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You had come into your mutation like one comes upon gum on the bottom of their shoe. You were unaware for a long, long time, and then suddenly it stuck to you and held you back. Pulsating headaches that left your stomach churning and your knees shaking became a frequent. The number of times you’d smacked your elbows against the edges of the trashcan, anticipating vomiting or losing consciousness, was higher than you could count on your fingers. You’d taken a couple of sick days off from life, waving away worried family members every time they came to your door and sneaking off in the middle of the night to snatch Saltine crackers and ginger ale.

The phone rang, endless times, and you were more than aware that the person on the other end of the line had to be Pietro. Moving out of bed was a problem, with the pulsing behind your eyes getting greater with every passing item you touched. You almost made it to the family room, sometimes, but, more often than not, you turned around halfway and ducked back into your bed. You’d never been particularly sickly, but, when something hit you, it hit you hard. You self-diagnosed a case of the flu and prescribed yourself lots of sleep.

But the normal escape from reality had been warped viciously, forcing you awake half-way through the day. With blankets twisted around your legs and hair pasted to your forehead, you downed a glass of water in what felt to be a single sip. You pressed the cold rim to your forehead and try to take deep breaths. As if you hadn’t left the dream, tin bodies slammed against each other in your mind’s eye, interlocking and trapping off an exit. The blue-black irises of your boyfriend locked onto yours, the fear in them so palpable that you shivered, even away from the dream.

He’s always been untouchable, a balloon floating above everything, bending the world to his own wills, but these monsters had just yanked his string down. His hair was curled; he hadn’t straightened it in what looked to be forever, and he looked so different from the controlled person you’d always known. He reaches out, his fingers just skimming yours, tears barely reaching the corner of his eyes before metallic hands clamp on his shoulders. He tries to shake them off, fast enough to the point where you can’t even perceive the blurry motions he’s making, but the machines are relentless and he can’t break away from them.

He’s sobbing openly, mouth opening and closing more times than you saw in the few seconds that played afterward, raw grief and anger in every taut muscle and tear. His lips are blurring, and you know exactly what he’s saying, even though you shouldn’t be able to hear at that pitch. “Please, please, please just let her live, please, just let her go, she’s not even a mutant, oh God, I was supposed to protect her please-“ His eyes flit to yours and they widen. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I l-“

The phone’s loud shrill breaks through the theater in your head and you audibly gasp for air, as if you had been under water. When you swipe away the thick tears from your face, however, the house is silent, your parents out for the weekend. Chalking it up to the headache, you flop back down onto your comforter, though you definitely weren’t going back to sleep. The images had been pushed away from the forefront of your mind only temporarily, the emotions still beating against your ribcage. Deep, heavy breathes couldn’t keep away your short and panicked ones, and you shove your face into a pillow.

The phone rings through your house and you freeze, drawn back to the noise that had snapped you out of the dream. Though you feel emotionally compromised, you felt better than you had in weeks, your nausea subsided and the headache only barely there. You make it to the stool that the house phone sat on, picking it up and answering it, shifting the bulk of it to your lap and sitting on the stool. “Hello, Pietro.” An uncanny sense of familiarity fills you and, before he can even speak (a very short amount of time, indeed), you wonder about the sense of assurance throughout your head.

“Well, hey there, yourself.” His voice lilts through the phone, as if someone had recorded his voice and fast-forwarded through it. “Now, do you have any clue at all as to the trouble I’ve been up to without you? You know, I can’t play pong or table-tennis by myself- well, I mean, I can, but it’s no fun that way. So, how’s the sickness going? Nothing too crazy, I hope. Actually, I’ve been, um, hoping you’d hop by when you’re feeling better. If you’re not feeling up to it I completely understand.” There’s a rare pause where Pietro is silent, something he does whenever he’s genuinely talking to you and not talking to hear himself talk.

His voice triggers the unhappy sight from earlier, and you cover the bottom part of the phone to keep him from hearing you dry-heave. Unexpectedly, your family walks through the door, talking amongst themselves and smiling, though their heads turn toward your bedroom door. When you blink, they’re gone, taking the ill feeling in your stomach with them. Feeling extremely unsettled, you scoot the stool closer to the wall, moving your hand away from the phone. “I hope you haven’t been driving your mom up a wall just because I’m not there to keep you in check. I don’t believe I can handle all this babysitting, what with the fool that you are.” You can literally hear him inhale, and you bet he’s holding his breath to keep from speaking, awaiting your answer. “’Course I’ll come over sometime, you goon. Give me a day or two to just not look like death warmed over and I’ll kick your door down.”

“I’ll never stop ya, you know, but mom got reaaal angry last time I knocked the door down, so I’d advise against it.” He has a short, barking laugh that holds your heart in its tone. Then he sighs. “C’mon, a day is, like, a whole year to me, you know that. How do you expect me to go on, with table-tennis, a Pong game, and a room full of Twinkies? I might just die, I’ve already beaten every single one of my highscores and mom says I can’t bring the cops near here for the weekend because we have family over-“

You hadn’t even noticed when you started crying, but a sob breaks free and the phone shakes in your hands. The line goes dead on the other end right after you hear the phone hit the ground, but you can’t move from your frozen position. The vision pans itself out in painful bursts, naming the metallic men Sentinels, showing, in slow-motion, your boyfriend blinking away tears as you’re pulled from him, his voice harsh from screaming as black began to fill your vision.

"Hey, woah, hey, it’s just me. See? It’s just me,” It takes you a long time to register the black as being Pietro’s tee and not the creep of certain death or the beginning of a fainting episode. You’re silent; the crying paused, but you were left with a hollow horror that filled you so indescribably that you had clung to the nearest solid object- your boyfriend’s chest. He’s pacing himself, you can tell, even through your scattered mind. Your grip on his ribcage loosens just so. “Everything’s going to be just fine, I’m gonna take us to my house. There’s nothing a whole box of Twinkies can’t solve, I know from experience. How about some, uh, television, and I think Wanda has some ice pops in the freezer.” His arms wrap slowly around you, maintaining eye contact with you, until he had you cradled in his arms. His hand supports your head, and you can feel his pulse, fast and almost faint, just barely through the skin contact.

You’d barely evened out your breathing before he has you laid out on the leather couch in his basement. You watch as he drops an unwrapped popsicle onto your lap, ruining your sweatpants and leaving a purple, spreading stain, then blinking the sight away, with reality contradicting what you just saw. Your sweat pants remain clean, and your boyfriend is nowhere in sight. When he appears in front of you again, popsicle in hand, you cradle your hands over your lap, catching the treat before it fell all the way. You fit it in your mouth, hoping it’ll soothe your sore throat.

For a boy with two sisters, he seems at a loss as to what to do with an emotional girl. You can seem him dart around the couch, switching from having his arm around you to perching on the arm of the sofa. He’s the first to notice when your breaths balance once more, and he sits thigh-to-thigh beside you, assessing you. Feeling pitiful and kind of gross because of your emotional breakdown, you curl your hands around your forearms, looking away from him.

Look at you, getting emotional over some horrid hallucinations and a nightmare.

His fingers dance over your shoulders, unsure, before pulling your head against his chest, combing his fingers through your hair. “What’s wrong? Are you… hurt?” The slow manner in which he speaks is almost comical, and you know it’s all for your benefit. You finish off your popsicle and close your eyes.

The stutter in your voice doesn’t escape his notice, but you looked so vulnerable that he couldn’t bring himself to make a joke, even. “I’m, I’m fine. Just a nightmare. A really, really bad one, and I couldn’t wake up from it.” His fingers pause at the shell of your ear, and you feel him pat down your stray hairs.

His lips ghost over the crown of your head, and he rocks the both of you back and forth. “Lorna has those sometimes,” His kisses your head again, his breaths ruffling the strands. “They’re called night terrors. But they’re just dreams. You’re fine, here.”

He’s not one for comfort, but you feel safe in his embrace, and you flex your fingers through his, a sneaking suspicion that the situation wasn’t as simple as nightmares or night terrors. Exhausted and weighed down by your swollen eyelids, you get comfortable and feel sleep creep on you. Not surrendering, you keep up the conversation, muttering, “I’m so lucky to have you, Pietro.”

You can hear him laugh, and you know he’ll tease you for saying that later, but you can’t bring yourself to care. “You can go to sleep, ya know. I’ll be right here to protect you.”

You suddenly feel very awake.