Chapter Text
Seth returns not too long after he left, he’s not happy, not by a long shot, but he’s in a hell of better mood now that he’s holding a bottle of laudanum that will give Ezra the relieve he so desperately needs and that he should have damn well gotten the first time Seth asked for it.
But he has it now, and that's as good a time as any. Except as he walks up the path he can see that the front door is open a crack. And he knows he didn’t leave it that way.
He reaches for his gun where it would hang at his hip, if he hadn’t left it hanging on its hook, inside the house.
“Ezra?” Seth calls out, heading upstairs, to find an empty bed, and Ezra’s bag missing from where it had lain, spilled on the floor.
A quick search of the house turns up nothing, no sign of Ezra. Seth heads back outside, now noticing the second set of footprints, leading away down the path. He can’t believe that he missed that on his way back, but now that he’s looking, it’s obvious.
Thankfully, the light snowfall means he is easily able to track Ezra, his clumsy footsteps dragging long tracks. He tracks him into town, and finds him collapsed at the foot of the staircase behind the gem.
“Ezra, what the hell,” Seth exclaims, hurrying to his side, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. The thin coat he has wrapped around him doing little to keep the chill of the wind out, he shivers. “What on earth are you even doing out here?”
“Felt it was… time that I returned to my rightful place.” Ezra pants, his breath thick with congestion.
“I find that you are heading in the wrong direction, if that is the case.”
Ezra just blinks slowly, sagging into Seth’s hold.
“Let’s go home.” Seth says, bends to lift Ezra into his arms, adding, unbearably soft, “That’s your rightful place.”
Seth carries Ezra, delirious in his arms, through camp and back into his home, tucking him safely back into bed.
“Ezra,” Seth says quietly, a hand resting on his shoulder. “You need to drink this, you’ll be able to rest.”
“No… no, I can’t… need to leave… can’t stay here…” Ezra mutters, turning his head away from the glass Seth puts to his lips.
“Ezra,” Seth says softly, holding the glass in one hand. “You’re back home, with me, right where you’re supposed to be.”
Ezra shakes his head, glassy eyes roaming around the room wildly. “Left… he left me alone.”
“I did leave, but not for the reason assumed,” Seth explains, although he’s not sure how much Ezra will be able to understand in his current state, but he has to try. He shouldn’t have let his temper get the best of him, once again. If he had simply stopped and thought, for just a moment, instead of storming off, perhaps he could have avoided this. “I paid a visit to the doc, to get the medicine you should have had this whole time, but he did not agree. Now, please, Ezra, you need to drink this.”
This time, when Seth presses the cool glass to Ezra’s lips, tipping until the liquid meets, he accepts, drinking the laudenum laced water.
“There,” Seth mutters, brushing Ezra’s hair back from his sweaty forehead, feeling how much warmer he’s gotten, his fever spiking. “That’s good, you’ve done well, Ez.”
Seth sits beside him through the night and all the way till morning, swapping out the cool compresses in a desperate attempt to keep the fever at bay.
Ezra sleeps blessedly through the night, even if restless with fever dreams.
After that unfortunate setback, brought on by Seth’s temper, things finally start to take a turn in the right direction, and Ezra starts to get better, against all of Seth's hope.
But with the medicine from Doc, Ezra’s condition continues to improve, he has color back in his cheeks, and not just from fever. He’s put weight back on, and the dark circles smeared under his eyes give way with each night he is able to rest. It’s such a stark improvement from the frail man he pulled out of the woods. He’s even up and moving around on his own.
Seth comes home most days to find him curled up in an armchair by the wood stove, nose deep in a book. He still coughs, from time to time, but they aren’t as all consuming, and they don’t take everything out of him when his lungs decide to betray him.
Seth imagines that Ezra will be wanting to leave soon, and get back to his own life and his own space and his own life.
The idea doesn’t sit well with him though. Ezra packing up his things and returning to his room in the gem doesn’t feel right.
But having Ezra close, in what has come to finally feel like home, does. It feels right in a way Seth never thought he’d get to experience in his life. Falling asleep each night, tucked close to Ezra, and waking up the same, has tempered something inside of him.
He’s not sure how to explain it, but he knows he can’t, he won’t give it up.
Ezra lays across the sofa, his bare feet resting across Seth’s lap. Seth holds his journal, balanced against Ezra’s shin, and he once again finds his hands sketching Ezra’s relaxed face as he reclines.
When he glances over, he’s hit with an overwhelming fondness for this man, cuddled and cozy under the blanket, his eyes closed.
“Ezra?” Seth asks, hoping he wasn’t asleep.
“Yes, kettle?” Ezra says with a soft sigh.
“I’ve been thinking, about how things have been lately.” Seth says, closing his book, resting it on the arm of the sofa. He’s been thinking about exactly what he wanted to say here for days now. “Having’ you here with me.”
“As much as this entire situation may have been trying, for the both of us, this unexpected forcing of our lives together in a way that perhaps neither of us were ready for, I find myself… not grateful… I am not grateful that you had to fall ill as you did, please, understand that.”
“I fear if this had not happened,” Seth continues, “I may not have pulled my own head from my own ass, And I may have pushed you away, as I am wont to do, with anything good that finds its way into my life.”
“I suppose, what I am trying to get out is, what if you stayed here, stayed with me in this house.” Seth asks uncharacteristically shy, placing his hand on the bed of Ezra’s knee under the blanket. “What if you did not return to the Gem?”
Ezra pushes himself up on one arm, the other placing his hand over Seth’s. “I would not be opposed to that proposition.”
In fact, Ezra hasn’t had a place he could confidently call home in years, either chased out or choosing to leave before he could really settle down. What Seth is offering him, it is something Ezra has desired so strongly for many years, and for it to be with the man he’s fallen for… well.
“I don’t want you to leave.” Seth says, looking up at him, turning his whole body where he sits, taking Ezra’s hand in both of his. “I have denied myself what I desire, for nearly all my life. I don’t want to do that anymore. I want you and I want you here.”
“Then I’ll stay.” Ezra says, simple as that, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. “If that’s what you want, if that is what you are sure of, I will stay, I will call you my home.”
“There is little I've been more sure of in my life.”