Chapter Text
Winston’s only partly surprised when he opens his front door to find an Amazon box he didn’t order sitting in the hallway.
What surprise he does feel stems from not knowing it was going to show up on this particular day or at this hour. Not that the timing really matters — this is the closest he’s come to leaving his apartment all week; there’s no way he would have missed the delivery. And the package itself doesn’t come as a shock because Taylor, after swearing up and down that he could let his week off be a true break and not worry about checking his work email or keeping up with market news or doing anything other than resting and relaxing, had texted him a few days ago:
Rian would like to send something to you. Would you object to me giving her your mailing address?
On reading that (the first message of any kind he’d opened in days), Winston had blinked a few times in confusion, because what, and responded:
What is it
She asked that I not tell you. I believe she wants it to be a surprise.
She did tell me what she plans to send, and I wouldn’t be raising the question if I thought that you wouldn’t appreciate it, or that she was being dishonest.
Good to know that Taylor wouldn’t let Rian send him a box full of glitter and dog shit, unless Rian did a great job of hiding her intentions to send him a box full of glitter and dog shit. He’d only had one question after that.
Why is she giving me something
He hadn’t expected a real answer, but Taylor had spent about five minutes typing one.
Rian was, and has been, concerned about your wellbeing. This is her way of showing it.
That had made sense, kind of. Mostly because he’d remembered a story Taylor had told him maybe a year and a half ago, about how in their early days at Axe Cap they’d once been worried that Mafee was completely bombing at work, or else coming close to it, and had been advised (they never said by who) to buy him something as a show of support. They’d shelled out for a signed wrestling poster, from the time that the Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell in a Cell, and left it at his desk, and he’d apparently stepped it up after that. Inordinately expensive gifts as a love language.
Of course, thinking in those terms about receiving a mystery item from the coworker he’s been nursing weird fuzzy feelings toward for some weeks now, in the wake of melting down very publicly and embarrassingly right in front of her at work, had made Winston feel floaty and lightheaded — and that was without even factoring in the whole thing being mediated by his boss who he’s been having even more weird and complicated feelings toward for ages now, because God, he can only try to pick apart what so many words and choices mean before he wears himself out. So he’d resolved to finish that text conversation and not think about it any more and just wait for his ostensibly unexpected gift to show up.
Okay you can tell her. And also tell her I said thanks
I’ll do both.
I also hope you’re doing well.
Could be better but I’m getting there
That’s good to hear.
Again: feelings way too complicated to unravel in the moment.
(Taylor had told him that story about the wrestling poster while he was halfway asleep in their bed. On the last day he was at work, they’d offered, in the quiet of their office, to replace his broken headphones.)
And just as intended, he’d gone back to his new schedule of sleeping half the day in four- and six-hour chunks and eating whenever he felt like it and talking to no one, right up until he’d heard a knock on his door and found a cardboard box outside. Which is to say, now.
Winston goes to pick up the box and fails. It’s heavier than he was expecting. (He doesn’t even know what he was expecting, but it wasn’t that.) He recalibrates, manages to get it off the ground on his second try, and lugs it into his apartment, pushing the door shut behind him with one foot.
Most of his waking hours recently have been spent on the couch in his living room, so the box ends up there too, dropped onto the cushion next to where he sits. For a few minutes he doesn’t do much of anything but sit and vaguely contemplate the strangeness of being in his apartment in the middle of the day on a… Thursday? He thinks it’s Thursday — with this box next to him. Then he actually looks at the box, which reveals nothing about its contents, and starts picking at the packing tape. It might be easier to open it with scissors or a knife or something else sharper than his fingernails, but that would require getting up and looking for the sharp thing in question, which would be much harder than staying right here and scraping away.
The last strip of tape peels off, and the flaps of the box fall open. The first thing he sees inside is the packing slip, which he takes out and tosses aside, followed by the crumpled brown paper that’s stuffed in around the actual contents to fill up the box. What’s left after that is dark blue and soft-looking and enveloped in a plastic case that helpfully informs him it contains a Premium Weighted Blanket with Micro-Fleece Duvet, fifteen pounds.
On some level, he wonders if he should be offended by getting this as an unsolicited gift. (He has one meltdown in the office and now a weighted blanket has been sent to his door — why not toss in a puzzle piece bumper sticker?) But it’s a nice gesture, or at least nicely meant, and it looks like a pretty expensive blanket, and he isn’t not interested in trying it out. (At his last dental appointment, the hygienist had forgotten to take the lead vest off of him after his X-rays were finished, and that was the most pleasant… well, the least unpleasant dental checkup he’s ever had.)
He picks up the packing slip from the floor, reading it this time. The price is nowhere to be found, but there’s a message from Rian.
Hope you like blue.
He does like blue. Blue’s a great color. Maybe his favorite color.
Winston unzips the case without taking it out of the box and places a cautious hand on the exposed square of blanket, sliding slowly. So that’s what micro-fleece feels like. Not quite velvet, not quite fur, but plush and smooth under his fingers.
He’s not sure how long he sits there before realizing he’s been mindlessly stroking the blanket the entire time, but he’d guess at least a solid five minutes. That’s settled — he has to see how this actually feels on top of him.
The blanket’s a pain to get out of the case, wedged in there as tightly as it is, and once it’s out, it’s as heavy as ever and no easier to handle. Winston shoves away the box and plastic case and tries to lay the blanket out along the couch, but it’s so much wider than the cushions that the extra weight hanging over the edge sends the whole thing slithering onto the floor. He bundles the blanket into his arms with some difficulty and resigns himself to having to haul it into his bedroom.
By some miracle, Winston’s bed is already close enough to being made (that is, the sheet and blanket are still on the bed, and covering it, mostly) that when he gets there, he can lie right down, pull the blanket over himself, and struggle to straighten it out until his arms get tired. When he decides he’s done a good enough job, he relaxes, letting his head hit the pillow and properly feeling the weight of the blanket on the rest of him, and holy shit is it comfortable.
Really, “comfortable” is an understatement. The blanket molds itself to every inch of him, putting that lead vest to shame. It’s the same kind of soothing he’d just brushed up against on the coldest New York winter nights, piling blankets up to keep the chill out and finding that he drifted off without looking at his alarm clock once. It’s like being held, perfectly tight, without hesitation.
No wonder that, before he can act on the hazy thought of I should text Rian to thank her myself, he’s asleep.