[ William was dimly aware of the thin, almost invisible line he was opting to cross in this moment, taking the man's hand in broad daylight, long after the emergency had passed—but he also didn't care. It was a welcome comfort, and moreover, it felt like the most natural thing in the world, intertwining their fingers atop the white cotton bedsheets.
Albert's palm was warm, a little more than it should have been, reminding him of the fact that his temperature still hadn't returned to a normal range, merely a lower-grade fever—but even that was soothing, in its own way, simply by virtue of not being much, much hotter. He easily could have sustained brain or organ damage last night, as high as his fever ended up getting. One or two degrees more and his body itself would have become an intolerable environment for the very enzymes that regulated it.
He tried to find something to say and found that nothing he could draw up was satisfactory. Instead he just... sat there, holding his hands for several minutes in the quiet before hazarding a muted, ]
Tell me if you start to feel worse. ...I don't want to think about life without you.
[ Not unreasonable—they had led the majority of their lives in tandem by this point, numerically speaking, and the entirety of their time as virologists (even if that had come to an end, on Albert's side). The man's presence was inextricable from his time with Umbrella, in the laboratory, even his current self. ]
no subject
Albert's palm was warm, a little more than it should have been, reminding him of the fact that his temperature still hadn't returned to a normal range, merely a lower-grade fever—but even that was soothing, in its own way, simply by virtue of not being much, much hotter. He easily could have sustained brain or organ damage last night, as high as his fever ended up getting. One or two degrees more and his body itself would have become an intolerable environment for the very enzymes that regulated it.
He tried to find something to say and found that nothing he could draw up was satisfactory. Instead he just... sat there, holding his hands for several minutes in the quiet before hazarding a muted, ]
Tell me if you start to feel worse. ...I don't want to think about life without you.
[ Not unreasonable—they had led the majority of their lives in tandem by this point, numerically speaking, and the entirety of their time as virologists (even if that had come to an end, on Albert's side). The man's presence was inextricable from his time with Umbrella, in the laboratory, even his current self. ]