QT:UK - Chapter 13 WIP

This one's coming in super hot before I've had a chance to let any proof readers from the QT writers room catch the inevitable raft of typos and spelling mistakes I'll have littered it with. But if I wait until they do, chances are it'll be Monday and my work week's going to delay everything for you, so I'd rather let you see now, jank and all. And that's before the usual caveats about me possibly tweaking things before the public release.This is the first of like 5 sections I have planned for this chapter that are going to take me to well past 20k words before it's ready to hit Literotica. But by the time you get to the end you'll probably see exactly why. This all ends with the ending Aoife deserves (in more ways than one) and I'm not stupid enough to upload anything elsewhere until that's done...but you're going to have to suffer a little longer if you're reading here.

The rest of the chapter already exists in snippits in places, but there's a few that are going to do as much heavy lifting as this part is - so I've no idea how long it's going to take to get the right words in the right order.

Should have some more commissioned art for you all in the next few days too. And I've had it pointed out to me that I never uploaded the final compiled version of Chapter 12 either so that's here now too.

*****

Aoife’s eyes might have been tear stained, the brushes of her hands against his too brief, the curl of her smile far too strained - but right then, for Ethan, it was enough.

“You had me scared we’d lost you.”

Ethan eased his arm around Aoife in the back seat of Collingwood’s car, and let her press back against him. The sheer relief when he’d seen her had been overwhelming and he wasn’t ready to let the feeling go, needing even the gentlest of contact to reassure himself that she was definitely there, tangible enough to hold the way he’d been desperate to. But more than that, the touch was for her. 

He knew Aoife well enough to know to worry about her when she was quiet, and as she leant her head against him, she’d barely said a word. He couldn’t have been more grateful that the worst of the scenarios he’d played out in his head hadn’t come to pass, but it was still obvious that whatever had happened to her over the last few days had left her hurting. And even the snark she tried to respond with came out tellingly muted.

“Yeah, well, you’re not lucky enough to get rid of me that easily”

“No, I guess I’m not,” he chuckled, before, almost without thinking, running a comforting hand through her hair. For an instant, Aoife briefly tensed beneath the unexpected touch, and he cursed himself for the overly intimate gesture, only for her to give a contented little sigh. She had seemed convinced that whatever had happened to her meant she was infected, and he understood that even with the vaccine his protection wasn’t bulletproof, but no amount of risk was going to stop him from finally being able to hold her. Continuing with another stroke, he realised how fast his heart was still beating, and wondered if she was close enough to feel it.

The sight of Collingwood approaching the car almost felt cruel. He knew the moment he was getting with Aoife wasn’t going to be allowed to last, there were still too many complications to be fixed for that, but the ever-stern look on the officer’s face was a harsher reminder of just how easily things might still come apart. She had admittedly allowed him to come along, after realising he wasn’t about to accept otherwise, but it was still hard to guess just how much scrutiny she was now going to place Aoife under for the files she’d had access to, or how much she’d bought into Nia’s explanations. Collingwood was too hard to read, and the thought of consequences biting them now must have caused him to tense just enough for Aoife to notice, as she shifted to look up at him.

“If they ask where you got the drive from, tell them I gave it to you,” he said, softly, leaning in to hide his words behind the closeness between them.

Before Aoife could respond, the driver's door opened, and Collingwood slipped into the seat, watching them for a moment as she did so and leaving Ethan unsure if the look was out of concern or suspicion. In response, Aoife shuffled away from him, her discomfort at the officer’s attention understated but obvious, and left his feelings to protest the reaffirmed space between them. Collingwood examined them in the rear view mirror for a pregnant moment and looked as if she was about to speak, leaving Ethan to do his best to get there ahead of her.

“Oh, right,” he said, reaching into the pocket of his jacket. “I had to argue with them to let me bring this for you.”

He’d known Aoife had two beanies that she’d taken to wearing on rotation rather than stressing about her hair, something that he’d become so used to that it felt odd to see her without one. And while the one she had been wearing when she’d gone missing remained as evidence for now, Special Branch had eventually relented to his requests to take the second from her room. The Scottish girl’s expression brightened, briefly, as he handed it to her, and she let out a small laugh, although he could have sworn her eyes moistened slightly as she did so.

“Screw you if you’re giving me a hint about how bad my hair looks right now.”

Truth be told, the washed out mess of green was looking in as much need of a little care as the rest of her, but Ethan gave a small shake of his head. “No comment. I just know you feel more comfortable if you have one.”

He wasn’t expecting the gesture to be something that would cause her to falter, but it took Aoife a moment, her teeth grazing her lip, before she reached out and took the hat, sweeping it onto her head. He was surprised how much of a difference something so minor made to her seeming herself, and, even if her thoughts still obviously weighed heavy, the smile she offered him felt much less forced.

“Thanks…”

Ethan waited for her to glance away, but she didn’t. Instead her blue eyes fixed on his as something passed across her face that he couldn’t quite read. For a second, he thought she was about to start crying again, but instead she leant forward.

Aoife’s offered lips only got halfway towards him before the sudden sound of the car’s ignition stopped her.

She drew away, fast and self conscious, the interruption enough to rob her of the moment, with both of them swiftly reminded of the scrutiny from the rear-view mirror. Aoife wasn’t one to shrink, but instead he watched her try and play off the almost-moment, searching for something outside the window as she did her best to hide the honesty of her feelings back away. Ethan considered pulling her back towards him anyway, but hesitated long enough over whether she would want that in front of Collingwood, or if he’d misjudged her intent, that it felt far too awkward to try. But after everything, all the searching and worry, he wasn’t willing to just let her go either.

Reaching out, he found her hand, and gave it a knowing squeeze.

Aoife gave the smallest of starts at the contact, and said nothing, but after a second, she squeezed back.

They left the rest of the Special Branch officers behind to resolve whatever Aoife had been dealing with at the farmhouse, making the journey back in near silence and an atmosphere that never quite managed to settle between tension and relief. If anything, Aoife seemed to progressively withdraw back into herself the closer they got to Taymont, her looks becoming furtive as her hand remained tightly wrapped around his as they pulled up the oak lined drive.

Armstrong was there to meet them when they arrived, the blonde doctor considerate, as she took blood work from Aoife, and fitted her with a new respirator and PPE before she was allowed to step out of the car. Only a small portion of the staff at the hall were, to Ethan’s knowledge, vaccinated at this point and although Nia seemed to think that was gradually due to change over the next couple of weeks, in the meantime there was only so much of a risk anyone seemed willing to take. Ethan had almost expected her not to be allowed back to Taymont at all. In the early days on site, several trailers had sat apart from the rest of the complex, allowing any new arrivals to quarantine for up to two weeks, but Palisade had scaled these back as ‘non-essential’ as the staffing numbers had stabilised. Instead they’d insisted that anyone else would be able to isolate off site before arrival and he kept waiting for someone to try and tell him she was being taken away again, whisked off to another hotel or police facility somewhere. He’d mentally prepared how he was going to refuse to let it happen, only to find he didn’t have to as the decision had been made to let her lock down in her own room, shepherded there up the fire escape at the rear of the building in heavy duty PPE, with the corridors cleaned down behind her. And while it was the best option they could really have hoped for, even that felt like another unfair indignity to impose on her.

The next surprise came with how little time Collingwood immediately wanted with her. It had been easy for Ethan to picture police procedurals, with little tape  and good-cop bad-cop routines (Collingwood was definitely the bad cop) and imagine that Aoife would be questioned at length. As it was however, Ethan was simply asked to wait outside her room for less than ten minutes, before the policewoman emerged, seemingly content to let Aoife have space and a chance to process what had happened.

Entering after Collingwood had left, Ethan realised that as familiar as Aoife’s room had become as a backdrop to their video calls, he’d never actually been inside. The closest he had was stopping by her doorway to drop something off, or to say goodnight after drinking at the bar, but even those were just glimpses that made the current reality feel even more unexpected. In his head, Aoife was exacting, and everything he’d seen of her room before reinforced that. She was the sort of person whose bed was always carefully made and who had ordered actual frames to display the b-movie posters on her wall, who got stressed if she knew something was out of place. But being there in person, and seeing the same scatter of laundry and untended trash that shamelessly decorated his room, he realised just how much she must have been coming apart, just out of shot.

The green haired woman sat on the bed, too spent to look like she cared, and before he could think he was crossing the space to hug her again.

“Ready to talk? Not that we have to if you don’t want to.”

He still had no idea what had actually happened to her, but if he was worried she was going to continue to carry it alone he didn’t need to be. Aoife’s chest gave a short, inward heave, and the words fell out of her.

“They were just scared, Ethan. One of them knew she had the virus and she was terrified of what was going to happen to her baby. She’d lost her husband and -”

Even by Aoife’s standards, her speech was a blur, and Ethan had to resist the urge to ask her to slow down no matter how hard her accent became to follow or how many questions he ended up with. It was more important to let her get things out, to let her know he was listening, and he had just enough experience of hearing her when she was worked up to be able to puzzle out most of the details; about Hayley and Anas, Layla and Rizwan. What was harder was seeing how hard she was struggling to make sense of things. None of this was her fault, but the sense of guilt she obviously had was palpable, leaving her fingers wringing at the bedsheets as she spoke. He did his best to reassure her for as long as she wanted to talk, sitting with his arm around her and offering encouragement, although the more she tried to touch on how she felt the more she seemed to falter.

“It was wrong,” she said eventually, after a long, definitive pause. “What they had to go through. It was unfair and fucked up and I kept telling myself there had to be a reason for what was happening.”

His instinct was to draw her closer, but she pushed away from him so she could look at him as she spoke, as if she needed him to see her face and believe what she was saying.

“And I tried not to say anything. I really fucking tried. But the longer it went on the more confused everything felt. And the harder it became to tell myself it was right to just let Hayley die without telling her. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.”

“Aoife, it’s ok.”

“But it’s not ok, is it,” she said, becoming more insistent. “Because I had to keep telling myself whatever it was I didn’t understand, whatever it was you had to tell me, it had to be something to make this make sense. That should have been enough to keep me going. I wanted you to be enough. And I couldn’t do it."

Ethan suddenly saw how much she’d built up her hopes on him, tall and fragile, leaving him terrified he was about to knock them down.  “Aoife, I…”

“You told me there was a vaccine, right? That’s why you’re here without a mask and no-one’s losing their shit about it.”

She noticed his equivocation, and the beat of confusion it caused threatened to run into something worse before he rushed to reassure her.  “There is. We’ve got a vaccine”

“Yeah? Then why are we leaving people like Hayley and Anas to be ignorant and scared like that?”

“Because we can’t make it without the American’s help.” Ethan picked his words carefully, but even then he still felt the atmosphere shift with a simple furrow of her brow. “And they don’t want things to be public until they’re ready. You saw what was on the drive, governments are worried about how much extra damage might happen if people panic.”

Aoife was still in his arms, but only barely, inching out of them as she straightened her posture. He knew that she was the last person he should be making an appeal to authority with, but he didn’t know how else to frame what he was still only just able to believe or justify himself.

“But you said there was a vaccine. If you can give people that bit of hope…”

“The vaccine’s not that simple. We’re involved because the government wants us to have the messaging ready for people once the US is ready next month.”

“What do you mean it’s not that simple. I’m not being dense, am I? You stick a great big needle in someone’s arm and they don’t get sick anymore, that’s what a vaccine is, right?”

“Right. But this one is lethal if it’s given to men directly.”

Her brow creased further and she gave him a look as if to note that he was sitting there, mask free and seemingly healthy, waiting for him to get to the point even he felt like he was avoiding. Project Upstart had several meetings about just this, draft scripts to explain the absurdity of how Gemivax worked, but all the carefully considered words eluded him in the moment.

“It’s based around a serum the American’s developed. I don’t really understand all the details, something to do with DNA, but it can still be given to women, and that protection can be passed on to a man. Through sex.”

There was a nervous laugh from Aoife, followed by a second when she realised he wasn’t laughing with her. “Fuck you, that’s not funny.”

“Aoife.”

She stood up from the bed, moving away from him entirely with a step backwards. It was obvious she was hurt, upset already obvious on her face, but he wasn’t sure if even she had settled on exactly why yet, and was still waiting for some sort of punchline at her expense.

“Don’t be an arsehole. Please Ethan. I can’t deal with being messed around with right now.”

“I’m not, I wouldn’t do that to you. Trust me, I know how insane it sounds.”

“Of course it sounds insane. That’s not how the world works. You can’t expect me to just accept…” Aoife’s voice rose as tried to continue protesting, but she must have seen something in his face that made her tail off. It was clear believed she his candour, even if she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe what he was saying and for a moment, she seemed to relax and weigh up whether something so incredulous was a reasonable price for a bit of hope. However, her downcast eyes soon wandered back towards him. She studied him, and even with everything she’d been through, was still sharp enough to realise that he wasn’t done.  “There’s more, isn’t there?”

“It’s going to be easier if I can show you some of…”

“Just tell me.”

Trust Aoife to be the one to be smart enough and indignant enough to demand answers. Part of him wished he had someone like Farah there to help him give a bit of context to the rest of the serum’s effects. There was a reason she was the face of the project, not him. But he also knew that right now anything other than him simply coming out and telling Aoife straight was just going to agitate her.

More falteringly than he’d have liked, and probably failing at being as reassuring as she needed, he pushed himself to tell her the rest, from women being paired permanently, to the algorithm and the need for multiple partners. And the longer he went on the more he waited for something he said to be the thing that finally caused a reaction, but she simply stood and listened.

When Aoife was quiet was when he knew to worry about her.

Instead, as he finished, she simply shut her eyes and balled her fists, taking a moment where it was unclear if she was doing her best to let all of the implications sink in, or if she was fighting to keep them out. “So if you’re protected then that means…”

There was something newly wounded to her that hadn’t been there before as she failed to finish another thought, and although Ethan nodded back, she wasn’t looking.

“This is bullshit.”

Aoife’s words were mumbled, but still somehow had enough pained intensity behind them to fill the room and leave Ethan wishing she’d just shouted.

“It’s a lot to take in, I know. It doesn’t get less weird but it does get easier.”

“The fuck do you mean it gets easier?” His response had stirred something in her, and although her voice remained low, the words came out agitated and insistent. “Are you mental? If this is real it shouldn’t get easy.”

“I didn’t say easy, just easier.”

She fixed him with a disbelieving look. He was doing his best to remain a point of calm for her to try and claw her way back to, but her expression was enough to make him second guess whether that was just making things worse.

“This is some bad dystopian shite. I don’t get how you can be ok with this.”

“I don’t know either. Believe me, it feels like for the last two weeks almost all I’ve done is make decisions I didn’t know how to make.”

“That’s the fucking point though isn’t it,” she snapped back, harder than anything she’d said so far. “Why do you get to make those decisions? Even if I wanted to believe that some sex cult miracle cure was the only way that still doesn’t make any of this right.”

Guilt choked around Ethan as Aoife began to pace, doing her best to keep her anger in check and only barely succeeding by turning away from him.

“I’ve just watched a woman die terrified of what was going to happen to her. Why? Because someone just decided she wasn’t allowed to know what was happening to her? So people could sit here and chat paternalistic shite about the choices they’re making for her? How many other people are dying like her and having their right to have any fucking say at all taken away from them. It’s wrong Ethan.”

Aoife stopped by the window, looking caged, and gave Ethan the chance to reply. “You don’t think I know that? But letting more people die isn’t right either. The government say that…”

“Fuck the government,” she interrupted with blunt disdain.

“They say,” he continued, doing his best to stay patient for her, “that if the Americans pull support for the vaccine we’re talking about millions more deaths than we’ve had already. And they aren’t giving us any choice.”

“There’s always a choice.”

“Aoife, millions dying isn’t a choice.”

“And neither is what’s happening to people like Hayley. It might feel easy, closed off out here, to pretend like these things don’t matter but they should. They aren’t numbers on a spreadsheet or some fucking theoretical anarchy.” The green haired woman turned back to him as she spoke, and he could see the pressure of emotion building on her face. He’d seen her frustrated and upset before, but he’d never seen her quite like this, with so much fighting to be seen all at once. “She had a kid.”

The strain was enough to make her voice crack slightly as she said the last part. Maybe she was right? He was struggling to imagine what she’d been through, and how could he say that he really had any idea of what things were like outside the comforting bubble of Taymont. More than anyone else, Aoife had a unique way of being able to tug at his feelings, and he hated that he didn’t have the answers for her. He could tell how quickly she was winding herself up, and it wasn’t a surprise when she began to try talking herself into lashing out with something rash.

“Maybe I should just take what was on the hard drive and broadcast it. I’m pretty sure if I wanted to I could get it far enough before anyone could stop me.”

Ethan knew the suggestion was her acting out, trying to provoke a reaction, from herself as much as anyone, and he knew not to try and argue with her and add fuel to her recklessness.

“They’d martyr me harder than Snowden and Assange put together but I bet it would call their bluff. Even Americans aren’t big enough psychopaths to hurt that many people because of one stupid Scottish girl.”

She wanted to be angry, to have a direction to point it in and something to burn, but he could tell she wasn’t actually serious. Besides, Aoife was smart enough to realise that doing something like that was making a choice for people too; that the trap was that there was no way to put something like that out into the world and give people a say without the action itself deciding things for them. He considered trying to reason her down, but opted for understanding instead.

 “I wish I knew what I’m meant to say to make this feel better.”

She faltered, realising she was probably being foolish, but that didn’t do anything to ease what she was feeling and just left her holding onto something she didn’t know what to do with. Finally, she settled on raising her head up towards the ceiling, and gave a short scream of frustration.

“I thought getting back here would make things feel less fucked. Why do they feel worse?!”

Rising from the bed, Ethan moved to try and comfort her. He didn’t know what to say, but it was too hard to just watch her and not want to do something. But as he did, an arm reached out to lightly shove him away.

“Don’t,” she demanded, managing to put some force behind the sentiment before her words began to spill away from her again. “Don’t just pretend you’re going to put your arms around me and make this all feel better because I’m not even going to be allowed to have that. Am I? Some stupid fucking questionnaire with a stupid fucking name is going to decide things for me. And I’m going to be left feeling an idiot for letting the only thing that’s got me through the last few months be how much I’m in love with you.”

Even Ethan’s pulse seemed to stop with the declaration. “Wait, you’re in love with me?”

“Of course I’m in love with you, you fucking idiot!”

There was something pained in how she snatched at the words, and of all the ways Ethan had hoped she might say it, he hadn’t ever pictured her doing it with tears in her eyes.

“Even now I should be nothing but raging but there’s actually a part of me that’s stupid and petty enough to care more about missing my chance with you.”

Aoife’s intensity dropped to something more wounded, but pressure still hung about her, like something had been building and now it had broken the surface it was coming out bruised. Ethan hesitated, lost his grip on his attempts to be a reassuring presence for her, letting his face respond long before any words managed to catch up. 

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“Why would I? I knew I wasn’t good enough for you. So why would I humiliate myself and fuck up the only good thing had?”

“What do you mean not good enough for me,” Ethan said, hearing the disbelief in his own voice, tripping over the idea that anyone as brilliant and funny as Aoife could think she wasn’t good enough for anyone, let alone him. “I tried to ask you out but you never seemed interested so I tried not to let myself get hung up on you. It’s only once this started that I had to stop pretending I wasn’t crazy about you.”

Aoife frowned again, her reply mumbled through the sudden consternation. “You did not ask me out.”

“I did. Like 5 or 6 times.”

“...bullshit”

“Why do you think I asked you to watch a movie with me the first time? Or how about all the times I said we should go into Manchester when this was done? Fuck, I even tried to ask you if you wanted to put it down that we were an item on the questionnaire.” Ethan was softly insistent, not realising how different his recollection of that evening was to hers. Had he really not been obvious? Admittedly he’d tried to be subtle, making sure she had enough room to be casual rather than making her uncomfortable, but it had to have been clear what he meant. Hadn’t it?

Just how much of an idiot was he?

“No you didn’t,” she said, trying to be firm but only managing to become frustrated again as she watched his expression. “Don’t chat shite, you definitely didn’t. I’m pretty sure I’d have noticed if you…”

It was Aoife’s turn to stop, everything about her shrinking inwards as she suddenly asked herself the same questions he was, second guessing things between them a moment at a time.

Ethan stepped back towards her as he continued. “Have you any idea what the thought of not getting to see you again has been doing to me?”

The movement was a mistake however as something stirred out of her that left her seeming hurt and self conscious, and she brushed him aside with another evasive push. She matched his step with another of her own, moving backwards and lightly bumped against her desk, rattling the computer monitor that sat there. Her eyes dipped downwards, and she stopped looking at him.

“Yeah, well, whatever it was, it wasn’t enough to stop you ending up with a harem of women you’d rather be with.”

He’d expected any accusations to sting, but that didn’t help him prepare for just how much.

“It’s not that simple.”

“A robot gave you a bunch of girls to fuck to stop you falling over dead, and you didn’t care how screwed up that sounds, or that none of them were me. Tell me what part of that isn’t simple.”

Ethan sat back on the bed, telling himself he was trying to give her the distance she wanted, and found himself worrying that all he was doing was trying to defend things that might not be entirely defensible. Despite every bit of agonising he’d done over the last two weeks, every bit he’d tried, he wasn’t sure he could look at her and tell her she was wrong to be upset. If anything, she was taking this better than she had any right to.

 “I’m not saying I rushed into things, but it still happened too fast for me to work out all of how I felt. I thought that not only were you not interested but that the algorithm didn’t think we were a good match. And when I actually stopped to question how wrong it felt to let it stop me from taking my chance with you, I found out that’s not the reason it didn’t try and put us together.”

He paused to let her take things in, not wanting to rush through things so quickly that it felt like he was attacking her with justifications. Instead, not for the first time, she surprised him by just how much quicker she was able to put pieces together than he was.

“So, what? It’s saying I’m not going to fit in with some of the other women it wants you to be with?”

“Yes,” he said, guiltily.

“Is it that woman from the government? Evie?”

The telling sense of inadequacy that came with Evie’s name was so tangible that Ethan could almost imagine it hanging in the air, pressing down on Aoife’s shoulders. He realised at once that Aoife had been comparing herself to his partner for a long time now, with all those feelings that she wasn’t good enough embodied in the other woman. And while it was true he’d quickly come to love Evie, he hated the idea that Aoife thought she was any lesser in his eyes because of it. But he wasn’t going to be able to fix that with just words, and certainly not now when everything he said left him worrying it was going to sound hollow.

Ethan picked his next words delicately. “She’s one of my partners, but no. Evie’s the last person who’d want that, she even thought we were an item already. Apparently she could see what neither of us had managed to.”

He hoped that might have earnt at least half of a smile, but it didn’t. Instead Aoife’s fists balled again, half of her question answered, but the rest still dangling, and she waited for him to finish.

“Her name’s Nia.”

The green haired woman winced. “...I’ve seen her name on emails.”

It was a simple enough statement, but he could see the world of speculation and uncertainty that came with it for Aoife, knowing just enough for all the blanks to be filled in by the worst of her imagination. Part of Ethan wanted to tell her what she was like, to try and offer some sort of encouragement and reassurance to her, but like with Evie, he knew talking about his other lovers was one of the last things Aoife wanted him to do right now and he held back as much as he could.

“You’re similar, principled and not willing to take any shit, which I think is why the algorithm thinks you might not work together. She’s the one in charge of the information campaign we’re putting together for the vaccine, and the one who offered me it.”

“So all it took for you was her getting there first?” Aoife’s tone turned accusatory again, but it was the subtext that really hurt, leaving unsaid the feeling it had been enough for him to leave her behind.

 “Like I said, I’ve had to figure a lot of this out as I’ve gone along, and try and do the right thing for a lot of different people as I have. I don’t think I’ve got everything right, I’ve probably got more things wrong. But not putting your name on that questionnaire is the biggest and I don’t care what an algorithm says now. If it says I shouldn’t be with you, I want it to be wrong.”

Ethan had leaned forward as he spoke, and for the first time in what felt like forever, she glanced up at him with damp eyes, no longer feeling quite so far away.

“That simple?”

“I don’t know,” he confessed, doing his best to learn his earnestness tell her how strongly he felt. “I need to speak to Nia but you need the vaccine anyway. I’m going to tell her that I’m not going to put up with any way forward that doesn’t include you.”

“What if it’s not what I want?”

In a single, stunned instant, every last one of the fears and worries he’d had over the last few days of losing her came surging back.

“I just wanted you, but this…listen to what you’re actually asking me.” Aoife struggled, forcing herself to look at him as she spoke. She fidgeted and every syllable sounded like she was having to drag it out of herself. “You can’t even see the way your eyes lit up when you said her name and you just want me to believe you’re the person I wanted you to be? And what if you are? So what? Even if I could accept what some drug is going to do to my head or that I need to share you, I don’t know if I can agree with what you’re telling me the vaccine is. Or how people are being treated.”

“Aoife…” he started, even before he knew where his thoughts were going to lead, but she cut him off without giving him a chance to find out.

“Maybe I want to take my chances. Or maybe this would hurt less if it was someone else. Or maybe this is just more fucked than I can deal with right now and you’re just making it worse.”

They each fell silent, as if they both needed to take in what she’d just said. Ethan wanted to protest, to tell her that she was probably infected and that she had no choice but to take the vaccine if she didn’t want to risk the worse. But he knew she knew that. He thought about telling her again how he felt, to try and plead with her to see sense. But either she knew that now too, or she didn’t believe him. It felt unfair, like he’d only just got her back only for her to start slipping out his arms again, and he asked himself if he could have done anything differently, or if he’d managed to miss that this had been inevitable from the moment they found her.

Not for the first time, any words Ethan could think to find felt inadequate and instead he found himself meeting her gaze and pleaded with her wordlessly, looking for any sign in her eyes that she was sure about what she was saying. He didn’t find any, just a lot of doubt, and alongside it enough stubbornness that he realised how hard it would be to sway her.

Eventually, Aoife pulled the beanie off her head, running a stressed hand through the faded green, before tossing the hat onto the bed in a gesture that felt more pointed than it was meant. “I think I need some time on my own…”

Ethan made one final attempt to close the gap that had yawned open between them, reaching his hand for hers, and once again, she pulled away.

“I wasn’t asking, Ethan.”

Every last part of him wanted to fight for her, but he knew if he stayed it would just be a fight with her instead. Managing to nod, the steps he took towards the door were the hardest he’d ever had to make. Ethan paused as he reached it, looking back to where Aoife had taken his place, sat on the edge of the bed and he was struck by just how adrift she seemed, lost among the unfamiliar clutter of her room.

“I’m here, if you need me…”