lizbot
It is a horrible, wretched, awful thing, but he'd actually enjoyed this, for a while--gotten off on the way America had been clinging to him like a limpet, watery-eyed as often as not and pliant. If anyone had asked him before he'd met her to describe his ideal girl he'd probably have reeled off a list of tender, soft-edged qualities: a sort of human prop for his forever-flagging sense of masculinity. Someone small and fragile to make him seem large and strong, even if he wouldn't have realized that that was why.
He'd have a reason to revise the list now. His ideal girl is not a list of qualities. His ideal girl, he's got reason to believe, is America Jones, just as she is: defiant and stubborn and a little self-centered; relentless and selfish as often as she's compassionate and fiercely protective.
It had all fallen apart when he'd realized she wasn't running any more, his indulgent "she'll get over this" tipping up into genuine fear. One of his favorite words lately is anhedonia and he hasn't used it on her but he's thought about it and it's showing up in a mental list of worrying symptoms. It's too much for one person to handle, he thinks: all the unfair things she's been given to carry. And he's pretty sure--and it's one of the reasons he loves her--that she's accustomed to finding the strength to carry whatever she's given, even if he's seen glimpses of her resentment for it; resentment for being that Jones girl, so strong.
So he's convinced her to put some of it down. Take some time off work, beg off a few shifts. He wheedles her into telling stories, because in some terrifying way he's afraid that she'll never snap back to her normal shape, and the stories are a reassuring tether to the America Jones that he knows is under there somewhere, that he's sure she'll be again, once she's had time to rest her Atlas arms from all she has to carry.
He's been feeding her, taking care of her, and that, too, has stopped being enjoyably novel and become terrifying, because she doesn't demand to reciprocate and when he cooks she doesn't want a lesson, instead becoming quiet and fearful that she'll curdle the milk or burn the garlic. She's curled up against him and he measures the rise and fall of her breathing until it tilts towards snoring, and he turns his head to watch Mr. Bitterberry on the windowsill.
He isn't sure how much time passes in sleepless pensive doubt, but eventually, moved by some disturbance outside, the bird lifts his head from under his wing, and in turning to assess the room his beady little eye in the darkness fixes on Taym and Taym touches the bracelet still tied around his wrist and after a pause he whispers into the still room: "Mr. Bitterberry. Quiet. What's wrong with Meri?"
