Honeybee [Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children FF]

Chapter Eight

Hugh

I woke around four from an odd dream I couldn’t fully remember, and couldn’t fall back asleep. I just wasn’t tired anymore. I pulled myself out of bed and yawned, stretching, before combing my fingers through my hair. I changed slowly, clumsy from grogginess, into slacks and a button-down, my usual outfit. Once changed, I headed into the guest room and made eye contact with Bronwyn, whose heavy frame sagged by the window as she tiredly kept watch. I nodded toward her room and she smiled in gratitude and headed off.

I crept quietly across the dark room and seated myself at a desk that sat perched near the wall, a chair in front of it. I sat on it and opened my jaws, allowing my bees to flow out and dance around a bit. I synchronized them, replaying that cheery jazz song from earlier in my head as they danced in zigzag circles. I heard a faint murmur and lost my focus, turning to Iris’s bed as the bees buzzed back to me. I looked over and she was shifting in her sleep, whimpering a bit as she lifted her hands. Her foot jerked to the side and she turned the other direction, and her breathing was coming faster, more panting than anything else.

Immediately I was on my feet, across the room, on the side of the bed, shaking her gently. She woke with a jolt, and upon seeing me she flung herself upon me, her arms around my shoulders.

“Hugh, I was so scared,” she whispered, shaking like a leaf in the wind. I held her close, her face buried in my shoulder.

“Sh, it’s okay, I’m here; it’s okay now, I’ll protect you,” I murmured. We remained like that for a while, me reassuring her and her shaking, until finally she spoke again.

“Hold me.”

I leaned back and looked at her and in her desperate eyes there was sincere fear. I nodded, unable to speak for my thrumming heart in my throat, and she laid back under the blankets. I laid down as well, above them, and she laid her head on my shoulder. I wrapped an arm around her and brought the other one over to her, but was uncertain of what to do with it. She had her hands wrapped around each other near her chest, and she took my hovering hand into her hands, curling hers around it and closing her eyes.

And as she lay there, curled against my side, a warmth began to grow inside me, and blossomed into something bigger.

~*~

I laid there for a while. She slept peacefully, her breathing evening out and her body growing just a tad limper beneath me. I thought back to earlier. When she’d held Charles.

The look in her eyes, the genuineness, the tenderness and care, it had been an incredible thing to see there. She seemed so bewildered, yet awed, and something in her had changed. Or maybe something in my view of her did. Whatever it was, things weren’t the same now.

When we’d danced earlier I’d seen her eyes light up in a way they hadn’t before. We weren’t arguing for once. She’d been so alive, as spirited as I am, so happy. She’d been really enjoying herself- it was a refreshing change. She’d been so tense just that afternoon and then, somehow, when dancing to that jazz song, she was so ecstatic. She filled the room with her smile, her green eyes taking in every detail. Her laugh at the little things, like Enoch getting angry at not being able to dance or Hutch attempting to, had been like the tinkle of a bell. Her voice had been warm, smooth, a bringer of joy- like honey.

Charles buzzed out and I got the message. She just might be my honeybee.

What about Fiona?

The little voice in my head reminded me of my long-time crush. But the girl barely paid me the time of day, and right now she wasn’t even here. She’s never shown any indication of wanting to speak to me, despite my trying to talk to her. Besides, Iris will be gone in less than a week now- shouldn’t I make the best of it while she’s here?