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He’s burning.
It’s not the first time, he doubts it will be the last, but it always catches him by surprise, the heat of it, how scalding it is. It’s in his head, in his heart, flashing through him like wildfire, incinerating him from the inside out.
He should be a husk, dry and cracked with heat, crumbling back to the earth from whence he came, erupting in ash and embers, floating up to the sky on the wind.
But he doesn’t.
Instead he burns, endlessly.
He wonders if this is how a phoenix feels, in a constant state of conflagration, burning on and on and on and-
“Caleb, hey, you’ve gotta wake up, I can’t carry you.”
Something cool lands on his face and he whimpers; it’s soothing, but also throws into stark contrast how blazing the rest of him feels. He thinks if he tries to move his joints will fall to pieces, and he’ll tumble to the ground like an unstrung marionette.
“Caleb... fuck, c’mon, we gotta go-”
That’s...that’s Beauregard. She sounds worried, and through the haze he connects that she’s attached to the hand on his face, to the tugging on his arm trying to pull him up. He forces his eyes open to see a blur of brown and blue looming over him, and he flinches back, crying out as the movement jars him, and the ache that’s been lying just below the surface rears up, shooting through his joints and limbs like bottled lightening.
Beauregard curses again above him, and his mind is slow, syrupy, like the molasses he keeps in the little pot in his pocket. He doesn’t know where they are, or why they should run, but the urgency in Beauregard’s voice is enough to rouse him, for him to grit his teeth til they feel like shattering and force himself into movement.
He rolls to his side, barely biting back a groan, and gets his hands under him before shoving up. Just that small effort has his arms shaking and his lungs struggling for air, and gods, he’s so weak, what happened-?
“Shit, here, let me-”
There are hands on him again, grabbing and pulling, and he almost fights before his thoughts catch up and he remembers Beauregard. His thoughts keep sliding through his mind like sand through a clenched fist, and he can’t- he can’t think, can’t focus, can barely keep his eyes open- but there’s no choice; Beauregard needs him to get up, and so he will.
Between the two of them he makes it to his feet, though he’s not sure how long he’ll be upright. Even with Beauregard’s arm around his waist and one of his arms slung over her shoulders he’s barely managing, feet stumbling like a newborn fawn over nothing.
He tries to remember what happened, what was going on, but every time he tries it just makes his head throb from the effort, the fever that's crackling through him destroying his ability to do anything but move in the direction Beauregard is pulling them.
“C’mon, man, just a bit further, you can do it.”
He wants to laugh, but he thinks if he starts he doesn’t know that he’ll stop, and he’s being difficult enough as it is without making Beauregard’s job harder. Instead, he bites his lip til it bleeds, clutches at Beauregard’s robes tightly as he’s able and stumbles on where she leads.