Who Do You Love - Dean Ambrose

Chapter 13: All I Want For Christmas Is You

As much as I was loathed to admit it, the foul-tasting ooze actually managed to do the job and I was able to fall into a comfortable drowsiness that lasted on and off for much of the night.

Plus I was able to pull up the covers.

Not the whole way, but it was still a kind of start.

It wore off again sometime in the early morning – as in really early, on the fringes of dawn – at which point I woke up almost bathed in perspiration and more confused than I had ever been in my life.

Where on earth was I?

What day was it?

What time?

Why did I feel so battered and ugh?

Vague recollections came rolling back slowly and I blinked my hot and weary little eyes, gradually able to make out my surroundings and the familiar lines of my bedroom.

My home.

This time I could feel that I was practically roasting, which was probably some sort of sickness progress –I thought – and my throat was so thick and swollen and tender that just swallowing and breathing brought tears to my eyes.

More worryingly still, I seemed to be moving.

Except I wasn't.

Well, at least, not that I could tell.

But my entire body still felt like it was floating, like it had somehow levitated clean off the bed. Not only that but it seemed to be twisting, as if my torso was turning the wrong way to my feet in some bizarre sort of glamorous magic act in which I couldn't recall being given a part.

Despite the fact that I was lying horizontal, the illusion briefly threw my balance off and suddenly getting the impression I was falling – which it turned out I wasn't – I flung my arms out. One of my elbows caught Dean in the kidney and he let out a noise and then a grumble of dissent,

"Ngh, what the – ,"

Fortunately he caught on pretty quickly and realized that his night time attacker was me. Spinning in the covers he reached across blearily and cupped my cheek,

"Hey, y'kay?"

It was a barely coherent half-whisper in the darkness and even for Dean it was deep and rough, but it was also concerned and utterly comforting given what I was going through,

"I'm floating."

"You – you're what?"

"Floating," I mumbled, still experiencing the turning, "Feels like my legs are on back to front."

"They're not."

"Are you – are you sure?"

Dean flapped up the covers and his blue eyes flickered quickly towards the foot of the bed.

"M' sure, an' you're not fuckin' floatin' either, can prove it."

As he spoke he lightly tapped my ass and the warmth of his hand burnt in through the material of the shirt he had picked out for me to wear the day before. It was fast becoming gross with different fluids but mostly with the unforgiving dripping fever sweat and clearly feeling the heat coming off me, Dean frowned mildly and reached out to touch my head.