Exit Signs I Missed (A Dark Artifices Fanfiction) ✔️

Feelings That We Hide

Emma woke up to the sound of Julian's voice, soft in her ear, comforting as the sunshine that spilled through the sheer curtains. He'd drawn on her arm the words E-M-M-A-A-R-E-Y-O-U-A-W-A-K-E-Y-E-T. "Last night - I wasn't asking you why there aren't any Laws against parabatai being estranged."

I-K-N-O-W, she wrote back on his forearm. He grasped her hand, suddenly, running his thumb over her knuckles. She'd always thought that her hands were made only to fit Cortana, but now she thought they were also, perhaps, made to fit in Julian's.

"I wanted to know why - " He stopped himself, and there was the Julian she'd known these past five years : controlled, because he had to be. Everything Julian was, she thought sometimes, was because he had to be.

Emma hugged her I LOVE CALIFORNIA pillow to her chest with her free arm and wished it was Julian. She squeezed it tighter and wished it was between them. This was a bad idea.

"I was asking why you were there. I wanted to know how you could possibly act like nothing had changed, like everything was the way it had been before - By the Angel, the way it was five years ago. When we could have been parabatai and nothing more, when you were my best friend and I painted anything, not just you." His voice was shaky now, uncontrolled. It was terrifying and painful and thrilling.

"Jules - " She didn't know how to make this better, let alone make it right, so it was just as well that he stopped her.

"I love you. I've always loved you. I just don't know when loving you became something wrong."

Emma hugged - no, crushed the pillow to her chest. Then she let it go. "Jules - "

"What can you say, Emma?" Julian's tone was bitter, the way it had been when he'd walked in on her and Mark kissing. "What can you say, Em, that will make any of this better or right? Raziel, Emma, what can you do?"

He was still clutching her hand the way he had last night, after she'd made the mistake of going to Tavvy's room, knowing he would be there. Sensing him in a way she'd never done before. The parabatai curse was probably responsible for that.

Julian had turned on his side now, to face her, and the look on his face hurt more than any demon wound ever could. He was looking at her like she'd pulled him out of the ocean - and was preparing to throw him back in.

"Our souls are knit. We're parabatai; our very souls are connected. So why do I feel so broken ever since you told me that you don't feel the same way?"

Don't say that like I don't, she wanted to scream at him. Instead, Emma answered. "You don't love me that way Jules. We both know that. It's like you said on the beach after we slept together. We're tied together, we know each other so well - but we're not in love. We're attracted to each other. Nothing's changed, Julian, we're just at that age when - "

"I - you're right. Just - just forget I said anything." He let go of her hand. He felt miles away. "It's just... Chemistry. That's all."

Emma nodded, and got out of bed. She could feel Julian's eyes on her, and all she could think about was the handful of explosive kisses they'd shared, each one pressing up against the backs of her eyelids, taking hold of her senses, centering all of her attention on Julian, and the space between them.

She closed her eyes, and willed them to go away. When she reopened them, Jules was gone.

:::

"Where's Julian?" Emma asked when she walked downstairs - hair still dripping from her shower - to find a frazzled-looking Cristina flipping pancakes at the stove and trying to get Mark out of her hair.

"He's sick - Mark, stop trying to help! Don't you remember what happened the last time you were in the kitchen?" Cristina batted him away, a few strands of hair escaping her bun. It was the first time she'd seen the older girl look anything but perfectly composed.

Normally, Emma would have laughed or chimed in with a witty comment, but all she could feel right now was Jules's absence, pressing in on her chest like a weight. Emma did her best to hide the fear, smiling as she walked over to Mark, giving him a quick, barely-there peck on the mouth, before helping Cristina with the pancakes and shooing Mark to his seat next to Ty. She went through the morning in a haze; she saw Ty pointedly ignore Mark, and Tavvy ask for the one thing they were out of (more butter on his pancakes) and the mess of sticky dishes left when everyone had gone - but she didn't see any of it, not really.

All she saw was Jules hurting, him bleeding, him dying. Anyone else might not have worried, anyone else might have assumed it was only a cold or at worst a flu, but Emma knew Julian. Nothing would have kept him from taking care of the children - not illness, not demons, not the Clave, nothing.

Cristina seemed to sense Emma's unease, and sent her off to check on Julian, doing the dishes by herself. She was already sprinting to his room, taking the stairs two at a time. When she got to his room, Ema threw open the door, panic wracking her body, only to find it empty. He wasn't there. For a moment she thought - hoped - that he wasn't sick, this morning had been only a bad dream, but then she heard it.

It was Jules, retching. She opened the connecting door to the bathroom, and saw him, kneeling in front of the toilet, vomiting. Emma pulled out her stele, trying to remember if there was an anti-nausea rune, or maybe even a seasickness rune.

"Hey, Jules." She rubbed his back until he was finished. "Is this the part of the movie where you tell me you're either pregnant or hungover?"

"Very... Funny, Em."

His voice was hoarse. Emma filled a glass with water and handed it to him. He got up shakily and rinsed his mouth before taking a swig. She examined him; his eyes were glassy, with shadows beneath them, looking almost sunken into his pale face in the dim light. He looked like a ghost, or maybe a statue of Hades, the Greek god of death.

"Do you.... How do you feel?" She waved off his weak protests and helped him to bed.

"Better than I look. That's saying something, isn't it?"

"It's still not as good as I look." She grinned at him, trying to lighten the mood.

"No, it's not." He nodded, then yawned.

She got up to leave. Staying would mean being alone with him, and that would mean having to hurt them both even more.

"Don't go, Emma," he implored her. "Stay."

Julian was already half-asleep, his voice slurred with drowsiness.

"I have to go," she said quietly. "But I'm gonna be here when you wake up, okay?"

She left silently, and jammed the heels of her hands against her shut eyes before the tears could seep out.

It was too late for her feelings, though.