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In the woods somewhere, 1897.
Beyond the flaring treeline of an old, wild-grown forest straddling the main road lies a safehouse. Small, cramped in the corners, and enchanted to resemble a dilapidated shack of no consequence, it is now where Adam tucks both himself and Nathaniel away, brutally aware of the blood trail they’ve left behind, the red splattered rawly on the wet foliage of the forest floor. The slick flow of it sticks now to Adam’s fingers, still curled tightly over Nate’s side, as he carries them away and through, deeper and deeper into the sprawling woods.
The wolves fell back several miles ago, gone to lick their wounds and tend their own in the aftermath of violence, but Adam doesn’t dare slow until the shimmery illusion comes into view. At once a half-structure, not even worth the title ruin; then, the stinging nettle of magic on his skin, the illusions falling away to reveal a more stable structure, though still worn away at the seams.
Squat, roof slumping in the right, time yields the safehouse to moss and vine, creeping up the walls, hitching their bodies onto the cracks and crevices and dipping windows. He can smell the tang of rusted metal, the body aches of disuse hooked deeply into the place.
The enchantments shudder and groan like the creaking of old hinges as they cross the threshold of its magic and into the boundary lines of its supposed safety. It lingers in the back of his mind, how the spells used here haven’t been reinforced in twenty years or more, the inevitable decay leaving its effectiveness in severe question. Whether they would hold, whether they would ward off the snarling teeth no doubt intent on hunting them…
But he is without options. At least until Nate heals.
(The blistering suddenness of it all: Nate there and then gone, chased and cornered. Adam caught in the bared-teeth scramble of a werewolf, itching to snap its jaws and hew his head from his shoulders. The gummy odor of saliva and gnashing teeth. Skin tearing, pained cries, and Adam, snapping bones till the snarls gave way to terrified whines.)
Nate’s nails bite sharply into the meat of his shoulder, clinging deep enough to draw blood, and he must not even realize. Adam slows his gait, flinching at the run he had forced them both to maintain—Nate was, is, in no state for such a thing. But he would rather Nate endure the flee than lose him to the wolves.
“Adam,” Nate gasps beside him, ragged and wet with blood he can hear swelling up from the lungs, into the throat. A wheezing cough and, “What about—”
“Later.” there is no fault or blame to lay, there is nothing more than the sharp blade in his chest. The feeling; thrumming, blood beating to the body-gripped old animal terror of Nate, surrounded on all sides, and the aftermath of that: the wolves, rendered still on the ground, eyes gleaming in the horrible realization that they were dealing with something far older than they, and far more capable of destruction. The rest of the pack howling, broken mournings for their brethren, vicious snarling for their unrelenting rage.
Adam draws the practiced coldness of centuries around him like armor, brittle with itself, and clenches his gut-fear for Nate (slick skin, scent of clove and iron and evergreen) with both hands. Press. Push down. This is no time for emotion to choke him now.
To get the door open, he must readjust, let go. Uncurling his hand from Nate’s wrist—arm drawn across his shoulder—he gives him a moment to catch his breath, the only apology he can afford before he sets Nate more on his own feet, one arm still held tightly at the waist, above the wound. Nate groans, swaying with the threat of collapse, and Adam grasps the doorknob, barely restraining a curse when it doesn’t give immediately.
A screeching whine, and the door handle wrenches and snaps off in his grip. With only a slight push, the door swings wide, shuddery with disuse, and Adam pulls Nate body-flush once again, bearing his weight with ease. Nate’s breath rattles, fresh blood sluicing down his side, and Adam ushers them both quickly through the doorway.
Inside, there is no light to be found save the filmy shafts of moonlight that hum through the windows. Still, the lines of the place are starkly clear, and he assesses the area with the sharp efficiency of experience. There’s a small reading desk. Perhaps supplies in the faint outline of the closet he can spy, but he wouldn’t trust anything in here to have been recently replaced. Dragging Nate down the narrow alley of space available, he eases him toward the bed in the corner.
Old, worn, never intended for comfort, the thin blanket moth-eaten and thickly veiled in dust. Slowly, Adam settles him down. Nate sinks his teeth into the pits of his cheeks, lips cinching around whatever pained noise threatens to escape him.
“Are they still…”
“It does not matter.” It does. It does. If they come, he’ll be prepared, but he knows the look in Nate’s eye—that soft regretting heart he possesses. The mission, failed. Later, Adam will turn each individual failure over in his mind, pouring over the missteps, notching them like a prisoner—the mistakes he will not make again, the failures he will not allow to happen twice.
Nate’s thoughts are written baldly across his face, and Adam can feel it now, how he’s on the verge of saying they must go back. But it is not Nate’s responsibility, not anymore, and so Adam silences him with a sharp frown, a hard look.
Nate has many traits that Adam deeply admires; generosity, kindness, even selflessness among them. And still, he wills him to be selfish. To put it aside.
(There are words for this, but they belong to stronger men than he. There is nothing Adam can say, nothing he can press into Nate’s hand.)
The darkness encases them both, the safehouse around them existing in shades of grey and black, all thin outline and shadowplay. It turns the mangled landscape of Nate’s ruined clothes a similar shade of blood-black, the red giving into itself, even as it continues to spread.
Neither one needs the light to see, and to know. His ability to heal far exceeds the norm. But there is no instant recovery for this.
With quick, sharp efficiency, Adam rends the tattered remains of Nate’s shirt, tossing aside the bloodied cloth without looking for its landing place. Nate groans, one hand twisting in the blanket beside him,
Long, serrated wounds carve deep. Thinner in some places, where the claws had not cut quite to the quick. The flesh mangled in others, jagged and welting, puckered, torn with no regard. Three long, uninterrupted claw marks carve themselves down Nate’s chest, meeting at the architecture of his hips, interrupted. Thinner, longer cuts splice down his left leg, disappearing under the fabric of his ruined clothes.
They bleed lazily in some places, vibrantly in others, and the viscous scent of it sticks to his teeth, his throat, sickened with dread. Again, Adam works down the flights of fear—or else horror, less animal-instinct than knife-edged reality, of seeing and knowing and understanding, to the bone.
Supplies. Adam rips himself up, pressing off his heel and then into the closet, the drawers, rifling for bandages, anything.
Binding the wounds would help them heal, if nothing else. Blood would be better to speed along the process, but hunting for animals in the wolf-ridden forest is, to say the least, unwise. And tracking down a human, perhaps, to persuade to come and then forget...
But Nate would refuse.
In motions blurred and hurried, he discards what’s useless, rifling through the different boxes until finally, finally, the gauzy white of bandages. Jugs of water, rags, bandages, he puts these things together and in the next instant he’s by Nate’s side again.
The full bellied moon crests into view in the window, casting Nate in streams of silver, tawny skin sheened with sweat and ashen. His eyes fall half-mast, head lolled to the side, breathing labored and alertness falling to the relentless pull of blood loss, pain, and Adam’s heart skip-stutters in his chest.
“Nate…” he breathes, the cot chirring under the additional weight as he settles on the small space available beside him. “Stay awake.” A murmur intended to be an order, but it comes out guttural, laden with emotion despite the steadiness of his hands, reaching for Nate with all tenderness he does not possess.
The blood leaves his hands a mottled hue, sticking in the grooves of his palm, leaving its own patchwork map of palm lines. Later, when the sun creeps like a blooming bruise on the skyline, he will scrub his hands in a creek and watch the red of it wash away, and still, still he will feel it cling under his skin—a dark spot.
Nate chuckles, an aching, almost sardonic thing ending on a grimace, and Adam grunts in response, reprimanding and desperate all at once. “I will do my best. Ah!"
Adam dunks a rag into the jug of water, and begins. His teeth grind in his skull, drawing a pulsing headache to the forefront with every hiss and shudder Nate cannot bite down despite his best efforts. He focuses where the lacerations are deepest, and won’t heal for many hours yet while his body stitches together the more minor wounds. With gentle firmness, he cleans the edges of the wounds. Every time the rag returns to the water, it leaves it darker and darker.
“That was exceptionally foolish what you did.” Adam mutters, relief and fear vying in his chest as he watches the gashes at Nate’s shoulder seal together, the skin raw and shiny with newness. The risk was too great; drawing the wolves away, toward him, away from Adam. “And entirely unnecessary.”
(Stop it, that part of him says, both separate and together within itself; there are words for this, too, but he cannot speak them.)
Nate groans, eyes squeezing shut as Adam draws him forward into a sitting position. One of his hands collapses on Adam’s shoulder, clinging tightly and moving his arm out of the way. He winds where the blood still runs, sluggish and lighter than before, and already it stains the gauze a fresh, smarting red. “They were going to surround you,” Nate says, his breath fanning out, close enough that Adam can feel it against his neck, warm and pluming in the fierce chill of autumn.
A shiver rides down his spine, spurred no doubt by whatever this feeling is, churning in his chest. Anger, yes, but not at Nate. Relief. Guilt. How could he let this happen? “I won’t apologize for—”
Adam knows his faults, knows them well enough to know he will regret this later, but the words pour from him all the same. “Then you should have let them.” He snaps, tying off the binding with a knot, his bloodied hand clasping at the back of Nate’s neck and finally, finally meeting his eyes.
He is so young, Adam thinks, strangled with the sight of him; his eyes, his crushed brow, his lips twisted back in confusion, in hurt.
He is so young, young enough to still hold onto his heart.
Instead, silence sits between them, split like a wound, and Adam faintly registers the tangles of Nate’s hair, caught between his fingers as they cradle the back of his head. He counts the moment in heartbeats. Nate’s, steady as a drumbeat. His own, a wild bird in his chest, beating against the bars of his ribs.
“Why would you ask me to do such a thing?” Nate whispers, his hand coming to the crux of Adam’s collar, where the neck meets the shoulder. His thumb finds its place at Adam’s pulse, and Adam swallows against it, shaking.
“I need to know you are safe.” His voice comes out low, strained with feeling too much to name. To name it would make it real, and it is too much, too wide, spreading out through his veins like a poison. The slow kind, the kind that builds for years and years and years and Nathaniel, in front of him now, eyes raw and open.
Nate pauses, closing his eyes and gathering himself. He inhales slowly, but it hitches halfway through, and it must take great effort for his next words to come as clearly and cleanly as they do. “And you think I wouldn’t want the same for you?”
“It isn’t your job to protect me.” Close. Close enough that he can feel the whispering outline of Nate, the faintest brush of their noses, the seam of his lips only a breath away, and Adam—
Adam cannot lose him. Not to the wolves, not to this. He pulls away, but Nate’s hand stays solid, grasping, and Adam cannot find it in himself to rip away completely, no matter how easy it would be. No matter how much he should. How quickly he’s coming to the boundary lines of whatever lay between them—friendship and affection, of a kind, and years .
Nate’s grip slumps, just a little, as if he remembered himself. “Is it so difficult for you to understand that I would want to? To protect you?”
“Not if this is the result.”
“I will be fine, Adam,” Nate gasps, hisses, his other hand coming to bear on his side, and it brings Adam sharply back into himself. Their closeness. Nate’s wounds.
What kind of foolishness is this. What kind of—
Yanking free of Nate’s grasp, away from the beckoning hurt of his eyes, his full mouth, Adam drops his hand to his shoulder, lightly pressing backward.
Nate slumps back, his head knocking lightly against the wall.
“You need rest.” He sighs, flicking his gaze over the injuries. The worst of it bound, Adam feels the tight coil of that old, old body-fear slowly uncurl, exhaustion setting deep into the marrow of his bones. “And I need to check our surroundings.”
“Adam,” Nate’s fingers curl suddenly over the hand at shoulder, something almost desperate flooding the depth of his eyes, and it leaves Adam’s next word stumbling in his throat.
A heartbeat passes. It takes three breaths, exactly, for Adam to find his voice, to form words under the weight of Nate when he looks at him like that. “Yes?”
“I…”
Adam waits, frozen in place. Yes, yes, yes, something in him hums, drawing him nearer and nearer.
Nate uncurls his grip, shaking his head, features sagging in what must be exhaustion, because it surely cannot be disappointment, cannot be whatever twists through Adam as the heat of his touch is lost.
“Be safe.”