Chapter 6
Better. Things are better. The pain from before… it lingers in small, phantom ways. You know the ever-present migraine stalks in the back of your mind, waiting to take grip again like a mother cat biting at the scruff of her young – you feel it in the unmistakable tension in your jaw. You feel it run down your neck, down one side of your spine, like someone has tugged on your marionette strings and left you askew. Just off kilter enough to be uncomfortable. Not enough to be noticed externally.
You unclench your jaw.
Things are easier around Strange, if a little odd. Breaching that divide between doctor and friend has made him a sort of pseudo-creature, and now you don’t know where you stand so easily. You can see that he doesn’t know either. It’s made for an odd atmosphere where you spend a lot of spare time around each other, but don’t spend a lot of it talking, unless he’s checking in on you or you have something to say. He tends to your needs, but hovers. You find yourself snapping less, and less willing to goad him, because he’s… nice. You don’t want to snap this fragile, little thing. It’s nice, but you’re so unsure of it, you haven’t got the faintest idea of how to navigate the friendship – is it a friendship? Maybe you should’ve tried to talk to Wong after all.
Strange, on his part, seems, perhaps not oblivious, but ignoring the fragility and the awkwardness in the interactions you’ve made. He still sees himself as a doctor first, is still acting thus – he’s letting you steer the rest of the conversations as you need to, because you’re the one that approached him.
He suggests that you take a trip to pick up your things. You’re not sure that you can walk that far, but no, no he means he’ll come and he’ll use a portal, and – can he have the address, please? This reminds you that you have no idea where you are, and when you ask him – “Bleeker street?” You scrunch your nose. Eight or so blocks? There was no way you would have made it home in the rain that day. And you were way off course too, how had you managed to stumble this far? The thought does make you smile a bit though, glad that you did.
You change back into your own clothes to go back to your apartment, already dreading the smell of thick incense, seeing any of your housemates on their way in or out. You shouldn’t see anyone – not at 10 in the morning. They’d either be at work by now or still sleeping from their late shifts, but there’s always the possibility. And if Strange comes in, how will you explain him? Or… the portals?
“Do they feel like anything to go through?”
“Hm?”
“The circle? The portals? In movies when people teleport, sometimes it makes them sick.”
The frown on Strange’s face lightens slowly, almost to amusement. “We’re not teleporting. I’ll be opening a tear between two spaces and we step between them. We aren’t displaced, the places are. Space is.” Stephen gestures with his hands, making a sweeping motion. “We place ourselves.”
“And it’s okay to do this?”
He raises an eyebrow – ah, there’s his ego. Sometimes in his careful explanations it almost forgot to come through. “Very.”
“There’s no magical council watching over how you use or misuse the… Mystic Arts?”
“For someone uninterested in magic you’re awfully concerned with mine.”
“I feel like these are fair questions. You’re… breaking apart a bit of reality so I can get my things, some spare socks and such. Is that… ethical?”
“Oh, we’re talking ethics now?” Strange considers you for a moment. “There’s nothing unethical about it. Everything is put back as it should be. There’s no reason not to do it. You want your belongings, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“Then what’s the issue?”
You don’t want to say it, but yes, it’s the portal, it’s going back, it’s seeing your housemates. Perhaps a bit of it is packing up your belongings and holding them in your hand again, one by one, objects you haven’t touched for ages – things you’d stuffed in shoeboxes and put at the back of cupboards. Even fear of the stress that all of this is sure to stir up, resulting in another migraine. You don’t want to begin.
Strange’s intuition must be sharp, or your face betrays everything you feel, because he sits on the edge of your bed and levels you with a look. “Can I do anything to make this easier? More bearable?”
“I’m not sure, it’s just… hard.”
“You know you say ‘just’ a whole lot.”
“You’re being awfully nitpicky.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Maybe I’m just struggling a bit here, Strange.” You try to smile but it falters. You know he sees it before you can look away, damn him. “There’s
certain aspects about going and packing up that I’m not looking forward to.”
He stands, creates his glowing portal like he hasn’t heard you. And then he offers you his arm. “One thing at a time, yes? You can close your eyes to the magic if you don’t want to see it. I promise you’ll hardly notice.”
______
He damn well lied. By portal is, so far, your least favourite way to travel. You clutch to his arm as wind whips your air, and the pressure drops in your ears and stomach. It’ll take some getting used to, your mind tells you, but you don’t want to get used to it.
The portal opens in the alley around the side from your apartment block. You leave Strange and dig your keys from your pocket, opening the door, climbing the stairs. It’s so familiar and anxiety inducing now, doctor at your back, dressed as he is in his strange robes – you don’t want to be caught out, you don’t want to have to explain why you’re leaving, why these separate worlds are colliding. Though only eight blocks from each other they needed a tear in all of space to be joined, and the reality of that breathes down your neck.
You rush through the apartment – unwashed pans and a mess in the living room, unclean bathroom, all from your housemates – at least your bedroom door is still closed. It’s musty inside because it hasn’t been opened in a few days and your window is closed. You look back to Strange, and he’s following you through, looking over the place as he goes. You wince apologetically but push forward into your room. If anyone is home, you don’t want them to see you – either of you. You usher him in and close the door behind, and only then can you calm down a bit.
You unclench your jaw again.
“So, you live here?”
“I… I did, yeah.” Strange walks over the room touching photos over your mirror – he pauses over one of you and your mother and you have to turn away. You’ve got to get your things together anyways. And get your shit together. You should mentally, physically, all together get your shit together.
You pull out a duffel bag and a backpack, packing all your clothes and worldly possessions. Pillow and trinkets and photos, a single leather shoe, keepsake jewellery, a men’s threadbare cardigan that would never fit you snuggly, but hell is it comfortable.
“You’re nosey,” you say, as Strange is looking over the things you have yet to pack.
“Do you want some help?”
“And give you more opportunity to go through my things?”
He smiles at you softly, hands you a jacket that you flung over the back of a chair last time you were here. You’d peeled it off because it was too damn hot, and you couldn’t bear it. You’d collapsed into bed in a heap, you remember. None of the furniture is yours, so it can all stay. You were lucky to find a furnished room. Lucky, in a way, but it also became a prison. A sweet trap to fall into, but one that kept you sick.
“You alright?” Strange asks.
“Yeah, yeah,” you echo. “Just,” your mind lingers on that word again. Just what? Always ‘just’, never more. Just is a word that asks only what is needed, nothing more. It begs for its place, it doesn’t demand. It doesn’t demand to be seen, doesn’t demand its place in the world. It just gets by. Only the minimum, gasping for air. Never more. “This room was a hellhole, is all. No space, no sunlight.”
You’re busily shoving clothes into a backpack and you explain it to him – this awful swirling feeling, this sickness – because you haven’t been able to explain it to anyone before. No one has been around to talk to, and that’s just the point.
“It’s like all the world is a current. Everyone goes about their days, their jobs. They have families and friends, go out for a drink after work and golf or go away on the weekends and have holidays and surf… and when you’re in it, you don’t realise you’re in it. It’s normal. It’s just life. But if you’re sick, or bedridden, it’s like you get pushed out of the current. Left to float beside and watch everyone else go about their lives, only look to each other to make plans and travel and—,” you brush a palm over one eye that threatened to leak. “Forget you? You get pushed out of life.
“And I was stuck here, it didn’t make me any better.” You shake a bottle of vitamin D pills. “It doesn’t encourage being social or active, getting out, getting better – getting sunshine… it’s like I came here and was stuck. And stressed. A self-feeding circle, it just kept going on and on, around and around.”
He doesn’t answer so you collect a few more things from around the room, putting them in a duffel bag. You find a notebook, ready to write a letter to your housemates about you leaving rather definitely. You write a few words but your pens hovers as you just keep talking.
“And it’s like… I wanted to be better – I want to be better, but in order to get better you have to have the energy to get better. Does that make sense? People don’t get that it takes so much from you to keep going after ideas and specialists and doctors who come up with expensive and wrong theories, especially when it’s already taking so much energy being unwell. It’s not easy being sick, lying in bed all day. It’s not simpler or less taxing than working – it’s so isolating…”
Strange hasn’t moved in some time, isn’t really breathing. A deep frown now mars his face. His shoulders are tense, eyes lost somewhere in thought. His hands are balled tight into fists.
“Doctor?” You ask, voice low. You reach out to touch his arm and he flinches at the contact and pulls his hand back. “Sorry,” You mutter.
He shakes his head. “Have you got everything?”
“Are you done being weird?”
“You mean strange?”
“Oh, so you get to bully yourself?”
“Of course.” He goes to grab your duffle back and you sit to finish writing your letter. Strange checks the drawers and cupboards while you’re here, and under the bed. Making sure there’s nothing left but
“Are you alright?”
“You’re right about this room, it’s positively stifling. And that incense smells awful – are you ready?”
“Almost.” You hold up a hand. You’d almost forgotten the bathroom. You almost want to leave it all there, but you’d much rather leave no trace of yourself. The kitchen and your food, that’s fair play, but your toiletries you’d rather have. You sneak to the bathroom and gather what you can remember into a bag quickly.
You expect to find Strange snooping when you come back but he’s sitting on the edge of your bed, staring into the distance. It’s unnerving to see him so motionless. So much so that you knock to get his attention. “Hey.”
He looks up and gets up. “Good?”
“Good.”
He opens another portal – from old bedroom to new – picks up your duffle bag, and this time he ushers you to step through first.
And then the old is gone. And you won’t be bothered by that incense again.
______
“Wong.”
This is worth it. Totally worth it. Even if he ends up thoroughly annoyed at you.
“Wong.”
You might lose your prospective book club… still worth it?
“Wong, tell me.”
Might end up triggering that migraine that’s been lurking… still worth it? Wong for his part is doing all his wonderful best to ignore you. In fact, he’s doing so well you may as well be invisible, not at all speaking.
“Can you please tell me what’s going on with him? I know there’s something.”
“I won’t interfere in his business.” Wong says, looking over the short aisles of food. He’d agreed to take you on a short outing – he was hungry, and you wanted some of your regular snacks, so you’ve come to a small shopping mart on a street corner.
You also wanted the opportunity to find out more about Strange, without pressing the man himself because he’s getting a bit… weird, sometimes. His vacant faces, the way he holds himself, even the way he words some things – there’s something else to know about him that feels pressing and relevant, and it may be your inherent curiosity, or it may be more magical weirdness, but it’s strange to live in such close and constant proximity to the man and feel such a glaring blind spot.
“But it’s my business too, surely. Now that I live here?” A weak argument, really. Make it stronger. “He’s… been a bit odd around me.”
Wong looks over his shoulder at you. “Odd how?”
Ah, there we go. “He’s distant and… he blanks out sometimes. Y’know… bluescreens.”
“Bluescreen?”
“He goes vacant. I don’t know if something I do is making him uncomfortable, or if he’s distracted by something else or it’s a… magical thing or he’s… being telepathic with someone.” Wong pointed doesn’t reply. “He’s got something going on, doesn’t he?”
“You say you’re not sure if you agitate him? You frustrate each other constantly. You disagree all the time.”
“Yeah, but,” You wave your hand in the air. Semantics. “Frustrating is different to making someone uncomfortable. Anger is different to… all that.” Wong scoffs and turns back to inspecting the deli. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”
“Doctor-patient privilege”
“But you’re not a doctor…”
“And I’m losing my patience.”
“Why can’t you just tell me? Give me a little hint or something. He’s not very forthcoming, and it’d make it a whole lot easier if you were.” You turn and catch a glimpse of the bright fluorescent lines of light in the ceiling. You blink and turn away but it’s seared into your eyes, under your eyelids. There’s pressure at the back of your nose and hinge of your jaw. The marionette tension wasn’t lying. Your shoulder twinges and you unclench your jaw. Again.
You look at Wong, busy with his selection and talking to the shop keep. You pick up a few snacks, some biscuits, and put them in the basket while you’re still lucid, still seeing. You turn and rest against the cool glass of the deli with a hand on your stomach.
“Would you like it if I told others about your problems that you told me in confidence?”
You squint up at him from your hunched state. “You’re very stoic, Wong.”
He squints back. “I’m not a fan of the stoic mindset. It breeds too much inner reflection, over holistic reflection and consideration of others.”
“Uh-huh.” Brain fog is setting in. You’re finding that the noise in the store isn’t kind either. You want one of those portal things. You wouldn’t mind one now – you might end up being sick anyway, so what’s a little more stomach upset. “There is something going on for him, though, isn’t there.”
“Everyone has a past.”
“So it’s his past?”
“How would it be his future?”
You shake your head. He’s making this needlessly complicated now and all you want to do is go back to bed. Your head is swimming. “But its personal?”
“I think you need to sit down. You’re looking quite drawn.”
“It’s just… only the…” His hand on your shoulder presses you down onto a stool used for stacking high shelves.
“Are you alright?” Wong appears in front of you, his misty hand in front of your vision, cracking with the light from outside. There’s a diamond line through his fingers, sparkling with static and colour and the aura spreads.
You try to nod, but it’s more of a rocking motion because that marionette – oh how it pulls. The strings are strung tight like a guitar and your head lolls back to accommodate. A panic comes over you – because something is coming, and everything is ending. And you’re not ready for the sensations that are.
How can this all be so quick and triggered? You know what this is, in your head you logically know what’s happening to you, some distant part of you knows that this is the migraine, here, it has arrived. That’s the part of you that’s backstage, the part of you that was in rehearsals. But the creature that you are now, of all flesh and feeling, roiling in the limelight with anxiety and panic, sweating under hot globes and forced to make the marionette dance – that you can’t hear the rehearsal and is forced to go with the panic, the stage fright.
All else is silenced under the insurmountable weight of experience in the present.
It’s too much. You cannot cope. You miss your mother comforting you when you’re sick.
Wong reaches past your shaking legs for a paper bag for you to hyperventilate into, and narrowly manages to catch you as you pass out.
______
You wake twitching, but twitching in your own bed. The nerves of your arms firing and curling up. You groan and dig into the pillow. Weren’t you at the little shop down the road? Yes. Definitely. It’s nice to be in a comfortable place but you’re missing spots in between and that’s concerning.
The dull buzz to your skull and slack feeling over your muscles tells you that you must’ve taken a triptan at some point at least. The migraine – or the worst of it – is subsiding and you’ve slept through it. Though you’re wondering just how long it is you’ve slept exactly.
You shuffle and dig further into the bed, adjusting your limbs to the oddest and most comfortable position, and find Strange in his designated armchair at the foot end of the bed. He’s not looking at you, but some energy about the air tells you he’s paying attention to you, he knows you’re awake. He’s aware.
You look at him, all settled in his spot as he flicks his hand and a pen hovers mid-air, writing in a book while he’s looking over the page.
“You were asking about me?” He says, without looking up.
You grunt under your breath. “Wong sold me out?”
“Actually, you talk in your sleep.” He chuckles and looks up with a raised brow. “But you were asking Wong about me?”
Your eyes slide to the side, “… I didn’t say that.”
“Uh huh. And what didn’t you ask?”
You look back to him, settled in the armchair like he belongs there, like he’s supposed to be in your room watching over you and taking care.
“How’d I get here?”
“Portals, arms, thought that’d be obvious. Are you prone to fainting?”
“Um,” You feel your face – your nose is cold and your head aches. Not terribly but that tension is still present. “No. Fatigue and sleeps, yes, but… fainting, I don’t think so.”
Strange looks over your form, your legs shuffling under the blankets as you try to get comfortable in a way that the small movements can’t create. His eyes grow concerned under his watchful brow and
His fingers dances with movement again. Was he wearing his gloves before? You can’t remember now. You feel like you should know, but… no.
They’re these lovely, yellowed leather gloves with a split up the forearm, splits over the knuckles, a ring around his wrists.
Oh, leather.
You had a thought when you were younger, though younger only by a few years, that you’d like to be a shoemaker.
There was a summer when you’d watched crude hide form from skin. You’d watched cowhands scrape the hide clean of hair, leaving only sun toughened leather. The drag and pull of the knife buckled the surface but never cut through. Sharp enough to strip it down, too dull to pierce.
Now you feel the same scrape of that dull hide-working knife every day, feel it in the way your bones stretch your skin. Like a babe sweeping a foot against its mother’s stomach, pressing for a stretch, for painful release.
The craft is gone from you, but the memory remains. Pain on the inside, pushing through.
Strange’s gloves are like a second skin, adopted for warmth, protection - gorgeously crafted. If you’d taken the craft far enough down the track, you’re thinking now that you could’ve crafted something like that if you’d learned enough, if you’d been healthy, and if circumstances were different.
You wanted to craft shoes, but your hands ached and pained you, you couldn’t hold the tools for long enough to do the work, your mind wouldn’t focus, there was too many other stresses going on at the time. You’d finished one, shoddy shoe that you were so unbearably proud of, that it didn’t matter that you didn’t finish the other. Only one was made, so it was never meant to be a pair. One perfect shoe of something you were never meant to do.
But you had to get rid of the extra leather and tools to be sure, to convince yourself against the longing to make more, to think that it should be any more that whole as a singular shoe.
That one shoe held all the inherited jewellery, knickknacks, and miscellaneous oddities you had. It was a shallow shoe too, not near cutting an ankle bone in height. Stubbornly proud. You moved it to the sanctum and kept it in the bedside table in the room you were in.
You still looked to people’s shoes. Strange’s were clean and well soled, newly worn in, but a snug fit. Perhaps a little tight around the toes. The way he walked when he left the room made you think the top of the heel pinched when he’d first worn them, but they looked like a very soft leather. Maybe it was a muscle memory of an old shoe, then. Or nothing at all.
Wong’s shoes were much older. He had a far more relaxed stance and gait. His shoes were wearing in on the balls of his feet - especially on the insides. When he came in the morning to bring toast and sit with you sometimes he brought his feet up on the chair and you saw it then - small peaks of his socks. He could use a new pair, you’re quite sure. Strange told you he was more active than he seemed. Not in those words exactly, but in a “Wong does more around here than you or I will ever see,” way.
And your shoes, tucked deep under the bed. You don’t have a right to talk about others needing new shoes, but Wong surely has access to such things. Your sneakers are two sizes too big, you found them at a charity shop and they’re the only shoes you have. There’s a stubborn stone stuck between the rubber that you can’t dig out no matter how you’ve tried. You can’t remember when it got stuck there.
You prefer feet on these floorboards. Socks. You’re not going to scratch their nice floorboards when they’re being so hospitable.
You unclench your jaw again.
But his gloves, his hands. You watch the leather tighten around his fist when he curls his hand around a cup handle or as a place to rest his chin in thought and the sight makes your breath quicken.
“Why do you wear gloves?”
He considers you. “Because of an injury.”
You watch him waiting. You’d heard somewhere that if you didn’t offer further conversation then it made others want to fill the gaps themselves. It isn’t working here. He’s clearly more charismatic than you. You don’t want to goad him into conversation, but you do want to know. Strange has his wits about him, and he knows plenty enough about you, he can decide what he doesn’t want to tell you.
“Because of what part of the injury?”
He looks… quite confused.
“I mean, because the leather helps keep your hands warm and that helps, or because the pressure of the gloves helps with pain or the tremors or—?”
He takes a glove off.
“Oh.” You hadn’t considered aesthetics.
“You wouldn’t believe how much these hands cost, yet they don’t look a thing like they should.”
“You’re ashamed?”
“They’re unsightly.”
“Hah.” Just like your tremors. Collapsing in the street or a corner store is unsightly too. But…it’s not so much a visible disability as his.
“I don’t always like to face the reminder of what I don’t have any more. Often the coverings hurt less than the scars.”
And he’s… poignant. You unclench your jaw. Again. You tell yourself to tread carefully, thinking of what Wong said earlier about how easy you both find it to rile each other up in offence – here is not the place to lose your tongue.
“You said you were a surgeon.”
“‘Were’ being the incredibly operative word, where I no longer am.”
You nod, then pull your sheets aside, gesturing at his hands with one of yours reaching out. “Can I…?”
He nods.
You come close to him and hover over his hand, so gently, so carefully. You imagine this is what it must’ve been like the other night as he sat on the couch with you laying across his lap, shaking and twitching as his hands hovered above you, your vulnerabilities laid bare. Only he doesn’t need your help. The pain has already happened, but the exposure, the pain the mind, that’s still there.
You run a finger across the back of his hand feeling the long scars like peaked mountain ridges. A forced landscape. And running your fingers along the bones you feel points where the formation isn’t clean – plates or bolts? You’re not sure how a procedure would work but… so much surgery, so much reconstruction.
And then you slip your hand into his, and run your thumb lightly over the scars, puffed like callouses – how long has it been since he’s held a hand? Simply and gently. Maybe he doesn’t want to, maybe he has no need or doesn’t feel the lack, but it feels important to you. It feels basic and human.
It feels like he ought to hold a hand.
You look up to him after a few moments, and he’s watching you and your movements, breath stilled, mouth closed.
You give his hand a squeeze with a cautious smile and climb back into bed, righting the blankets around yourself. You don’t see him flex his hand, you don’t see his eyes tracing the ghost of where your fingers touched and traced. He puts the gloves back on. To hide, to preserve, to keep safe.