Alva thinks maybe he should never have said Paul was doe-eyed, even in his head. He figures that was when this track of thinking began. Those comparisons should have been avoided all together…

By the time they pulled out of CITY X it was nearly dawn. They could have stayed longer but even with the now somewhat cooler weather neither Paul nor Alva wanted to stay any longer. They’d packed up their stuff and headed out of city limits just as the sky was starting to lighten.

Alva had still been discussing the “ghost lights” and its likeness to similar phenomena he’d seen when he’d first started to really notice that Paul wasn’t feeling too well. Actually, he’d been aware of it already. It wasn’t like he expected the man to get shot by a 140 year old bullet and not feel the ill effects, but it wasn’t until they’d left CITY X that he really noticed Paul’s behaviour. The conversation had become increasingly one sided and now the most he was getting from the man was the occasional grunt of reply. Pulling his eyes from the road for a moment Alva looked over to find that Paul was curled up in the passenger’s seat, leaning against the window with his eyes closed. His face had a look of pain on it and his arms were wrapped tightly against himself, right hand holding his left arm close by hanging onto the elbow.

*****
Paul was starting to regret their decision to leave right away. It had seemed like a good idea at the time – afterall, the sooner they left the sooner they’d get home. And the sooner Paul could get away from Alva. He couldn’t pin it down but there was something about the way Alva ignored his injury that bothered him. While the last thing he’d want was to have his boss fussing over him, the apparent lack of concern was a little unnerving. But Paul accepted it, assumed it was as useless to question this as any of Alva’s other quirks. Maybe the man was just trying to be polite or set the tone or something. Really, Paul knew there was no way he’d have been able to keep going last night if he’d had to contend with someone reminding him that he’d just been shot. That being said, it would have been nice to be on the receiving end of SOME concern.

Paul mentally sighed and held his arm closer, trying to cut down on the amount of jostling. He’d been only half listening to Alva’s recollection of similar phenomena to what they’d witnessed last night.

“… similar to a case in Scotland. On June 23, 1744 27 witnesses, some of whom gave sworn testimony to a local magistrate, watched for up to 2 hours as phantom soldiers…”

Paul nodded and gave a little “huh” to make Alva think he wasn’t being ignored. There it was, simple as that. Not difficult at all to give the impression that you at least cared. So why wouldn’t Alva at least ask how he was doing? Show at least SOME concern.

Okay, it made some sense earlier, they’d had very little time to accomplish their task and while Paul might be feeling downright sore and cranky right now, he was greatly relieved they had been successful. Measuring success by floating globes of light didn’t seem odd in the least to him when you took into consideration their significance.

“… then in 1779 in Boulogne, France a large number of luminous globes filled the air the very day of the earthquake…”

Interjecting another grunt of fake interest, Paul turned his thoughts back inward. Any other time he’d have enjoyed this type of conversation but between the steadily increasing pain in his shoulder, and the gnawing fear that there was a deeper reason why Alva was so unconcerned about his well being, Paul was disinclined to really participate in intelligent discussion.

Lately it had seemed like things between them were getting better. Time had helped him reconcile his feelings about Alva’s clearly misguided behaviour of holding back information. He still was angry about it, but was able to set his feelings aside for the most part, though he truly believed a trust had been broken and the damage, at least on his end, could never be fully repaired.

Paul was well aware that Alva probably was still unhappy about the situation. The real problem was he couldn’t figure just how mad the man was. He also couldn’t figure if maybe Alva was being so distant because of the whole incident. It was still a problem between them and the more time went by the more Paul realized that they may never totally get past it. He knew as far as he was concerned he no longer felt like frothing at the mouth and screaming at Alva about betrayal (not that he thought he’d ever do that but the mental image had been satisfying for awhile). When it came to Alva however, he couldn’t know just how the man felt about it and there just didn’t seem to be any way to bring it up either.

“… to the phantom battle in 1854. Now there were no battles in Germany during January of 1854 and it was considered by local citizens to be a supernatural replay of a nearby battle some years earlier…”

Maybe this is it, maybe they would never be close. He’d thought of Alva as a friend before but now … well he wasn’t sure what to think exactly.

But it would be nice, even just as his boss, if Alva would ask how he was doing.

*****

“Paul are you alright?” Alva asked, glancing between his passenger and the road. He noticed that the sun had full risen now and wondered how long he’d been driving and talking, not noticing how much time had passed.

“Mmm,” Paul mumbled in what Alva now realized was the same noise he’d been acknowledging with for the past couple hours. It sounded mostly positive.

“Do you want me to pull over?” Alva offered.

“No, s’okay,” mumbled. “Keep going.” He leaned farther into the door, resting his head against the window.

Oddly, now that Alva had asked, it felt like too little too late and Paul just wanted to curl into himself and try to sleep despite the nagging burning feeling in his shoulder. The sooner they got home the sooner he would get away from Alva and hopefully away from the thoughts that plagued him, the questions that remained unasked. Holding his arm just a little tighter, Paul scrunched lower in the seat and resolved to try and sleep until they got home or until he felt better, felt like he could deal with this.
*****

Alva hit a piece of blown out tire in the road causing the old car to bounce slightly. Unfortunately, this jarred Paul’s already throbbing shoulder and he couldn’t stop the sharp yelp of pain he let out.

Glancing over to see Paul now totally awake, hunched over and trying desperately to hold his arm from moving anymore, Alva decided it was time to pull over for a break. They’d both been up all night and while he was more than wound up enough to drive most of the way back to Boston Alva knew Paul wasn’t exactly in the best condition to be taking a road trip. Or, judging by his pale face and pained expression, out of bed.

Seeing a sign for a motel at the next exit Alva said, “There’s a place just up here. We can stop there and stay for the night…” glancing up at the sky he amended, “or day.”

“It’s alright, we should just keep going, get back sooner,” Paul said quickly.

“Well I need a rest and unless you feel like driving…” Alva let it hang and heard yet another one of Paul’s “Mmm’s”, this one somewhat non-committal. “Right then, the-“ Alva squinted to read the faded sign as they pulled in, “Sleepy Inn it is.”

“Mmm.”

*****

Paul couldn’t help but notice that without the constant jiggling of the car in motion, the pain in his shoulder lessened. Or it did until he tried to get up anyway.

“Ahhhh!” Paul groaned as he reached for the door handle.

“Just stay here, I’ll take care of the accommodations,” Alva said as he got out of the car.

Paul squirmed around in his seat, trying to find a more comfortable position though he knew that was most unlikely with the bent spring still poking him in the back and the sharp pain in his shoulder he’d inadventently reawakened.

“Nice, order me to stay like a dog, thanks,” he grumbled with uncharacteristic snarkiness. “And thanks for slamming the door,” he added, glaring at Alva through to lobby’s windows as the man rented their room. The door slamming (okay, he had to admit it wasn’t really so much a slam as it was a too hard shut) had jarred his arm again.

Shaking his head, Paul dug out the painkillers the hospital had provided him with. One wasn’t very strong but it did allow him to still function. That was what he’d been popping like M&M’s the previous afternoon and night. It took the edge off his pain but that was about it.

They’d also given him some stronger pills, with the caution that he’d best take those when he wasn’t planning on doing anything but sleeping - which of course he had told the nurse was his intent – after all, he doubted they’d have been thrilled to know he was going to go racing around putting civil war era souls to rest. Yeah, if he’d told them that they’d likely have wanted to increase his stay substantially and not for the hole in his shoulder.

Paul looked up from the pill containers watching Alva at the desk, signing something. Chemical bliss might have sounded really nice about now but Paul just didn’t feel comfortable stuck in a hotel room with Alva if he was going to be that out of it. Again, it was a trust thing. While Paul couldn’t put his finger on exactly why he couldn’t Alva trust right now (afterall, it wasn’t like he thought the man would murder him in his sleep or anything) he just felt distinctly uncomfortable with the idea.

Paul dry swallowed a couple of the lighter painkillers and sank back in the seat with a wince. The spring poked him again, digging into his back.

*****

It had taken an innordinant amount of time for Alva to arrange a room. Though Alva considered himself to be a reasonably patient man, the clerk had been very likely senile and clearly incapable of the simple task of renting a room. After pulling the car around to their room, Alva had sent Paul in while he searched around for their bags in the back.

“Paul?”

Reentering the room, Alva didn’t see Paul. The room was dark and it took his eyes a few moments to adjust from the bright sunlight outside. He noticed the door to the bathroom was closed and headed back out to the car to get more of their stuff.

By the time he entered the small motel room again and closed the door behind him, Paul had come out.

“Have you got my bag there?” he asked.

Nodding, Alva held out the duffle. When Paul walked forward to take the bag, he also moved into the patch of sunlight streaming in through the dusty window.

He looked awful.

Alva wondered if Paul had looked this unwell before. Had he really not noticed how pale and shaky the man was? He watched Paul dig into his bag (still perfectly organized despite the number of days they’d been living out of their bags) and pull out his toothbrush and paste then duck back into the bathroom.

Alva furrowed his brows and dropped the rest of the bags onto the small sofa. Surely Paul hadn’t been that ill yesterday. He’d have noticed … wouldn’t he?

Alva listened as the sound of running water stopped. It was quiet for a good minute before the silence was broken by the very recognizable (and obviously painful) sounds of retching.

Torn between knocking on the door to see if Paul was alright, and giving the sick man some privacy, Alva wandered around the dim room. He noticed a couple of pill containers poking out of the pocket of Paul’s jacket. One was almost empty, the other nearly full and both had a big orange warning sticker on the side to “take with food”.

Alva sighed deeply as he sat down on the end of the bed. What had the nurse said about the pills? Oh, that’s right, the only thing he’d heard was the part about making sure Paul took it easy for a couple days to which he’d agreed then promptly all but forgotten.

Lovely.

Neither of them had eaten since yesterday afternoon and they’d run ragged finishing things last night. It had been worth it in the end, but that was no excuse for now.

It had become more than obvious that Paul had quite a knack for getting himself hurt. Alva had assumed the young man was capable of taking care of himself. And, probably under normal circumstances, that would have been the case, but Alva had been as focused on their work last night as Paul had been. He hadn’t thought much about Paul’s injury, except that it didn’t seem to slow him up too badly. They were both too concerned with other things at the time but Alva should have had the sense to keep a better eye on Paul’s condition this morning.

Hearing coughing that seemed to sound the end of the vomiting, Alva wondered aloud, “You’d think with how frequently he gets injured he’d know enough not to keep taking these things on an empty stomach.”

Rising from the foot of the bed, Alva knocked lightly on the closed bathroom door.

“Paul? Are you alright?”

There was a short pause then, “Yeah.”

“Okay, well, I’m going out for a few minutes. You’ll be alright?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll be back shortly then,” Alva said before heading out to find them some food.

*****

Paul waited a few minutes until it had been silent long enough to indicate Alva had indeed left the room. Walking out of the bathroom on shaky legs, Paul toed off his shoes and yanked back the covers on the nearest bed. Deciding it was not worth the effort, he left his clothes on and laid down on the bed, holding his arm still as he did so.

Getting sick had only further irritated his shoulder. Now he had not only a massive throbbing pain radiating from the wound, but also a headache and sore abs from all the retching. On the list of embarrassing things he’d done around Alva this rated lower than being possessed by a violent spirit but not by much. He’d actually disgusted the man to the point he’d been forced to leave the room.

Nice.

Paul longingly eyed the painkillers sitting atop his jacket on the other bed but decided against them. If he could just fall asleep he’d be alright and wouldn’t have to risk doing something else embarrassing.

unfinished

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