#idk what to do about it apparently i've gotten into writing this trio most often lmao

[kuiinncedes]

come morning light

another shadowhunter au oneshot time lol 🤪 this is directly related to my last one “and you knew what it was” (takes place before it) but you don’t necessarily need to read that first (it might make this one make more sense tho there’s like more background i guess kinda lol 😋)

kinda angsty mostly hurt/comfort-y and it is a shadowhunter fic so there’s a little bit of description of violence and injury but nothing graphic

title from “safe and sound” by taylor swift

also as always lmk if anyone wants any shadowhunter things to be explained :]

the full fic is under the cut and also on ao3!!! :DDD ahhh the first new fic i’m posting on tumblr and ao3 at the same time lol 🤪

--

“I’m fine,” Tina manages to say, teeth clenched and hand pressed to her side.

“You’re very much not,” Kurt says, all but dragging her over to a corner alley, out of the way of demons. “Don’t even try to pretend.” 

“What are you - I need to be out there - ”

“Getting yourself killed is not going to help Quinn,” Kurt hisses, but not unkindly, gripping Tina’s arms -- not too tightly, he hopes. He feels the tension in her muscles give in under his hands and then a sob bursts out of her like she can’t control it, and her hands shoot up to cover her mouth. The sobs tear out and part of Kurt’s mind thinks, finally, because, fuck, Kurt knows.

He recognizes this, recognizes it in Tina, but also recognizes it because he’s been so close to it himself lately. He’s been there. 

He helps Tina stand up against the wall, scribbling a quick iratze below her collarbone and watching for the demons because, by the Angel --

“Now is not a good time for this, babe,” he whispers gently, mostly to himself. He adds an amissio rune beside the iratze just in case; he didn’t get to see how deep the cut went, or if there was poison or anything, in which case it will be a much bigger problem. Thank the Angel that his rune-drawing has always been perfect, even when he’s barely looking and just scratching them out as quickly as humanly possible. 

“Stay here,” he says, and he knows Tina would object if she could, but Kurt really just needs to get rid of these demons as soon as fucking possible because there are fucking mundanes nearby and it’s so hard to keep track of everything when he feels the same, when he feels like he’s unraveling and has been for the last two days --

But Quinn is okay, he has to remind himself before he can start spiraling too. The parabatai bond doesn’t lie. He can feel it.

So the demons. 

Luckily, it’s a relatively common, relatively mindless brand of demon -- Kurt never knows the species off the top of his head, doesn’t care enough to memorize them except for the really dangerous ones -- and he’s able to surprise them, taking two out right off the bat. The other three give him some trouble, and he very nearly misses what would’ve been a more than somewhat painful strike but he gets away almost unscathed. A check on his Sensor that there aren’t any more demons in the immediate area, a check around him to make sure everything was well-glamoured and no mundanes saw anything of note, a quick iratze while he’s doing that and he’s back to Tina, who doesn’t look much different.

It’s not the first time Kurt’s had to help Tina calm down when the stress -- the everything -- gets too much and it just bursts out. It is the first time it’s happened in a situation that was so high-stress itself, so that was a little harrowing, but since that part’s over now, thankfully… 

He talks to her about their newest design ideas, which had screeched to somewhat of a halt because of Quinn, but they still float around in his head and he takes them out at night, modifies and deletes and creates and designs until he can fall asleep, so he catches Tina up on what he’s been doing with them. He talks about dumb stories of himself and Quinn when they were younger, training together to be parabatai and sparring when neither of them knew how to spar and they nearly killed each other, whether from incompetence or later, from overcharged feelings and tension during arguments. He talks about everything and nothing until Tina’s sobs have turned into slow breaths and an air of defeat.

Kurt takes her hand and stops talking. He’s not quite on the level of Mercedes or even Quinn in being able to tell what Tina needs right now, so he just waits. They have time; he assumes she probably wasn’t planning on getting much sleep tonight, anyway. Neither was he.

Tina calms down and opens her mouth to speak, taking a little breath, but Kurt interrupts, “If you’re about to say ‘sorry,’ forget about it.” Tina freezes and he smiles a little. 

She ducks her head with a breathy laugh. “Okay,” she whispers.

Kurt stands up and offers his hand. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s get some food to eat while watching a dumb cheesy movie instead of sleeping to take our minds off of the shitshow that is life as a Shadowhunter.”

“That sounds nice,” Tina says with a wince as she gets up, hand hovering back over her injured side that Kurt all but forgot about until now. Before she can say anything, he draws another iratze by the faded scar from the first one. 

“Better?” he asks after a moment, already prepared to immediately have to either draw another or pull out his phone to call Mike or the Silent Brothers. 

Tina nods, shooting him a grateful smile. “Thank you.” Kurt can hear the weight of everything she’s including in the statement; he smiles back at her.