it's always have and never hold; you've begun to feel like home

[pointzerothree]

All things considered, between the killer toys and the fall he took while climbing through Olive's window, Eduardo knows full well that four weeks in a cast is really nothing at all when it could have been so much worse, when it could have been Olive instead of him. That doesn't make him any less relieved to finally be done with the damn thing

Comments

[floozyfacade]

Olive glances up him with a smile, wry and fond and relieved. "You're welcome," she answers, "again. For everything." He doesn't need to say it once more or even any of the last few times it's been said, but she knows better than to fight it, and in the end, she prefers that gratitude to other options, like being taken for granted, though even in her head, that one's laughably implausible. If she's done anything worthy of his thanks, than she can only be glad in turn. It hasn't been the easiest of months for them to get through, but they've managed as well as she's come to suspect they always will - turned on their heads, but still climbing their way out in the end, side by side.

"How's it holding up? Does it still hurt?" She doesn't want him overdoing it just to spare her his weight or something silly like that.

[pointzerothree]

"No," Eduardo answers with a shake of his head, the response more instinctive than thought through, though he does mean it. It's an odd feeling, but to say that it hurts would be massively overstating the matter, and when she's done so much worrying about him already, he doesn't want to give her any more reason to. This is normal, nothing he wasn't already prepared for. "I mean, it's, you know, a little weird - muscle atrophy and all that - but it doesn't hurt, no." He smiles a little, fond, vaguely amused. "I'm fine. I can't say I ever thought walking normally would feel so strange, but I'm fine."

[floozyfacade]

It's because the break wasn't as bad as it could have been, Olive knows; she understands the medical reasoning, if only because she listened very carefully to all explanations. She still can't help the slightly irrational worry that the cast is off too early or something and he's going to get hurt again. He seems to be doing fine, though, and the walk home will at least give her a chance to keep an eye on him. "No more crutches," she says, grinning. "Or Duckie trying to treat your crutches as toys."

[pointzerothree]

"Is it bad that I think I might miss that?" Eduardo asks with a laugh, self-deprecating. It's as close as he'll come to a truth he isn't ready to yet admit to, that he liked staying with her too much to really want to leave. He's said for a long time that with Olive is the closest he's ever really felt to having some kind of home, but that's nothing compared to having actually lived with her, even knowing all the while that it was a temporary arrangement. Especially after everything that's happened recently, too, all that he's lost again, it's hard not to be drawn to the appeal of that. Still, the very fact that he is is all the more reason not to say so. "Not the crutches, obviously, but Duckie trying to treat them as toys was kind of adorable."