Message #147884

[Trine Larsen]

Trine had watched his face as he spoke, there were no tears, but his eyes were glossy. A hazy pink had filled in making the light blue of his eyes a shade brighter in the harsh fluorescent lighting, until he looked down. She frowned at a loss of what to say other than to just be there for him and for Tony even if-

”It’s okay...” She reached a hand out, running her thumb over the back of his knuckles that had gone bone white from the sheer pressure he had put into curling his fingers into fists.

It was hard when you wanted so desperately to feel something openly, to not be alone in it, but you’re hard wired to want to hide anything that wasn't the shining example of a happy, well put together human being. Kid Genius was like a tuna can with two lids. He opened up, but there was always so much more beneath the surface that she could feel was there, but just something...always stopped stopped it.

Things weren’t okay. It absolutely was not ‘okay’ that her friend and his best friend was in a hospital breathing through machines. It wasn’t okay that Tony was suffering. That Kid was falling apart and it was all at the hands of people she had been trying to change, or have changes put in place to stop this sort of thing from happening. At this point she could find nothing to back up her words of absolutely anything being “okay” because she was sick to her stomach that this was happening. That she was standing in a white washed hallway that smelt like sanitizer, and plastic, and recycled air holding onto the hand of man still trying to be strong and keep himself together when he had every right to just crumble.

It was okay if he needed to.

If the pieces of him he had been keeping tied together for as long as he had been in this hospital and the one before that fell away... that was okay. She would stay there and gather them up so the scatter of nurses walking by and clattering food trolleys wouldn’t blow them away. And she would hold them as long as she needed to until it was time to glue them all back together again.
Her hand fell still over KG’s and she squeezed the fist he’d been holding at his side.

She wanted to ask if he’d eaten anything. If he thought Tony would have liked to have something with him that she could get, but she couldn’t get the words out. She wanted to just pull him back into the hug and stay that way for a while. Instead she took a step to close the space between them, taking his opposite hand in hers as well and looked down. Just standing there with him in support.

”....I got you….”