Utterly Forgettable | MM Romance | Complete

Twenty: Emery: An Impossibly Beautiful Dream

Emery hated the hospital every single time he visited, and today was no exception. Emma was doing better — she'd be released tomorrow — but walking into that bedroom to find his active sister confined to a bed, glaring at her surroundings with exhausted eyes, never failed to drag his spirits down. It made no difference, how mentally prepared he'd thought he'd be for the sight. The smells didn't help — the neat clean sterility of this environment bringing back competing memories, none of them happy over the years. But visiting her at the hospital meant she was alive; he'd take all the oppressive memories he could get under the circumstances.

Today it wasn't just her surroundings she was glaring at, but him. He risked a "Hello," only to be made to feel he'd committed some unspeakable evil.

"Not talking to you. Unless you've smuggled something. Book? Phone?" His expression told her all she needed to know. "Go away then."

Her heart wasn't in it; it was just a dance they did during the single visitation hour she was allowed.

"You'll find me as unwilling to go away today as I have always been." Ignoring both the chair and the protests of the blameless fabric of his suit, he reclined on the bed next to her, careful not to disturb the wires keeping her monitored. His eyes were trained on the ceiling.

It hadn't always been a ceiling — she'd had the patience to lay underneath the stars with him, during his brief stint wanting to be an astronaut, finding the time in her busy older sister's life to learn the constellation names so she could teach him. His parents close by, too enraptured by one another in the fleeting moments of peace their children allowed them to really pay any attention to the stars. He held nothing but fond memories of that time, could still recall the warm summer breeze on his skin with perfect clarity.

"Always the stubborn brat," she replied, making a play at resentfulness.

"You'll be home tomorrow, and I know fully well I won't have any luck slowing you down. Allow me to savor this last day during which you're not trying to shed your mortal coil, if you please."

She pressed a kiss to his forehead, with a gentleness she rarely displayed these days. "Not trying to shed anything, kid. Things to do. People to terrorize. Tired of being stuck in bed."

"I know. It doesn't prevent me from wishing you'd allow yourself to rest."

"Rest? Over my dead body. Soon enough."

He forced a smile at her gallows humor. It might be selfish of him to want to keep her alive longer, but he didn't have it in him to be selfless, not in this. The point was moot. She'd do what she always did, he'd worry as he always had, and one day too soon she'd be gone. He grasped for something innocuous to say, wishing Josh had been allowed to come with him. Josh would have said something to fill the silence, something that would distract them from the sword of Damocles perpetually hanging over her head, its single hair ever closer to fraying completely. Her sole responsibility that of staying alive, but an impossible one to rise up to.

"On the subject of dead bodies and terrorizing people — have any other priests come to visit you?"

Her voice was gleeful in its malice. "None. Shame. Should have seen his face. Coward ran and never came back."

"I can appreciate the sentiment," he confessed. "You often have that effect even in me."

"Minion stuck around," she quipped, challenging. "Either I'm not that bad or you're that good." Her voice dropped conspiratorially. "We both know I'm that bad."