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Byron pulled himself into consciousness, trying to distance himself from his still-throbbing shoulder. He’d- been hit by something, he thought, it had been confusing and scary and then there’d been a stinging pain in his arm and he’d tensed up and pulled in on himself in clumsy pain and fallen and then it had been worse ‘cause the ground was all covered with barbed wire and broken glass and twisted pieces of metal and it had hurt too much for him to get up.
“Are you okay?” Leo’s voice. He tried to get his eyes open, repressing a wince at the light and the smoke in the air making them sting. Leo was biting their lip in worry, sitting across from him. He was safe, then.
He tried to get to his feet, but his arms slipped out underneath him and he ended up falling back down. “‘M fine. Did you see what happened?”
“I don’t- I was running, and then you weren’t behind me, and I had to go back and get you and I thought you were dead, and now you’re real hurt.”
“It was super cool,” Byron lied immediately. “There was this big standoff thing and I had um a gun and a sword and I was fending them off from getting you and then I got shot but kept going and killed them and it was awesome-”
“That is not what happened.”
“I’m sorry you don’t have a sense of imagination.”
“I’m sorry you don’t have a sense of self preservation. Sit still.” Leo took Byron’s arm in hand and started inspecting the bullet wound.
He tried to wriggle away. “Oww, stop it!”
“I gotta fix it up! Otherwise it won’t heal right!”
Byron bit back more complaints. It still hurt a lot, and there were little cuts on his hands and the back of his neck and his elbows where he’d fallen that kept catching on things.
They tugged him gently to get him to move over to a better position and he fell with it, curling further into Leo’s lap and burrowing his head into their shoulder. He dug his nails into their leg to try and stop from recoiling as they tugged at the bits of his scavenged uniform that had caught in it.
“It’s just a graze,” they said quietly. “There must have been- just so much gunfire, and they didn’t care who they hit.”
“‘s unfair.” His voice was muffled in layers of shirt. “I never did anything. Was just there.”
They sighed. “I know. That’s just how it is.”
“I’m going to kill all of them someday. All the soldiers. Then maybe they’ll leave us alone,” Byron promised. “And then you won’t have to worry. It’ll be proper nice, we’ll have as much food as we want and a house and won’t have to hide all the time.”
Leo finished with the bandages and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Yeah, sure, maybe someday.”