." She shrugged, thankful that any sound came out. "I just keep trying to figure out what I could have done, what I could have said different to make her listen."
Now he looked as close to crying as she felt; she wondered if he could. Before she could think about what she was doing and how crazy it was, she darted forward and kissed him, one hand raking her hair back from her neck.
For a second, just one dizzy tingling second, she could have sworn he kissed back. Then he took hold of her shoulders and pushed her to arm's length, using precisely as much force as the task required. Determinedly blinking back tears, she couldn't quite tell if that disappointment was there in his face now.
Still measuring his strength to the fraction, he turned her and steered her to the couch, shifting his hands to keep them on her shoulders from behind. "Sit."
Coreen obediently plopped down, staring at the floor until he knelt in front of her, in her line of sight. He didn't look angry, at least. "Can we pretend I didn't just do that?"
"I sincerely hope so." He didn't sound angry either. Maybe a little frustrated. "Now. It's obvious you're not thinking clearly, but you're thinking something. What is it?"
"Look, I'm really sorry -- "
"Yes, I got that part."
"It's just... I couldn't stop Vicki from taking your blood and -- " She gulped, unable to finish the sentence. "Giving you mine was all I could think of to fix anything. And you wouldn't take it, even though I don't even know how you made it out the door." She shook her head. "It's still all I have, Henry. I don't know what else to do."
She had no idea what he had expected her to say, but apparently that wasn't it, because he just stared at her. Not surprised, exactly, just... processing.
Finally he stood up and spun on his heel, taking a couple steps away from her before stopping. "Of course you don't understand. How could you?"
"Understand what?"
He sighed. "Part of me knew only that I was in pain, and saw you as part of the cause. And saw you, effectively, offering me your life." Turning back to face her, he finished, "I couldn't afford the risk that I might take it."
"Oh." She couldn't think of anything else to say. She certainly didn't dare ask about the risk to whomever he had fed on instead.
"As for what you have to give... Don't undervalue your trust. I don't." He sat down next to her, continuing, "I'm fasting tonight. I haven't been out, and hadn't seen anyone until you arrived. So, will it satisfy your need to help if I tell you it means more to abstain when the temptation is right here?"
It wasn't really funny, but the laugh bubbled up on its own anyway. Everything was just so absurd all of a sudden. After a few seconds, she realized it wasn't laughter anymore.
"This is ridiculous!" she protested through hitching sobs, two days of unshed tears escaping through her relief when misery had held them at bay. "God, I'm sorry, you must think I'm crazy!"
"Occasionally. But not at the moment."
She was too busy trying to catch a decent breath to be suitably surprised when he put his arm around her shoulders and gathered her close, inside the boundary he had so carefully maintained as long as she had known him. He didn't shush her or tell her it would be okay, just let her bury her face in his shoulder and hang on for dear life.
There was no telling how long she kept on crying, so violently that it seemed like Henry's steady arms were all that kept her from shaking apart. Finally, though, it passed, and she took a deep breath and pulled reluctantly back to her side of the couch. Back outside the boundary.
"Thank you." It sounded surreally inadequate.
"You're welcome," he answered simply. "Feel better?"
"Yeah," she managed around residual sniffles. In spite of aching stomach muscles and hyperventilation lightheadedness, it was true.
"Good. Here." He stood and reached into his pocket. "For all the archaic affectations of the culture, I have yet to meet a goth who carries a handkerchief."
This was what a real laugh felt like. She had all but forgotten.
"I'm going to go change my shirt -- no, you've apologized enough for one night," he headed her off as she registered the huge smear of saltwater and eyeshadow on white linen. "If you would hold this for me?"
Coreen held out the hand that wasn't busy making a similar mess of his handkerchief, and he handed her the plain black rosary he customarily wore wrapped around his wrist. She hadn't seen him take it off; had he been holding it loose the whole time? That, and what he'd said about fasting, and the calm patience he had shown from the moment he opened the door... "Did I interrupt something?"
"Nothing I can't easily resume. I'll be right back."
Alone in the room, she tried to just sit quietly and wait, but she had never been very good at it. She looked around at the paintings on the walls, the sketches tacked up around his workspace, the city lights outside the windows. From the portrait of his father, her eye tracked down to the sword on its display stand below, spotless and shining. Leaving the handkerchief on the coffee table, she walked over toward it, trying to wrap her mind around the realization that Henry must have had to wipe his own blood off the blade.
"It looks clean, doesn't it?" he asked at her shoulder. "You would never know."
"But you would."
"Yes. I can still smell the blood, feel the taint. On the sword. On the floor beneath our feet."
She hadn't paid attention to exactly where she was standing, and shivered with a sudden chill, though she was still wearing her coat. "On me?"
He hesitated just a beat before answering. "Yes."
"Oh."
"Not as strongly as the other night." That was reassuring, until he added, "It's less obvious as it becomes more a part of you."
She nodded, wondering why she wasn't terrified by that. His calm seemed to be contagious, or maybe she was just too wrung out by the crying jag. "What about Vicki?"
"That's more complicated." Neither his voice nor his expression gave anything away as he moved in front of her and gave her a glass of water. "Why do you ask?"
"She said you came by, but she wouldn't tell me what you said. She's..." She swallowed. "She's acting like everything's the same. But it's not. Not anything she's doing, exactly, but every time she comes in the room, it's like..." The penny dropped. "Like standing here."
He didn't say anything, just looked sad while she took a sip of water.
"I'm not just imagining that, am I?"
"It could be cause for concern," he answered cautiously.
Coreen didn't feel concerned. She didn't feel much of anything, except that strange faint buzzing of nerves and a sneaking suspicion that she wasn't standing quite straight. "I should probably sit back down now, huh?"
"That would be a good idea."
The buzzing faded as she walked back to the couch, acutely aware of Henry close behind her. Was he worried she wouldn't make it? She wasn't that loopy, was she? Tired, sure. Everything just a little bit farther away than it should be. But she wasn't going to keel over on him. See, here was the couch.
"Why don't you give me your coat?"
"I just need to sit for a minute. I should go home."
"I'm not going to send you out to fall asleep on the streetcar." He watched her consider the logistics of removing her coat with a glass of water in one hand and a rosary in the other. "Or possibly in the elevator. Let me."
He took the glass and set it on the coffee table -- she would have thought of that if he'd given her a second -- and helped her off with her coat. "I'll drive you home later," he said, laying it neatly across a chair while she sank gratefully onto the couch. "You need a little more than a minute."
"But you were..." She held up the rosary. "Won't it... I don't know, interfere?"
"For one of the people I'm praying for to be present?" he asked, taking it back. "Why do you think it would?"
"I don't know. I never really -- I mean, I'm not, um..." She frowned at his soft chuckle. "What's funny?"
"You've grown up in what is probably the most inclusive society in human history, and you're uncomfortable saying you don't share my religion?"
"It's not that, exactly. You said I'm..." The word he had used dangled out of reach, and she waved vaguely toward the sword and the creepy spot on the floor.
Henry's face fell. "Tainted." Crouching and leaning on the arm of the couch beside her, he went on, "Maybe I shouldn't have. You're in no frame of mind to understand."
Shrugging, she reminded him, "I asked."
"Yes, you did. We can always count on that." He gave her that patient, sad smile again. "I didn't turn you away tonight. Surely you don't expect less of God."
She didn't quite get that, but nodded anyway.
"Good." He stood and handed her the glass of water again.
After taking a few swallows, she asked, "You're keeping a vigil, right? Like knights did?"
"And your idiosyncratic self-education comes through again." Settling on his knees near the other end of the coffee table, he explained, "I expect your literary image is more than a little romanticized, but essentially the right idea. Now get some rest. I don't mind your being here, but I will ask you to be quiet."
Coreen nodded, taking a last sip of water and setting it on the table. The idea of just curling up for a nap was more appealing by the second, and even seemed possible now that her mind had given up running around in anxious circles. But it didn't seem appropriate, even though it seemed to be what he expected. Instead, she sat back, folding her hands in her lap, watching him curiously while trying not to stare.
It didn't seem to matter if she did. Henry bowed his head over the beads in his hands, eyes closed, heedless of the stray curls falling into his face. Definitely not appropriate to think about how beautiful he was.
At first she tried to pay attention to the words; the Latin was fairly basic, and not difficult to link to her nodding familiarity with the prayers as she had encountered them in movies and books. But sustained focus eluded her, and she found herself instead drawn into the repetitive cadence.
Maybe that made more sense. These prayers had been second nature to him for nearly five hundred years; not even he could possibly concentrate on the words the third or fourth or tenth time through, could he? There was something more in it for him, unlocked by the language but not really about it. Even as she thought that, she wasn't quite sure what she meant. But it was comforting to be near it anyway, to wrap herself in the steady murmur and just be still.
"...Sancta Maria mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen. Coreen, lie down before you fall."
"Mm?" She wasn't sure when she had closed her eyes, but they didn't want to open, and she was pitching forward and couldn't tell where upright was. Before she could register any alarm at that, though, the forward motion stopped. Cool hands supported her shoulders, guiding her to lean sideways instead. "Whuzzuh?"
"Shh, never mind. Go back to sleep." Henry's soft voice was far away, though he had to be right there to be setting her head down. She didn't know whether she pulled her feet up or he did it for her.
"Lord, grant Your daughter strength." Something warm and soft settled over her, satin-smooth on her arm, velvet-fuzzy under her chin. With a last sliver of conscious logic, she identified it as her coat. "Guide her steps on the perilous road we walk."
His words were just sound now, beyond the heavy curtain of overdue sleep, resuming the rhythm of the age-old formula. And for a little while, two wounded souls knew peace.
[Complete story archived here.]
Author: WiliQueen
Pairing: n/a
Rating: T
Bookverse or TVverse: TV
Spoiler: "Wrapped"
Disclaimer: None of these people, places, or things belong to me. I promise to return them in more or less the condition I found them, with no money of any kind changing hands.
Warnings: n/a
Summary: A sampler platter of scenes from a friendship.
[If you missed them: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
6: Eye of the Storm
Coreen had been standing at Henry's door for at least five minutes, trying to muster her courage, when it swung open. "It's generally considered more efficient to knock." His tone was completely neutral, giving nothing away.
She couldn't meet his eyes, her focus bouncing between his shoulder and his bare feet as he stepped back from the threshold for her to enter. She walked several paces past him, turning around when she heard the door click shut. Taking a deep breath, she addressed a tumble of words to his shins. "Henry, I know you probably don't want to hear it, and it's not going to fix anything, but I still have to tell you I am really, really sorry. I know you hate me, and I don't blame you, I'd hate me too, but -- "
"Coreen, stop. I don't hate you."
"You wouldn't even look at me!" This was all coming out way more pathetic and melodramatic than she had hoped, but she couldn't help it.
"Will you look at me?" She dragged her eyes up to his face; it held none of the disappointment or condemnation she had expected, only sadness and worry. "I was betrayed and hurt and, yes, angry." He spoke slowly and clearly, as if he wanted to make sure she absorbed every word. "I was and am afraid, for Vicki and for you. I could not hate you. All right?"
Not trusting her voice to make it past the lump in her throat, she nodded.
"All right, then." He took a closer look at her. "Have you slept at all?"
She must look worse than she thought. But then, there was no fooling his senses, was there? "Sort of. Some." She shrugged, thankful that any sound came out. "I just keep trying to figure out what I could have done, what I could have said different to make her listen."
Now he looked as close to crying as she felt; she wondered if he could. Before she could think about what she was doing and how crazy it was, she darted forward and kissed him, one hand raking her hair back from her neck.
For a second, just one dizzy tingling second, she could have sworn he kissed back. Then he took hold of her shoulders and pushed her to arm's length, using precisely as much force as the task required. Determinedly blinking back tears, she couldn't quite tell if that disappointment was there in his face now.
Still measuring his strength to the fraction, he turned her and steered her to the couch, shifting his hands to keep them on her shoulders from behind. "Sit."
Coreen obediently plopped down, staring at the floor until he knelt in front of her, in her line of sight. He didn't look angry, at least. "Can we pretend I didn't just do that?"
"I sincerely hope so." He didn't sound angry either. Maybe a little frustrated. "Now. It's obvious you're not thinking clearly, but you're thinking something. What is it?"
"Look, I'm really sorry -- "
"Yes, I got that part."
"It's just... I couldn't stop Vicki from taking your blood and -- " She gulped, unable to finish the sentence. "Giving you mine was all I could think of to fix anything. And you wouldn't take it, even though I don't even know how you made it out the door." She shook her head. "It's still all I have, Henry. I don't know what else to do."
She had no idea what he had expected her to say, but apparently that wasn't it, because he just stared at her. Not surprised, exactly, just... processing.
Finally he stood up and spun on his heel, taking a couple steps away from her before stopping. "Of course you don't understand. How could you?"
"Understand what?"
He sighed. "Part of me knew only that I was in pain, and saw you as part of the cause. And saw you, effectively, offering me your life." Turning back to face her, he finished, "I couldn't afford the risk that I might take it."
"Oh." She couldn't think of anything else to say. She certainly didn't dare ask about the risk to whomever he had fed on instead.
"As for what you have to give... Don't undervalue your trust. I don't." He sat down next to her, continuing, "I'm fasting tonight. I haven't been out, and hadn't seen anyone until you arrived. So, will it satisfy your need to help if I tell you it means more to abstain when the temptation is right here?"
It wasn't really funny, but the laugh bubbled up on its own anyway. Everything was just so absurd all of a sudden. After a few seconds, she realized it wasn't laughter anymore.
"This is ridiculous!" she protested through hitching sobs, two days of unshed tears escaping through her relief when misery had held them at bay. "God, I'm sorry, you must think I'm crazy!"
"Occasionally. But not at the moment."
She was too busy trying to catch a decent breath to be suitably surprised when he put his arm around her shoulders and gathered her close, inside the boundary he had so carefully maintained as long as she had known him. He didn't shush her or tell her it would be okay, just let her bury her face in his shoulder and hang on for dear life.
There was no telling how long she kept on crying, so violently that it seemed like Henry's steady arms were all that kept her from shaking apart. Finally, though, it passed, and she took a deep breath and pulled reluctantly back to her side of the couch. Back outside the boundary.
"Thank you." It sounded surreally inadequate.
"You're welcome," he answered simply. "Feel better?"
"Yeah," she managed around residual sniffles. In spite of aching stomach muscles and hyperventilation lightheadedness, it was true.
"Good. Here." He stood and reached into his pocket. "For all the archaic affectations of the culture, I have yet to meet a goth who carries a handkerchief."
This was what a real laugh felt like. She had all but forgotten.
"I'm going to go change my shirt -- no, you've apologized enough for one night," he headed her off as she registered the huge smear of saltwater and eyeshadow on white linen. "If you would hold this for me?"
Coreen held out the hand that wasn't busy making a similar mess of his handkerchief, and he handed her the plain black rosary he customarily wore wrapped around his wrist. She hadn't seen him take it off; had he been holding it loose the whole time? That, and what he'd said about fasting, and the calm patience he had shown from the moment he opened the door... "Did I interrupt something?"
"Nothing I can't easily resume. I'll be right back."
Alone in the room, she tried to just sit quietly and wait, but she had never been very good at it. She looked around at the paintings on the walls, the sketches tacked up around his workspace, the city lights outside the windows. From the portrait of his father, her eye tracked down to the sword on its display stand below, spotless and shining. Leaving the handkerchief on the coffee table, she walked over toward it, trying to wrap her mind around the realization that Henry must have had to wipe his own blood off the blade.
"It looks clean, doesn't it?" he asked at her shoulder. "You would never know."
"But you would."
"Yes. I can still smell the blood, feel the taint. On the sword. On the floor beneath our feet."
She hadn't paid attention to exactly where she was standing, and shivered with a sudden chill, though she was still wearing her coat. "On me?"
He hesitated just a beat before answering. "Yes."
"Oh."
"Not as strongly as the other night." That was reassuring, until he added, "It's less obvious as it becomes more a part of you."
She nodded, wondering why she wasn't terrified by that. His calm seemed to be contagious, or maybe she was just too wrung out by the crying jag. "What about Vicki?"
"That's more complicated." Neither his voice nor his expression gave anything away as he moved in front of her and gave her a glass of water. "Why do you ask?"
"She said you came by, but she wouldn't tell me what you said. She's..." She swallowed. "She's acting like everything's the same. But it's not. Not anything she's doing, exactly, but every time she comes in the room, it's like..." The penny dropped. "Like standing here."
He didn't say anything, just looked sad while she took a sip of water.
"I'm not just imagining that, am I?"
"It could be cause for concern," he answered cautiously.
Coreen didn't feel concerned. She didn't feel much of anything, except that strange faint buzzing of nerves and a sneaking suspicion that she wasn't standing quite straight. "I should probably sit back down now, huh?"
"That would be a good idea."
The buzzing faded as she walked back to the couch, acutely aware of Henry close behind her. Was he worried she wouldn't make it? She wasn't that loopy, was she? Tired, sure. Everything just a little bit farther away than it should be. But she wasn't going to keel over on him. See, here was the couch.
"Why don't you give me your coat?"
"I just need to sit for a minute. I should go home."
"I'm not going to send you out to fall asleep on the streetcar." He watched her consider the logistics of removing her coat with a glass of water in one hand and a rosary in the other. "Or possibly in the elevator. Let me."
He took the glass and set it on the coffee table -- she would have thought of that if he'd given her a second -- and helped her off with her coat. "I'll drive you home later," he said, laying it neatly across a chair while she sank gratefully onto the couch. "You need a little more than a minute."
"But you were..." She held up the rosary. "Won't it... I don't know, interfere?"
"For one of the people I'm praying for to be present?" he asked, taking it back. "Why do you think it would?"
"I don't know. I never really -- I mean, I'm not, um..." She frowned at his soft chuckle. "What's funny?"
"You've grown up in what is probably the most inclusive society in human history, and you're uncomfortable saying you don't share my religion?"
"It's not that, exactly. You said I'm..." The word he had used dangled out of reach, and she waved vaguely toward the sword and the creepy spot on the floor.
Henry's face fell. "Tainted." Crouching and leaning on the arm of the couch beside her, he went on, "Maybe I shouldn't have. You're in no frame of mind to understand."
Shrugging, she reminded him, "I asked."
"Yes, you did. We can always count on that." He gave her that patient, sad smile again. "I didn't turn you away tonight. Surely you don't expect less of God."
She didn't quite get that, but nodded anyway.
"Good." He stood and handed her the glass of water again.
After taking a few swallows, she asked, "You're keeping a vigil, right? Like knights did?"
"And your idiosyncratic self-education comes through again." Settling on his knees near the other end of the coffee table, he explained, "I expect your literary image is more than a little romanticized, but essentially the right idea. Now get some rest. I don't mind your being here, but I will ask you to be quiet."
Coreen nodded, taking a last sip of water and setting it on the table. The idea of just curling up for a nap was more appealing by the second, and even seemed possible now that her mind had given up running around in anxious circles. But it didn't seem appropriate, even though it seemed to be what he expected. Instead, she sat back, folding her hands in her lap, watching him curiously while trying not to stare.
It didn't seem to matter if she did. Henry bowed his head over the beads in his hands, eyes closed, heedless of the stray curls falling into his face. Definitely not appropriate to think about how beautiful he was.
At first she tried to pay attention to the words; the Latin was fairly basic, and not difficult to link to her nodding familiarity with the prayers as she had encountered them in movies and books. But sustained focus eluded her, and she found herself instead drawn into the repetitive cadence.
Maybe that made more sense. These prayers had been second nature to him for nearly five hundred years; not even he could possibly concentrate on the words the third or fourth or tenth time through, could he? There was something more in it for him, unlocked by the language but not really about it. Even as she thought that, she wasn't quite sure what she meant. But it was comforting to be near it anyway, to wrap herself in the steady murmur and just be still.
"...Sancta Maria mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen. Coreen, lie down before you fall."
"Mm?" She wasn't sure when she had closed her eyes, but they didn't want to open, and she was pitching forward and couldn't tell where upright was. Before she could register any alarm at that, though, the forward motion stopped. Cool hands supported her shoulders, guiding her to lean sideways instead. "Whuzzuh?"
"Shh, never mind. Go back to sleep." Henry's soft voice was far away, though he had to be right there to be setting her head down. She didn't know whether she pulled her feet up or he did it for her.
"Lord, grant Your daughter strength." Something warm and soft settled over her, satin-smooth on her arm, velvet-fuzzy under her chin. With a last sliver of conscious logic, she identified it as her coat. "Guide her steps on the perilous road we walk."
His words were just sound now, beyond the heavy curtain of overdue sleep, resuming the rhythm of the age-old formula. And for a little while, two wounded souls knew peace.
[Complete story archived here.]