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The detective is curled up in the common area when Adam finds her.
Well. Perhaps ‘curled up’ is poor phrasing, on his part; rather, she’s sprawled on her back across most of the sofa, her head lolling off the edge at what has to be an uncomfortable angle, long neck arched and slim and lovely. Her hair is falling loose from its usual messy bun, and it trails over the plush carpet in thick tendrils of pale strawberry blonde, spraying across a few crumpled pages of notebook paper marked by her chicken-scratch scrawl beside the couch.
The veiled windows of the living area are dim at the best of times, but the grey-blue light leeching through the mesh would probably put them at around dawn. Unfortunately, that hardly accounts for how long she’s been here. The detective sleeps the way a vampire does; sparingly, and never for long, always bouncing with some kind of nervous energy, filling the air around her with the caffeine-laced double-time tick of her heart that, in anyone else, would be unbearable.
But that heart is surprisingly mellow now. Steady and slow, not pounding but rather thumping, quiet as a far-away bird’s. Save the rise and fall of her chest and a slight furrow between her brows, her entire body is still, almost loose — he’s never seen her so inactive in all the time that he’s known her, so without anxiety or excitement or concern.
It’s— humbling, almost.
Except that that’s a ridiculous thought to have, and he banishes it with a clench of his jaw and a shake of his head.
He heaves a sigh, stepping lightly over to her before bending to collect the papers strewn across the carpet and set them on the coffee table. There’s a book of vampire myths from the library lying open and face-down underneath one of them, and he closes it before Nate can wander in and have his heart broken over its treatment.
Squinting at the detective’s truly hideous handwriting, he picks out a few half-formed questions and ideas — Aspen wood? Ask Nate on one line, Lamia? Strigoi? Sparkler? on another — interspersed with apparently random doodles. A displeased-looking cat smoking a cigarette in one margin, then a surprisingly well-replicated rendition of a steaming coffee cup wearing a cape above a bullet-pointed list of herbs.
And, often, an eye. Always the same one; very detailed, eyelashes and lids lovingly picked out first in black ink and then in blue, in pencil once or twice, with occasional hints at a strong nose or a sharp cheekbone at the edges. It’s familiar, in an oddly removed kind of way, and Adam frowns down at the paper for several very long heartbeats, trying to place where he’s seen it before and coming up blank.
He didn’t know June was an artist. She’d never hinted that she had any interest at all in art — not that he does, really, but still. He finds something warming in his chest, eyes darting over to her still-sleeping face as he tucks away this new little tidbit about her for—
For later inspection, he thinks. He should know her well. For the sake of the team, and his job.
Once all her notes are piled neatly on the table, he runs a hand through his hair, frowning down at the detective’s still slumbering form.
At any other time, he would wake her. She has a room of her own in the warehouse, after all, and it’s certainly inconvenient of her to fall asleep in the common area, where anyone could walk in. Where he’s walked in. Not to mention the agony she’s no doubt inflicting on her back, which could leave her unbalanced and floundering in a fight, if she isn’t careful.
But it isn’t any other time, and this is June. She sleeps so rarely, and usually so fitfully, stumbling into the kitchen for coffee or the training room for conversation at ungodly hours, and—
And he hasn’t seen her this peaceful in all the time that he’s known her.
A lock of copper hair has fallen into her face, fluttering slightly with each of her soft exhales, and Adam finds himself holding his own breath as he brushes it away and tucks it behind her ear. It’s soft to the touch, strawberry-scented and light as a feather, and once he releases it, the urge to scrape away its memory from the pads of his fingers is almost unbearable. The skin there itches, and he rubs his digits together with a frown, thumb over index then middle then ring finger, but all for naught.
Her nose wrinkles then, rubbing the ear he’d just-barely avoided touching against her shoulder before she begins to wriggle against the couch restlessly, only stopping once she’s settled on her side.
The couch is one of Nate’s antiques, deep-seated and covered in button tufting, made more for sitting and entertaining and tea-sipping than anything else. To name it ‘uncomfortable’ would be a vast understatement, which usually Adam would have little problem with, because he prefers to stand anyway.
The detective, unfortunately, is clearly not of the same mind. And she will injure her neck like this, if she hasn’t already.
With the Maa-alused relocated and the carnival under control, Wayhaven is peaceful once more, but Adam has not survived over nine hundred years by trusting in anything so fragile as peace. More will come, drawn by June and her fragile, breakable skin, the blood that pulses beneath it. They must — all of them — be in top condition to protect her. And the town.
This is the reason that Adam eases her off of the couch and into his arms. This is the reason that he learns the soft weight of her, how very warm she is against him, how her scent is not just strawberries but coffee, too, and underneath that the faint tang of menthol and nicotine, and underneath that the smell of cotton and soap and summer.
Settling her properly in his grip takes a moment of adjustment, but eventually he has her against his chest, her knees thrown over one of his arms and her back cradled by the other. June stirs, just slightly, and he falls very still — her face is lolling gracelessly against his shoulder, her nose scrunching up slightly as her brow furrows, but she blessedly doesn’t wake. In fact, after a moment, she hums and nuzzles into him with a snuffling snore, her face falling slack, body boneless in his hold.
The breath he releases then, one he hadn’t even realised he was holding, is oddly shaky, shuddering in his over-full chest and up his throat. Foolish.
She doesn’t stir again, not as Adam carries her through the living area, not as he takes her through the halls— not even when he stumbles across Farah, leaving the kitchen with a cup of something coppery.
“Well. Hi there, Adam,” Farah says with a grin, eyes locked on June and brows raised. “Nice night, huh?”
Merde, she’s going to be insufferable about this for days.
“Farah.”
Thinking — foolishly, again — that such an acknowledgement will be enough, Adam starts to continue down the hallway.
Farah, in her way, decides to prove him wrong by stepping directly into his path. “Whatcha doing?”
He darts a cautious look June’s way, but her face remains smooth. In fact, as though in response to either his concern or Farah’s question, she releases a particularly loud snore.
Do not smile. Do not smile. Do not smile.
“Awwww, Adam, you’re adorable. Y’know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile like that.”
Damn it.
“Farah,” he says again for lack of anything else. “Shut up. She’s sleeping.”
Farah rocks on her heels. “Mm, I see that.”
“So be quiet and let me take her to bed.”
“Yeah, I bet you’d like that.”
“What?”
“It was a sex joke, Adam. Y’know, sex? That thing people do? That thing Morgan does all the time?”
Adam is going to crack a tooth clenching his jaw. “Yes, I understand the joke.”
“Oh, good.” She’s still grinning.
He growls under his breath, shaking his head, before pushing past her and down the hall.
“Make sure to tuck her in!” Farah whisper-yells after him, and if his hands weren’t already full of June, he might have thrown something back at her.
As he can’t, he might just have to put her through her paces in sparring tomorrow instead.
June’s door is blessedly open when he reaches it, so he doesn’t have to fuss about with the handle or anything; he can just pad over to her bed, the carpet plush under his socked feet, and set her down atop the sheets.
Or— he can try to. Because at some point during their journey from the living room, June had knotted her fingers into the grey fabric of his t-shirt, and she has a surprisingly strong grip, even in her sleep, one that only tightens when he begins to draw away.
Adam hesitates. He cannot wake her at the last minute, not after he’s managed to avoid it for this long. But he cannot stay here, either, waiting for her to wake and— and doubtlessly turn an accusing eye on him, wondering what he’s doing here while she’s so vulnerable.
He is ill-practiced in being gentle, but there’s nothing else for it, so he begins the task of carefully loosening her hold on him. Her fingers aren’t so warm as the rest of her — poor circulation, perhaps? — and he has to consciously smother the urge to breathe some heat into them as he prises away first one, then another, then the rest.
And then he’s left with her hand in his, pulse almost visible at her exposed wrist. June’s palm is— it’s soft, not so callused as her fingers, marked by lines and folds that, to someone like Sanja, might mean something, but to him are a mystery. A long life, he thinks, hopes. Let them mean a long life.
It’s not until it dawns on him that he’s holding June’s hand that he lets it go, dropping it as carefully as he knows how onto the bed beside her, and then brushing his own against his trouser-clad thighs, unsure of what to do with himself now.
Tuck her in, Farah had said. Bah. As though he were some sort of overzealous mother-hen. As though— as though he cares that much.
Hm. But the facility is cold, for a human, and June has foregone her usual hoodie, arms bared to the elements.
Well. Perhaps…
Adam sighs, clenching his jaw, but somehow unable to leave without knowing she’s comfortable. And so he picks up one of the blankets thrown over the foot of her bed and lays it over her, drawn up to the shoulders to be sure she won’t catch cold before she wakes.
Let that be enough, he decides, heading for the door and not allowing himself to linger there, not even for a second. It will be enough.