#thank u caiti aaaaaaa

[solasan]

on the touch prompts, 2 for june and adam uwu

2. with relief.

Before coming to Wayhaven, Adam du Mortain could count on one hand the number of times he had been seriously knocked down by one of their foes.

An impressive statement, certainly, given his nine centuries of service, but no less accurate for its weight. Indeed, he has ever been in his prime, striving to prove his capabilities since the first dusk he faced with immortality thrumming in his veins.

Farah would doubtless find it funny, how much his exemplary record has been muddied by their stay in Oregon. This is what he thinks on his way to the bruising ground, his lungs rattling around the wooden stake buried between his fourth and fifth ribs, three inches deep. She would— she would make some sort of joke about it, probably. And the detective might laugh.

Or perhaps it would be her jesting in the first place?

The Trappers are getting desperate to catch her, he muses as though from very far away, and then — for the second time in the last year, and also an entire millennium — he passes out.

He could not say how long he was unconscious for. It is not like sleeping; he does not dream, and that is almost a relief, given how frequently the detective has been haunting his nights as of late.

But it does leave him a little disoriented when he wakes, still collapsed across the concrete, a roaring pain in his chest that reaches a sudden crescendo when something in that area is ripped free. Cold floods in, filling his rib cage, his lungs, every breath hard-won and edged with ice.

He cannot— he cannot see properly, his eyes rolling uselessly in his skull, vision blurred and skittering sideways when he tries to focus. Nothing has form for long; he thinks he catches sight of Nate’s cheek or perhaps his chin, and a spray of something red beside him, but beyond that—

Beyond that, he cannot be sure.

He swallows thickly, mouth acrid and vile, coppery in a way he is ill-used to; his own blood, he thinks, not another’s. What happened? How— how did it get there?

“Adam, you have to stay still,” Nate rumbles from a great distance, and so it must be him at his side.

“Wha—” Adam begins to slur, concentrating on the mastery of his tongue, which feels thick, blunt and clumsy in his mouth. “Wha’ hap—”

“Adam!” comes a cry, and then shoes pounding on the asphalt, the sound of something stumbling or slamming to the floor beside him.

“June,” Nate is saying, “be careful, don’t overwhelm him—”

“Fuck! Shit, sorry, sorry, are— are you okay? Nate, is he okay?”

“June,” he manages, following the sound of her — breath, heartbeat, and voice — with his still-uncooperative eyes.

“Hey,” she breathes, and then something soft and cold is brushing his cheek, cradling his jaw.

He is too tired not to lean into her. He is too tired to pretend he does not follow her like a flower does the sun, blooming in her light. He knows only that she is safe, that she is home, that the world seems less terrible now with her hand on his skin and her scent filling his head.

He hears her swallow. Then, with a laugh just an octave off: “Wow, uh. You— you must be pretty fucked up, huh?”

Adam grumbles. 

“That’s— shit, that’s like, a metric fuckton of blood.” She makes a high-pitched, anxious sound. “Is he— Nate, is he gonna be okay? What do we do?”

“I—” Nate swallows. “I need to contact the Agency. They’ll have to send out a team to get him. He’ll— he’ll be fine, he’ll heal, he just… he needs to be seen.”

“Okay, okay, cool, cool, cool— um, what should I—”

“Stay here. Put pressure over the wound; yes, that, hold your hand there—” and the rest of his sentence is lost to Adam as pain fills his chest again and his vision goes white.

He comes back to himself under a litany of her words. Not that many of them make sense. He thinks— he thinks she is telling him something, but he can’t figure out what. His ears are working, but his mind isn’t; if he could just focus, if he could only concentrate—

“June,” he croaks, and the hand on his cheek trembles.

“Oh, thank God, I thought—” June laughs again in that wobbly, wet kind of way, and his heart — quite independently of whatever was done to his chest — throbs. “I thought you might’ve died on me you fucking— you fucking asshole, oh my God, I’m gonna kill you.”

“M’not—” He inhales, exhales. Gasps for one breath, two, three. “M’not dead. Swear.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re damn right you’re not. Jesus, if you die on me, I swear to God I’ll— I’ll bring you back to life and kick your ass.”

Laughing is painful, he soon learns, his chuckle becoming a hacking, bloody cough that leaves him panting. You fool. You absolute fool.

“Sorry, sorry.” 

June shifts with a low grunt, and then his head is pillowed on something firm but warm, her fingers combing through his hair. That’s nice, he thinks vaguely, pressing himself into her touch as much as he can. I like that.

“Yeah?” she asks.

Oh. Oh, did I say that aloud?

Adam blinks up at her blearily. It is perhaps not the most flattering angle — she has pulled him into her lap, he realises with distant surprise, his skull resting on her thighs — but that doesn’t matter. Her eyes are big and brown and a little bit wet, brimming with such concern that he can barely stand to meet them.

He swallows. Blinks once, twice. Wrestles control of his tongue from the dark edges of his vision with a clenched jaw and a shuddering breath.

“Are y’alright?” 

June laughs again; high, wild, half-mad. “Are— are you kidding?”

He makes a rough sound he hopes she will interpret as negatory.

“Okay, I— I really should be asking you that, don’t you think? I mean Jesus, I leave you alone for one fucking minute and you go and— and get yourself turned into a pin-cushion.”

She sounds so scared. He has scared her. This is unconscionable.

“S’not a pin,” he croaks. “Stake.”

“Is— was that a joke?”

He hmms. 

His chest hurts. By God, it hurts so much. He has not been staked in some time, and never so terribly — he had forgotten, quite. How could he have forgotten?

He reaches down to feel for the pain, but June catches his hand in hers, knotting their fingers together and squeezing.

“Okay, buddy. Don’t go doing that, okay? That’s— that’s a bad idea.”

Adam grumbles.

“Shut up, dipshit.” She squeezes his hand again. “Just— just stay there and wait with me, okay? They’re on their way. You’ll— you’ll be okay.”

Yes, he will. With her hand in his, how could he be anything but?