Some time later, there is pasta and asparagus resting in their pots on trivets on the counter, and Alice is facing two bright red stove elements.
He takes a deep breath, puts his left hand on one, and leans into it.
It hurts. It hurts a whole fuck of a lot. His jaw works, but no sound emerges; his other hand clutches at the handle on the oven door. His elbow rains pentagons onto the linoleum. When he looks down and recognizes the shape of the obsidian coins, he hisses through his teeth and lifts up his hand. What remains of his hand.
And wraps his right hand tightly around the edge of the counter, and leans his left forearm on the stove.
This time he moans, but quietly, so as not to wake Bella. And the coin that appears on the counter next to his thumb has six sides. So does the one after it, and the one he gets when he rips his smoking arm up off the red-hot coils.
A few more pentagons drop while he leans over and carefully turns off the elements, right-handed, hugging his left arm against his stomach and hissing whenever it touches anything.
Then he picks up a hexagon, clears his mind as best he can, and wishes.
Charred flesh regrows before his eyes. That hurts, too, which he should have expected but didn't; he gets another pentagon out of it in the few seconds before his arm is pristine again.
He brushes a few flakes of ash away and looks at the clean new skin.
Then he lays his arm across the elements again. Hexagon, hexagon—
His knees buckle; he grabs at the counter with his right hand and misses; he falls to the floor, whacking his left arm against one leg of the kitchen table and dropping another hexagon when he does it.
"Ow," he mutters, more out of surprise than anything, and relaxes whatever part of him controls his brand new healing factor. His arm fixes itself again, faster than last time. He rolls onto his back and looks up to see if all this nonsense has awakened Bella.
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Some time later, there is pasta and asparagus resting in their pots on trivets on the counter, and Alice is facing two bright red stove elements.
He takes a deep breath, puts his left hand on one, and leans into it.
It hurts. It hurts a whole fuck of a lot. His jaw works, but no sound emerges; his other hand clutches at the handle on the oven door. His elbow rains pentagons onto the linoleum. When he looks down and recognizes the shape of the obsidian coins, he hisses through his teeth and lifts up his hand. What remains of his hand.
And wraps his right hand tightly around the edge of the counter, and leans his left forearm on the stove.
This time he moans, but quietly, so as not to wake Bella. And the coin that appears on the counter next to his thumb has six sides. So does the one after it, and the one he gets when he rips his smoking arm up off the red-hot coils.
A few more pentagons drop while he leans over and carefully turns off the elements, right-handed, hugging his left arm against his stomach and hissing whenever it touches anything.
Then he picks up a hexagon, clears his mind as best he can, and wishes.
Charred flesh regrows before his eyes. That hurts, too, which he should have expected but didn't; he gets another pentagon out of it in the few seconds before his arm is pristine again.
He brushes a few flakes of ash away and looks at the clean new skin.
Then he lays his arm across the elements again. Hexagon, hexagon—
His knees buckle; he grabs at the counter with his right hand and misses; he falls to the floor, whacking his left arm against one leg of the kitchen table and dropping another hexagon when he does it.
"Ow," he mutters, more out of surprise than anything, and relaxes whatever part of him controls his brand new healing factor. His arm fixes itself again, faster than last time. He rolls onto his back and looks up to see if all this nonsense has awakened Bella.