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It is after a case – Enola had asked him to accompany her for a mission that led to them chasing after a fugitive murderer all over London – and while she had more often than once insisted it was all because she needed someone to act along to perfect her disguise, he knows she deems his help useful enough – not that she would admit it.
Though, even with the routine and frequency of each case they worked together and the danger and uncountable times their safety was on the edge of the cliff, Tewkesbury isn’t used to this – will never be used to this – for he will never understand why Enola loves to endanger herself so much.
And truly, he is mad.
“Sit down,” Tewkesbury says, his voice more clipped than intended. He doesn’t mean to – it simply happens – and he’s slightly guilty for it, but his mind is far more preoccupied with the gash on Enola’s arm to truly mind anyway, the prior sequence of events repeating again and again in his mind. She sits on the sofa in their lodging house, the moonlight from the window illuminating the blooming red on her left arm, and Tewkesbury feels even more lightheaded.
“Now, Tewky, it’s just a small cut, is it not?” Enola says, not even minding when he cuts off the left sleeve of her shirt – she’s wearing a boy’s clothes again – before slightly wincing. “Surely I had gotten it worse.”
Truly, he usually loves it when she calls him by a nickname – or anything for that matter – but it’s surely not now, and most precisely not when a cut a far cry from a small cut is glaring back at him at the moment.
She seems to notice the grim turn of his mood, though, so she clears her throat and averts her eyes somewhere.
“I know you’d never listen,” Tewkesbury sighs, cleaning the cuts with the water he’d brought before entering the parlor. “And you’ll keep doing it over and over again anyway, but I’ll still say it,” he mutters as he looks at anywhere but her, trying his best lest his voice wavers – he wishes sometimes Enola could not look through him as easily as she could. “I care for you, Enola Holmes. A great deal, at that.”
He’s told her as much all the time, but he cannot help the deep, truer meanings it reverberates in the depth of his heart.
He expects her to say something – a clever quip or something she usually does to avert the conversation – but she doesn’t, surprisingly, and he looks up to see her already staring at him.
“Well,” she says, not offering anything much. “I’m sorry, I guess.”
Though, he doesn’t expect that to be her answer, and he certainly doesn’t expect the next words that follow.
“You know I care for you too, are you not? A great deal, as well.”
And honestly, Tewkesbury absolutely preens at that.
“Glad that you do,” Tewkesbury says after a beguiling attempt to cover his initial reaction, hoping it doesn’t look like a wince with the mix of rooted worry and bubbling joy at Enola’s admittance of care. After all, it’s not that he doesn’t know or she never says it – but when she does, he cannot help the blush creeping his cheeks like every other time Enola had her way of depriving him of his calm.
They continue the procedure in silence, after that, with Tewkesbury treating the cuts and Enola trying her best not to wince, before he’s done dressing the wounds. It isn’t unusual, this way, for his mother had forgone any other form of proper chaperoning in the face of their frequency and reasoning every time they meet each other, that she gave up to keep the propriety anyway. And, well, Tewkesbury is absolutely grateful for that.
“You can sleep on the bed,” he says, taking the basin with him to place it on the side of the chamber, before looking back at Enola – who stares back at him. He knows, somehow, that she would say something that would shatter his calm demeanor once again.
“Where will you sleep, then?” she asks. “We rented a wrong chamber in haste to chase after Mr. Walter.”
“On the floor, of course,” he says, shrugging. He doesn’t even know why she’s asking this when she’s always the one claiming the bed as hers. “Is that not our usual arrangement?”
“As much as I’m grateful, Viscount Tewkesbury, Marquess of Basilwether,” she starts, “I won’t let you hurt your posture in that state of yours.” She raises her brows. “Mind you that I saw Mr. Walter knock you into a wall while we were in that peculiar alley.”
Truly, he’s not at all grateful for the reminder of the incident – he didn’t look graceful in the slightest, mind you – but her words are quite valid, indeed.
“Then...?”
“Then, just sleep on the bed here with me,” Enola shrugs, as if she didn’t just ask something so highly frowned upon in Victorian society. “It is quite big, is it not? Surely it’s spacious enough?” she raises her brows higher, as if she didn’t get why he would propose otherwise – not that Tewkesbury didn’t secretly admire Enola’s independence and logic in the foremost of her mind.
And she’s right, indeed, and Tewkesbury would be a fool for missing this chance to sleep close to her.
“Fine,” he says, trying his best to hide the grin that slowly threatens his lips – it is quite hard considering he’s about to spend the night longer next to the one he holds dear in his heart. “I’ll stay here.”
He lays down on the bed next to her, searching for the most comfortable position to rest for the night. It isn’t long until he closes his eyes with a sigh, the tiredness of the day comes crashing down on him like a wave – the adrenaline rush and utmost fright when he saw the blade in Mr. Walter’s grip way too close to Enola’s skin. He knows she’s far from strengthless – if anything, she knows much more martial arts than he does – but he cannot help the worry that creeps within him every single time Enola is way too reckless for her own good.
He’s far too deep in his thoughts, willing the memories to disappear, that he almost flinch in surprise when a soft touch graces his forehead, scratching his scalp in a slow, tender motion as she lightly cards her right hand through his hair.
“Sorry, okay?” she whispers, her words almost far away in between the loud heartbeat of his heart. “I’ll still do it, of course, but, well,” she says, pausing in between her sentences. He can practically feel her shrugging as her hair falls behind her back. “I’m sorry.”
Now, Viscount Tewkesbury, Marquess of Basilwether, cannot help the upcoming smile that graces his feature – and he’s truly, perfectly, aware of the warmth that blooms in his chest, the subconscious that scrambles to memorize the tiniest bits and pieces of the way her scratches feel against his scalp, lest he forgets it in the many days to come – not that he would, of course. Because, after all, he cares for her way more than a great deal than he’s brave enough to admit.
“I know you do.”