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It had been close to two weeks since the last spawncamper attack. Lillium was helping rebuild the parts of the city that were destroyed in the fire additionally to his normal job. Sadly, that meant that he had to leave Iris at the RV a lot.
He was training with Dan these days, so that kept him occupied for four to six hours a day, but Iris wasn’t allowed to leave the strictly dictated path between the RV hill and Dan’s. If he was spotted even looking into a side street, the citizens would report him and the collar could go off.
Anyway, it’s been two weeks and the tunnel they had used was secured now and the Indigos on patrol were wired to not let an invasion like that happen again.
Lillium and Iris were eating a late dinner when the alarm went off. Lillium tensed, preparing himself mentally for battle, while Iris tensed out of unpleasant memories of his roommate straight-up killing people.
There was uncertainty in his eyes, so Lillium voiced it: “Spawncampers.”
He jumped up, leaving half a bowl of green curry behind.
When Iris stood up to join him, Lillium gave him the dirtiest side-eye, but caught himself and immediately softened his look.
“Stay here. You’ll get into trouble if you follow me. If someone comes here, hide, don’t fight.”
Iris held his gaze. Defiance was glittering in his eyes.
“I mean it,” Lillium emphasized, but he also knew that Iris could probably not help himself.
The alarm sounded again and Lillium put on his coat and his bandaged hands still hurt, but he had to go – for his community, for this stupid town that hated him and Iris.
It was bad. Not as bad as the last attack. It felt like the spawncampers had wanted to do a surprise attack when the town wasn’t expecting them to be back so soon, but many of them had died during the last invasion and the group seemed uncoordinated, like they were thrown together last-minute.
Still, their plan was good.
They caught hostages on the edge of town and disappeared with them almost immediately. Very few stayed behind to spark a fire. It was close to the marketplace with all its wooden stalls, the weather had been warm and sunny, so the wood burned brightly in the late night hours.
The indigos of the striker team went after them into the woods, while the begonias put out the fires and the attack team with Lillium and Heather and a few others went to take out the trash. Dan had given them masks.
Lillium almost pitied them – almost. He hated them with such a fervor that it drowned out anything else. The begonias had trouble keeping the fire in check and Lillium caught himself thinking that Iris would paint a wall with an ocean and ignite it. Much like during their little trip.
It would also probably flood the city.
Maybe it was because Lillium was on high-alert, maybe it was because he had trained his eyes to see the impossible flicker of light the invisibility cloak had around it, but he turned towards the apparition and glared.
“I told you to stay at home, Iris!”
The cloak lifted and the dark-haired looked like a kicked puppy – even when a mask was hiding half his face.
“I’m sorry.” It was muted by the filters.
Lillium decided to be angry at the other later and take care the real troublemakers first. If his count was correct and Heather had relayed all her kills, there were only two spawncrawlers left, if they hadn’t fled yet, that is.
“Okay, stay close to me.”
Together, they weaved their way through the buildings. Lillium was glad the citizens had evacuated in time and there were no half-burning corpses like last time. He didn’t know if he could endure the haunted look that would give Iris.
Iris’ training was showing, he had little trouble to keep up with Lillium and that made both of them weirdly proud. How far you could get in just a few weeks.
“You’re getting good at seeing the cloak,” Iris commented.
“I have good eyes.” A little too late, Lillium froze as he realized that it was the first time he had complimented his own eyes. Being a lily was a curse, but in this singular case, he was glad to have his eyes.
Lillium sensed someone long before he could see them, another thing about being a lily. That didn’t mean he could stop what was happening.
It was a woman; her mask was hiding most of her face and the red-tinted protective glasses hid the rest.
And there was a bottle in her hand. It was burning, a Molotov cocktail, his least favourite cocktail.
And then it was already being hurled at them. While Lillium threw one of his knives at the attacker, he tried to pull Iris out of the way.
It wasn’t enough.
The woman was dead and Heather was relaying that she had gotten one and Iris was on fire and stop, drop and rolling and Lillium was afraid that this was it, that he should have told Iris that he viewed him as more than a roommate, but that had felt weirdly like Stockholm syndrome, or saviour’s complex or whatever and he was grabbing a blanket from the couch and throwing it over Iris. And then Iris went very still and that freaked out Lillium out more than Heather asking if he was alright and his location on the comm.
Lillium relayed his location quickly and then lifted the blanket. The fire was out, but Iris had also passed out. His jacket and shirt were singed and the exposed skin on his back was a fiery red. Blisters had already formed and Lillium could literally watch them grow.
Iris was breathing, though, which was good, but the taller man had to debate to take off the other man’s mask, but that posed the threat of carbon monoxide poisoning and he felt like crying – which was 100% the fault of the thick smoke filling the house and not because he was feeling overwhelmed.
He was this close to a full-grown panic attack when Heather showed up, smacked him on the back of his head and then scooped up tiny Iris herself and got them out of there.
Outside, she ran up to the next Begonia – Bee was her name – and demanded her to cool the burned skin.
“That was everyone, right?” she asked Lillium, who was finally snapping out of it and confirmed.
“Then we’ll go back to Dan’s and get help for Iris.”
The rest of the night was filled with questions like ‘why had he even been there’ and ‘was he part of the raid’ and only the firm hand of Heather on his shoulder kept Lillium from throwing fists.
Iris woke up when they were cleaning the blisters that had broken open. He woke up, lying on his stomach, screaming and struggling as Lillium was holding him down.
The he was crying and Lillium wanted to shoot someone.
As Iris was struggling, he eventually looked back and saw Lillium practically sitting on his back. Tears were rolling down his cheeks.
“You got burned, we’re cleaning the wound, stay still,” Lillium said and tried his best to keep his voice steady and comforting.
The worst part was that Iris stopped struggling immediately. He was still tense with the pain coursing through him, but he had stopped struggling. They held eye contact and Lillium could feel Iris taking in a sharp breath as they put some ointment on the wound. Once that was done, the medic told them that Iris should get up so that he could place the bandage. With a nod, Iris confirmed that he was ready, no words would come out between his gritted teeth. Lillium stood up and jumped off the table. He was in front of Iris half a second later, steadying his arms as the other slowly fought himself upright. He got to holding himself up to propping himself up by a hand-width when he said something incoherent that Lillium would later know to interpret as ‘I’m gonna pass out.’, and then Iris went limp.
This was the first time Lillium got a good look. He had listened to the medic talk with Heather earlier. It was mostly a first-degree and where the clothes had burned through, a partial second-degree burn. It covered a fourth of his back, which wasn’t that much because Iris was tiny, but seeing it like this felt like a lot to Lillium.
He whispered more to himself than anyone in particular: “You weren’t supposed to get hurt.” and soothingly ghosted through Iris’ hair with his fingers.
He received some instructions on how to treat the wounds, but there were more people that got hurt that night, so they needed Lillium to take Iris home. When he scooped him up, he noticed the extra weight the training had brought, but Iris was still a lightweight. Lillium was hesitant, he didn’t want Iris to hurt more, the pain killers they had given him before the procedure obviously hadn’t helped and he was in no mood to be the one to inflict more pain on him. He was gentle in a way he hadn’t believed himself capable of and piggy-backed Iris home.
Heather accompanied them, but had to go back to report once she had them settled in the RV. Penny was fussing over Iris the second they had entered and defended the unconscious form, lying stomach-down on the bed in the closet.
Lillium felt like crying and allowed himself to do just that during the two minutes he spent in the shower to get rid of the fine layer of soot the fire had left him with.
The next few days were a struggle. The wound didn’t get infected, thank god, but that was the only positive thing they had going for them. The council wasn’t happy, and they let Lillium feel their frustration.
And Iris was trying his best to bite down the pain, but he wore his heart on his sleeve, so that wasn’t very successful. Breathing hurt, which was the biggest problem, and getting upright and staying upright meant flexing his back muscles, which hurt and apparently he was a hyperactive sleeper, so when he tossed and turned at night, sometimes he would end up rolling on his back and then screamed out in pain. Lillium would be at his side immediately and sooth him back into sleep.
Changing bandages was a nightmare and those minutes will haunt Lillium for months.
Two nights later, they were watching a movie on the couch. Lillium was sitting normally. Iris was draped over a pillow in his lap and Lillium was happy that the pillow could hide how he felt about being this close to him.
The movie was lame, but Iris liked it and changing it would have meant to get up and disturb Iris, so that was that.
They were just about to see the big fight scene, when Iris asked: “Do you think it will scar?”
It was such a out of the blue question.
“The medic said that the part with the blisters might scar, but mostly, no.”
And the next thing Iris did was a punch to his gut. He said: “Oh, oh.” and had the audacity to look disappointed.
“What?”
“I-“, Iris began, but had to regroup himself. “It’s just that I would be prouder of that scar than my others…”
Oh, Iris. Lillium understood. He understood so well. He wasn’t proud of neither his eyes nor his need for prosthetic legs.
“I wouldn’t want you to have a scar because of me.”
“It would be more noble than-“ but he never finished his sentence.
The more you love, the more you suffer.
“You know how I feel about your scars,” Lillium said and felt Iris tense on his lap. He had been looking towards the TV, but now struggled to get his head to turn towards Lillium.
He felt guilty about the tower. If he could have convinced Iris to flee with him earlier or maybe if he hadn’t been caught, then madam wouldn’t have made a show out of it. He knew that covering up madam’s doings with other scars could be mentally healing to Iris, whatever twisted way of trauma response that was, but he would rather that Iris wouldn’t be hurting at all.
“They only make you more beautiful, but I wouldn’t like you to get more because of me.”