Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“B-but look Jericho… I can finally be of use to you again.” Claude’s smile was a cocktail of a little delirium, a little hysteria, and a lot of desperation. The kind of end-of-your-rope smile that stays long after anyone in their right mind would keep it on. But it faltered as Jericho’s reaction strayed further and further from what Claude wanted.

Jericho looked like he was the one who had lost a limb’s worth of blood. Face pale enough to rival Rex, his expression was pulled tight with horror. Jericho took a step back, as shaky as his breathing, then another step, then bolted out of the bathroom.

Claude’s face fell like it had been weighed down with bricks. What was wrong? He could be useful now, couldn’t he? In the way Jericho wanted, right?

It must not have been enough. He was only in the middle of it, Jericho would be happy with him when he was done. It just wasn’t enough yet. And Claude was more than willing to make it enough. Renewed with horrible determination, he reached for the saw.

“No no no no no!” Suddenly Nia was there, phasing the saw from his hands. Why wasn’t he alert enough to have noticed her taking off her mask and gloves?

“Give me that,” Claude hissed, trying to reach for the saw without hurting his leg.

“Look bud, I know you’re going through it right now, but you’re nuts if you think I’m letting you cut off your other leg.” Nia held the saw firmly out of his reach, and he was too occupied by retrieving it to see the visible effort it was taking her not to cry.

“ You can’t stop me, ” he snarled, making a last ditch effort to grab the saw from her. Claude had completely ignored his leg this time, and paid for it when he suddenly collapsed back in the tub with a pained yell.

He didn’t hear what words Nia was swearing with, nor did he see where she put the saw, but he did feel it when she kneeled on the floor and reached through the tub to gently take his arm. Claude was far too weak to fight her, so he didn’t even resist as she carefully put his arm around her shoulders and held him tightly. Head clouded with pain, he felt detached as she helped him stand and phased both of them out of the tub. And as she carefully set Claude on the floor, Nia faintly realized that his state of hurting so much he could barely feel it reminded her of how she had been when her mom was taken away.

Claude’s breathing was heavy and labored, and he almost felt nauseous as the sudden burst of pain brought all the exhaustion to finally catch up to him. He was so, so tired. Too tired to panic, too tired to worry, too tired to even think about Jericho. Too tired to do anything but groan in pain as Nia gently pulled him into a hug, from his left side so she wouldn’t put pressure on his new injury.

Eventually, he fully processed that it was Nia here with him. Why was Nia still here? He’d never done anything for her, why did she care enough to deal with him? Where was Jericho? Wouldn’t he want to check on Claude, even if it was just to make sure he could use his new red blank? Didn’t Jericho want him now?

…Did Jericho still not want him?

Normally Claude’s brain would have gone into overdrive trying to think of another way for Jericho to want him again. But now he was too tired. The only thing he wasn’t too tired to do was cry. So he slumped against Nia, his head on her shoulder as he sobbed, broken and pathetic and absolutely pitiful.

No wonder Jericho didn’t want him.

“Oh god, you poor thing,” Nia whispered, though it was more to herself than to him. She didn’t say anything else as he cried, just held him as tight as she could. There was nothing she could say. There was hardly anything she could do.

Nia still held him for a minute even after Claude finally ran out of tears, scared he might get himself worked up all over again. But Claude just laid limply on her shoulder, silent and damn near lifeless. She leaned him against the side of the tub, probably more careful than she had ever been before. Getting up, she grabbed a rag and a towel from the cabinet, soaking the former with warm water in the sink. She tossed the still-folded towel on the floor, gently moving Claude onto it so he was sitting at least somewhat more comfortably.

“I’m going to get you a change of clothes. I’ll be right back, okay?” Nia was almost holding her breath, waiting for Claude to show some kind of response. He didn’t look at her when she spoke. He wasn’t looking at anything. He just stared into space, his expression nearly mournful.

But he did nod after a few moments, so Nia put the rag in his hand and told him to try to clean himself up, then looked back at him every few seconds as she left. Even if only subconsciously, Claude was grateful she had left him with the task. He had already cried in front of her, already let her hold him. Letting her try to clean him up like she was his mother would have been the cherry on top of his future humiliation.

In the few minutes before Nia rushed back, he at least managed to wipe the blood from his face. She hugged him again, gently at first, like she was apologizing for leaving him alone. Or maybe she was trying to see if he had regained any bit of life, because she pulled him closer, almost protectively, when he didn’t so much as try to resist.

“Will you be okay if I leave you alone to get changed?” Despite her best effort, Nia’s voice was trembling. He nodded sooner this time, though, and could feel her relieved sigh. “I’ll be right outside the door if you need me,” she promised. Then she let him go and grabbed the saw from where she’d kicked it under the tub.

Claude watched her leave, then sat still for a few moments without even a thought of changing his clothes. Without any thoughts at all. Finally, with the speed and energy of a sloth, he managed to get dressed and wipe the rest of his blood off. For a minute or two afterward, he returned to his state of empty headedness.

Then a few soft knocks on the door, and Nia’s question in a voice nearly as soft. “Are you done..?”

“Yes,” he managed. His voice was scratchy and full of tears, and he worried for a second that he wasn’t loud enough and would have to speak again.

But Nia had heard him well enough, so she opened the door. He felt a muted sense of relief when she didn’t hug him again, and didn’t have time to think about the accompanying pang of disappointment before she looped his left arm around her neck. One arm around his shoulders and the other hooked under his knees, Nia carefully picked him up, and for once wished he would fight her. Fighting meant life, meant some semblance of Claude’s normal self, meant there was something other than the emptiness and the pain. There was no fight left in him. Only the emptiness and the pain as he leaned into her.

As Nia approached Claude’s room he realized she would let go of him, and hated that he didn’t want her to. As she set him on his bed, he hated that he wanted to hold onto her. And as she carefully pulled the blanket over him and asked if he needed anything, he hated that it was Nia taking care of him instead of Jericho, then hated that he’d ever been stupid enough to think that Jericho might care for him.

“Where’s Jericho?” he asked anyway, managing to actually look at her. There was nothing to distract him from Nia’s reaction, so for half a moment he saw that she was taken aback before she got her expression under control.

“Back in the bathroom. I told him to clean up while I took care of you,” Nia told him, just as careful as she’d been when she was carrying him. Her tone was neutral… too neutral.

“He doesn’t want to be here, does he?” The next thing Claude hated was that he couldn’t keep his voice from breaking, or the tears from forming.

“Hey, no, don’t think like that,” Nia said, trying to calm him before he broke down again. “I’ll go get him, we can switch jobs. I’ll tell him you asked for him.” At least her attempt at a soothing tone sounded more natural than the careful neutrality had.

Claude didn’t see if Nia turned back to check on him one last time before leaving. He had shut his eyes tight, trying to keep the tears at bay despite the thought that Nia saying Claude wanted him would probably make Jericho less likely to come. He had to force himself to take a deep breath and desperately tried to blink the tears away. He couldn’t cry now. Even if Jericho did come, he wouldn’t want to deal with Claude crying. It was a small miracle to him that Nia had wanted to deal with it.

After a minute or two, when Claude managed to get himself under control, Jericho did come. Not into the room, but he was talking to Nia just outside of it. Maybe in another situation they would have been quiet enough for Claude not to hear them, but right now the door was unlatched and there wasn’t a single other sound in the apartment. Claude would hear them whether he wanted to or not. Thankfully he wanted to, or at least thought he did.

“Should I really be in there?” Jericho was asking. What was that tone in his voice?

“He asked for you,” Nia told him, “He did this for you, he wants you .”

“I can’t do that, I don’t know what to do for him!” Jericho’s voice had raised to a whisper-yell. If it was anyone else Claude would have pinned his tone as nervous, maybe a little scared, maybe even helpless, but that couldn’t be right.

There was an audible deep breath, which was probably Nia. “There are two messes in this apartment,” she said slowly, “one of them is in there, and the other is in the bathroom. Considering that I have more experience cleaning up blood and you’re directly responsible for the one in there, we’re switching jobs.”

Claude couldn’t make out what Jericho said over Nia’s footsteps as she walked away, but it was definitely some sort of protest. That was enough to know that Jericho didn’t want to be there. The only reason he was there was because Nia had dragged him. So Claude closed his eyes just before the door creaked open, making sure his breathing was even. Watching him ‘sleep’ would be less torturous for Jericho than having to deal with him awake.

“…Claude?” Jericho nearly discovered his act then and there when him speaking unexpectedly almost made Claude jump. It helped a second later, though, when he wasn’t startled by Jericho nudging his shoulder. “Um… Nia?!” Jericho called, still in that tone Claude couldn’t decipher.

Nia must have phased through the door, because there was no sound of it opening between her footsteps and her panicked “What??”

“Is it normal for someone to fall asleep in, like, two minutes?” Jericho asked, and Claude was sure he was hallucinating. For a second he thought it sounded like Jericho was actually worried about him.

“I don’t think so,” Nia breathed. It was at least believable that she would be concerned, but Claude still thought he was imagining that. “With that amount of pain, I don’t think so... I’ll go check what kind of painkillers he took, you make sure nothing happens.”

“Wait, what am I watching for?” Jericho asked (for a second Claude thought he was frantic), “What could happen?”

A beat of silence passed before Nia answered grimly, “Depends on what label that empty pill bottle has…”

It turned out that there were, in fact, things that Claude was not too tired to do. For example: he was not too tired to be offended that they both thought he would be that careless.

Claude considered opening his eyes, either pretending that the noise woke him up or exposing his ruse entirely. It would spare Jericho the stress of thinking he’d have to clean up Claude’s whole corpse too. But if Nia was checking the medicine he took, she’d realize he wasn’t in any danger. Exposing himself wouldn’t be worth it once she did. He didn’t want to put Jericho through unnecessary stress, but a few minutes of that was better than a whole night of having to deal with Claude.

With Nia gone again, he heard Jericho pacing near the bed, and could have sworn he heard that Jericho’s breathing was shaky. He could hear better when the bed dipped near the pillow, but that didn’t make anything clearer. Jericho was taking deep breaths, Claude knew that much for certain. He knew Jericho only ever did that to calm himself down, and that made sense. Jericho was facing the possibility of having to find something to do with his entire body, after all. What didn’t make sense was that, even though Claude was closer to Jericho now, he still wasn’t hearing any more correctly. To him it sounded like Jericho was trying to not to cry, and that was impossible. Jericho wouldn’t get that upset about having to take care of a body. Had something happened while he was gone that made Jericho stressed out before he had to deal with Claude? That had to be it. Why else would Jericho be this upset?

Then Jericho took Claude’s hand in both of his. Maybe Claude really had messed up with the medicine, because there was no way Jericho’s hands were actually trembling. For some reason Jericho’s fingers weren’t at his wrist, which meant he wasn’t trying to check Claude’s pulse. Claude gave up on trying to figure anything out when Jericho started gently stroking his palm. He resigned himself to just accepting what was happening. It was probably better if he didn’t hurt himself realizing why Jericho was actually holding his hand anyway. At least it was soothing if he didn’t think about it too much, and- oh, that was probably it. Jericho was just trying to calm himself down.

Between consciously steadying his breathing and Jericho’s thumb gently rubbing his palm, Claude felt himself starting to drift off. And before Nia rushed back to tell Jericho that Claude would be fine, before he could hear Jericho finally break down and sob with relief, before he could feel Jericho lay down to hold him and say that he was so sorry…

…Claude blacked out into a dreamless sleep.

Chapter Text

The clock read almost 10 as Rex yawned, unwrapping the bandages from his arm. It was a pain to wrap, unwrap, roll up, and repeat every day, but the fashion statement was worth it. Except for a few times. One of those times was when the roll slipped from Rex’s hand and bounced under his bed.

Sighing much more heavily than necessary and wishing a dozen annoying inconveniences on Jericho (and gravity), he flopped down on the floor. As he flung his arm under his bed to grab the roll, something else caught his eye. It was a box, probably a shoebox judging from the size, pushed up against the wall under his bed.

“Oi, scion, have you ever seen that box there?” Rex had made a habit out of talking to his scion out loud, purely because Jericho kept telling him not to.

“ Why would I know what’s under your bed? ” it snapped, “ It’s probably just some old thing from when this room was storage. ”

Rex blinked, unsure if he had imagined his scion sounding defensive. Sitting up, he slid closer to the foot of the bed to get the box within arm’s length.

“ Are you seriously prioritizing investigating an old box over sleeping right now? ” it asked, and for the most part it was back to its usual judgmental tone. But only for the most part.

Rolling his eyes instead of answering, Rex reached under the bed again to pull the box out. He had been right to assume it was a shoebox, though he wasn’t sure whose it would be. It was a little beat up; the label was half scratched off, and each corner had been bumped enough times to be pushed in. The was a small tear in the rim of the lid, which had been repaired with an excessive amount of tape.

“ See? Random old box. Why do we still care about this? ”

“Oi, why are you being so weird all of a sudden?” Rex had looked at the air over his right shoulder, half expecting it to have come out by now with how involved it was getting.

“ You’re worrying about some dusty shoe box at 10 o’clock at night and I’m the one being weird?! ” Oh it was definitely getting defensive now. That was new. And a little unsettling, if Rex was being honest.

“It’s… not dusty though,” he said as he took a closer look at the box. Rex had been in that room for half a year now, anything that had been there since he moved in would have at least some dust on it. Maybe only a thin layer, sure, but it would definitely still be there. The wear and tear made it obvious that it was old, but it didn’t look unused.

“I’m seeing what’s in it,” he decided out loud, starting to open the lid.

Then the next few moments were enough of a blur for Rex to not be entirely sure what happened.

He had tried to open the box, and in the half second between when he lifted the lid and when he would have looked inside, the box was suddenly no longer in his hands. His scion had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere and suddenly very concerned with keeping the box in its possession. Said box had ended up pushed half back under the bed, and his scion was hunched over it protectively. Claws long and sharpened, its back arched up as crystalline spikes protruded from where its spine would be if it had bones. And it was hissing. Hissing at him. It hardly ever hissed out loud at anything, let alone at Rex.

“Okay, what’s going on with you?” he demanded, trying to decide between feeling frustrated or slightly victorious. In the back of his mind he had been putting together that his scion had something to do with the box, but hadn’t expected this extreme of a reaction.

“Don’t touch it ,” it hissed, “ this is mine.”

Rex may or may not have had to fight the urge to pull his legs up and slam his head into his knees.

“Oi, yeah, that part I got,” he said, opting instead to drop his head in his hands for a second before raising it again. “Why do I not touch your box?”

“ Because it’s mine,” his scion’s hiss had nearly risen to a yell, “ Everything we’ve had has always been yours . It’s only ever been your life and your things, and everything is only ever yours or ours and this is mine and  I’m not letting you ruin that! ”

A few beats of silence passed as Rex just stared at it, face fallen and eyes wide. Then he reached forward, and his scion was ready to grow teeth and bite his hand off before it realized he wasn’t reaching towards the box. He was reaching towards it . Rex gently took it by the shoulder and pulled it into a hug, waiting for a moment to just hug it before speaking up.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally, “I never thought about it like that. I’m sorry I never thought of that. I won’t take your things. I won’t even look at them if you don’t want me to. Promise.”

“… Thank you ,” it hadn’t returned his hug, but the spikes from its back had retreated, which was probably about as close as it would get.

Rex brightened as he started having an idea, and his arms relaxed a bit as he did. His scion did not waste time violently squirming out of the hug, punctuating its escape with a long huff that was made even more dramatic by the fact that it didn’t have lungs.

There was a long moment of silence as Rex just stared at it, filling in its role as the judgmental one.

“I was going to say you don’t have to hide your things under my bed,” he said finally, “The book tower has those two shelves I’m not using, you can put your stuff there and have your own place for it.”

“No,” its answer was nearly immediate, and thankfully (for Rex’s sake) it kept going before he could get a confused word in. “I don’t want it out in the open. I don’t want it where anyone could take something.”

“Okay, you can keep it under the bed,” Rex hesitated for a moment, not sure if it would be out of line for him to even ask this, but he decided to try anyway, “Can I see what’s in your box? I won’t touch it if you don’t want me to, you can just show me what you’re okay with me seeing.”

His scion spent a solid minute thinking, completely silent, and Rex started to get nervous that it wasn’t actually contemplating his question and was instead plotting his demise. But then it slid over to its box, slowly opening the lid and turning it to show Rex the contents. It took him a moment to even look at what was in the box, too taken aback by the fact that his scion was actually nervous about something.

There wasn’t actually much in the box. Some beads, an old glowstick, a small pile of shattered glass pieces, two little plastic dinosaurs, a charm necklace. If Rex had to guess, he’d say it was probably all from either the Sour Grape’s floor or the piles of clutter in Jericho’s room.

“Oi, do you want me to go to the dollar store and get you some more things?”

“No,” it snapped the box shut, pushing it back under the bed, “if you buy it then it’s yours .”

“It won’t be mine if I buy it for you,” Rex said, struggling to follow its train of thought. It shook its head anyway, so he tried again. “What if I ask Nia to come and she buys for it for you?”

“…Okay.”

——————————————

“Okay,” Rex grunted, finally giving the narrow stack of shelves a last push. By his scion’s request, he had moved the tv stand over a bit so the book tower could be wedged into the back corner. Far and safe from anyone who would dare try to mess with its things. “Have at it.”

His scion immediately went to work organizing its things, on three shelves now, after Rex consolidated his stuff to give it extra space. Some beads, an old glowstick, a small pile of shattered glass pieces, two little plastic dinosaurs, a charm necklace. A little chalkboard stand it had written ‘Scion’ on, a rubik’s cube, a glossy deck of cards, a cat figurine, a wooden puzzle box, a bag of glittering red marbles, two short books.

Rex couldn’t help but smile watching it. Tail wagging almost dangerously fast, it zipped between its box and the shelves with more excitement than it had ever shown before. Somehow it was managing to beam despite having no face.

After reorganizing everything for the third time and being reminded twice that it could still move things around later if it wanted to, it was finally satisfied. Rex plopped on the floor next to it, watching it admire the things that it could finally call its own. For the first time it seemed happy.

Rex hugged it, laying his head on its to look at the shelves too. “Do you like it?”

“ Yes .” Slowly it hugged him back, and Rex was pretty sure he was smiling enough for both of them.

Chapter Text

“Just for one night… let me take care of you.”

Claude stared at Jericho, wide eyed and silent for a moment. A moment where he thought his eyes were kidding him. Jericho actually looked like he cared. Like he actually wanted Claude to feel better.

“Okay,” he whispered, honestly terrified that it was all just a cruel trick. But for half a second he saw Jericho smile, and then Jericho was kissing him. Claude just froze, so much that he couldn’t even tell if he was kissing back. In the span of half a moment everything had suddenly become so much. Jericho kissing him and Jericho’s hand cupping his cheek and Claude’s own terror and the distant feeling of his leg throbbing and it was all so much, yet to one small part of his brain it wasn’t enough.

If anything, Claude was even more shaken when Jericho carefully pulled away. His eyes were just as wide as before, his breathing heavier now, and at some point he had started to reach up, but stopped halfway. His hands just hovered in the air, trembling more and more with each passing second.

Jericho was still softly smiling down at him, thinking it was the expression least likely to accidentally upset Claude. Gently, carefully, trying so hard to make his movements seem caring, he wrapped Claude’s arms around his neck. Gently taking Claude’s head in both his hands, carefully kissing him again, trying so hard to balance his desire with caution. He tried to pull away after a minute, but Claude’s arms suddenly tightened around his neck, desperately pulling him back. So he let Claude kiss him as long as he needed to, because who was Jericho to deny him when this was the most lively Claude had been in the last 24 hours? Soon Claude’s terror had gone, replaced by a haze of desperation. He wanted to hold on to Jericho forever, wanted to kiss him until he couldn’t breathe, wanted wanted wanted .

Jericho’s smile had been progressively growing larger between kisses, so glad that Claude had relaxed and left the fear and pain behind. Except it wasn’t as far behind as Jericho thought.

It finally hit him, the way Claude was sitting. He had dragged himself closer to Jericho, damn near into his lap. The problem was that Claude was leaning forward so much that he had ended up with the majority of his weight on his right leg. Putting so much pressure on the place where his skin and bone ended, still raw and sensitive under the blank space. Jericho’s heart seized up, and for a second he froze like he had when he first found Claude that day. Trying to imagine all the pain Claude had been through and was in now, and the fact that he was unable to fully realize it making him sick to his stomach. He should have thought before he started moving, should have made sure that he wouldn’t upset Claude or hurt him even more. But the only thing in Jericho’s mind at that moment was that Claude was in more pain.

Jericho immediately took Claude by the shoulders and pushed him away. He was trying to move either Claude or himself in a way that would change how Claude was sitting. To keep anything from pressing on or irritating Claude’s leg. But Claude didn’t know Jericho’s intentions, and misinterpreted his actions in the worst way possible.

“ No! ” Suddenly Claude was back up against Jericho’s chest, clinging to him like a vice. Jericho froze, surprised and taken aback and a little scared. Claude had buried his head into Jericho’s shoulder, one arm wrapped around the opposite side of his neck and the other hand gripping a fistful of the fabric of his shirt. Holding on so so so tight, like his life and wellbeing depended on it. He was nearly sobbing, choppy breaths shaking his whole body, basically begging through the tears. “Please don’t go, please don’t stop, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please- please- don’t leave, I’m sorry, please don’t leave me, please-”

There weren’t many times when Jericho remembered just how small Claude was, especially in comparison to him. But as he held Claude in a horribly useless attempt to calm him down, Jericho realized how easily he could gather Claude’s entire body in his arms. Here was Claude, who looked so small, who was so small, and Jericho had hurt him. Hurt him so much that Claude had finished the job, hurting himself in ways that were nearly unthinkable.

There was a torturously long minute where Jericho held Claude tight, gently rocking him back and forth as his words dissolved into tears, only for it to do nothing at all. Nothing to help Claude, nothing to calm him down, nothing to keep him from hurting. Then Claude managed to drag in a longer breath, and his shaking dissipated a bit. Jericho’s relief was cut short as Claude whispered another apology, and in that moment the only thing keeping him together was the fact that Claude needed him.

“What are you saying sorry for?” Jericho nearly winced when he heard his own voice, knowing that his distress was going to make Claude feel guilty.

“I didn’t mean to make you upset,” Claude choked out, “I’m sorry.”

“Shhhhhh, it’s alright,” Jericho whispered, trying to somehow hold Claude closer as his heart shattered, “There’s nothing for you to say sorry for. I’m not upset, you didn’t do anything wrong, I promise. I’m right here. I won’t go anywhere.” Shifting one arm up to Claude’s shoulders, Jericho slipped his other hand under Claude’s hoodie to gently rub his back. There were a few moments of silence as Claude finally managed to breathe properly, his grip loosening as Jericho ran his fingertips down Claude’s spine. He almost felt loved.

“Is it okay if I move?” Jericho asked softly, trying to make up for his thoughtlessness from before. “You can still hold onto me if you need to. I just want to sit on the other side… it’s okay. Just turn so you can keep holding on… there you go… that’s it, it’s okay.” Jericho had carefully pried Claude off of his shoulder, but let Claude keep his hands balled up tight with his shirt. Slowly, nudging Claude to move with him, Jericho managed to get himself sitting on Claude’s left. It was better if he moved before explaining, he’d decided. If he said that he’d just been trying to move so Claude would sit differently, Claude would have immediately taken the task entirely upon himself, and wouldn’t have been half as gentle with his body. “I wasn’t trying to leave. I just wanted to move so you wouldn’t be sitting on your leg, okay?”

Claude didn’t respond, only buried himself back into Jericho’s shoulder. He laid in silence, hardly registering anything that happened externally, including Jericho’s arms wrapping around him and starting to rub his back again. His own voice was echoing in his head. Please don’t pretend you suddenly care about me. He had begged for that. Yet Jericho was still holding him, still gently running a hand up and down his back, still softly talking to him like he needed to be handled with extreme care. He wanted so badly to go back to kissing Jericho, to finally being able to satisfy the desire he constantly shoved down. But he had already convinced himself that this was wishful thinking, that there was no way Jericho still wanted him after his emotional episode. How had he been stupid enough to misread the situation that much? Everything would have been fine if he had just thought for a second instead of fucking it up like he always did.

The silence was almost physically painful, both of them scared to upset the other or accidentally cross a line. But finally, when Jericho was sure Claude had calmed down, he carefully drew his hand from under Claude’s hoodie. Immediately Claude missed his touch, craving anything even close. Anything with a chance of filling the void in his heart, even if it was temporary and would only hurt him later.

One at a time, Jericho carefully moved his hands to hold Claude’s head. Just as carefully, if not more, he lifted Claude’s head from his shoulder to kiss away the tears. Claude nearly stopped breathing, heart caught in his throat as Jericho slowly kissed one side of his face, then turned his head to kiss the other. He almost felt loved. When Jericho was done he nudged Claude’s half-lidded eyes open, hoping his smile was as kind as he was trying to be.

“Do you want to keep going?” he asked gently, and his heart soared when Claude’s face lit up.

“ Yes. ” Claude’s answer was immediate, and desperate, and laced with disbelief. Jericho couldn’t help but find his enthusiasm endearing, and maybe even a little adorable.

This time there was no hesitation from Claude as Jericho kissed him. He wrapped his arms tight around Jericho’s neck on his own accord, pulling himself closer and kissing back with the force of every bit of desire lighting up in his skin. Jericho ran a hand through Claude’s hair, hoping Claude would interpret it as a reward or encouragement for his newfound liveliness.

Eventually Jericho managed to hold Claude back, giving himself the opportunity to nestle his head into Claude’s neck. Claude stilled as Jericho tugged at his hoodie, then dropped his head to the side with a content sigh to give him more room. Jericho paused, keeping his mouth against Claude’s neck for a moment in hopes he would feel Jericho’s smile. Then he lifted his head to whisper in Claude’s ear.

“Remind me later to reward you for that.” Jericho grinned as Claude shivered, then returned to kissing his neck and shoulder. And fuck , Jericho was desperate too, slowly losing the ability to contain himself. What was once deliberately placed kisses turned haphazardous as Jericho found himself almost controlled by a wild need to cover every bit of Claude’s skin he could reach. It was intoxicating, nearly addictive really.

Claude was gripping Jericho tightly, though he didn’t have to pull himself in. One of Jericho’s hands was keeping his hoodie out of the way, the other was supporting his head, and both were holding him so close. Claude still craved having Jericho’s lips on his, but Jericho’s breathing progressively getting heavier against his skin was nearly as good. He couldn’t have focused on anything else if he tried, his attention continuously stolen by the desperation Jericho was revealing. The external stimulation held half of his mind prisoner, while the other half had been dedicated to realizing that Jericho wanted him. Wanted to touch him, wanted his body, wanted him the same way he wanted Jericho. He almost felt loved.

It was a long two or three minutes before Jericho reigned himself in, trying to hold Claude impossibly close as he finally managed a deep breath. He buried his face into the crook of Claude’s neck for a moment, as Claude moved his fingers up the back of Jericho’s neck. Claude was gently massaging the top of his neck, pressing his fingers into the base of Jericho’s skull with a pressure that was nothing short of wonderful. Calmed enough to have full self control again, Jericho placed a few kisses along Claude’s shoulder, then dragged his tongue up the side of Claude’s neck.

To Claude, it was almost embarrassing the way he had audibly gasped and nearly shuddered. Had he been in any less of a daze, he would have realized that now he would have to admit the tongue piercing was sexy. Jericho kissed him again, and didn’t need to hold the back of his head this time as Claude was pulling himself plenty close already. So one of Jericho’s arms wrapped around his waist, and his other hand was allowed free rein to explore.

Claude’s breathing picked up as Jericho touched him, hand first slipping down Claude’s side and under his hoodie, running over his back, his ribs, teasingly brushing his shorts. Claude had to pull his head away, no longer able to drag in enough air while kissing Jericho, especially not when Jericho started tracing the shape of his hip. He had no chance in hell as he felt Jericho’s hand slide down to his left leg, going limp against his chest and barely stifling a moan. As he started to run his hand over Claude’s leg, Jericho’s mouth found Claude’s again. Short kisses pressed to his lips again and again and again, Claude was falling apart as the hand previously at his waist moved to hold his head still and the other ran up and down his thigh. He couldn’t find the breath nor the words to beg, couldn’t cry for more when Jericho’s stay at his inner thigh was far too brief, couldn’t keep himself quiet when Jericho’s hand went so far up his leg that his fingers slipped under Claude’s shorts.

Jericho’s breath caught as Claude moaned, and he had to grab Claude’s head and kiss him hard . He had already decided to allow himself to go the night without limits (except for the ones Claude set, of course) because Claude would get too stuck in his head to relax if he realized Jericho was holding himself back. As much as Jericho wanted to lose himself already, to just have Claude and focus on nothing but the pleasure of the present moment, he couldn’t yet.

When Jericho pulled away he wriggled his arms under Claude’s hips, making sure Claude was holding onto him before standing up. Having no warning, Claude nearly jolted in surprise, then quickly clung to Jericho. He mumbled some sort of protest into Jericho’s neck, along the lines of being able to walk himself, but Jericho just ignored it as he walked to Claude’s room, shouldered the door open, and gently set Claude on his bed.

Claude only watched as Jericho pulled his shirt off, wide eyed all over again. His breathing picked up as Jericho knelt between his legs, and when Jericho kissed him he had no idea when his hands had gone to Jericho’s chest. Jericho gently helped Claude lay down after he pulled away, handling Claude like he was something precious. After Claude was settled Jericho crawled over him, propping himself up on his elbows.

If it was up to Jericho he would have gone so slow and gentle, making sure Claude felt cared for, savoring every bit of him, coddling his body so nothing would hurt him. But the night wasn’t for Jericho. He could guess what Claude wanted, could try to figure out what would make him comfortable and happy. Or he could lightly pull Claude’s head to the side and kiss the corner of his jaw.

“Tell me what you want,” Jericho murmured, pressing his cheek against Claude’s.

“I just want you,” Claude whispered. He leaned his head against Jericho’s, and could have happily stayed in that moment forever. Blissfully unaware that he was nearly breaking Jericho’s heart.

“I’m here. You have me.” Jericho wanted to cry. “Tell me what you want.”

“I just want to be yours,” Claude said softly, scared to say anything along a different line.

“Then you’re mine.” Jericho wanted to hold Claude so close and so tight. “Tell me what you want me to do. Tell me what you want me to say.”

There was a moment of silence. If not for the implications it held, it would have been peaceful. But instead it was horrible.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Jericho whispered. “I want to know. I want to know you everything you want, and give it to you. Please don’t not tell me just because you think I won’t like it.” Jericho wanted to beg him to find someone better to love.

There was another moment as Claude swallowed, trying to push through the embarrassment he tried to tell himself was irrational.

“…Can you tell me I’m doing good?” His voice was so small, and he was holding his breath in anxious anticipation.

Jericho kissed his jaw again, smiling to himself. “Of course.” His voice was noticeably warmer, and it made Claude noticeably relieved. “Only that you’re doing good, or any kind of praise?”

“Anything,” Claude whispered, still somewhat timid. “But mostly that I’m doing good.”

“Of course.” Jericho pulled his head up to kiss Claude for a few moments, a sweet smile on his face afterward. “Thank you for telling me. You’re doing so good being honest with me. Is there anything else?”

This time the silent moment was somewhat peaceful.

“Can you be gentle?” Claude asked, and Jericho’s smile brightened even more. He almost felt loved.

“Of course .”

—————————

(woohoo)

—————————

No amount of coaxing would have gotten Claude to let Jericho help him dress. Jericho hadn’t slept in two days, he’d said, so there was no way in hell or on Earth he was letting Jericho do anything besides go right to bed, and that was final.

Jericho’s internal debate was incredibly brief. If Claude dressed himself, he would be standing on his hurt leg. But while that argument would have won over in nearly any other scenario, this time it was quickly drowned out by the relief from Claude seeming to be somewhat back to normal. Jericho had argued for a minute anyway, just to make sure Claude would realize that he had truly meant it. Then he put his jeans on and flopped down on Claude’s bed.

After putting minimal effort into wriggling under the blankets, Jericho rolled onto his side, then made sure there was enough room for Claude to lay comfortably on the other half of the bed. Content with the distribution of space, Jericho closed his eye and tried to at least seem to be sleeping, if only so Claude wouldn’t feel the need to fuss over him. Jericho let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding when Claude slipped into bed, relieved that he was finally off his feet. And then Claude crawled into his arms.

In some horrible twisted way, Claude was happy. Leftover adrenaline blocking most of the pain in his leg, the memory of Jericho in him and on him still fresh, and his head remaining somewhat clouded from pleasure, he was grinning stupidly to himself as the night hardly even felt real. It was a strange sort of high he was riding, but a high nonetheless, built off the relief of satisfying such a long buried desire. He was so hopelessly in love, so eager to please, so desperate for Jericho in any way.

With the haze in his head scrambling most chances at logical thoughts, he of course didn’t have much solid reasoning behind his actions. All Claude could think was that more than anything he wanted to stay close to Jericho, and he had already been in Jericho’s arms for most of the night, so why couldn’t he spend the rest of the night there? So he wormed his way into Jericho’s embrace, under Jericho’s left arm and carefully laying on his right one. Moving close enough that he was nearly against Jericho’s chest. He almost felt loved.

Jericho couldn’t breathe. All night, Claude had looked fragile. But before he had looked fragile like something that needed to be coddled with care and caution and love, at risk of breaking from any sort of mishandling. Now he looked fragile like something that was securely tucked in a glass case or a padded box, safe from the world and not meant to be exposed to it again. Except when Claude had chosen a place to tuck himself and hide from the world, somewhere warm and safe that would let him feel at ease despite everything, he hadn’t picked a glass case or a padded box. He had picked Jericho.

Even after everything, all the pain Jericho had caused him, directly and indirectly, on purpose and by accident, Claude still picked him. Jericho wanted to cry, wanted to hold Claude so close and so tight, wanted to beg him to find someone better to love, for one brief second even wanted to be able to lose all his power and responsibility so he could be what Claude needed. But any one of those things would get Claude worked up, would make him upset again, and Jericho wouldn’t have forgiven himself if he ruined Claude’s precious few hours of peace. So instead he pulled the blanket up further to tuck Claude in, then carefully hugged him close. They laid in silence for a while, until Claude shifted when Jericho thought he had fallen asleep.

“Go to sleep,” Jericho whispered, hugging him just a little bit tighter.

“I’ll go to sleep when you go to sleep,” Claude grumbled back. But he buried his head into Jericho’s chest anyway.

Jericho sighed and rolled his eye, then quickly dropped a kiss to Claude’s head so Claude would know he wasn’t actually upset.

Neither of them said anything after that. For all Jericho knew he could have laid there for two minutes, or twelve, or even twenty. He wasn’t exactly thinking, just wallowing in the shit show of emotions gathering in his head. Shame for giving into basic desires he should have been above, self-contempt for letting himself stray so far from his scion and the mission, and, of course, horrible crushing guilt for what he had pushed Claude to. And then a sense of warmth, a need to care that melted everything else away until all that was left in his mind was the warm little spark laying in his arms. Jericho nudged Claude a bit, then sighed with relief when Claude’s stillness proved him to finally be asleep. Then the knowledge that Claude didn’t actively need him opened the floodgates in Jericho’s mind the rest of the way.

He couldn’t be there, shouldn’t be there. He couldn’t care like this, shouldn’t care like this. He couldn’t let himself stay, shouldn’t let himself stay. The longer he stayed the longer he was being weak, and the longer he was being weak the longer it would take for him to claw his way out of that weakness. He had to leave before he broke even more. When Jericho slipped out of bed, he shouldn’t have been that gentle untangling himself from Claude, shouldn’t have tucked Claude back in, shouldn’t have stopped to kiss Claude’s forehead. But he did all of those anyway, promising himself that he would leave all that weakness behind after a few more moments of self-indulgence. Then he grabbed an extra blanket and went to sleep on the couch.

At least he could hope that Claude had felt loved.

Chapter Text

As the sun finally started setting on one of the best days of Bell’s life, she had decided to go down to the basement to go to bed. No one had thought twice about the fact that she was going to bed earlier than usual; so much had happened that it would have been weirder if she hadn’t gotten tired earlier. And no one thought twice about how anxious she had been waiting for a time to believably want to go to bed, because no one had noticed.

Rex had gone after her, nearly getting tired himself, but mostly because he wanted to be able to kiss her goodnight before she fell asleep. He had gotten to his room after Bell did, but ended up ahead of her when he went to hang up his scarf and take his shoes off. Bell closing the door behind them wasn’t too unusual; it was hearing the lock click that made Rex turn back around in confusion.

And then Bell was kissing him. Standing on her toes and grabbing his head and kissing him for as long as she could. The surprise wore off quickly, and Rex found his hands resting at her waist and tail gently looping around her leg. There was a long, perfect minute when nothing else existed besides the two of them. Then Bell finally pulled away, wrapping her arms around Rex’s neck to pull herself closer to again.

“Go put your pajamas on,” she whispered, softly kissing his temple. Rex nodded, almost dumbly, and Bell smiled and left a stray kiss on his jaw as she let go.

Rex felt like he was dreaming as he got changed. But he couldn’t bear to try pinching himself, almost scared that it truly wasn’t real. He kept finding his hand drifting to his mouth, or temple, or jaw, anywhere that Bell’s lips had touched. When he was done he found Bell patiently waiting for him, and felt his face heat up at the thought of her watching him undress. He was nothing if not putty in her hands, no thoughts and head empty as she gently pushed him to sit on his bed. Not a word spoken or signed, yet he still understood as Bell nudged him backwards until his back was nearly against the headboard.

If Rex’s face wasn’t flushed before, it certainly was once Bell climbed onto the bed. On her knees, straddling his lap, her hips pressed against his, so easily pulling all the air from his lungs. He wanted to wrap his arms around her neck as she cradled his head, but she was so close that all he could do was stare up at her in awe.

Bell rested her forehead on Rex’s, one hand leaving his face to lead one of his to her hip. “Touch me,” she whispered, lips nearly against his. She smiled as he finally found his muscles, pressing his hands into her hips as his thumbs gently rubbed the skin and blank space just above her shorts. His tail followed suit, coiling around her thigh and happily thumping against her leg.

“Good boy,” she cooed, returning her hand to his head. Rex’s breath caught at that, immediately grabbing her attention. “Do you like that? Do you want me to tell you how good you are?” Bell already knew the answer from the way his tail had started thumping faster, but teasing him was too adorable to resist. He just nodded, voice not yet found, and Bell wasn’t about to leave this discovery unexplored. “You want me to tell you that you’re so well-behaved? How pretty you are? Reward you for being so perfect, call you my good boy?”

Rex had finally pulled his voice from his throat, whispering yes over and over to Bell’s words, audibly cracking with eagerness at the last bit. She kissed him for a few moments, Rex trying to follow her when she pulled away before stilling as she kissed his face.

Lips against his forehead, his nose, the outer corner of each eye, Bell must have kissed him at least half a dozen times before she was satisfied. Only to immediately want to start all over again upon seeing Rex’s expression. Her heart melted in an instant, cooing over him as he looked up at her like a puppy dog waiting to get a treat.

“You’re so precious,” she whispered, gently brushing his bangs out of his face. “So precious. My good boy. I love you.” And what was she supposed to do besides kiss him when he managed to whisper I love you back? What was Rex supposed to do but moan as her tongue dipped into his mouth?

Rex was breathing heavier as Bell pulled away, hands trying to pull her hips closer and tail nearly trembling as it tightened around her leg. Slowly she kissed along his jaw, letting him have time to breathe and relax.

“We should go to bed.” Rex had loosely draped his arms around Bell’s waist, and was trying to lean his head into hers.

“We are in bed,” she hummed, grinning to herself and pressing another kiss against his skin.

“Why did you tell me to put my pajamas on if we weren’t going to sleep?” Rex nearly whined. A little confused, a little tired, a little hesitant over what was happening.

“Oh,” Bell tilted his head to the side a bit, leaning closer to whisper in his ear. “That was because your shirt wasn’t giving me much space to work with.” And with that she was dropping her head, nipping at the crook of his neck, reveling in the way he shivered and held onto her tighter.

Rex was nearly gone, gripping Bell’s waist as he let her have her way with him. He couldn’t tell if his tail was wagging or shaking, his scion sharing his sentiment over the way Bell touched him. Soft and gentle and just so her that he could barely take it.

Bell tugged him forward a bit by the back of his neck, letting his head fall back so she could hunch over to kiss his throat. For an instant Rex felt anxious being so vulnerable, but only for an instant. It was quickly chased away, Bell still making him feel so loved and so safe . But when she lightly bit the thin, sensitive skin, that same part of his brain still dedicated to basic survival lit up again, and this time wasn’t so easily calmed down.

Immediately Rex’s whole body tensed, nearly hitting his head on the wall to jerk his throat away from Bell’s teeth. He was grateful when she quickly lifted her head, the realization that something was wrong coming just as fast as his reaction had.

“Hey, what is it?” Bell asked softly, her voice almost trembling. One of her hands was hovering behind Rex’s head in case he moved suddenly again, the other lightly brushing the hair out of his face. Wanting to protect and comfort him, but trying to give him space until she knew what he would still be comfortable with.

Rex leaned forward, still loosely hugging Bell, and rested his head on her chest. “You don’t have to worry; you can hold me, it’s okay. Everything was fine, I liked it, it’s just…when you bit there it was just… too much.”

“Okay,” she murmured, resting her head on his and hugging him tight, “I’m sorry.” There was a long peaceful moment where she just held him, few other cares in the world besides the two of them.

“Did you want to keep going?” Bell asked finally, “Or do you want to stop for tonight?”

“Can we go to sleep?” Rex’s voice was small as he tilted his head to peek up at her. “Not that it was that bad, I- I’m just tired.”

Bell ran a hand through his hair and kissed his forehead before sliding off his lap. She gently tugged Rex down to lay with her, laying on her right side if only because she could do that now. She had been planning to hold him, let him snuggle up to her and lay his head on her chest again. Stroke his hair and kiss his head and whisper sweet little things to him as she watched him fall asleep. But before she could scoot closer to the top of the bed and tuck his head under her chin, he pulled her close first. Kissing the top of her head like she had meant to do for him.

“I wanted to hold you,” she said, not wanting to feel bad when he was holding her, but still wanting to be able to hold him the way she planned.

“You already did,” Rex said, kissing her forehead before continuing. “I wanted to kiss you goodnight.”

So Bell made herself settle down as he rolled onto his back and pulled her into his side. One arm snug around her waist, tail draped over her hips, hand cupping her face. Letting her snuggle up to him and lay a hand on his chest. Stroking her hair and kissing her and whispering that he was so happy for her as he watched her try and fail to not fall asleep.

Chapter Text

For a second the whole world was silent.

Or maybe it wasn’t, and Bell’s ears were ringing too much for her to notice. She wasn’t sure if she was frozen because of her horror or because of Jericho. All she could do was stare.

Stare with one eye, instead of the two she should have had. At the jagged blank space that started at her. At the blood, she couldn’t tell if it was dripping or pouring, coming from the place where the blades went right through Desmond’s body. At the man she had just killed.

And then she was on the ground, Jericho dropping her body like a rag doll. Dropping Desmond like he was even less.

The world started up again, so much sound and so much happening. So much that it may as well have been nothing. Someone was yelling, she had no idea who. It couldn’t be her. Even if she had a mouth, she wouldn’t have been able to yell. She couldn’t do anything but stare. Stare at the man she had just killed.

Then Rex was grabbing her, hauling her to her feet and forcing her to realize the scene around her. “Oi, Bell, come on!”

“Rex run ,” Lyss was yelling.

“But Desmond-“

“Run, now !”

So they all ran. Bell had no idea where Nia took them. Couldn’t realize a single direction, or count the turns, or estimate the distance. Everything was blur. A numb, overwhelming blur. Rex set her on the ground once they did finally stop, much more gently than Jericho had, and knelt down next to her. She didn’t know when he had taken his mask off, only knew that he was trembling when he pulled her to his chest and pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

“We need a place to go,” Nia said, half falling onto the ground with them. Rex reached out with one hand to help her steady herself, but she waved him away.

“Oi, we’re not bringing her back to the Sour Grape.” Rex had wrapped his arm back around Bell, pulling her closer protectively. She felt like a spectator of a conversation she was in, numbly hugging herself and not completely feeling Rex’s arms tight around her. Staring at nothing as the tears ran down her face. Her half of a face, instead of the full one she should have had.

“I know…” Nia was saying, stopping to think for half a minute before continuing. “We could go to Claude’s new apartment, it’s not like he’s using it. We won’t have anything though.”

“You take Bell, I’ll go back to the Sour Grape and pack,” Rex decided.

Nia looked hesitant, but took Bell anyway when Rex nudged her away. “You sure you’ll be alright bud?”

Rex had put his mask back on, but Bell could still feel his eyes on her when he promised he would be fine. She and Nia watched him walk away for a minute, before Nia gently turned Bell’s head toward her.

“Hey,” Nia whispered softly, “It’ll be alright.” She gently wiped the blood and tears from Bell’s face, then drew her hands back to take her mask off. “It’ll be alright,” she repeated, returning her hands to cup Bell’s face. “It’s not your fault.”

Bell wished she had it in her to do anything more than stare. But all she could do was look back at Nia, completely hopeless, scared to even lean her head into Nia’s hand. Bell wasn’t sure if Nia understood everything that her lack of response meant. She must have understood enough, though, because after a moment she pulled Bell’s head close to kiss her forehead. Gently pulling Bell to her feet, Nia tucked her mask under one arm and wrapped the other tight around Bell’s shoulders.

“Come on, let’s get you somewhere safe.”

—————————

Rex was seething as he walked back to the Sour Grape. His scion wasn’t out yet, but he could feel its fire bristling just under the surface of his blank space. Sharing his fury and ready to maul anything that tried to get in their way. Or any one .

It was hard to focus on anything other than his anger. After a few blocks he finally managed to force himself to think about packing instead. What he would need to get for each of them, where it all would be, what order to grab things in. The more he planned  out his movements, the faster he would be in and out. The faster he would be in and out, the faster he could get back to Bell.

Eventually his scion spoke up. “Jericho isn’t going to just let us walk away.”

Then we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it , he thought back, hands curling into fists at even the thought of his brother.

“I hate to admit it, but we both know we can’t win against him.”

Rex swallowed, mulling over the thought until an idea surfaced. We can’t. But you could.

“…Are you serious?” His scion sounded like it was is disbelief, and Rex couldn’t tell if that was over the situation or his idea.

If it comes to that: yes. Frankly, Rex was in a slight bit of disbelief himself over his own idea. And at the overall situation.

When he got to the Sour Grape, Rex made a beeline for the basement. The room Nia was staying in wasn’t the closest to the stairs, but she had her backpack there, and he needed that first. He had barely managed to grab one set of clothes for her before his scion sensed Jericho moving.

“He’s coming down,” it warned, “He was only in the apartment, not his room, we don’t have much time.” His scion ended up materializing to help him shove everything in the backpack. By the time he was finished grabbing Nia’s things, Jericho was already almost in the club. He rushed back across the hall to his room, in a mad dash to pack as much as he could. To minimize the amount of time he would have to stall for.

“He’s almost here,” it hissed, disappearing after helping him shove the last of Bell’s things into the bag. Rex almost stumbled in alarm. Almost dropping things in his panic.

Almost freezing as the door opened.

“Rex.” Jericho’s voice was dangerously stoic. A stone wall, ready to reveal sharp iron stakes at any moment. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Packing,” Rex snapped, sparing a side-eying glance in Jericho’s direction. If the small pause that followed was Jericho waiting for him to say more, then Jericho could keep waiting. Rex already knew that the more he opened his mouth, the less likely it would be that he would close it. He couldn’t afford to let that happen right now, not when he needed to get out and back to Bell.

“Really… and where do you think you’re going?” Jericho was borderline threatening now, practically daring him to keep talking.

“Oi, you’re clearly not above using Bell’s blank space, figure it out yourself!” Rex slammed the drawer shut, glaring at Jericho as he opened the next one. If looks could kill he would be talking to Jericho’s scion already.

Jericho just laughed to himself as Rex turned away, making him grit his teeth. “Oh, I’m sorry Rex, I just realized I’ve been asking the wrong questions. A better one would be do you really think I’d let you? ”

In the silence that followed as Rex stilled, they could have heard a pin drop. There was no borderline threatening now. The threat was out in the open, in the form of Jericho’s scion hissing at his shoulder with no shortage of fire or claws. Even if it could only give itself a semblance of a face with its fire, it was still perfectly clear that it would have already sunk its claws in Rex’s head if it had its way.

For a moment nothing moved, except for Rex’s scion. Materializing to perch on his shoulder, hissing plenty despite being smaller and much less dangerous looking. Jericho scoffed, him and his scion sharing a glance as if neither of them could believe that this was all Rex’s scion was at the moment. He met Rex’s glare, just raising his eyebrow in near amusement before Rex spoke.

“Yeah, actually,” Rex said finally, holding eye contact with Jericho as he took a step back to stand next to the concrete wall. “I do think you’ll let it leave.”

And then his scion slammed his head into the wall.

Two beats of silence passed as Rex’s body slumped to the floor. Jericho’s smug look gone and replaced by genuine shock. Rex’s body staggered to its feet, blank space arm growing sharp at every joint and a crown of fire lighting up.

“Oh, I’m sorry Jericho,” Rex’s scion growled, pushing Rex’s hair back. “What was that you were saying about us needing your permission to do anything?”

Jericho’s face set into a scowl. “So you’re still on his side about this whole damn thing,” he said slowly. Accusatory. Once again nearing dangerous.

“Yep,” the scion tossed over Rex’s shoulder, turning back to the bag they were almost done packing. All it had left to grab was few things for Rex. A few more things and it could get back to Bell.

“And here I thought you were committed to the mission.” Jericho’s voice was disappointed, but not particularly surprised. Like he had always suspected, in the back of his mind, that it would stray from what he said they stood for. It had to plaster on a smile to hide the fact that his tone hurt. That the idea of Jericho expecting it to disappoint him cut deeper than it wanted to admit.

“Well, I’m not actually sure what the mission even is anymore,” it drawled, sarcastically cheerful as it clapped a few times for him. “Congratulations, I’m sure we can call up Guinness and get you some recognition for being this fucking confusing.”

It turned back to packing, hurriedly grabbing the last few things it needed. Jericho and his scion were undoubtedly in a ridiculous amount of sync, making them nearly as dangerous as they could possibly be. Having complete control for the time being was the only thing giving the scion any sort of upper hand. Its advantage was incredibly slight, but it was there and they all knew it. Jericho wasn’t impulsive nor dumb enough to fight it without weighing his options. That gave it some time to get out, but that was about the extent of the grace period it had gotten itself. Jericho would likely decide that using force would be worth it, even if it didn’t have to fight Rex for control. Once he did, the biggest factor in its getaway would be how fast it could counter and run. Unless it was lucky enough to get out before the situation came to that.

But as it finally zipped the bag shut, its luck ran out.

A screech was its only warning before Jericho’s scion was lunging at it, full of rage and sharp edges. It only barely managed to dodge, slinging the backpack over its shoulder with the hand still made of flesh and bone, ready to fight back with the one made of blank space and fury.

It was ready when Jericho’s scion whipped around, tearing its claws across its face and chest. Grabbing its head and kicking its body back, watching the blank space that was Jericho’s scion tear apart. It turned to face Jericho, who could only half stifle his flinch, knowing it needed to leave before his scion could melt back into the floor to dash back to his shoulder. It stalked towards the door, harshly bumping Jericho’s shoulder on the way out. It could hear him seething as it climbed the stairs, could hear the beginning of his scion’s hiss as it started to reform. When it slammed the basement door behind it there was nothing it could do but run.

—————————

Rex’s scion nearly collided with the door when it got to Claude’s apartment, all but tripping over itself from rushing so much. Trying to catch its breath and momentarily wondering why it had ever wanted this damn body so much.

“Rex?!” Suddenly Nia’s voice made the scion freeze. It hadn’t even realized that it was going to have to explain that Rex wasn’t awake, and then have to explain why.

Nia rushed in from a connected room, her mask off and weariness on display. “Oh thank god you’re… you…” She trailed off, registering the claws and the fire and the uncomfortable expression, all of which incredibly unlike Rex. “…You’re not Rex right now.”

“It was his idea,” it sputtered, suddenly defensive in fear that Nia would blame it for hurting Rex. “Jericho was trying to stop us and we couldn’t have gotten out if he was awake too so-“

“I don’t care, whatever!” Nia snapped, waving at it to shut up as she grabbed the backpack. “We have more important things to worry about. Bell locked herself in a room and won’t let me in, so if Rex isn’t here to talk to her then you’re doing it!”

The scion froze, scared to know the answer to its question but slowly asking anyway. “Why did she lock herself in a room..?”

“She’s scared Jericho will make her hurt someone again,” Nia said, rubbing her eyes and the bridge of her nose. “The worst part is I don’t think she’s wrong.”

It nodded slowly, letting Nia take the backpack before running in the direction she was pointing. It wasn’t long before it found Bell, tracking the one other blank in the apartment to the spare bedroom. Locked, just as Nia had said.

There was a long moment of hesitation, the scion wondering if it should wait for Rex to wake up instead. But it quickly shook that thought away, knowing that would take too long, and gently knocked on the door. “Bell..? Are you in there?”

A light knock from the other side of the door was the only response it got, but something was better than nothing. It had to take a deep breath before speaking again, nearly terrified that it would say the wrong thing.

“Listen I- it’s not Rex. Jericho tried to stop us from leaving, so Rex’s idea was that we could get out if it was just me… and…” It took a deep breath again, voice starting tremble. It couldn’t sound nervous, not too much at least, or that would make Bell even more worried. “Nia said you were scared that Jericho would use you to hurt one of us, but- and I know you might still be scared because being scared doesn’t always make sense but… Jericho couldn’t hurt us himself. You couldn’t hurt either of us, I promise.” It winced, hating that it was somewhat lying to her, but if it had to stretch the truth to comfort her then so be it.

There was a pause as it waited for her to respond, so long that it started trying to think of something else to say. Then the lock clicked, and the door slowly cracked open. Bell only opened it so much, allowing her eye to be visible and not much else. But it was enough to show the tears tracked down her face, enough to show that she was still trembling, enough to wrench its heart until the scion could barely breathe. Slowly it reached towards her, and whatever walls she had thrown together crumbled when it cupped her face to wipe away her tears.

She was still scared to be close to anyone. She knew that even if Jericho couldn’t have hurt Rex or his scion, it would be easier to use her to hurt them if she was already close. If she did hurt Rex, his scion could easily heal him and neither of them would blame her, and that would do nothing to stop her from blaming herself until the end of time. But no matter how scared she was that she would hurt someone, some selfish part of her chose comfort over everyone around her, and she was ashamed of how easily that part won.

Pushing the door open the rest of the way, she fell into the scion, starting to sob all over again. It held her as tight as it could, tail wrapping gently but snugly around her leg.

“I know,” it whispered, “I know. It’s not fair. You didn’t deserve any of this. You deserve to be able to have the rest of your face. It’s not fair.” It nearly choked as the tears started forming, and buried its head in her hair to hide them. “I’m so sorry.”

For what felt like forever, Bell just cried. Exhausted in every possible way, scared, hurting, guilty. Wishing she could cry with the second eye she’d thought she could have, wanting to scream with the mouth that had been torn away from her. Every time she managed to calm down, even in the slightest bit, she caught sight of her hands clutching Rex’s scarf and started to sob all over again. Hands that were hers but at the same time not, that were now responsible for death, that were the reason she saw a picture perfect vision of Desmond’s lifeless body every time she closed her eye.

Eventually, by some miracle, Bell finally got herself under control. Or maybe she had run out of tears, or had made herself too tired to cry anymore. She squirmed a bit, getting it to drop its arms so she could move.

“I killed him,” she signed, squeezing her eye shut for a moment to stop the tears from welling up again.

“No you didn’t.” It tried to reach for her, but she smacked its hand away.

“I killed him,” she repeated, tears forgotten as she started to get angry. She didn’t want to be told that it would be okay, didn’t want to be told that she wasn’t to blame, didn’t want to be told that it wasn’t her fault because it was. Those blades had come from her. It was her blank space that had driven right through Desmond’s chest. They had only been there because of her. It was all her fault .

“Jericho killed him.” It insisted, and this time gently caught her wrist when she tried to push it away. It moved its hand to hold hers and she made herself look at it, if only to glare. But that quickly wavered as she saw its face. Desperate, pleading, helpless. Hurting. Hurting for her .

“Hey,” it said softly, catching her attention again when she tried to look away. “If someone got stabbed, you wouldn’t say the knife killed them, right? You’d say the person using the knife killed them, wouldn’t you?”

Bell just stared for a moment, already knowing what point it was trying to make. But it wasn’t going to stop or continue until she responded. Until she acknowledged that it was right. Finally, slowly, she nodded. Defeated.

“I know it’s easier to say that it’s your fault, because that’s not as scary as admitting that you had no control over it and that Jericho can just take all your autonomy that easily. But- but I don’t want you to force yourself to accept that it’s your fault, and feel guilty until you realize that’s not true, and then have to force yourself to accept the truth all over again.” It stopped for a second to swallow down the tremors creeping into its voice, looking down for a second before making itself look back at her again. “Jericho is the one who killed Desmond. Jericho used you to kill him. He’s the only one responsible, and- and I don’t want you to get hurt even more by blaming yourself for what he did.”

Bell dropped her arm, and it let go of her hand. A moment passed where she did nothing, looking down at nothing, thinking nothing. Then, slowly, she managed to raise her hands. “I’m tired.”

Gently it drew her back into a hug, this time loosely so she could easily leave if she wanted to. The comfort still made her tear up, because she was still scared Jericho would use her to hurt someone again, and still felt guilty that she continued to choose her own comfort over protecting Rex and his scion. But she leaned into it anyway, and was too exhausted for the tears to fall.

There was a moment where the scion said nothing, unsure of how fragile this semi-peacefulness was, scared that it would ruin this. But Bell wasn’t going to take initiative on taking care of herself right now. “Do you want to go to bed?” It asked gently, bringing one hand up to carefully brush the hair out of her face. She nodded, and it carefully pulled her to the bed, sitting next to her as she unceremoniously plopped on the mattress. Movements slow and exhausted, she managed to take her shoes and scarf off. The scion just watched her, trying not to tear up, trying not to tremble, trying with everything it had to be strong for her.

“Is it okay if I let your hair down?” A second passed as Bell registered the question, giving a small nod once she did. It carefully hooked a claw under the elastic band holding her ponytail up, dragging it out at a snail’s pace so it wouldn’t pull on her hair. It would have been faster and easier to just slice through the band, but dammit if the scion did something that would startle her like that. Once the elastic was out it ran a hand through her hair, smoothing out the creases and gently scratching her head. Somewhat against her will, Bell leaned into it, head and eyelid starting to droop.

“Can I kiss you?” It asked softly, still gently stroking her hair to keep her calm. “Or do you want to wait for Rex?” She didn’t sign a response, only pushed her head towards it, hoping and begging and praying that it understood. For a minute it didn’t react to her answer, only pulled her closer. Nudging her legs up onto the bed, leaning her head on its shoulder, gingerly tucking her body under its arm. Then it kissed her forehead, lips lingering at her skin as it debated saying something. It wasn’t sure if there was actually any way that its intended question could make Bell upset, but it felt better about breaking the silence with a safety net. Something that it knew would keep her calm, something to continue actively trying to make her feel better, something that would give her another thing to focus on besides the thoughts that were no doubt unkind to herself. In the end it decided to return to scratching dulled claws along her scalp, watching her sigh and relax into it a bit more.

“Did you want to actually go to sleep, or just sit here for a bit?” It had meant to be gentle, but despite how soft it had been it still panicked when Bell moved. Still scared that it had somehow made whatever was going through her head even worse.

Bell had picked herself up from its shoulder, sitting up but leaving her legs bent behind her on the bed. She just stared at her lap for a moment, trying to get her brain to start up again. At some point her thoughts had slowed until they reached a standstill. She couldn’t tell if it was better or worse than thinking about what had happened.

“I don’t know,” she signed finally, and it was the truth. All of her trains of thought had been reduced to basic feelings, taking precedence over even essentials such as sleep. Most of it was the same that it had been since they had run from the Moat District.

Guilt over Desmond and his crumpled, lifeless body. Sorrow for Lyss being punished for trying to be kind to her. Fear that she would be used to hurt someone else. Craving comfort but at the same time hating it. Shame for letting that craving outstrip the fear that should have come first. Rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat.

“I’ll stay with you if you want,” the scion offered, “if you want to go to sleep but don’t want to be alone.”

She nodded, letting it ever so gently guide her to lay down. It slid over to sit by the pillow, pulling the blanket over her and draping its tail across her shoulders. Only the slightest bit of weight, but it felt like so much more. Personal, and kind, and loving, and making her want to cry from how much she didn’t deserve it.

The scion had lightly rested a hand on her head, originally meaning to run it through her hair but unsure if the constant motion would make it harder for her to fall asleep. It compromised with itself by stroking her temple, and thanked every higher power that did and didn’t exist when it seemed to make Bell’s eye shut just a little bit faster.

After a long time of just watching her it got up, knowing there was nothing else it could do. It turned the lights off as it left the spare bedroom, slowly making its way to the kitchen where it had sensed Nia.

“Is it okay if I sit?” it asked, hovering in the doorway by the table.

Nia nodded, slumped over with her head resting in her arms, and pushed one of the other chairs towards it with her foot. “Is Bell alright?” she mumbled, already knowing the answer from the defeated way the scion fell into the chair.

“No.” It felt its eyes starting to tear up, but then registered the shine on Nia’s cheeks and quickly blinked them back. “But she’s asleep, so that’s… better, I guess.”

* Nia just sighed through her nose, a slow, tired, exhale. “I found a bottle of wine in the cabinet when I brought groceries over the other day, if that sounds like it would do anything.”

The scion leaned back in its chair, looking up at the ceiling. “Yeah, that sounds like the only thing that could help right now.”

Chapter Text

Jericho propped his head on his knees, staring across the room. The motel had a mirror mounted on the dresser, and, now that Claude had gone to get dinner, there was nothing for Jericho to do but sit on the bed he wouldn’t use and look at it. Look at his reflection.

He hated it.

It was just so boring : black hair and black eyes and once he fully developed his skin would be just as plain. This face belonged to Jericho now, it was his , but that didn’t mean that it felt like it was. He had tried to make it more interesting, nagged Claude into finding a place run by blanks so he could get a few earrings and a bridge piercing. It had helped, but only somewhat. Most of the time he still felt like he was looking at Martin in the mirror.

He reached up to tug on his hair, something he did now just because it had gotten long enough and because he could. He wouldn’t be as mad about the black if it wasn’t his eyes and his hair. It was the monotony that was the worst part. If he could just change one of them to a different color, it would be so much better.

And with that thought, his eyes slowly wandered to the envelope of cash Claude had left behind. Claude who had left, and wasn’t there to stop him.

When Claude did get back, Jericho was nowhere to be immediately found. What was immediate was Claude’s alarm upon realizing this, which made him drop the bag of takeout as he nearly slammed the door and dashed in to search. Jericho had left the bathroom door wide open, so Claude had found him fairly fast. He was so relieved that it took him a minute to actually register why Jericho was there. And then that minute passed.

“What are you doing?? ” Claude was nearly shrieking, but Jericho’s only reaction was to look at him with a raised brow, like he was a child having a tantrum.

“Hey, would you shut up?” Jericho turned back to the mirror in the bathroom as he rolled his eyes. “Aren’t you the one always telling me to keep it down so no one has a reason to come knocking at our door?”

“What. Are. You doing?” Claude hissed, practically clawing at the air, because better the air than Jericho’s dumbass face.

“Dying my hair.” was the extent of Jericho’s response, as casual as he would be if he was talking about the weather.

“Where did you get that?” Claude demanded through gritted teeth, glaring at the boxes of bleach and red dye. If he kept glaring at Jericho he was going to start plotting some kind of crime against him. Not murder, he had put too much effort into keeping his idiot alive to kill him, but something.

“Drug store across the street.” Jericho was still just as unbothered, like Claude and his wrath weren’t even there. If anything, the nonchalance only served to make Claude even more infuriated.

“With what money?” Claude caught sight of the envelope on the bed designated for Jericho, and immediately knew the answer. “The emergency cash is for emergencies!” he shouted, before Jericho could even get a word out.

“Um, yeah, the emergency was that I didn’t have any money.” Jericho just blinked at Claude, annoyed and confused and why didn’t you realize that yourself. 

Claude took his mask off to bury his face in his hands. He walked a slow lap around the small motel room, taking several deep breaths to calm himself down. Jericho, for one, just turned back the mirror to figure out how to get to the back of his head.

After a minute, Claude snatched the bag of food from the floor. He set it on Jericho’s bed, starting to take the boxes out, and glanced back towards the bathroom. Jericho had managed to turn his head enough to see some of the back of it, and that had apparently been enough for him to be confident in his ability to eyeball the rest. He was back in his own world, and his mouth had turned to a slight smile, dissolving Claude’s anger. Making Claude soften and watch him fondly for a second. It had been so long since he’d seen Jericho look in the mirror with anything other than contempt.

“Do you need help?” he offered, not even thinking before he did. Just wanting to be even a small part of something that made Jericho happy.

“No,” Jericho snapped, “I want to do it myself.”

Claude just nodded, turning back to the food. The blatant rejection hurt, but he knew Jericho well enough by now to realize that he had control issues. This was something Jericho had complete control over. He got to decide how much of his hair he dyed and what color he used, got to do it all with his own hands. Claude would be a variable outside of Jericho’s control, and Jericho wouldn’t let something like that into this, even if he did trust Claude. Especially not when it was as important as making him feel better about his new face.

So Claude just grabbed the box with his food and dug to the bottom of the bag to find the plastic utensils. “You’re lucky I didn’t get hot food,” he called towards the bathroom at Jericho. “And you better come back to eat when you’re done.”

It ended up only a being few minutes before Jericho left the bathroom, and Claude frowned as he threw the takeout bag away.

“Jericho you have to wash your hair after you put the bleach in,” Claude told him, rolling his eyes.

“The instructions said to wait 20 minutes,” Jericho snapped back, huffing into his own food. Claude didn’t manage any kind of retort, too stunned that Jericho had actually read instructions.

Jericho only got through half of his meal before wordlessly abandoning it to go back to the bathroom. Claude sighed at it, knowing that Jericho probably wouldn’t eat much more, if at all. He then sighed again in a very different tone when he heard the sink running and realized that was how Jericho intended to try to rinse his hair.

When his hair finally felt clean, Jericho looked in the mirror again and nearly gagged. Truth be told, his hair looked absolutely horrendous. Like the amateur dye job that it was. The bleach hadn’t completely stripped his hair, leaving him with a somewhat light brown that was uneven as hell. But when Jericho looked a second time he couldn’t stop smiling, because no matter how horrible his hair was, he finally looked different. He had to turn towards the back of the bathroom so Claude wouldn’t see his stupid grin. Giddy with the idea that if he already looked different from just the bleach, it was going to somehow be even better with color.

Jericho tore open the box of red dye, literally tore because who had time to use the intended flaps when he had a face to change up, only for the instructions to tell him that his hair needed to be dry. He pulled the shitty motel hair dryer from under the sink and glared at it as he plugged it in, bitter that he had to wait to finish dying his hair. By the time he had dried his hair, he was shoved out by Claude wanting to wash his face before going to bed.

Jericho was nearly bouncing in place with impatience when Claude finally let him have the bathroom back, promising that he would go to bed without even realizing what he was agreeing to just to get back to the dye. He didn’t even realize that he was still smiling while he was mixing the dye. By the time he was done he had to stop to hug himself and do a dumb little spin, so stupidly happy that he would have been embarrassed to know himself if he wasn’t so excited.

It was just dye. But at the same time it was so much more than that. It was something that was making Jericho’s face look like it actually belonged to him. Something that was making him want to look in the mirror instead of avoiding it. Something small yet already so important. It was his.

And when he had washed the dye out of his hair he had to bolt out of the bathroom. Turning on the lamp between their beds and shaking Claude awake with borderline violence.

“Claude look Claude look Claude look!” Jericho dropped to his knees so his head was at the same level as Claude’s, face only inches away.

Claude blinked once at Jericho, bleary and only barely awake. “Okay,” he said, in a slight bit of disbelief that Jericho was this excited to show him something. “Red now. Very nice. Much better than the black. Can I go back to sleep now?”

Jericho didn’t answer, just grinned wildly as he jumped up to go back to the bathroom and revel in the fact that he wanted to look in the mirror.

“You better get your ass to bed in the next hour or I will banish you to backseat of the car tomorrow and make you sleep there,” Claude snapped, turning the lamp off. He flopped back down onto the pillow, rolling over so he wouldn’t be kept awake by the light from the bathroom. Him and his minor compliment managing to make Jericho even happier.

——————

“Hope you don’t plan on needing the bathroom in the next few hours,” Jericho called. He was practically able to hear Claude’s eye roll.

“Don’t get dye in your piercings!” was Claude’s response, referring to the three new piercings on Jericho’s brow.

“Why do you act like I’m that stupid?” Jericho half slammed the bleach and green dye on the sink counter. Staking claim to the bathroom for at least two hours with the smell of the bleach alone.

“I’ll stop acting like you’re stupid when you stop acting like you’re stupid!” Claude shouted back. Each of them huffing at the other with no fire behind it. Arguments in that lane were basically routine at this point.

Jericho was humming to himself, having commandeered the radio. Dying his hair had become therapeutic, and almost instantly everything from the day, even the past week, that had worried or stressed him out was pushed right to the back of his mind.

“Do you need help?” Claude called after a while, hardly even meaning it anymore.

“No,” Jericho snapped back. The response had become reflexive, part of another argument that was common and comfortable. But then Jericho paused, mouth twisting as he stared at the mirror.

It was the only mirror in their apartment, and though the motels the two of them used to jump between had varying sizes in mirrors, it was still narrower than Jericho was used to. He had only dyed his hair one other time since they’d started renting the apartment, and had severely struggled when his normal strategy to get to the back of his head had failed due to the mirror’s size.

As he took a deep breath, part of Jericho wondered why he was so anxious, and another part of him knew exactly why. “Claude..?”

The blank in question had to do a double take, backpedaling to the bathroom doorway to see if Jericho was serious. Jericho was standing in front of the sink counter, hair only half bleached and face looking nervous. Definitely serious.

“I don’t think I can get the back of my head,” he said after a few moments of just staring at each other. Nearly sounding helpless.

So Claude nodded, grabbing a chair and bringing it to the bathroom for Jericho to sit down. “Just the same as what you’ve had, right?”

Jericho nodded, watching Claude in the mirror as he took the gloves and bottle of bleach. Jericho couldn’t tell if the silence was actually tense or if it was just him. The most rational part of his brain remembered that he trusted Claude, knew that he didn’t need to track Claude’s movements in the mirror, said that he could relax because Claude wouldn’t mess up his hair. But the rest of him was strung tight like a bowstring, gaze not leaving Claude’s reflection for even a second.

It was just dye. But at the same time it was so much more than that. It made Jericho’s face look like it belonged to him, made him want to look in the mirror. It was small, yet so important. It was his.

And he had just handed it all over to someone else.

Claude didn’t look up as he finished spreading the bleach through Jericho hair, no matter how much he could feel Jericho anxiously watching him. He didn’t want to accidentally do something that would make Jericho more nervous. Or worse, he didn’t want to see how anxious Jericho already was and not know what to do to ease it. When he was done he put the bottle of bleach back on the sink counter, then peeled the gloves off and snatched the instructions. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jericho turning his head, trying to make sure that Claude had, in fact, done exactly what he wanted. Claude took his time and then some finding the part of the instructions that said how long to wait before washing the bleach out. The more time he took the more time Jericho could safely have to reassure himself.

After Claude decided that he had wasted a sufficient amount of time, he folded up the instructions and shoved them back into the box. “It says wait 20 or 30 minutes before you wash it out,” he said.

“I know,” Jericho snapped, the familiarity of another meaningless little squabble breaking him from his bout of anxiety. Completely unaware that he had responded exactly the way Claude knew he would and fallen for the ‘trap’.

When Jericho did wash the bleach out and dry his hair, he still hesitated before asking Claude to help with the color too. He was still tense, still anxious, still unsure about giving up the familiar sense of some bit of control, even though Claude’s hands running through his hair made part of him want to ease up. He still tracked Claude’s hands in the mirror, still followed every move Claude made, still tight with nerves and anticipation.

But he was better than before, even if it was only somewhat. Letting Claude bleach his hair had proven to turn out fine, and Jericho was able to actively remember, just a bit, that he trusted Claude. He no longer felt the need to watch Claude with as much intensity as before, no longer held his breath the whole time.

Claude wasted time reading the instructions three times again, because Jericho wanted to check his hair in the mirror again. He still did his best to check as much as he could see, but he didn’t have to inspect it as closely.

“Are you using enough of the conditioner?” Claude asked suddenly, having picked up the small tube that had come with the bleach. He honestly didn’t know how much Jericho should be using, but it didn’t seem like very much had been used.

“Of course I am,” Jericho snapped, turning away from mirror to glare and making Claude groan.

“Oh my god, forgive me for making sure.” Claude rolled his eyes, then started to leave.

Jericho swallowed, not expecting the pang of longing to take up that much space in his chest once Claude’s presence was gone from the room. This time, there was no part of him that knew why he was so anxious again.

“Claude?” Jericho was grateful that his voice didn’t audibly crack, though he still winced when it got far too close for comfort. Claude turned back to him, seeming confused and bordering on concerned.

“Thanks,” Jericho managed, forcing himself to keep eye contact.

And Claude just smiled, one of the few genuine smiles of his that Jericho had the privilege of seeing.

——————

Jericho slammed the grocery bag down on the table, grinning when it made Claude jump. “Picked a color.”

Claude just sighed, muttering something about took you long enough as he grabbed the bag. He had abandoned Jericho in the aisle with the shelves of dye after realizing that his indecisiveness would last more than 5 minutes. What he had not done was tell Jericho to get anything else, yet there was still a small handful of other random shit in the bag anyway.

When he pulled out the dye Jericho had decided on, Claude had to take a long deep breath. “Jericho,” he said slowly, “This was one of the first colors you were looking at. And it took you half an hour to pick it?”

“The store had a lot of options!” Jericho yelled back defensively, “And you told me to ‘pick wisely’ because you don’t know if I’ll be allowed to bring more to the jungle!”

Groaning, Claude tossed the bleach and purple dye on the table. “Do you want me to do it for you again?”

“No, I want to spend an hour struggling,” Jericho quipped, dripping sarcasm. Routine, comfortable, basically scripted. He dragged a chair into the bathroom, plopping down as Claude followed him. Slipping one of his more tolerable CDs into the radio as Claude opened the box of bleach.

Claude gently ran his hands through Jericho’s hair, and near immediately all the tension in his body was gone. Claude couldn’t help smile softly at how quickly Jericho relaxed, glad that he could always make that happen. Occasionally he glanced at the mirror as he bleached Jericho’s hair for him. Taking a second to watch Jericho watch him, sometimes for half a moment meeting Jericho’s lazy gaze.

The time passed in a comfortable silence until Claude finished and peeled off the plastic gloves that had come with the bleach. Wordlessly letting Jericho know he was done. They went about their separate ways, Claude leaving the bathroom to finally let himself gag at the smell of the bleach while Jericho threw out the leftovers and the box. Jericho’s background music suddenly stopped, and Claude took that as his cue to retreat to his room as Jericho replaced the CD with his favorite one. Which just so happened to be one that Claude could hardly stand.

Jericho passed the time half-singing half-humming to himself, mindlessly spinning around himself with a grin he couldn’t control. No matter how many times he had dyed his hair, the feeling never got old. Nevermind that it had been a regular habit for nearly three years now, he still got just as excited about dying his hair.

When a few more than 20 minutes had passed, Claude reappeared. Jericho was found in the kitchen, having wandered there to get one of the miscellaneous snacks he had unnecessarily grabbed back at the dollar store.

“Wash your hair soon,” Claude reminded him, trying not to cringe at the awful choice of music. If it had been anything less than Jericho’s favorite, there would have been next to nothing keeping him from stomping into the bathroom and turning the radio off.

Jericho just flipped him off, too in the middle of a cookie to get a verbal response out. But he made his way back into the bathroom anyway, swallowing the rest of his snack and frowning at the mirror. “Still looks terrible,” he commented, loud enough for Claude to hear.

“It’s not like one day it will magically look good with just the bleach,” Claude snapped back. Rolling his eyes and making the mistake of walking past the open bathroom door, the consequences of which Claude only barely managed to save himself from by immediately turning away. Jericho had already taken his shirt off to shower, and the last thing Claude needed was another 24 consecutive hours of being teased for getting so flushed.

“Make sure you use all the conditioner,” Claude yelled. Finding some nothing task to busy himself with so he had a reason to avoid acknowledging that Jericho was, in fact, as hot as he thought he was.

“Stop acting like I’m stupid!” Jericho yelled back, flipping Claude off again, this time through the bathroom door he had just closed.

“I’ll stop acting like you’re stupid when you stop acting like you’re stupid!” Claude had turned back to the bathroom now, safely able to glare in Jericho’s direction without risking his own embarrassment now that the door was in the way. “And I mean it! Remember how fried your hair was the first time when you didn’t use the conditioner?”

Jericho didn’t answer, only turned the shower on to drown out anything else Claude might have had to say. Routine argument. Comfortable. A near script that was nearly affectionate.

It didn’t take long for Jericho to rinse his hair, and the first thing he did after getting out of the shower was briefly open the bathroom door to throw the box of dye at Claude. The very first thing. Claude nearly had a heart attack.

When Jericho had blow dried his hair and actually put pants on, he opened the bathroom door again. Claude had very quickly learned from a few minutes prior and very quickly averted his gaze. But Jericho left the bathroom door open this time, and after a few seconds of existential-level fear Claude felt safe enough to look up.

Jericho turned back to the bathroom, impatiently plopping back into his chair as Claude grabbed the bottle of purple dye he had mixed and followed him. This time there was no leisurely pace, no drop-dead level of relaxation, not even when Claude ran his hands through Jericho’s hair. Now Jericho was all bottled up energy and eagerness, sitting on his hands as he impatiently watched Claude in the mirror and tried to will him to work faster.

Practice in this exact scenario was the only thing keeping Claude from reacting to Jericho’s flip in behavior. He had smiled at the near-childlike excitement once, and paid for it dearly when Jericho thought he was being made fun of, refused to hear Claude’s exasperated explanation, and didn’t let go of it for almost a week.

The wait for the color to set in once Claude was done was shorter than the wait for the bleach had been, but to Jericho it felt ten times longer. He was nearly bouncing around trying to wait, and Claude kept the observation that he looked like a kid on a sugar rush to himself. Finally he bolted to the bathroom, and Claude allowed a fond smile to surface.

It was just dye. But at the same time it was so much more than that. Jericho didn’t necessarily need it anymore to think of his face as his own, or to keep from avoiding looking in the mirror. But it still made it better, was still something he liked, still helped him actively like his reflection. Something small, but still important to him.

And Claude got to be part of it.

It was theirs.

——————

Jericho swallowed, staring at the boxes of bleach and dye perched on the sink counter. He didn’t necessarily need to re-dye his hair, it hadn’t grown out that much yet. But he had been talking to Claude the day before, and somewhere in the middle of the conversation realized that this was longest period of time Claude had gone without his mask in at least a year. The longest Jericho had consistently seen his eyes.

So he asked Nia to get him more dye when she went to the store, asked her to get him pink this time. And if she put the pieces together about Jericho asking for pink soon after talking to Claude, her mask kept Jericho from seeing any sort of face she made at him.

And now he had the dye, and by all accounts should have already been halfway done. The mirror in the Sour Grape’s bathroom was wide enough for him to be able maneuver into seeing the back of his head. He could easily do his hair by himself. But Claude had taken more painkillers about an hour ago, so they should have kicked in by now. Meaning Claude would be able to stand if he wanted to.

“Claude..?” Jericho winced when his hesitation made itself known in his voice.

There was no response for a second, and then Claude was limping into the bathroom doorway. “What is it?”

“Can you help with my hair?” Jericho made some sort of motion towards the boxes of dye. Not completely aware of what exactly it had been, too focused on trying to seem natural.

Claude just blinked, taking a moment to register that Jericho had actually asked him that. Then it set in, and he had to force his face to change as little as possible, to keep from brightening too visibly. He just nodded, not trusting his voice, and made his way into the bathroom.

Jericho had already dragged a chair in, already grabbed the radio and put a CD on. He plopped into his chair, taking the box of bleach and starting to open it. Claude had gotten to him by the time he was pulling the contents out of the box, and wordlessly took the bleach from Jericho to mix it for him.

After hesitating for a moment, Claude ran a hand through Jericho’s hair. Jericho had to catch himself so he didn’t immediately sink back into Claude’s hands, didn’t react even more than he used to, didn’t admit how much he realized he’d been craving this. Claude still noticed the sudden change in his demeanor though, and didn’t know what to make of it.

“Are you okay?” he asked, a little scared that the answer was no, and a lot scared that he was the cause of it.

Jericho blinked, then quickly nodded. “Yeah,” he managed, “I’m fine.”

Claude allowed himself a small smile after a moment, putting together what Jericho’s reaction had been and why. He couldn’t help but gently run the backs of his fingers down Jericho’s temple, and had to duck his head to hide how amusing he found it. With the way Jericho’s breath caught as he tried to keep himself completely upright, Claude wasn’t sure if he had ever found something so endearing.

After that Claude returned to the bleach. Deciding to spare Jericho from having to employ a near-painful amount of self control again, no matter how much he wanted to try to get Jericho to openly relax.

It was surprising how easily they fell back into their abandoned routine, Jericho forgetting he had any care in the world and Claude not needing to look in the mirror to know the soft expression Jericho was watching him with. He wanted to look up, wanted to have the briefest moment of peaceful eye contact in the mirror like they used to. But now Jericho probably wouldn’t let himself have that, so Claude didn’t look up, didn’t risk ruining what they were slowly rebuilding.

It had been a long time since Jericho had asked Claude to help him, since he had forced himself to break from what had once been theirs. Jericho had forgotten how nice it felt, not having to strain his neck, letting Claude take care of it for him. Being able to let go, even if it was so important to him, because he knew he could trust Claude with anything. It was a strange thing to feel safe over. But when Jericho tried to think about putting the feeling into words, that was the first thing that came to mind.

The atmosphere was comfortable, nostalgic, quiet between the two of them. The only sound was the radio, turned down enough to only be background noise. Claude found himself surprised when he was done so quickly, then remembered that he only had half the area to cover from what he used to. Jericho wasn’t caught off guard by how fast it was over, having become accustomed to it from doing his hair himself, but that didn’t lessen the disappointment.

Claude didn’t leave when Jericho washed his hair, only turned the chair away from the shower and took it for himself. He mixed the dye while he waited, frowning a bit to himself as he did. Jericho had been dying his hair long enough that there wasn’t much newness to it. Colors that he had never tried before were a thing of the far past. Once Jericho had found a handful of colors he knew he liked, he began to just cycle through those, with most of the variety coming in the form of brighter or darker shades, or different frequencies of each color.

Pink, however, was entirely new. More than that, it was far brighter and more saturated of a shade than what Jericho normally chose. But Claude just shrugged to himself and let it go, chalking it up to the fact that it had been Nia who picked out the dye.

Claude didn’t get up or turn around when the shower turned off, very well knowing the consequences of turning around too early. He looked over his shoulder when the blow dryer started, letting out a relived breath when he saw that Jericho had put his jeans back on. He stood up when Jericho was done with the blow dryer, relinquishing the chair and turning it back to the mirror.

The process for the color was almost identical to the bleach. Jericho trying his hardest not to react to Claude’s touch, the two of them falling back into an old rhythm, everything being over far too quickly. Claude turning away while Jericho showered, waiting longer than he probably needed to turn back around, Jericho pretending he had no idea why Claude would do that.

Jericho reclaimed the chair when his hair was once again dry, falling back into it and contemplating his reflection.

”Do you like it?” Claude asked softly, head tilting with concern. Unsure if Jericho liked the new color as much as he thought he would when he picked it.

”Yeah,” Jericho said, making Claude’s shoulders drop just a bit with relief. Claude gave him a small smile, then tried to turn away to limp back to the room they were now technically sharing.

“Actually wait, hang on a minute!” Jericho quickly reached up, then yanked Claude’s head down to his level. Silencing Claude before he even thought of anything to say.

A few moments of silence passed, Jericho closely inspecting their reflections while Claude used the back of the chair to brace himself. Claude was nothing if not bewildered, having no idea why the hell Jericho needed their heads right next to each other. And then he made eye contact with himself in the mirror, and suddenly had the idea. Jericho seemed to have been waiting precisely for Claude to realize what his plan had been, because a victorious grin split across his face as he let go of Claude’s head.

“So you agree we match, right?” Jericho turned to look at Claude directly, his face wicked and grin shit eating.

Claude couldn’t put together a full response, only sputtering that was halfway coherent, with the basic gist of ‘you asshole’. He punched Jericho’s shoulder a few times when Jericho cackled, making him nearly roll off the chair. Jericho hadn’t meant to laugh, but the way Claude’s entire face had gone red was too funny to not laugh.

“Don’t fall off the chair, you’ll hit your head and then we’ll all be six feet under!” Claude shouted, finally able to string together an actual sentence. Jericho just kept laughing, but did grab the back of the chair to keep himself up. Claude ended up with a somewhat-growl that turned into a huff, and he stomped out the bathroom to hide in Jericho’s bed.

It was just dye. But at the same time it was so much more than that. It gave Claude something that made him feel useful again, gave the two of them something to do together, gave them something to use in the foundation of trying to build any semblance of what they once had. It was small, yet so important.

And as Claude buried himself under a blanket to hide the ridiculous blush covering his face, something warm bubbled in his chest from remembering what it was like to have something that was theirs.

Chapter Text

“I’m going to beg of you one favor,” Claude nearly choked in his words. He didn’t realize his own tears until it was far too late, and nearly choked on those too. “Please don’t pretend you suddenly care about me. I just don’t have the strength to swallow that lie right now.”

The tears were starting to fall faster, and Claude found himself incapable of stopping them. He hugged his legs closer, dropping his head into his knees before he could see how much his pain was hurting Jericho too.

“But…” Jericho reached out with one hand, gently pulling Claude’s head up a bit. “I do care.”

Claude tried to wrench his head away, entire body filling with dread, panicking as he bordered on fully crying. “Jericho don’t,” he gasped, starting to lose the ability to speak through the tears. “P-please, just- just don’t.”

Jericho managed to catch Claude’s head in both hands, hating the amount of force he had to use to keep Claude from curling up again. It tore him apart, trying to keep Claude open when he was begging for the opposite. But if Claude was allowed to fold in on himself again, he would hide from everything, especially Jericho. And Jericho was terrified that if Claude closed up, he wouldn’t be coaxed into opening back up again.

“Please,” Jericho said softly, only mostly able hide his panic as Claude just kept trying to tear himself away. “I know you have every reason in the world to not believe me… but I wish I knew what I had to do to convince you that I do care about you.”

Claude’s thrashing stopped for a moment, the air disappearing from his lungs at Jericho’s words.

And then he broke.

Whatever pieces of Claude that were still intact fell apart, cracking down to his very core, every wall and dam he’d ever put up falling, leaving him with nothing. Nothing to stop the pain. Nothing to stop the tears. Nothing to stop him from breaking down into sobs in an instant.

For a moment all of Claude’s muscles stopped working, and in the brief portion of a second before he started to feel everything at once, he only felt the sensation of falling. Then the entire world was gone. Claude’s own words echoed back at him from so long ago, what felt like a hundred years, bringing him back to almost all the pain he’d ever felt. Stripping him of his ability to push it down and ignore it, rendering him unable to hold back the tears.

How much it had pained him to see Jericho constantly locked up and taken apart in the lab. How much of a stab through the heart it had been whenever Jericho made it clear he didn’t want to be around him. How much grief he had felt in the period of time when he thought Jericho was gone. How much it hurt to watch Jericho be in so much pain trying to heal and barely being able do anything for him. How much his heart wrenched whenever Jericho was shameless enough to tell him that he was only a tool. How his whole world had fallen apart when his family didn’t want him and Jericho didn’t need him.

How much he had sat on his hands to keep from doing even more, had forced himself to sit back down to keep from trying to spend time near Jericho, had bitten his tongue to keep from saying anything that could have meant I love you.

Claude cried for a lifetime, for his lifetime, physically unable to do anything else. Faintly he registered pressure around his body, and maybe heard some kind of low sound, but that was it. He couldn’t see, couldn’t speak, could barely even breathe. Gasping between sobs, fitful breaths that bordered on violent, each time feeling like he would tear his lungs apart. Nearly disappointed when he didn’t.

When he had relived every negative event from the last third of his life, the tears finally slowed down. Claude had already done an embarrassing amount of crying about the past day or so. Already cried about every little thing and especially the big things, and now he had nothing left. So his tears slowly came to a stuttering stop, hiccups still occasionally wracking his body.

Finally, he managed to realize that the pressure all around him was Jericho. That when he had nearly collapsed in on himself he had fallen into Jericho’s hands. That Jericho had pulled him close when he had curled up to cry.

He never realized that Jericho had nearly been in tears himself. Never realized that when he pulled Claude in at first, Jericho had been talking to him. Trying his hardest to convince Claude that it was alright, promising that he was there, begging Claude to calm down, begging him to be okay. Then Jericho had realized that Claude wasn’t going to stop, that he needed to not stop. He kept telling Claude that it was alright, kept saying that he was right there, and started telling him to just cry, just let it all out, that he would stay for however long Claude needed to just cry.

And eventually, when he finally realized that Claude wasn’t hearing him at all, Jericho just whispered into Claude’s hair that he was sorry, that he really did need him. Murmuring over and over that he loved him.

Claude’s body finally stilled, save for the slight trembling and occasional hitched breath. Ever so carefully Jericho let go of him, trying to maneuver his own body without accidentally hitting Claude. He ended up sitting with his back against the couch’s armrest, one leg extended along the back of the couch and the other hanging off. Claude flushed when Jericho gently grabbed him by the hips, turning him so he wasn’t leaning on either side. His blush only grew worse when Jericho pulled him to sit between his legs, back against Jericho’s chest.

Slowly, Claude let go of his own legs, carefully relaxing into Jericho, unable to see Jericho’s relieved smile. Jericho waited until Claude was settled, then reached to the coffee table to grab the water and painkillers he had brought earlier and place them in Claude’s hands.

“You should take the medicine,” he said softly. But Claude only stared at the pills, unsure if he had it in him to swallow them. “Please?” Jericho pressed, “For me?”

At that Claude slowly managed to bring the pills to his mouth, able to get them down one at a time. His breathing had gotten slightly heavier, and some part of his brain that was less clouded than the rest told him that it shouldn’t have taken that much time or effort just to swallow three pills. He reached out to put the cup back on the table, but Jericho gently caught it and pressed it back into his hands. Wordlessly pleading for him to finish it.

It took far too long, at least in Claude’s opinion, for him to manage to drink the rest of the water. Jericho just waited, hands lightly resting at Claude’s waist as he patiently watched over Claude’s shoulder. This time he let Claude put the cup back on the table.

“When’s the last time you ate?” Jericho asked suddenly, “Are you hungry?”

Claude just shook his head. “I’m fine,” he mumbled, pressing his lips together when even only two words were enough to bring him back to the brink of tears.

“Claude there is next to no food in this place. There’s no way you’ve eaten anything in the past day.” Jericho leaned his head over Claude’s shoulder, and Claude just shrunk in on himself upon realizing he’d failed Jericho’s small test. All he could do was turn away so Jericho couldn’t see his guilty face.

Jericho gently took Claude’s chin in one hand, turning Claude’s head back towards him. One moment wanting to coo over the blush that was still spread across his face, and the next having to stop himself from tearing up at the anxious way Claude looked at him. “Claude please,” he said softly.

After a long, nearly frightened, moment Claude slowly nodded. “I- I am hungry,” he managed, and Jericho had to fight the urge to pull him close and kiss his head. Instead he smiled and let go of Claude’s head, slipping an arm under Claude’s legs and letting Claude hold onto his shirt as he picked him up.

“I can walk on my own,” Claude grumbled, pouting to himself as Jericho carried him to the kitchen.

“I don’t give a damn if you can,” Jericho said, rolling his eye as he set Claude in a chair, “I’m a bit more preoccupied with the fact that you shouldn’t.”

When Jericho turned to the fridge and cabinets, he suddenly remembered that he had been banned from cooking for other people. By a unanimous vote, no less. When he skimmed through the few things Claude’s kitchen did have, Jericho started to think that his confusion was probably a solid indicator that said banishment had been a good idea.

What could he even make? More than that, what could he make that Claude would actually eat? It would probably have to be something light, since taking the painkillers had given Claude enough trouble for Jericho to be able to notice. There was bread in the fridge, so he could make toast. Did he remember how to make tea?

Claude watched from his chair as Jericho fumbled his way around the kitchen, a little worried but still a little amused. And a little touched that Jericho was actually trying to make something for him.

Leaning heavily on the back of the chair, Claude managed to get to his feet. “I can help,” he started, trying to limp towards Jericho. But when Jericho whipped around, his alarm made any possible words die before Claude even thought of them.

“You can help by sitting your ass back down so I don’t have to worry about you accidentally hurting yourself even more,” Jericho snapped, words made harsher than he had intended by the panic he was trying to hide. He exaggerated a shooing motion in Claude’s direction until Claude lowered himself back into his chair, looking scolded. Jericho couldn’t help sighing in relief as he turned back to the cabinet to try to execute his plan that, frankly, was a bit shoddy.

Tea would have to cool down before he gave it to Claude, so he should make that first. There was no tea kettle, so Jericho settled on putting water and the teabag right into the mug and precariously leaving it on the stovetop. As he hoped the mug wouldn’t explode, Jericho dropped two pieces of bread into the toaster, then waited anxiously, unaware that his water heating method was nearly giving Claude a heart attack. He had turned the heat on the stovetop up all the way, so it wasn’t long before the water in the mug started boiling. He took the mug off the heat, decided that the tea bag was probably supposed to stay in there, then waited until the toast popped up.

The toast ended up being burnt, but Jericho didn’t want to waste time making more. So he spread butter on the partially blackened bread, putting the plate in front of Claude before turning back so he could bring the tea over. He went back to the counter a second time to leave the knife in the sink and put the bread and butter away, then finally dropped into the chair next to Claude’s.

When Jericho did sit down, Claude was still just staring at the food. He was biting his bottom lip in somewhat apprehension, and Jericho had to look down and swallow back the realization of just how much he wanted to be the one biting at Claude’s lip. By the time Jericho looked back up, Claude had managed to take a bite of the toast, then a second one.

Some part of Claude’s brain that was moving faster than the rest told him that it shouldn’t have taken that much time or effort just to eat two pieces of toast. He was borderline struggling, feeling hungry and knowing he should eat, but still having to fight how tender his entire body had become. He was too nervous to look at Jericho, unwilling to take the risk in case Jericho was getting tired of waiting for him to eat and was letting it show.

But finally, when he had eaten the first piece and most of the second, and wasn’t sure if he could finish it, Claude made himself look up. Jericho was watching him, just patiently watching, but whatever it was that made Jericho’s face border on fondness disappeared when he saw how distressed Claude looked.

“You don’t have to finish it if you don’t want to,” he said gently, and Claude nodded gratefully, dropping the toast back onto the plate and slightly pushing it away.

A few moments of silence passed, Claude having looked back down at the table and Jericho unsure what to do next. His first thought was to put Claude to bed, make sure that Claude would rest. But it wasn’t late enough to try to have Claude go to bed yet. What could he do until it was? Claude wouldn’t want to just sit around, so if Jericho wanted him to rest then he would have to find something that would keep him occupied. He remembered seeing a basket of DVDs under the coffee table, would that be enough?

“Do you want to watch a movie?” Jericho asked, tilting his head a bit to try to see Claude’s lowered face. Claude managed to meet his gaze, looking back down before nodding. Earning a smile he never saw.

Jericho carefully picked Claude up again, bringing him back to the couch before making another trip to retrieve the mug that was still more than half full. He put the mug on the coffee table, then pulled out the little basket of DVDs to skim through them. It looked like they were in alphabetical order, with the exception of the one on the top of the pile. If this one had been pulled from its correct place to be put on top, surely that meant Claude liked it, right? Jericho fumbled with Claude’s DVD player for a moment, then managed to start the movie.

Claude had been watching him the whole time, now less worried and smiling to himself, just a little bit. Jericho plopped down on the couch, one leg against the back like earlier, this time sitting against the other armrest so what was left of his face was towards the tv and he could actually watch. Carefully he pulled Claude up to him, pretending that he didn’t notice the way Claude’s face went red again upon being dragged back to between Jericho’s legs. Slowly he shifted to get himself comfortable, legs up on the couch and sitting on his left hip, curled up just a bit against Jericho’s chest. By the time the beginning credits were over Claude had grabbed his mug, and was settled down with Jericho’s arms around him.

Claude was watching the movie, and Jericho was watching Claude. Watching him seem genuinely interested in the movie, eyes occasionally lighting up a bit or mouth slightly twisting. Watching him finish drinking the tea that was probably cold by that point, much more easily than he had before. Watching him return the mug to the coffee table, then tuck his arms up under his head as a makeshift pillow that was irrefutably cute.

After about half an hour, Jericho realized that this probably counted as cuddling, which meant that under normal circumstances Claude probably would have hated it. But now he seemed perfectly content. Jericho didn’t know how to feel about the fact that something Claude normally would have avoided at almost all costs now seemed to be just what he needed. He wondered what the threshold was for enough emotional distress to make Claude alright with cuddling. He wondered what the threshold was to make Claude want cuddling. And he was scared to think about just how far he had pushed Claude past that line.

Eventually the blanket over the back of the couch caught Jericho’s attention, making him start to wonder. Claude didn’t look like he was falling asleep, but would the blanket make him more comfortable anyway? But what if it just made him feel too hot instead? Then again, Jericho had turned the air conditioner up earlier, what if Claude had been cold this whole time? If he was picking between leaving Claude cold or making him warmer, which one was better? Being a little cold would maybe be like an ice pack. But Claude’s leg seemed a bit too extreme for an ice pack to do any good. And hospital beds always had blankets, even in the summer, which had to be for a reason. Yes, it would be better for Claude to be warm.

So Jericho grabbed the blanket, catching a bit of Claude’s attention. He draped it over Claude and his own legs, pulling it up to Claude’s shoulders before wrapping his arms back around him. Claude looked at the blanket for a moment, nearly skeptical, but then decided it was alright and returned his attention to the movie.

The rest of the movie passed uneventfully, Jericho trying to figure out what was happening after spending the first half paying attention to Claude rather than the plot. A few seconds after the movie ended Jericho rested his head on top of Claude’s, frowning when he took a slow inhale.

“You still smell like blood,” Jericho said, not even thinking as he made the observation out loud. He did think in the moments that followed, during which he alternated between cringing at himself and kicking himself.

“I can take a shower,” Claude said. He pushed lightly against Jericho’s chest, trying to get himself up.

“No.” Jericho’s voice was beyond decisive, absolutely no room for argument, not even on a microscopic level. “That’s too much standing,” he continued. Jericho just pulled him back down, one arm tight around his back, the other hand pressing his head close, and his chin firmly propped on the top of Claude’s head like a final declaration that Claude would stay right there. Claude was just sputtering in confusion, while Jericho tried to think of a solution because he hadn’t actually thought any of that through before saying it.

“Just take a bath,” Jericho said after half a minute. This ceased Claude’s verbal confusion, but only because he was now too bewildered to even try to put it into words.

A few seconds passed in silence when Jericho didn’t do anything to follow up on what he had said, while Claude just gave up and tried his best to burrow himself into the blanket. Truthfully he had wanted to snuggle into Jericho, take advantage of whatever had possessed Jericho to act like this. But, like with nearly everything else he did in Jericho’s general direction, he was scared that he would learn the extent of Jericho’s tolerance the hard way.

“You should take a bath,” Jericho said again, firmer this time. Breaking Claude from his thoughts before he spiraled too much, even if he didn’t know it.

Claude nodded a bit, defeated, and Jericho returned the blanket to the back of the couch. Claude involuntarily shivered at the sudden re-exposure to the chilled air, then kicked himself a bit for doing so. Jericho just pulled him closer, as if holding Claude tight enough could replace the warmth of a blanket. He managed to nudge Claude into pulling his legs up, wrapping his arms around Claude’s entire body and taking a minute to just hold him.

After that minute he pushed himself to stand up, Claude still in his arms. For a moment Jericho thought Claude was probably getting sick of being carried around, but Claude only wrapped his arms around Jericho’s neck, painfully silent. Once he got to the bathroom, Jericho just lowered Claude’s legs to the ground next to a stool so he could sit himself down. Something reminiscent of independence, just so Claude might feel even a little better about himself.

Jericho turned to the bathtub, turning the water on and holding a hand under the stream. The water was borderline freezing, so he left it to warm up and went to find soap in the cabinet. Claude watched him from the stool, a grim look on his face as he still wasn’t entirely on board with the bath idea. Jericho was fumbling around in a hurry, trying to do five things at once, and Claude couldn’t do anything to help him or make him slow down. And when Jericho had to scramble to stop the bottle of soap from falling out of his hands when he tried to check the water again, Claude couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Jericho it’s okay,” he said quickly, pushing himself to his feet. “You don’t have to do all of this, I can just take a shower.”

“Claude, I swear, I will get in the damn tub with you if that’s what it takes to keep you from trying to take a fucking shower!” Jericho snapped, head whipping towards Claude. Just in time to see him go pale and sit down just as quickly as he had stood up.

A heartbeat passed in silence, three heartbeats in Claude’s case thanks to how fast his body was reacting to his panic. His face was almost parallel with the floor, whole body shrinking in on himself in trying to hide the way his entire face flushed. Trying to hide the hurt, longing expression that Jericho saw anyway.

Jericho turned back to the tub for a second, plugging the drain now that the water was warm enough. He had to take a deep breath to make himself look at Claude again, to make himself face the elephant in the room. “Claude.” If Jericho’s voice had been fiery before, it was nothing worse than a heating pad now. “Do you want me to stay with you?”

“You don’t have to,” Claude said quickly, glancing up for a second but looking back down so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash. “I’ll be fine, I- I’ll be okay by myself.”

Jericho had to bite back ‘that’s not what I was asking’ , knowing it would only make things worse. Instead he slowed the water down, then made his way to Claude and knelt in front of him. Gently turning Claude’s head back towards him, making himself look at Claude’s face, at the expression that was entirely his fault. Wide-eyed and trembling, scared to keep eye contact with Jericho but too frozen to look away. No way to tell where the pining ended and the fear started.

“If I did stay with you…” Jericho said, slowly, like he was trying to keep a deer from bolting. “If I decided I wanted to stay with you… would you like that?”

Claude tried to answer, he truly did. But he didn’t know what to say, and his voice wouldn’t work, and his chest seized up, and in the end all he could manage was a strangled breath. Tears just beginning to well up as he realized his head was leaning into Jericho’s hand.

But Jericho just waited for him, patiently waiting as his thumb slowly ran across Claude’s cheek. The fear gripping Claude’s chest unclenched, though it didn’t let go, and he managed to nod. Jericho smiled, brushing at the corner of Claude’s eye where a tear had been threatening to fall.

“Okay,” he said softly, “I’ll stay.” Then he returned to the tub, making the water flow faster for a second before deciding that was enough and turning it off. He didn’t pick Claude up this time, just put an arm tight around his shoulders and let Claude lean on him to limp to the bath. It was a bit of a struggle, considering their height difference, and for a moment Jericho wondered if he should have picked Claude up after all. But it was only a few steps of distance, and they were across it by the time the thought completed itself in Jericho’s head.

Claude managed to awkwardly sit on the edge of the tub to take his hoodie off, and Jericho realized he had grabbed zero towels. When Jericho turned back to the cabinet, Claude nearly fell over trying to undress the rest of the way before Jericho looked back. By the time he heard the cabinet close Claude had gotten into the bath, and would have been impressed with the fact that he hadn’t slipped if his heart wasn’t beating so fast. There was no way Jericho was actually going to take a bath with him, right? Jericho couldn’t have been serious when he said he would get in the tub with Claude, right?

Wrong.

Claude nearly jumped out of his skin when Jericho slipped into the tub next to him, nearly stopped breathing, nearly felt his heart go dead still. Jericho didn’t notice any of this, or at least acted like he didn’t notice, and just pulled Claude close with an arm around his shoulders. His other hand brought Claude’s legs into his lap, gingerly resting on Claude’s blank space leg.

Claude wasn’t curled up like he had been on the couch, so his head was now on Jericho’s shoulder. Face almost as red as the blank space he was resting on. His hands were clenched around each other in his lap and he was frozen still, too nervous to even breathe.

Jericho pressed his lips together, able to feel how tense Claude was and how shallow his breaths were. “Hey,” he whispered, “just take a deep breath, okay?” But that only made Claude grow more anxious, his struggle to breathe properly starting to show on his face.

Squeezing Claude’s shoulder just a little bit tighter, Jericho carefully leaned his head against Claude’s. “Shhhhhh, don’t worry.” Jericho’s voice was soft, so much so that Claude was only barely able to hear it over his own pounding heart. “Just try. Just trying is enough. Here, I’ll help you, okay?” Jericho took his hand off of Claude’s leg, instead carefully prying one of Claude’s hands away from the other to hold against his chest so Claude could feel him breathe.

Some part of Claude’s brain that was less anxious than the rest told him that it shouldn’t have taken that much time or effort just to take one deep breath. He dragged in a breath, finally managing to let it out slowly as opposed to something similar to the beginnings of hyperventilation. The next few breaths were easier, and Claude was able to fall into a calm, steady pace.

Jericho was still pressing Claude’s palm against his chest, and Claude couldn’t look away. Jericho’s hand over his, and Jericho’s head resting on top of his, and Jericho’s arm around his shoulders. It was calm, and peaceful, and safe, and nearly the opposite of what they normally were. They spent a minute or two like that, Claude following Jericho’s breath and finally relaxing with a content exhale. Leaning into the excessive affection that he normally would have been squirming to get away from.

Eventually Jericho let go of Claude’s hand, and watched Claude hesitantly pull it back into his lap. Smiling when he saw Claude’s hands just resting instead of curling into nervous fists like before. Then he reached for the bottle of soap, not immediately realizing when the hand on Claude’s shoulder dropped.

Claude’s breath caught just a bit as Jericho’s hand slid down to his lower back, but to Jericho’s relief it easily returned to normal. It was then that Jericho realized he didn’t know what he was doing. Realized he didn’t know why he was there.

Keeping Claude from standing to take a shower, yes, but he didn’t need to be in the tub for that. Helping Claude wash off, right. He had meant to help Claude clean the rest of the blood off, that was the reason he was there. Or, well, it was at least a reason.

Jericho surveyed Claude’s body through the water, hoping his face didn’t look nervous. There was really only blood left on Claude’s hands and legs, and Jericho was nowhere near working up the courage to touch any of the skin that remained on Claude’s right leg. So he awkwardly managed to pour some soap out with one hand, able to get most of it into his palm.

Jericho dipped his hand under the water, taking one of Claude’s. The two of them were silent as Jericho rubbed soap along Claude’s skin, ridding it of the blood that had dried in the creases of his palm and fingers. It was a sort of intimacy that was strange to them, the opposite of Claude spilling blood for Jericho yet still holding the same meaning.

When he was done, Jericho’s chest tightened in an instant. He had to steady his breath as he grabbed the sponge, silently begging for Claude to not notice. The silence became thicker as Jericho let the sponge float so he could pour soap on it, then deafening when he reached for Claude’s legs.

Claude blinked as Jericho’s hand left his lower back to slide around his waist, realizing that Jericho was trying to hold him closer. He pressed more of his weight against Jericho’s shoulder, trying to send whatever message Jericho needed. Claude could only hope that the water was distorting his vision, that Jericho’s hand wasn’t actually shaking.

It stung a bit when the sponge touched Claude’s leg, hurt a bit more when Jericho hesitantly started to wash his skin. But Jericho was clearly scared to hurt Claude, and was moving with gentility that Claude hadn’t known he was even capable of. So Claude swallowed back every wince and just relaxed.

Thankfully Claude’s lack of reaction did ease Jericho’s anxiety, and soon he had lost any tension that had previously been gained. Head back to resting on Claude’s and unsure of when he had let go of the breath he was originally holding, Jericho almost wished this peace was normal for them. But no matter how much or little he would miss this, he missed what they usually were even more. Missed teasing Claude with a grin on his face and being the only one who knew that Claude was hiding his own, missed petty bickering over things so small that only someone as close as a lover would notice, missed knowing that Claude was okay and thinking that he always would be.

It was a slow process, Jericho washing Claude’s leg, would have felt slower than it needed to be if Jericho knew whether there was a pace too slow for this situation. When he was done, when he was satisfied with the lack of blood left on Claude’s skin, Jericho realized he was at a loss for what to do now.

But instead of thinking, he just stilled, finally allowing his eye to slowly wander down Claude’s body. He lifted his head a bit as his gaze made its way back up, smiling to himself at the leftover blush that still hadn’t left Claude’s face before he realized he probably looked the same.

Claude’s head tilted a bit, unsure why Jericho had moved. But Jericho didn’t notice that, only noticed the faint, dried smear of blood that was still near the corner of Claude’s jaw. He lifted his hand out of the water to wipe it away, making Claude sputter for half a second from the suddenness. Jericho bit down a small laugh, and then they were both quiet again, Jericho’s hand still almost cupping Claude’s face.

Slowly, Jericho’s fingers slid down Claude jaw, gently guiding his head up until they stopped to hold his chin. And before Claude could even get too nervous to break eye contact, Jericho was kissing him.

It was long, and slow, and so unlike them but still so perfect. When Jericho pulled away Claude looked back up at him again, awe and surprise and no longer any fear accompanying the pining. The only thing he could think to do was kiss Claude again, pulling away sooner this time and making Claude’s breath catch as Jericho nipped at his bottom lip.

“You know,” Jericho said finally, breaking the silence that had lasted almost as long as the bath had. “I heard that whole cheesy speech you gave Charlie about being a loyal knight for your king.” Jericho just grinned as Claude’s eye went wide, able to admit that he enjoyed Claude’s somewhat embarrassment. “And I think a good king should take care of his knight if he wants that knight to keep fighting for him. So for at least one night… just let me take care of you.”

Chapter Text

Nia didn’t realize how shaken up she was until she was no longer carrying Rex’s weight. Until she let him plop on the bed in the guest room Ms Lauro has sent them to, leaving her with only herself to hold up.

Lyss was hovering behind her in the doorway, both of them nervously watching as Rex’s godmother pushed her way in. Both of them just waiting to be given something to do as Ms Lauro fussed over Rex.

“Oi, both of you get out and get some sleep,” Lauro snapped, shooing Nia and Lyss out of the room. “You’ve both had a long day too and you’re making it crowded in here. Go to bed!”

“But Rex-” Lyss started, but she just trailed off helplessly.

“I’ll take care of him,” Lauro said after a moment. He voice had gone uncharacteristically soft with understanding, shutting both of them up more effectively than any yelling could have. “Don’t worry about him. Just get some rest.”

Taking one last glance at Rex, beaten and bloodied and hunched over, Nia nodded and reluctantly left. Lyss must have done the same, because Nia’s footsteps weren’t the only ones trudging into the living room. Nia dropped herself on the couch, finally falling back and letting herself relax. Taking her mask off as Lyss plopped down next to her. Half a minute of silence passed, the two of them remembering how to breathe as the relief set in.

“There’s another guest room I’ve been staying in,” Lyss said finally, “You can stay there too if you want. I’m guessing you probably don’t have anywhere else to go tonight.”

Nia just nodded, still a bit breathless, still in a bit of disbelief. “Thanks,” she managed, getting up when Lyss did and following her to the room.

As Lyss started going through drawers, Nia realized she didn’t have anything she could sleep in besides the clothes she was wearing. Lyss must have been about four thoughts ahead of her, because a second later a set of clothes was tossed onto the bed in front of her.

“I don’t think anything I have will fit you perfectly, but these are a little big on me so hopefully they’ll be fine for you.” Lyss nodded toward the tank top and pair of shorts she had just given Nia, then turned back to the drawers. “I’m gonna change in the bathroom so I can change my mask, so you can just change in here.”

“Thanks,” Nia repeated, waiting until the door clicked shut to start changing clothes. The clothes Lyss gave her were a little snug, but still fit better than she had originally anticipated. She flopped face-first onto the bed when she was done, taking a deep breath into the comforter as she realized how tired she was. The adrenaline had been fueling her before, but now that was gone and all the events of the night were catching up to her.

Nia got up for a minute, turning the lights off but leaving a lamp on for Lyss, then tucked herself into one side of the bed. Letting out every breath she had held that day. After all the panic and chaos, everything was finally still and quiet. It was relaxing for a moment, but only a moment.

Then it started coming back to her, the way Rex had genuinely wanted to be left to die. He wanted to die, wanted to make sure that every part of himself was dead. More than that, he thought the whole world would be better off if he was gone. She was starting to get why Jericho had been so hell bent on finding out what was in that memory, if it was major enough to change Rex so suddenly like that.

And oh, god, Jericho. None of them were safe from him now. Even if he did need Nia, even if he did get to her but decide to leave her alive, he would make sure that the circumstances were so bad that she wouldn’t even think of pulling something like this again.

Bell was stuck with him, basically alone now that no one else besides Claude was there, with no idea of what was happening. None of them could tell her what was going on, chances were it probably wasn’t safe to even talk to her at all. Scratch basically alone, she was alone. And Jericho could do whatever he wanted with her, could use her as bait or leverage or any other terrible thing he could think of.

Nia couldn’t talk to Claude either, couldn’t tell him that Rex was alright, couldn’t thank him for telling her where to find him. Claude was probably in danger too now, or was at least at risk of being in danger. Jericho needed Claude, but if he forgot just how much he did and found out how Nia knew where Rex was, then Claude was probably good as dead.

And if Jericho found Rex, and they all knew he would because they all knew how easily he could track another scion, then he was essentially dead too. Jericho didn’t need Rex alive anymore now that he had the memory. Rex’s only insurance policy against Jericho was gone, and he and his scion had chosen now of all times to be ridiculously out of sync. Rex was the one who could do the most against Jericho, and now he was on the bench indefinitely.

God none of them could really do a single thing against Jericho, could they? They had taken as many pieces away from him as they could, but if anything he controlled the board even more now.

Nia was wrapping up on realizing just how fucked the situation was when Lyss came back. She got into bed before she turned the lamp off, and didn’t even have time to reach for it before Nia quickly slid over to curl up against her legs.

“I need to lay with you.” was Nia’s only explanation, trying to bury her head in Lyss’s lap as her voice cracked and showcased just how horrible she felt.

“Wh- hey, hey what’s going on?” Lyss took Nia by the shoulders, managing to pull her to sit up. “What’s wrong?”

Nia didn’t know where to begin, and for a second all she could do was choke on air. “He wanted me to leave him,” she managed finally, “Rex wanted me to leave him and let the fire get to him. He- he wanted to-”

Lyss cut her off, immediately pulling her into a crushing hug. Nia folded herself into Lyss’s shoulder, holding onto her tight and shaking too much to feel the way Lyss’s breath had shuddered too. The blood had all but drained from Lyss’s face, the feeling of success that she had been riding up until now turning sour in less than an instant.

Nia was nearly incomprehensible through the bout of tears now, but Lyss understood enough of “He wanted to die.” to have to push down the feeling of her blood running even colder.

“It’s okay,” Lyss said, holding Nia just as tight as Nia was holding onto her, voice shaking just as much as Nia’s body was. “Rex will be okay. Think about everyone here. Me and you and his godmother. Even one of us wouldn’t let him do that to himself. Between the three of us he couldn’t even give himself a paper cut if he tried. We’ll make him live until he wants to, okay?”

Nia was able to nod, and was thankful when her tears resolved themselves quickly enough. Her grip relaxed a bit, calmed down and soon just laying on Lyss’s shoulder like it was a normal hug, like there wasn’t a single thing wrong. Lyss had ended up relaxing too, her head resting against Nia’s neck with a sigh. Both of them pretending that this was the calm after the storm, not before it.

Only a second passed before Nia opened one eye, feeling Lyss press into her neck just a bit firmer than she had before. Then she smiled to herself, closing her eyes again and hugging Lyss a little bit tighter before she rearranged her arms. Wrapping one tight around Lyss’s waist and the other slipping down until her hand was nearly at the base of Lyss’s spine.

Lyss stiffened a bit, but Nia just settled back into her shoulder and kept hugging her. Acting like nothing had changed, save for the self-satisfied grin that Lyss couldn’t see. Too entertained by the way Lyss’s breath trembled a bit to realize just how much she had begun to lean into this.

“Do you still want me to lay with you?” Lyss asked, opting to break the silence rather than risk a reaction that she would be embarrassed by.

Nia pouted to herself when her little bit of fun was cut short, but nodded anyway. Lyss gently pushed her away, only to pause once Nia was sitting up again. Then the fun returned, with no effort on Nia’s part. The only downside was that she had to control her expression, otherwise she would give away how much she enjoyed watching Lyss try to cover for the way she had frozen after actually looking at Nia’s face.

“Um- is it okay if I leave the lamp on?” Lyss turned away once she gave herself an excuse with the lamp, but still looked back over her shoulder a bit.

“Sure,” Nia said, quickly lying down. The way Lyss tilted her head was making the glow of the lamplight catch on the newly visible features of her face, and Nia realized that she probably didn’t have the right to mess with Lyss anymore, considering she had nearly frozen too.

Lyss finally laid down, and Nia didn’t even have time to turn towards her. Instead Lyss pulled her close again, snuggling into her back and draping an arm over her waist. Too late Lyss realized that she didn’t actually know if this was what Nia had meant, but Nia just happily hugged her arms.

Then it was quiet again for a few seconds, and, like clockwork, Nia’s thoughts went right to hell again.

“Can we keep talking?” Nia asked, making Lyss stir behind her. “I… I just don’t want to be able to get back in my head right now.”

“Of course.” Lyss had to stop herself from pondering just how much the distress in Nia’s voice was tugging at her heart. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Just something good,” Nia said, pressing herself back a bit until Lyss took the hint and pulled her closer. At this point there was absolutely no space between them, but Nia would have made sure that was the case regardless of if she was upset.

Lyss hummed against the back of Nia’s shoulder, trying to think quickly. “Shnee is staying with Finze, so we can tell Rex that he’s finally going to be getting junk food again.” That got Nia to laugh a bit, and it was the best sound Lyss had heard all day. “Okay, your turn,” she said, trying to give herself time to think of something else that would make Nia laugh again.

“I got an A on that bee report I told you about earlier,” Nia said, already smiling at her own story. “But I was, like, 14 and really perfectionist back then so I was absolutely scandalized that it wasn’t an A+.”

Lyss was the one to laugh this time. “What were you, valedictorian?”

“I was, actually.” Nia’s smile went smug, making Lyss mutter something with fake-bitterness about her being a show off. “Also, it’s your turn again.”

Lyss leaned forward to rest her head in Nia’s neck, which definitely wasn’t a futile attempt to get Nia to turn and see her biting her lip (it was). “You smell really good,” she said, mostly thinking out loud to herself. The two of them were silent for a minute before they both burst into giggles. And just like that, Lyss’s heart had risen back up to her chest.

“I smell like smoke, what are you talking about?” Nia was able to get that sentence out, then laughter took over her voice again. Just like that, her train of thought finally veered away from paralyzing dread.

“I smell like smoke too, I’ve gone blind to it!” Lyss was trying to sound defensive, but she was laughing again too. “If that’s lotion or perfume I’m gonna have to steal it.”

“Over my dead body!” Nia gasped. “I can bring you to the store I bought it from, but if you touch my lotion collection you’ll be dead to me and then dead to everyone else too!”

“Okay fine, you’ll bring me to the store.” Lyss had to use a tremendous amount of effort to keep herself from falling back into laughter all over again. “It’s a date.” And just like that, Lyss wished that they had the luxury of being able to plan something as normal as a first date in the near future.

Nia just scoffed. “You call that a date? I’ve had mediocre guys take me on more interesting dates than that.” Just like that, she wished they had somehow met under normal circumstances.

“Oh really?” Lyss challenged, “What kind of more interesting dates have you been on?”

“Let’s see… sneaking into a mafia warehouse to break out a high security prisoner and setting the whole place on fire is definitely near the top.” Nia’s smile was audible, and this time Lyss couldn’t stop herself from laughing for a moment.

“That’s still a lousy date though,” Lyss half-whined, pouting once she was able to stop laughing. “Neither of us got to eat for free.”

Nia had to stop herself from pointing out that Lyss was free. Instead she said “How about we have a picnic in the park next time, and we’ll both bring stuff so we both get free food. Ooh, have you ever played that game where you people watch and pick out strangers you think you’d want on your zombie apocalypse team?” And just like that, Nia realized that she could, and wanted to, spend hours talking with Lyss.

Lyss couldn’t help but smile to herself at the idea of such a game, something so Nia that she never would have normally done it but knew she would enjoy. Just like that, Lyss realized that she would do so much to get Nia’s voice to light up like that again.

Then Lyss lit up herself, having thought of an idea. “Would you want to go to the natural history museum? The botanical wing there just opened a carnivorous plant exhibit.”

“That,” Nia said slowly, “is the gayest, most romantic thing you could have possibly said. Someone with a knife couldn’t have gotten my heart faster.”

Lyss found herself hugging Nia tighter, smiling as her heart turned into warm butterflies. “Okay, so,” she started, trying to get herself under control, “Our first date is going shopping for nice lotion, and having a picnic in the park so we both get free food, and playing people-watching games, and going to the botanical garden in the museum.”

“No, that’s our second date,” Nia said, “I told you five minutes ago that tonight was our first date, pay attention.”

“Can we compromise and call it our second first date?” Lyss barely heard when Nia agreed, instead burying her head into Nia’s shoulder. It was silent for a minute after that, and this time it stayed peaceful. Then Nia squirmed a bit, managing to turn around and shifting to nestle herself against Lyss’s body.

“Hey, you know what would make up for our first first date not having free food?” Nia asked softly, tilting her head up as Lyss looked down to her.

“What?” Lyss had brought a hand up to brush the backs of her fingers against Nia’s cheek, so she didn’t have to move it far when Nia kissed her.

And just like that, everything else was gone. Nothing left but the two of them. Nothing but Lyss’s hand cupping Nia’s face, and Nia holding onto Lyss’s waist, and the smell of smoke that neither of them could bring herself to mind.

Chapter Text

Claude couldn’t stop shaking. His body had been nearly collapsing to the floor as he forced himself back to Jericho’s room. He had laid in bed for an untold amount of time, all the while still trembling from the unchecked pain that had made its way even into his skull. Then when the pain finally did lessen — Claude couldn’t tell if it had actually subsided or if he had just started to go numb to it — he remembered what he had done and his breath had continued to shake at the thought of it.

He wasn’t sure if he had actually betrayed Jericho. It sure as hell felt like he had. Jericho had trusted Claude with information on what he was doing, information that wasn’t supposed to be shared, and Claude had gone and shared it anyway. With someone who would be actively undermining Jericho’s plan, no less.

But Claude had always wanted to make sure Jericho was alright, and that didn’t actually mean doing what Jericho wanted. Up until that point, it had just so happened that what Jericho had wanted to do had seemed close enough to what was best for him that Claude had always gone along with it.

But Jericho was going much too far now, doing things that in the very short term seemed to be right but would come back to bite him later, and for the time being he couldn’t see that. Claude wasn’t doing what Jericho wanted, but it was what was best for him. Betrayal was hurting someone, but Claude was still doing this to help Jericho. Surely he wasn’t actually a traitor if he wasn’t doing it to hurt Jericho, right?

In the end, though, it didn’t matter. Even if he technically hadn’t, Claude still felt like he had betrayed Jericho. Going directly against what Jericho was doing, against what Jericho wanted him to do; that was most definitely something that Jericho would consider to be a betrayal.

Claude had always been the one person Jericho could count on, the one person Jericho could always trust. Jericho’s one loyal knight. And according to his king, that knight had just committed treason.

It had been a while since Jericho had left, so he had definitely gotten there in time to confront Nia and Rex. The thought left a horrible taste in Claude’s mouth. The idea that he had betrayed Jericho like that, only for Jericho to go and personally make sure that everything Claude had been trying to prevent would happen anyway.

At some point Claude must have drifted off, because then he was suddenly woken by a bang. He managed to prop himself up enough to see that the sound had been Jericho slamming the door shut, then quickly sat up the rest of the way. Jericho had thrown his (eccentric) jacket onto the floor and was pacing around, the right side of his body clearly displaying his rage.

“What happened?” Claude asked, swallowing back the fact that he already knew some of the answer. Whatever it was, he was the root cause of it.

“Nia and Bell’s damn face are what fucking happened!” Jericho shouted, continuing to pace like a caged animal as he seethed. “Nia found where Rex was and brought Bell’s face to go get him out and of course Charlie’s stupid goons couldn’t get their asses so now we’ve lost Charlie and we fucking lost Rex and the goddamn memory too!”

Claude found himself more affected by Jericho’s use of ‘we’ than he thought he would be. He opened his mouth, trying to say something, trying to say anything that could help Jericho. But Jericho kept going before Claude could speak.

“And Nia will know not let his scion take over!” Jericho’s rage wasn’t quite beginning to dissipate, but he at least seemed to be getting a somewhat clearer head now that he could let everything out. “She knows how to keep it stuck in his head so on top of keeping him alive they’ll keep him awake so now we can’t even just wait for it to wake up and fucking finish the job!”

Jericho ended up dropping himself onto the bed, and Claude flinched hard as Jericho’s head hit his leg. Jericho didn’t notice though, just curled up and yelled into his hands. Claude didn’t know whether Jericho’s head being in his lap was an accident or not, but it didn’t matter as Jericho started to pull on his own hair and dig his claws into the blank space on his head.

“Jericho, hey,” he said, placing a hand on top of Jericho’s. “Stop it, don’t do that. You can hold my hand if you need to but don’t hurt yourself like that.” He pressed his hand down a bit, making sure Jericho realized it was there.

After a breath Jericho managed to let go of his hair, instead squeezing Claude’s hand tight. He couldn’t bring himself to put as much of his anger into it as he had when he was pulling on his hair, couldn’t bring himself to take that much anger out on Claude. It helped a bit, making him focus on not holding Claude’s hand too tightly instead of on the way his entire plan had been turned upside down and gutted. Eventually Jericho was able to take a mostly calm breath, then slowly opened his eye.

“Hey, listen to me.” Claude’s voice was soft and gentle, and his focus on calming Jericho was enough to keep it from shaking. “This is what you’ll do right now. Go downstairs and get some water and something to eat. Then you come back up here and you go to sleep, alright? Everything will feel better in the morning once you eat and get some rest. Wait until the morning to make a new plan. You’ll think of something. You always do.”

Jericho nodded, finally calm. With a deep breath he let go of Claude’s hand and pushed himself to sit up. Then he dropped himself again, this time onto Claude’s shoulder.

“Thank you,” he said, the words muffled by Claude’s hoodie, “for everything. Always being here and helping me.” He was hugging Claude tight, and Claude froze for a moment before managing to hug him back with nearly shaking arms.

The time that Jericho spent on Claude’s shoulder was probably no more than 3 minutes, but to Claude it felt like an eternity.

An eternity that reminded him that he was one of the only constants in Jericho’s life. That he was the only person Jericho trusted completely. That he was one of the few things Jericho had left now. That Jericho relied on him, Jericho needed him. And that he was a traitor.

Claude found his head on Jericho’s shoulder, found himself hugging Jericho tighter. Like he was apologizing for the betrayal that Jericho didn’t even know about. Would Jericho ever even suspect what Claude had done? Would it ever so much as cross Jericho’s mind that Claude might do something against his wishes?

As Jericho held onto him, clearly using him for comfort, Claude started to think that the answer was no. And that only served to make him feel even worse.

Finally Jericho lifted himself from Claude’s shoulder, needing an amount of effort that was greater than what was usually required for standing up. Claude didn’t dare let his mind touch the question of whether that was due to exhaustion or to Jericho not wanting to leave him. Then as Jericho made his way to the door, Claude was suddenly hit with one of his normal protective tendencies.

“When I said eat something I meant real food,” he snapped at Jericho’s back. “Don’t just eat a family size bag of chips again, that’ll only make you feel worse!”

“I will,” Jericho said dismissively, not even turning around as he left the room.

“And have an actual meal!” Claude called, starting to raise his voice. “And at least a whole cup of water! Having something to eat and drink won’t help if you don’t have enough!”

“I will! ” Jericho yelled back from the stairs. Claude looked at the door Jericho had left ajar, debating saying more before deciding he didn’t need to.

For a moment he actually felt somewhat back to normal. Then he remembered the situation, and then that feeling was suddenly just as far away as it had been an hour earlier.

Jericho wouldn’t ever have to know what Claude had done. But Claude would know. He would always know, always remember it, no matter what the final outcome ended up being or how much time passed. He knew as Jericho had confided in him, knew as Jericho had held onto him, knew as he had acted like he had done nothing wrong.

Claude couldn’t help but think of the way Jericho had been clinging to him. Normally he would have told himself that it was because Jericho did, somewhere deep down, still care about him. Normally he would have told himself that Jericho was trying to somehow reciprocate Claude’s feelings without actually disobeying his scion. Normally, in the back of his mind, he would have still known, or at least thought he’d known, that none of those were true.

But now the idea of Jericho coming to him for support made him sick to his stomach. He was trying to tell himself that Jericho was just tired, that the events of the night and everything that had happened over the past few days had left Jericho drained. He was trying to tell himself that Jericho hadn’t been holding onto him for him, that Jericho had only been holding onto him because he needed something to hold onto. He was trying to tell himself everything that would have normally been lingering just under his active thoughts, everything he normally would have considered to be the truth that he didn’t want to face.

And normally, if he had been willing to tell himself those things, he would have easily accepted all of them, no matter how much it would have hurt. But now he was scared that those weren’t the truth. That, in actuality, Jericho really was going to him specifically for comfort, that he made Jericho feel better. And in that moment Claude wished that everything he used to think he knew was true. He couldn’t stand the idea of Jericho needing him like that, not after what he had done.

Claude knew that he should move to the couch so Jericho could have his own bed to sleep in. He wanted to get up preemptively, to already be on the couch when Jericho got back so Jericho could just go right to bed. But, frankly, his leg fucking hurt, and where he normally would have forced himself to move anyway, he could no longer muster the strength. So Claude resolved to wait until Jericho got back to move to the couch, so that he could rest for just a bit longer. And maybe so Jericho might help.

Old habits died hard, and apparently Claude secretly craving any bit of Jericho’s attention was no exception. Jericho helping him would just make him feel worse, he knew that. But even then, he still wanted Jericho to show any signs of care, any hint of support that would tell Claude that his constant efforts weren’t all for naught.

When Jericho did finally come back, Claude quickly slid to the edge of the bed to get up. He froze, though, when he saw Jericho blinking at him in confusion.

“What are you doing?” Jericho asked, and Claude couldn’t pin whether his voice had concern, disdain, or some secret third thing.

“Moving so you can have your bed.” was the only answer Claude could give, nearly dumbly.

Jericho waved a hand at him, closing the door behind himself. “Just move to one side, you shouldn’t be getting up if you’re not on any medicine for your leg.”

And where he would have argued, Claude couldn’t bring himself to do anything other than exactly what Jericho said. Jericho’s little bit of care dug thorns into the pit in his stomach, just like Claude knew it would. He moved back onto the bed, pushing himself close to the wall so Jericho could have as much space as possible.

By the time Jericho got into bed, Claude had curled up on the little portion of the mattress he was allowing himself to take, and had pushed the blanket over to Jericho’s side. Jericho frowned and put the blanket over Claude, flopping onto the bed as Claude sat up. Then Claude moved the blanket back over Jericho, and Jericho was sputtering in confusion when he picked his head up from the pillow he’d buried it into.

“Take the damn blanket,” he said, slightly irritated, sitting up and practically throwing said blanket at Claude.

“It’s your bed, I’m not taking your blanket from you on your own bed!” Claude snapped, pushing it back into Jericho’s hands.

“Yeah, well, I’m not taking the blanket from the guy on self-imposed bed rest!” Jericho tried to shove the blanket to Claude, but Claude shoved back harder and quickly laid down before Jericho could try to give it back again.

Jericho groaned, then huffed, then yelled “Oh my god, fine!” Then he threw half of the blanket over Claude, and fell back onto the bed, and moved so his back was almost up against Claude’s, and pulled the other half of the blanket over himself.

Claude’s breath caught as he felt Jericho’s back brush against his, and even though he managed to keep breathing, he couldn’t keep it even. Every guilty feeling from the night resurfaced, tearing the hole in his stomach twice as deep, prying his chest apart twice as hard. He almost wanted to break down and tell Jericho everything, almost wanted to spill every reason why he’d done it and then beg for forgiveness. He definitely wanted to cry, definitely wanted some way to get all the feeling out.

He should have known that Jericho could probably hear his breath now, that Jericho would know something was wrong if he didn’t keep his breathing steady. But he was too stuck in his head to realize that, too stuck in his head to realize just how obvious his growing distress was.

“Claude?” Jericho’s voice made Claude jump, which wasn’t lost on him as he propped himself up so he could crane his head to see behind him. “Are you okay?”

“It’s fine,” Claude said quickly, forcing himself to resolve any outward signs of an issue, forcing his body still. “I’m fine.”

“Don’t give me that, what’s going on?” Jericho pulled at Claude’s shoulder, but Claude shook him off to avoid any risk of Jericho seeing his face. To avoid any risk of Jericho seeing the extent of what he was hiding.

Claude was desperately searching for something to say, desperately trying to say something immediately. “I’m sorry,” he said finally, voice starting to fill with tears as he curled in on himself more. “I… I didn’t mean to give Nia an excuse to go out and look for Rex.”

“It’s not your fault,” Jericho told him, then gently fixed the blanket over Claude as he laid back down. “You just get some sleep too.”

This time when Jericho laid down, he pressed his back against Claude’s, and Claude wanted to crumble all over again.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been able to help you enough,” Claude said, and this time he was telling the truth. He still sounded like he was on the verge of breaking down, because he was.

“Stop that,” Jericho told him, and Claude immediately clamped his mouth shut. “We’ll figure it out in the morning, just like you said, right?”

Claude nodded, then realized Jericho couldn’t see that. “Okay,” he whispered. After a few seconds he twisted his head back, managing to catch a glimpse of Jericho’s shoulder just behind him. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Jericho snapped. “You really think Nia and Bell’s stupid face could have gotten a single hit on me?”

“No, I know you couldn’t have been hurt.” Claude swallowed, managing to hold back any possibility of tears and keep his voice mostly even. “I meant with everything going wrong all at once. It’s been a while since I’ve seen you get that upset.”

“I’ll be fine,” Jericho said, and Claude could have sworn he heard Jericho’s voice soften just a bit.

After a minute Claude managed to work up the strength (or maybe it was audacity) to move his foot, hesitantly placing it against Jericho’s leg. Jericho didn’t react at first, and Claude wondered if Jericho had even felt it at all, thought that maybe it would be better for him if that was the case.

Then Jericho shifted his leg, only slightly but still enough for Claude to realize he wasn’t imagining it. The movement made Claude jump, made him pull away a bit. But Jericho just carefully moved his leg until it bumped Claude’s foot, managing to nudge it somewhat under Claude’s heel. Claude swallowed, hoping he was interpreting right, and ever so carefully rested his foot on top of Jericho’s leg. Jericho did little after that, just let Claude’s foot rest on his calf and shifted just a bit closer up against Claude’s back.

It made Claude feel worse, then somehow made him feel better. On one hand, Jericho was responding to his silent plea for any small connection, with no idea of what Claude had done that made him so undeserving of it. On the other hand, Jericho was responding to his silent plea for any small connection.

Claude had been desperately trying to find way to apologize, a way to try to tell Jericho he was so sorry without letting the words leave his mouth. And Jericho had accepted it. It wasn’t the same as Jericho actually forgiving him if he ever learned what Claude had done. Claude knew that. But it warmed his heart anyway, dug those thorns into his stomach again then gently closed the wounds.

So Claude let himself have that, have that small thing that he could use to lie to himself and pretend that, despite the way he’d just betrayed Jericho, it was alright. And for the second time in a long time, he was smiling when he fell asleep.

——————

In the morning Claude was startled awake by a crash, so much so that it made his leg jolt with pain again. He found himself tucked in under the entire blanket, with Jericho nowhere to be found.

Getting up and out of bed, Claude limped down the stairs from the loft as quickly as the throbbing pain in his leg would allow. Frustratingly, it turned out that ‘as quickly as his leg would allow’ was a normal walking pace at best. Claude could barely focus by the time he got to the bottom of the stairs, but that changed when he finally saw Jericho.

Jericho was pacing around the living room, even angrier than he had been the night before, as evidenced by the shattered plant pot on the floor. His scion wasn’t out, but he didn’t appear to be needing it. The blank space of his shoulder and upper arm had grown into sharp blades, pink flames punctuating their jagged edges. They almost made Claude scared that Jericho would become the next casualty of his own rage. For a second Claude couldn’t tell what was going on. Then the screen of the tv caught his eye.

It was turned to the news, and right there on the screen was the picture of Jericho that had been on his id while he was legally alive. There was a line of text running across the bottom of the screen, and it made Claude’s stomach drop.

Simon Maddox, 23, 6’2”, male, white, most likely wearing a gas mask or helmet, may be going by the name Jericho.

Claude didn’t even register what the reporter was saying. All he could see was the text running along the screen. It was on loop, and Claude must have watched it repeat 3 times as those first words set in.

Simon Maddox.

Simon.

Oh no.

Claude forced himself to stumble across the floor to the living room couch, reaching over the back of it to grab the remote. Another crash nearly made him drop the remote, his hands starting to shake as he fumbled to turn the tv off. Once he did Claude quickly turned, finding Jericho crouched on the floor next to the ceramic shards of whatever the second target of his anger had been. Jericho’s arms were crossed over his knees, reminiscent of hugging himself but far too vicious to be that, spots of blank space filling in on his left arm where his claws had started to sink into his own skin. He was snarling at nothing, his face twisted into something terrible. White hot rage and hurt and an utter need for horrific, bloody vengeance.

Barely managing to step over the broken pieces of ceramic on the floor, Claude limped to Jericho’s side. Managing to kneel down, Claude hesitantly reached out a hand to place it on one area of Jericho’s shoulder that hadn’t grown knife sharp. The touch seemed to finally make Jericho realize that Claude was there, and he snapped his head up.

Jericho didn’t say anything, just unceremoniously fell from his crouched position onto the floor and pushed himself into Claude’s arms. One arm holding onto Claude tightly as a sort of half hug, his other hand grabbing Claude’s to hold it like he had the night before, pulling himself right up against the only person he had left. Claude’s heart was ripping at the state Jericho was in, and he could only pull him close, holding Jericho’s hand to his chest and wrapping his other arm around him.

“Nia told them everything.” Jericho was almost growling through gritted teeth, breath and voice ragged. “She gave them that name.”

Jericho was trembling, and Claude couldn’t tell if it was from stress or fury. Claude held him tighter, resting his head on Jericho’s. Whispering into Jericho’s hair and scalp that it was alright, trying to get him to calm down. But Jericho didn’t calm, still looking like a shell of bottled up, targetless rage. Still breathing hard and heavy enough to resemble a minor panic attack, still desperately needing an outlet but cornered by the fact that he had instead clung to the one thing that could come close to beloved to him.

Claude’s words ran out as he realized they were doing nothing, so instead he moved his hand from Jericho’s back to his shoulder, starting to gently trace shapes into Jericho’s skin. Jericho mostly stilled when he registered it, some of the attention previously on his anger now turned to whatever Claude was drawing. After a few seconds he realized that Claude’s shapes were letters, and then after a few more he realized what Claude was spelling.

J - E - R - I - C - H - O

The tension Claude could feel in Jericho’s muscles finally dissolved. Jericho’s breathing was still heavy, but at least it wasn’t strained anymore.

J - E - R -

What would have felt sudden if he wasn’t so relieved, Jericho found his stress being snuffed out like a candle, closing his eye and shifting his body to fit better against Claude’s.

I - C - H -

For a moment Claude was actually able to smile before he started to fill with dread.

O… J - E -

As Jericho relaxed, it hit Claude that the arm Jericho had been holding onto him with was the blank space one. Hit him that despite all of Jericho’s anger, he hadn’t once felt claws digging into his side. Hit him that despite all of Jericho’s anger, Jericho had still made a conscious effort to not hurt him.

At some point, Claude’s letters faded into him running his hand up and down Jericho’s upper arm. Jericho had pulled his hand away from Claude’s to hold onto him with both arms, but otherwise hadn’t moved. Just resting on Claude’s shoulder, just letting Claude keep him calm.

Jericho may have calmed, but Claude was starting to think that it might have been because he had absorbed all of Jericho’s stress. What would happen if Jericho ever found out what he’d done? Forget whatever harm Claude would suffer, what would it do to Jericho? He was the only one Jericho had left. Losing Rex and Nia had affected him more harshly than Claude had been anticipating, and seeing Nia’s betrayal had gotten to him so much that Claude had genuinely been scared for him.

It didn’t matter how Jericho truly felt about him. No matter what his feelings were, now losing Claude meant losing everything. The thought made Claude immediately hold Jericho even tighter. The thought of how Jericho would react to having no one left, especially without anyone there to calm him. What would he do then?

Claude pressed his head just a bit firmer against Jericho’s, his resolve becoming harder than steel. Jericho could never know what he had done. The only thing worse than Jericho not even realizing that Claude had betrayed him would be Jericho realizing that even Claude had betrayed him. Jericho wouldn’t be able to handle it, would snap beyond repair if he tried to. Which meant it was up to Claude to make sure that it would never come to that.

It didn’t ease his guilt over what he had done, but it did ease its influence. Covered by new determination, a new mission, the terrible feeling Claude had been plagued with suddenly felt much less present. He would do almost anything to make sure that Jericho would be alright. Whatever was best for Jericho, he would be there to do it himself or see that it got done. Whatever would keep Jericho safe, even — no, especially — if it was keeping Jericho safe from himself. Whatever Jericho needed, whether or not he knew that was what he needed.

If Jericho noticed Claude progressively holding him closer, progressively holding him tighter, he did nothing that acknowledged it. Claude had gone from comforting to protective, even though there wasn’t anything that Jericho immediately needed to be protected from.

If he needed to risk his own safety by reintegrating with the public to get what was best for Jericho, then so be it. If he needed to kill someone else or saw off another one of his limbs to get what was best for Jericho, then so be it.

And if he needed to betray Jericho again, if he needed to be a horrible traitor and commit an unforgivable betrayal, to get what was best for Jericho? Then so be it.

And Jericho would never know.

Chapter Text

Christoph was humming as he left the diner. Off to Mr Finze’s. He glanced at a clock through a store’s window, and nearly jumped when he saw the time. Quickly speeding up and taking a turn down an alley. I’m running late so I better take the back streets.

Then someone else stepped into the alley, with a gas mask that looked almost ominous.

“Whoops, excuse me sir! Just cutting through!” Then Christoph stopped dead in his tracks, actually registering who - and what - he was seeing. Transformed blank space?! “Wait… a-are you one of those rumored red blanks?!”

Christoph realized that his question probably answered itself, and turned to run. But instead of being able to go back through the alley he had gone down, all he saw was a broad spine of red blank space blocking his escape.

Nearly freezing, his eyes and head followed the spine upwards to the fiery creature that it was only the beginning of. A torso that was probably near the size of his whole body, with a disturbing amount of definition of ribs it shouldn’t have had. Its arms were equally bony, and led to disproportionately long claws that could have skewered multiple people at once. Around its head was a ring of pink fire — that had to be some sort of crown, Christoph faintly thought, because there was no way this thing would have a halo. It shouldn’t have had a face, and technically didn’t. But just below its crown was a collection pink blaze that was unmistakably rendered into a sickening, vicious grin that turned Christoph’s blood to ice.

Fear making him forget that there was still another blank, Christoph frantically whipped back around. But the blank monster had other ideas, both sets of huge claws clamping around his body, not giving him the chance to so much as start thinking of another way out. Christoph couldn’t breathe, and he didn’t know how much of that was the tight pressure around him and how much was the panic seizing his chest and lungs. The red blank that actually seemed like a person was walking towards him, silent and stoic and next to no signs of life behind that mask.

Christoph found himself pressing backwards as much as he could, away from the ends of those claws, away from the blank walking towards him, technically towards the monster he had wanted to be away from even more. He had shut his eyes tightly, head ducking down as he strained against those claws with the instinct to curl up and protect himself. He felt like he had lost control of his lungs, breathing so hard with panic, breathing so fast, breaths so short, hyperventilating so much he was barely breathing at all, waiting for what would come next, waiting for all ten claws to sink into his skin, waiting- waiting- waiting for- for-

…For a cool hand to rest on the side of his face.

Christoph’s next breath caught short, panic coming to a sudden halt and eyes shooting open. After the few moments in which his terror managed to somewhat fade, he slowly lifted his head back up, daring to look at the blank that was now in front of him. The blank had taken his mask off, and Christoph found he wasn’t even surprised that he was only looking at half of a face.

“Shhhhhhh,” The red blank’s voice was low and soothing, and in that moment Christoph almost completely forgot that he had been scared. “Don’t be afraid.”

The blank’s hand had followed Christoph’s head when he lifted it, now settled against his cheek with a note of firmness that hadn’t been there before, that managed to feel reassuring. Christoph found his breath beginning to even out at this sudden calmness, heart beginning to slow down. Originally he had almost flinched at the cold metal of the blank’s rings, but now he found it surprisingly grounding.

“Don’t be scared,” the blank continued softly, “If you’re scared then he will be too.”

Christoph blinked, confused. As far as he could see, there wasn’t anyone else there. But the red blank didn’t say anything else that could have clued Christoph in on this mystery third party, and Christoph didn’t want to be rude and turn his head to look around. He was nearly leaning into the blank’s hand now, starting to realize the possibility that there had been nothing for him to be scared of in the first place.

It reminded him of being told as child that spiders were more scared of him than he was of them. Blanks were hunted as a profession, even just for sport in some places. If a blank was going to develop the ability to morph their own blank space, of course it made sense that they would use that ability defensively. And Christoph was openly carrying a weapon with him, very clearly a blank hunter. This blank had no way of knowing that Christoph wouldn’t have hurt him, and had every reason to believe that he would.

But now it was calm, now Christoph thought he sensed a mutual understanding that neither of them would hurt the other. The claws holding him in place had relaxed alongside his breathing, and he was starting to think their grip might never have been all that tight to begin with. Christoph’s gaze hadn’t left the red blank, watching the pierced corners of his mouth turn up into a small, approving smile. By this point Christoph was almost completely at ease. Things would be alright after all.

Eventually the red blank moved his hand up to push Christoph’s bangs out of his face, and Christoph tilted his head a bit in confusion. He quickly righted it, though, when the red blank’s hand slid back to the side of his face, then further down to hold his head by the side of his jaw.

Christoph let the blank turn his head a bit, and the approving smile that had helped Christoph calm down grew, just a bit but enough to be noticeable. If Christoph still had any panic or apprehension left in him, he would have realized that it seemed as if the blank was inspecting him.

“You’re going to be very important soon,” the blank told him. “Thank you.”

The statement continued to confuse Christoph, but the softness it came with continued to neutralize any possibility of panic. There was nothing slight about the red blank’s smile now, pleased with whatever he had observed and almost looking warm.

Then the blank’s fingertips trailed back up Christoph’s face, and whatever ease Christoph had turned to dread in an instant and the blank’s hand rested on the strap of his mask.

“Don’t be scared.” The red blank’s tone was still the same, still soft and low and gentle, but something shifted that did away with any soothing quality. His smile hadn’t faltered, hadn’t changed at all, but whatever Christoph had thought was warmth went cold.

The blank’s hand closed around Christoph’s mask, and whatever panic that set in was muted by disbelief. Then in an instant the world was brighter, and the claws that had held Christoph in place were gone like they had never been there at all.

Christoph couldn’t move, couldn’t tear his eyes away from the red blank, whose smile still remained but was as icy as the air biting Christoph’s exposed face.

Then purple overtook his vision, and he felt himself fall to the pavement, and the last thing he heard was his own voice screaming.

Chapter Text

Jericho couldn’t even sit up straight, doubled over from the stabbing pain in his side — literally stabbing.  “Wh-why…Mikiah?”

“I’m sorry, Jericho…” Mikiah said, the hand holding the knife shaking as much as his voice. “…but I can’t allow for there to be any red blanks in this world…”

Jericho felt the tears finally start to fall, and it made Mikiah break, his face crumpling into horrible regret. He started forward, and Jericho only had the strength to flinch as Mikiah sat next to him. But Mikiah just dropped the knife on the bench and pulled Jericho close, pressing his face into Jericho’s shoulder as he hugged him tightly.

“Oi, I’m so sorry,” he choked, “I promise I love you, but I have- have to…” Mikiah just trailed off, unable to bring himself to finish his sentence. Instead he slid the knife into his belt, then looped Jericho’s arm around his neck.

Jericho found that his awareness had slowed, because he reacted before he even realized what was happening. Crying out in pain as Mikiah pulled him to stand, stumbling and nearly falling, feeling nothing but numbness and pain and fear.

“I’m sorry,” Mikiah repeated, voice full of tears. He gently rubbed Jericho’s back for a moment, like he was trying to apologize for something unforgivable. Then he put his arm around Jericho’s shoulders, gently guiding him out of their tent and into the rain.

He weaved the two of them between tents, making sure no one saw them, whispering another apology every time Jericho moaned in pain. Then they were in the jungle, the heavy cover from the trees blocking out most of the rain. Jericho could do nothing but stumble along to wherever Mikiah was taking him, could do nothing but silently cry, could do nothing but bleed and bleed and bleed.

“Oi, th-this is the spot you like, right?” Mikiah set Jericho on the ground, then knelt next to him.

On the verge of light-headedness from blood loss, Jericho managed to look up and realize that this was where their trio had gone on the first day in the jungle. Him and Mikiah and Claude, exploring the jungle for the first time, picking this spot to sit and talk and take everything in. He’d said it was his favorite spot in the jungle, but everything that had made it his favorite was gone now.

Mikiah gently took Jericho’s head in his hands, wiping away his tears and kissing his forehead, trembling all the while. “I’m so sorry,” he sobbed, hugging Jericho again.

If you’re so sorry , Jericho managed to numbly think, then why are you doing this? Why are you the one crying when I’m the one you’re killing?

And then there was a moment of silence, one of Mikiah’s hands moving to Jericho’s head. Too late, Jericho realized he didn’t feel Mikiah’s other hand on him.

Then he was yelling, Mikiah pressing his face into his shoulder to muffle it. Sobbing and nearly delirious with pain from the knife plunged between his shoulder blades, right through his spine. Jericho could only whimper as Mikiah slowly drew the knife out of his back, and the sound nearly broke Mikiah even more.

He hugged Jericho tighter for a few seconds, then kissed his head again and ever so carefully lowered him to the ground. Jericho could only stare as he was laid in Mikiah’s lap, by this point unable to feel most of his body, only able to feel pain and his own blood pooling underneath him. Mikiah furiously rubbed at his own face to keep his tears from dripping, then gently held Jericho’s head. If anyone saw them, they would think Mikiah was trying to take care of Jericho.

“Oi, I know I’m the last person who should ask you for something, but…” Mikiah’s voice cracked, and he almost couldn’t keep going as the gravity of what he still needed to do set in. “…my brother, the one I told you about, his name is Rex. I think he’s your brother too. C-can you take care of him when you see him? You’ll like each other, I promise. You both deserve better than me.”

Jericho opened his mouth, trying so hard to say something. “It hurts,” he managed to rasp, voice shaking, and he knew it would be that last thing he said. It hurt to talk, hurt to breathe, hurt to feel anything at all.

“I know,” Mikiah whispered, gently cradling Jericho’s head, stroking his hair, trying anything at all that could possibly soothe him. “I’m sorry. It’ll be okay. It won’t hurt soon, okay?”

Jericho managed to slowly blink, and it set loose a fresh wave of tears that had been gathering in his eyes. Mikiah gently wiped them away, and Jericho couldn’t tell if the wetness from Mikiah’s hands was his tears or his blood.

“Shhhhhh, it’ll be okay.” Mikiah’s voice was still trembling, but it wasn’t breaking anymore. “Just close your eyes, just rest.”

But Jericho didn’t close his eyes, just kept staring up at him. Looking at him with those dark eyes that he had come to love like a brother, and Mikiah knew he deserved that. Knew he deserved the haunting that would come with having to look Jericho in the eyes as he died.

Then Jericho coughed, tasting his own blood, breaths starting to rattle his body. He was helpless as he stared up at Mikiah, breathing becoming harder by the second. Mikiah’s stomach dropped, and he was helpless too, knowing there wasn’t a thing he could do to soothe the friend he had killed. He tried anyway, gently stroking Jericho’s face, talking to him softly, trying to coax him into calming down.

If Jericho could still feel his hands he would have tried to reach up, would have tried reach for any kind of support, even if it was from the person who had killed him. All he could think was that he hoped Mikiah would stay, even though Mikiah was the one who killed him, even though Jericho hated him, dying pathetically in the lap of his friend (killer) was better than dying pathetically alone.

And Mikiah did stay, as breathing became suffocating, as everything started to get dark, as he couldn’t even feel the pain anymore. And Mikiah stayed as a breath racked Jericho’s body for the last time, stayed as Jericho went limp, stayed as the light left his eyes and the tears stopped forming.

All he could do was bury his face in his hands and sob, grieving and regretful and knowing that he would still do it again if he had to. Mikiah gently closed Jericho’s eyes, then pulled his body up to hold him. Kissing his forehead one last time, hugging him one last time, holding his best friend one last time. Whispering one last apology that didn’t even matter, because it went unheard.

Finally he laid Jericho down, smoothing out his hair because Jericho would have hated it if Mikiah left his hair messed up. Then he stood up and forced himself to leave, knowing that this was only the second hardest thing he would ever have to do.

He couldn’t bring himself to look back as he walked away, so he didn’t see the blank space filling in Jericho’s wounds, didn’t see the pink fire light up around his face. Didn’t see Jericho’s eyes opened by someone else.

Chapter Text

Claude slowly let out a breath as he closed his apartment door behind him. Not with relief, certainly not relief. If anything it was the opposite, the sense of growing tension from no specific thing yet at the same time from everything. He didn’t know what intuition was nagging in his head that something was going to happen, but it was enough for him to decide that he needed to prepare for it.

He sighed, pulling the syringe of red blank space out of his pocket and dropping to sit one his bed. For a while Claude just stared at it, at the bright red serum that could potentially make or break whether Jericho needed him.

A state of extreme bodily emergency through a life-threatening injury.

Confirmation of what had been his worst fear since the idea crossed his mind: that the red blank space couldn’t be activated in a controlled environment. If this was the way he wanted to ensure that Jericho would need him, he would have to somehow get into or engineer a potentially lethal situation.

Uncontrolled, unregulated, legitimately unsafe. So many variables, so many things that could go wrong. Almost too many.

Claude set the syringe on his nightstand with a disappointed huff and stood up. Of course it couldn’t be that easy. Nothing involving Jericho ever could be. And for a brief moment, he almost smiled fondly at the thought.

Borderline wandering around his own apartment, Claude was in a limbo of trying to take his mind off of the situation while also actively trying to figure it out. He found himself in the kitchen, found himself reheating leftovers from the night before, found himself slumped over at the table while he waited for the microwave to announce that it was done with annoying beeps he wouldn’t be able to turn off fast enough. Mulling over the entirety of his new predicament, coming up with nothing but possible solutions that were near immediately debunked.

He could ask Dr Bordeaux what kinds of situations would activate the red blank space and which was the safest. But that was sure to bring the dots close enough together to be connected over what he was planning.

He could ask Bell or Rex or Nia to do it for him, pick a time out of the blue to go at him the same way Bell had with Mathers. But even Nia had too much of a moral compass to do that, and any one of them would blab to Jericho about it.

He could take the serum for now and let it lay dormant in the event that something did happen to him. But that ran the risk of Jericho being able to sense that he had taken it before it actually proved him to still be useful.

Claude could barely even taste his food as he ate, too stuck in his own head for his body to be anything other than on autopilot. He made his way back into his room, taking the syringe again and sighing as he stared at it.

Then something caught his eye, a label on the opposite side of the syringe that the serum’s opacity had been hiding.

Kelman

Claude nearly smashed the syringe on the floor.

Thankfully he managed to only throw it onto his bed, burying his head in his hands to stop himself from yelling as he paced and fumed. Not only had his entire plan to activate the serum been turned on its head, now he didn’t even have the right serum, too.

Claude was doubtful of his chances of slipping this serum back and taking the right kind. If Dr. Bordeaux noticed this syringe missing, well, it was only one thing among many and he might have miscounted or even just imagined it. But if it returned and then another seemed to be missing? There was no coincidence that could possibly be chalked up to.

Taking a deep breath, Claude forced himself to think the situation through. Sure, he had a new problem, but it could be a solution too.

He still didn’t know how he would get into a situation that would activate the red blank space. But even if dormant extensions could be sensed, Rex wouldn’t know how to realize that. Now Claude could take the serum preemptively, without having to worry about being found out.

The new catch now was that Rex and his scion were so often out of sync. It would probably be hard for Claude to get to the level of power he could have as an extension of Jericho. If it was just a matter of Claude putting enough work into it, though, then it wouldn’t be a problem. He would do whatever was needed to get ahold of the power he was looking for, especially for Jericho.

But if Rex and his scion entirely prevented him from gaining that power, that would not only be a problem, but one he could do nothing about. Then he would still be useless to Jericho until stupid Rex and his stupid scion got their act together.

Although, Rex would probably try harder to get in sync with his scion if someone else was depending on it. If Rex did actually get more in sync with his scion once Claude was hanging in that balance, then he would be useful to Jericho and he would be the reason another one of Jericho’s problems was solved.

Claude was nearly smiling to himself as everything fell into place in his head, too relieved to find any flaws in his plan. He grabbed the syringe as he went to his bathroom, only barely bothering to wipe a spot on his arm with an alcohol wipe.

And before he could have a single other thought, before he could possibly have any reservations, the serum was gone and the syringe was in the trash.

Now Claude really was smiling, because he had finally done something. Something that, even if the worst happened, would make sure Jericho would still need him.

——————

Most of the group was on the couch. Claude was at the kitchen island instead, taking up almost the entire space with papers. Financial records, correspondence with superiors (some of which should have been inferiors), all of which were being frustrating just by being there.

It was getting harder to cover his tracks. The amount of shit Jericho wanted to pull off was only increasing, so of course the amount of money Claude needed to get away with was too. One too many people getting suspicious was all it would for everything to be over, and people were starting to get suspicious.

Inquiries about whether he had noticed anything off, about what exactly had been done with certain funds, about why certain requests had been increased and other costs had been cut. He was still a source rather than a suspect, so no one had started looking sideways at him yet. But anything less than a perfect record had the ability to drastically change that. Any little mistake in the wrong place would unravel everything, and then his face would be on the news and he would lose everything.

Claude groaned as he blinked rapidly, trying to keep words on the papers from blurring into each other. The words started to look incoherent anyway. He needed to do something else. Doing this badly would have worse consequences than not doing it all. So he stacked all of the papers and files, then closed them all in their respective folders that he took with him when he slid off the barstool.

“I’m going home,” Claude called over his shoulder, starting toward the door.

“Bye!” Rex called back, at the same time as Nia’s “See ya” and Bell waving. Claude did his best to ignore the fact that the only person whose response he cared about didn’t answer.

He left the Sour Grape, then doubled back to drop the files in some box so he could just go right home. Claude sighed as he walked, hands shoved in his pockets and glaring at the ground. He didn’t notice people looking sideways at him as he made his way out of the slums. But when he had gotten to downtown, he did notice people slowing or even stopping as he passed. Claude stopped too, staring back in confusion and near disgust as people backed away from him into a circle, whispering amongst themselves.

“Isn’t that the guy?” “Why is he just-” “Does he not know?” “-no way that would be him.” “Are the other red blanks-” “-can’t be dumb enough to-” “Someone call a blank hunter!”

Claude ended up turning, and that was when he saw a tv through a store window. A tv that was turned to the news, with his face and mask on display and labeled ‘Wanted’ . For a terrified moment, Claude just stared.

Then he ran.

——————

“Don’t worry about grabbing a mask, just go!” Jericho shouted, pulling his hoodie over his head as fast as panic would allow. The news was still playing in the background, on the tv that no one had bothered to turn off.

“Has he been gone long enough to get back to his apartment?” Rex had thrown on his own jacket, and was wearing everyone’s panic on his face.

“Thankfully no, so he can’t get cornered in the building.” Jericho quickly started toward the door, scared that his expression looked a lot more like Rex’s than he wanted it to. “We’ll all go in the direction of his apartment, but split up so we can cover more ground!”

“Hang on hang on, wait!” Nia cried, snatching the box of walkie talkies and shoving one into each of their hands. “ Now go!”

So they all went, running like their lives depended on it, because Claude’s just might.

——————

Claude felt like he could barely breathe, almost doubled over as he stopped for a minute to catch his breath. He didn’t even think to check his surroundings much, holding his mask in one hand while his panic found it easy to seize his lungs and halve his stamina.

He didn’t think he was being followed, he thought he was safe enough for now. Every blank hunter had undoubtedly been given his last known location, probably along with what direction he ran in and where his apartment was.

But even if they had been on their way before he started running, he could hope that it been at least a few minutes before any of them actually got there. He could hope that he had gotten enough of a head start to lose them before they were even onto him. He could hope that he had run fast enough and far enough into the slums to be untraceable.

He could hope, but hope wasn’t enough.

“Well look what we have here.”

Even his need for extra air couldn’t keep Claude from freezing. His movements slowed by numbing terror, Claude looked up, somehow managing to straighten his posture.

He was met with a jet black faceted mask that didn’t hide an arrogant, nearly vile grin. The man behind it was drawing a sword, and fire lit up along the blade as he did.

The Doberman.

Claude had never spared a thought about blank hunting weapons if it didn’t have to do with business. He didn’t need a weapon, and he didn’t need to worry about facing somebody who had one.

Except now he was, and now he was very concerned with how much more damaging a blade was when it was on fire. Now he didn’t want to think about being on the receiving end of a blade that was starting to turn red from the heat, except he couldn’t stop thinking exactly that.

“I spy with my little eye… a red blank.” The Doberman didn’t stop grinning as he started to slowly walk. Clearly enjoying the way Claude took a terrified step back with every step he took forward.

Claude finally turned to run, but he was only met with a dead end. He whipped back around as the Doberman stalked closer, moving faster now, ready to get to the main event now. Claude would never give the blank hunter the satisfaction of watching him plead. So instead he managed to force his face into as deadly a glare as he could muster, steeled himself as the blank hunter lifted his sword, didn’t even realize he was bringing his arms up to protect himself anyway as the blade came down.

In the maze of walls and alleyways, no one heard his scream.

No one heard the Doberman’s either.

——————

Rex was running on adrenaline, and adrenaline only.

He didn’t even know the slums that well, didn’t where to check or how to know if he was going in circles. His scion was at as much of a loss as he was, darting ahead but still having no clue either.

“For crying out loud,” he panted, trying to keep up a semblance of a pace, “How are supposed to find Claude like this?”

“Hell if I know,” his scion huffed in his head, “way too many blanks here to track any specific one.”

“Oi oi oi hang on,” Rex called, waving a hand to get his scion to come back. “Do you think you could get enough of a view if you went on the roofs?”

“At the least it’ll double our chances of getting seen.” His scion was darting up a wall anyway. “But the only person who would yell at us is the one we’re trying to save so whatever.”

Rex was about to ask his scion for directions, and his scion was about to give them before he even asked. But instead they both stopped like they had been hit, suddenly and nearly violently freezing.

“Y-you felt that too, right?” Rex’s voice was small, and trembling almost as much as his arms.

“Yes.” His scion was in just as much shock, both of them hoping that hadn’t been what they thought it was.

“We probably know where to go now, don’t we?”

“Yes…”

Rex couldn’t even feel his muscles aching from exertion as he ran, only felt the pain that was faint yet horribly present, secondhand and radiating from just above each elbow. Neither he nor his scion could bear to waste so much as a second, just running, running, feeling pain where it now should have been impossible for him to feel it, running, running, running.

* And then Rex stopped just as suddenly as before, now shaking even more than he had before, now even more horrified as the confirmation was in front of him. The Doberman’s body was on the ground, motionless with a deep gash in each shoulder and the middle of his back. Rex couldn’t tell if he was dead or only unconscious, but not even he could spare the thought to worry about that.

All Rex could focus on was Claude, on his knees and shaking and staring at the ground, eyes wide and unblinking like his mind wasn’t even there. He had lost both arms at the elbow, and even though blank had replaced them Rex still wanted to sob because he knew that pain. Knew what that fresh injury felt like from when Kingly had taken his arm, and the thought of doubling that pain may as well have torn his stomach out. *

After the moment it took for the shock to set in, Rex managed to fumble for his walkie talkie.

“Oi, Jericho, c-can you get Nia and Bell and come find me? I- I think you’ll all want to see this…” Rex couldn’t do a single thing about his voice shaking, and Jericho couldn’t do a single thing about Rex turning his talkie off immediately after.

* Then Rex finally rushed over to Claude, nearly falling over himself, nearly slipping because there was so much blood . He knelt in front of Claude, and had to swallow back the nausea that came with his pants immediately starting to dampen. *

“Oi, Claude..?” Rex’s hands hovered nervously for a second, then he carefully pulled Claude close to hug him tight.

Over the course of a few ragged breaths, Claude managed to shift back into focus, managed to regain awareness of what was going on, managed to register Rex hugging him enough to try to react. But that led to him moving his arms, which brought on a sudden, fresh wave of white-hot pain that violently jerked him fully back to reality.

Claude suddenly cried with pain, making Rex flinch, then hissed through his teeth when he made the mistake of grabbing at his arms. Rex hugged him tighter, and Claude didn’t have the strength to hold himself up anymore, finally dropping his weight against Rex. All he could do was sob into Rex’s scarf, not a single thing anyone could possibly do to ease his pain.

“Shhhhhh, it’s okay,” Rex whispered, “just- just don’t move your arms, okay?”

“Everyone else is almost here,” his scion said, sounding faint, like it was in the back of his mind. It didn’t know what to do about their new extension either.

Rex nodded, holding Claude for one more second before gingerly taking him off of his shoulder. “Oi, Jericho and Bell and Nia are on their way. Once they get here we can get you back to the apartment and then you can rest, okay?”

“Jericho..?” In that moment, Claude couldn’t focus on anything else. Not even the thought of finally being able to rest cut through the cloudiness in his head as much as the thought of Jericho did.

“Yeah, he’s bringing Bell and Nia,” Rex swallowed, knowing that he was going to have to make Claude hurt more in order to get him home. “C-come on, they’re all almost here.”

* Rex paused to grab Claude’s mask, slipping his hand through the strap so it would hang on his arm. Then he started to stand up, pulling Claude by his ribs until he managed to stagger to his feet. Claude didn’t notice that his pants were dripping with his own blood, or that the bottoms of his shoes were slick with it. He couldn’t realize that, too lightheaded to do anything of the sort. But Rex did realize, and the fact that the urge to cry and the urge to throw up were battling each other was the only thing keeping him from doing either. *

Claude stumbled when he was pulled to Rex’s side, hissed in pain when one of his arms was pulled over Rex’s neck. Rex could only wince in sympathy, because right now there wasn’t anything he could do to help.

Finally, finally, Jericho came into view, skidding around the corner with Bell and Nia right behind him. Rex couldn’t find the words to try to explain, couldn’t find the words to say anything at all, could only look at the rest of them helplessly.

Claude had managed to lift his head up, and when his gaze found Jericho he didn’t look away. Everything had become a numb, detached blur. Bell helping Rex hold him, the long and painful walk back to the Sour Grape, nearly falling as not even Rex and Bell could keep him from stumbling as they dragged him up the stairs. After what felt like both forever and before he knew it, Claude found himself on Jericho’s bed, Rex and Nia and Jericho off to the side and talking quietly while Bell tried to convince him to go to sleep.

Not once did Claude stop looking, or at least tying to look at Jericho. And, right up until Claude finally passed out, not once did Jericho look back at him for more than a moment.

Chapter Text

Lyss sighed as she looked down at Rex’s scion. Curled up on the couch, tail draped over (itself? Rex? them?), fast asleep and somehow looking cute even after everything. Lyss ended up smiling a bit despite herself, finally realizing how Bell had taken a liking to it.

She managed to stop herself from ruffling (its? Rex’s? their?) hair, having to remind herself that this wasn’t Rex and that the scion would probably hate her touching it. Instead she went back to the room it had originally been sleeping in, remembering what it had said about Nia being asleep too.

If Lyss hadn’t known the situation, this would have been adorable. Nia was sitting on the floor, arms propped on the bed with her head resting on them, her face smoothed out and relaxed. If Lyss hadn’t known that this was because of how exhausted Nia had been, she would have melted on the spot. But she did know, so instead it just broke her heart.

For the short time Lyss had known her, Nia had always been so fiery, so passionate, her mind always set on something with an intensity that bordered on ridiculous. It was frustrating and antagonizing and so, so admirable. A peaceful sleep would be surprising to see on Nia, sure. But this tired, empty stillness? It was nearly jarring.

Lyss knelt on the floor next to Nia, then reached out to tentatively push the braids of one pigtail out of Nia’s face, and her breath caught. Nothing short of precious. Hands and breath slightly trembling, Lyss gently pulled Nia close to rest against her shoulder. There was a moment where she just held Nia, trying to figure out how to get her into bed without waking her up.

Then Nia started to shift a bit, her face scrunching up slightly, and Lyss froze with borderline horror. She stayed deathly still for a second, not even daring to breathe as she hoped that Nia was just moving in her sleep. But Nia’s eyes cracked open, just a bit at first, then reaching half-lidded as she managed to mumble half a sentence in sleepy confusion.

“Shhhhhhh,” Lyss hushed, holding Nia closer and ignoring her heart dropping. “It’s okay, just go back to sleep.”

To Lyss’s dismay, Nia didn’t go back to sleep. Instead she brought one hand up to rub at her eyes, starting to look around despite Lyss’s effort to stop her. It only took a second for her to spot the empty bed, and even less time for her breathing to speed up from panic. Immediately Nia was pushing against Lyss, trying to break out of her arms. Head already filled with a hundred horrible possibilities, wild with the thought that she had let Rex get hurt.

“ Hey , Nia it’s alright!” Lyss held Nia by the shoulders, and all Nia could do was stare at her, trembling and wide-eyed and nearly crying. “Rex is okay. You can calm down, you can go back to sleep. Rex is just fine, he’s okay, you don’t have to worry.”

“H-he’s awake now..?” Nia’s voice was shaking, and Lyss couldn’t tell if her tone was disbelief, or fear, or both.

“He’s asleep on the couch.” Lyss hated that she had to tread on things that were only technically true, but it was the only thing that would calm Nia down. “He’s alright. You can talk to him in the morning after you both wake up.”

Slowly Nia nodded, and as the panic started to melt away she looked more tired than ever. It hurt almost as much as seeing Nia scared seconds earlier had.

“Come here,” Lyss said softly, pulling Nia back to her shoulder. Nia practically fell into her, curling in on herself against Lyss, breath slowing more from tiredness than from relaxation. “Hey, let’s get you to bed,” Lyss whispered after a few seconds, “Let’s get you back to sleep, okay?”

Lyss managed to pull Nia up onto the bed, stopping to soothe her as Nia protested with something between a groan and a whine. Then she got Nia to lay down, reaching to nudge her legs up onto the bed.

Suddenly Nia grabbed Lyss’s arm, holding onto her with both hands. “Stay with me,” she whispered, her volume low only because it was the most she could manage in this tired state. Lyss couldn’t tell if Nia was demanding or begging, but it didn’t matter because her response would have been the same no matter what.

“Of course I’ll stay.” Lyss moved her other hand to cup Nia’s face, gently wiping away the beginnings of tears that had gathered in the corner of her eye, and Nia’s hands fell away with relief. Lyss grabbed the blanket, meaning to tuck Nia in, but instead she stilled. “I’ll be right back,” she said, starting to stand up.

Borderline fear gripped Nia’s heart, even faster than she latched onto Lyss’s arm again. “You said you’d stay,” Nia choked, grip even tighter than before, holding onto Lyss like her life depended on it.

“I will,” Lyss said softly, “Rex doesn’t have a blanket, I’m just going to get him a blanket, okay? I’ll be right back.” She carefully pried one of Nia’s hands off of her arm, then linked her pinky with Nia’s. “I promise.”

After a moment Nia nodded, reluctantly letting go of Lyss’s arm. Lyss finished pulling the blanket over her, an unspoken apology for the fresh tears shining in Nia’s eyes, then got up.

She forced herself to walk at a normal pace as she left the room, not wanting to get Nia worked up. But the second she closed the door after herself Lyss was nearly sprinting, and would have slid on the floor and probably fallen if she had been wearing socks. She opened the door to the closet in the hallway so fast that the stack of blankets inside it toppled over, and she had to slip a hand under her mask to stop herself from cursing out loud.

Kicking herself for making a mistake that wasted more time, Lyss haphazardly refolded everything a shoved it back in the closet. Taking one blanket with her, she turned and finally managed to naturally move at a safe speed, not wanting to rush and end up accidentally waking Rex’s scion up too. Then finally Lyss was able to go back to Nia, but she stopped short when she opened the bedroom door.

This time, Nia sleeping was adorable. She had pulled the blanket all the way up to her chin, one hand tucked under the pillow and the other resting on top of it, all curled up and cozy looking. Lyss could barely breathe in the best way possible, her heart taking up so much space in her chest that there was scarcely any room left for her lungs.

Frankly, it should have been illegal. Nia got badass powers, got Lyss to like her even when she was this frustrating, and was this adorable?? Unfair. And Lyss couldn’t even be mad about it.

Lyss got into bed slower than she ever had before, determined to make sure she didn’t wake Nia a second time. At first she settled at a safe distance away, so she wouldn’t disturb Nia if she moved in her sleep. But what if Nia didn’t realize that Lyss was there, what if she woke up and thought she was alone?

So Lyss sat back up, carefully reaching out to feel around for where Nia’s body was under the blanket. After a second she realized her hand was on Nia’s thigh and quickly pulled it back, taking a moment to cool down the blush that was definitely on her face now. In the end she just slid back over, laying down again and pressing her back against Nia’s in hopes that it would be enough, then finally fell asleep.

——————

It must have been later in the morning when Lyss woke up, because the sun was bright even through the window blinds. She started to turn around to check on Nia, but realized almost instantly that she didn’t need to. Nia must have woken up at some point during the night and rolled over to hold onto her, arms wrapped around Lyss and head resting against the back of her neck. Lyss couldn’t help but sigh and smile and bring a hand up, reaching behind her to gently brush Nia’s face.

Then the moment of peace was broken by movement in the corner of her eye. Lyss snapped her head in the direction of the movement and saw… well it was either Rex or his scion.

“Oi, you’re awake! Good morning!” The cheerful wave made Lyss have a moment of excitement, but then she narrowed her eye under her mask.

“Is this actually Rex now?” She wanted to believe this was Rex, the same way she had last night. But as much as she wanted to believe that right away, she didn’t put it past the scion to pretend to be Rex again just for shits and giggles. Plus, it had undoubtedly learned from its mistakes, and that paired with a full night of sleep was a recipe for much better acting.

Thankfully, though, the scion materialized, even before Rex could respond. It flopped on his shoulder and gave her a much less energetic wave, making Rex raise an eyebrow at it and the fact that it literally could not be tired when it wasn’t driving their body.

“Oh, thank goodness,” Lyss sighed. “Rex you have to sit down, literally so much has happened and-“

“Oi, oi, don’t worry about it,” Rex said, “Aunt Lauro and Nia’s dad already told me everything.”

“That’s good…” Lyss dropped her head back onto the pillow, stifling a yawn. “What time is it?”

“Almost eleven,” he told her, “You guys should probably get up soon.”

“Okay. I’ll try t- hey what the hell is that about?” Lyss had snapped her head back up, voice raising to a whisper-yell when Rex’s scion flipped her off.

“Oi, stop that!” Rex cried, trying to wrangle it off of his shoulder. “Shut up, I told you to shut up about that!”

Lyss narrowed her eye again. “Shut up about what ?”

Rex froze for a second, and Lyss could tell that if his scion had a face it would be grinning like a cat surrounded by knives.

“Oi it- it’s nothing,” Rex finally managed to shove his scion down and quickly started toward the door. “Just- I’ll see you in a little bit, bye!”

Then he waved goodbye and was gone, and Lyss could have sworn she heard him sigh with relief after he shut the door. She sighed too, with annoyance rather than relief though, then jumped as Nia stirred behind her.

“Good moooorniiiiing~” Nia sang, snuggling into Lyss’s back.

“I- I didn’t wake you up again, did I?” Lyss’s voice was small and nervous, and it made Nia quickly hug her tighter.

“I’ve been awake,” Nia said softly, “don’t you worry yourself about that. And don’t you worry about not getting back here before I fell asleep last night. I woke up with you twice, that’s just as good.”

Lyss managed to nod, pretty sure she was blushing, then very sure when Nia nuzzled her neck.

“Alright, let’s get up!” Nia suddenly sat up, pulling Lyss with her. Lyss groaned and went limp in Nia’s arms, trying to fall back onto the bed with her dead weight. Nia just laughed and pulled her back up, propping her chin on Lyss’s shoulder. “Come on Lyssy, get up. If you lay down again I’m gonna lay down again, and then we’ll both get yelled at.”

Lyss had gotten caught off guard when Nia laughed, and before she knew it she was stumbling along dumbly as Nia pulled her out of bed. In the moments that followed she became much more responsive, especially when she realized she had to actually walk.

“I come bearing a grumpy Lyss!” Nia called, pulling Lyss into the kitchen.

Said kitchen was very populated, nearly everyone in there at the same time. Chairs that didn’t even belong in the kitchen had been dragged to the table to provide enough seats, though one had instead been used to hold everything that had previously been on the table. Rex (plus his scion) and Rosie were both sitting, probably having already eaten. Aunt Lauro and Dr Bordeaux were standing on the other side of the kitchen so their conversation would be private, but they had both designated their own seats with coffees.

Nia let go of Lyss’s arm to talk to her dad, and Lyss mumbled a ‘good morning’ in Rex and Rosie’s direction before turning to the cabinets. The bowl of cereal that she had when she fell into the last open seat could arguably be lunch by this point.

“Oh, no spots left that aren’t already claimed,” Nia observed when she finished talking to her dad. She did not sound inconvenienced at all.

Rosie quickly reached over, trying to clear the last chair. “It’s okay, we can move some stuff or-“

“Lyss, I’m sitting in your lap!” Nia declared. Then she dropped onto Lyss before anyone could raise objections.

“Wh- okay…?” Lyss blinked, then hesitantly put her arms around Nia’s waist to support her. Almost immediately Rex was shoving his scion down again, and once he did he noticed her looking at him and froze. Then he quickly tore himself away, forcing himself to ignore what was now Lyss’s semi-glare.

Eventually Lyss turned back to what was actually happening. Nia had draped one arm around her shoulders and rested her head on top of Lyss’s, nodding along to the conversation happening around them and somehow completely normal about this.

As much as she wanted to, Lyss could barely pay attention. It wasn’t possible, not when the majority of her thoughts had become uncontrollably dedicated to Nia being in her lap. Why was this affecting her so much, anyway? Lyss had known what she was getting into, almost anyone who so much as met Nia knew how much she ignored personal space. Yes, Nia was Lyss’s friend, of course she cared about her, but for some reason Lyss couldn’t pin that as the reason for her wanting to pull Nia closer.

Thankfully the discussion was only going over the day’s plan, mostly the part about saving Desmond, so Lyss didn’t need to actually contribute. Eventually it all broke up, mostly just side conversations by that point. Nia got up, so Lyss stood too and left the kitchen. She passed by Rex, snatching his scion off his shoulder by the back of its neck as she did. If he noticed, he must have decided he didn’t want to bother saving it. Or that no matter what fate awaited, it probably deserved it.

The scion was squirming with a vengeance, nearly about to scratch her skin off just to set itself loose. Before it could, though, Lyss dumped it on the coffee table in the living room and threw a notepad and pen down in front of it.

“Beans. Spill. Now .” Lyss demanded, practically looming over it as she crossed her arms and stared it down.

It stared back at her for a second, entirely unimpressed, then picked up the notepad and started scribbling something down. When it turned the pad around, there was a second where Lyss only noted that its handwriting was very similar to Rex’s, but a little worse. And then she actually read what it had written.

Lesbians, noun, when two women are really fucking gay for each other, example: you and Nia

Lyss had to fight the urge to drop kick it.

Instead there was a second where she said nothing, honestly dumbfounded as to what she could possibly respond with. Then, finally, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

If the scion had eyes it would have been rolling them at her, which it made clear in the way it dropped its arms and tilted its head. Then it flipped to a new page on the pad and started writing again. It means you two are down so bad for each other and you and Rex are the only ones who haven’t noticed

“No I’m not!” Lyss cried, reflexively going on the defense before the words even fully set in.

There was a long few seconds where the two of them just stared at each other. Then the scion wrote something else down. So you’re telling me that if you made Nia laugh you would be completely fine and not short circuit in any way at all?

Lyss shifted, uncomfortable for a moment as she contemplated the question before returning to defensive. “This is ridiculous,” she snapped, tearing the notepad from its hands, “You’re being ridiculous.”

It did not take a genius to guess the way the scion was looking at her as she turned and walked away.

Lyss ripped the used pages out of the notepad as she walked, crumpling them up and disposing the evidence when she passed a trash can. Everyone else had left the kitchen, so she followed them to the room where Desmond was. With everything suddenly going on, she managed to forget about what the scion had said.

——————

Lyss sighed, rocking back and forth on her heels as she absentmindedly looked out the window. Rex was okay. Desmond was okay. Everything would be okay, but it didn’t feel like it would be.

Someone putting a hand on each of her arms made her jump out of her thoughts, but then Nia stepped closer and Lyss relaxed again. Slipping her arms around Lyss’s waist, Nia gently pulled her close, trying to read her silence as Lyss’s head dropped a bit. “Hey, you feeling alright?”

“I just-” Lyss ducked her head as Nia tried to peer over her shoulder, swallowing as she tried to put the words together. “I… what is this? You and me, and- and you’ve been so close to me all day, me more than anyone else and-”

Nia retracted one arm as Lyss broke off, instead putting her hand on Lyss’s shoulder. “Shhhhhh, don’t get yourself all upset, okay? Please?”

“Answer me.” was Lyss’s only response, and for a minute Nia just leaned her head against Lyss’s.

“I’ve been close to you because I want to be,” Nia said finally, “I want to be with you, I want to be close to you if I can, if you’re in the room you’re the one I want to sit by or on.” Nia hugged Lyss tighter, wrapping her other arm back around Lyss’s waist, “You’re someone I want to be close to.”

A few seconds passed in silence, Lyss trying to pick apart what Nia had said.

“If it bothers you, I’ll stop,” Nia added. “I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

But Lyss just held onto Nia’s arms. “I’m not. I… I like it. More than I’ve ever liked having someone close before. And- and I want to be close to you too, more than I’ve ever wanted someone close before.”

With that Nia spun her around, pulling her close and phasing Lyss’s mask into her shoulder to hold her more comfortably. Lyss let out a content exhale, hugging Nia back tightly and snuggling into her shoulder.

“I think I know why” Nia said into Lyss’s hair, starting to grin to herself. “Do you want to hear it?”

Lyss nodded, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about her half-conscious guess of what Nia would say next. It had passively surfaced while she was contemplating Nia in her lap, had reappeared when this conversation started. But Lyss didn’t want to actively think it, didn’t want to purposefully entertain the thought, scared of it and the implications it held.

“I like you… a lot,” Nia said, “So much. I think you’re brave and selfless and beautiful and I’ve never loved seeing someone go wild as much as I did last night. If I had to describe my idea of a perfect world, it would include waking up with you every day. I’m so glad we’re friends but dammit I want to be more.”

“Wait what?” Lyss lifted her head up from Nia’s shoulder, caught off guard by how blatant Nia had just been.

“What do you mean ‘wait what?’?” Nia pulled back, now also confused by what was apparently a major disconnect in what each of them thought was happening. “Was I not supposed to say what we were both thinking?”

“I wasn’t thinking that!” Lyss grabbed her hair, suddenly bordering on panic. “What?! How did you get there?”

Nia was starting to get secondhand panic from Lyss, not thinking to de-escalate the situation. “I thought you were putting the ball in my court!”

“I didn’t know there was a ball in the first place!” Lyss cried, then slumped with embarrassment.

Nia had to press her hands together as she took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Lyss,” she said, “You- actually hang on, I’m recreating this.” Nia stepped in front of Lyss, then turned to face away from her. “This is us from this morning. You’re me and I’m you. You did this.” Nia turned back, brushing her hand through Lyss’s mask and against her face. “You did that — you did that — and you’re trying to tell me that it was platonic?!”

Lyss pressed her lips together, needing to recover from Nia’s touch making her heart momentarily forget how to work. “……oh”

Nia sighed, then sat herself on the edge of the bed. “Okay, I’m just going to sit here until you get yourself together.”

Lyss dropped next to her, feeling defeated and confused. Hunching over with her arms on her knees as Nia leaned back on her hands. When she took a moment to think, Lyss realized she wasn’t actually as confused as she had thought. Only willfully ignorant because, in all honesty, she had been thinking what Nia said, just pushed it down. The thought was terrifying, both the idea of feeling this way at all and feeling this way now of all times. But then Lyss glanced to the side and saw Nia staring off at nothing, so effortlessly pretty and making Lyss want to hold her forever. And in that moment, no matter how scary it was, falling in love would be a hundred times better than acting like it was nothing.

Breath shaking, Lyss sat up and looked at Nia. “C-can I tell you something?”

And Nia turned her head to look back at Lyss, a knowing smile on her face that Lyss would have done almost anything for. “What is it?”

“I-” Lyss had to take a deep breath to start talking, but she couldn’t stop once she did. “I want to be close to you, if I can be. If you’re there, you’re the one I want to be with. I like you so much. You’re beautiful and strong and special, and waking up with you was the best I’ve felt in a long time. I’m really happy we’re friends but I… honestly I don’t know what I want besides you.”

Nia laughed a bit, leaning over and tucking herself against Lyss’s side. “Took you long enough,” she whispered, having lifted her head up to let her words brush against Lyss’s ear.

Lyss could only remember what Rex’s scion had said. On one hand not she didn’t want to admit that it was right, just for the sake of being petty and stubborn, but on the other she was so glad that it had been. And there was nothing Lyss could do besides hold Nia tight, so much and so suddenly that it made Nia gasp with surprise.

“That’s perfect,” Nia said softly, answering Lyss’s question before she could even ask it. Nia’s body was almost limp, Lyss fully supporting her as she held Nia as tight as she possibly could. Nia could barely keep her eyes open, the near-crushing pressure feeling so safe that she wanted to do nothing more than stay there forever.

Lyss’s head was directly resting on Nia’s thanks to Nia letting Lyss’s mask phase through her head. It was a little disturbing, but Lyss wouldn’t have had it any other way, especially when it let her kiss the top of Nia’s head. One of Nia’s hands had left her back, absently playing with a lock of Lyss’s hair that she didn’t realize she was tugging on. If either of them had the energy, Lyss would have let Nia pull on her hair to her heart’s content.

“Stay close to me..?” Nia asked after a minute, pressing herself further into Lyss’s shoulder.

“Of course,” Lyss promised. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

Chapter Text

Jericho had been pacing for an hour. He was beyond exhausted, both physically and mentally, yet if anything he didn’t have to energy to stop.

He had no idea what was going on. He had been trying so hard to be able to hear something, anything , but found nothing every single time. Claude wasn’t his anymore, and that made Jericho far more terrified than he was able to admit. He was alone now, couldn’t tell Claude anything, couldn’t ask Claude for help, couldn’t even just sit and talk to him.

Jericho’s hands curled into fists, gritting his teeth as he started to get angry. He had one person. One person in the whole world that he could trust, that he knew wouldn’t leave him. And Rex had just taken that away. Taken Claude and left Jericho with nothing, with next to no one, more alone than he had ever wanted to be again.

And Claude had agreed to it. Claude was just as much to blame as Rex. He had agreed to become Rex’s extension, had agreed to let Rex take him away from Jericho. Jericho could feel his blank space almost fully solidify, finally gaining a fraction of its usual power thanks to his rage. Claude had left him. Even after everything, even though Claude had promised he would never leave after- after-

Memories of the lab flashed behind his eye, and all of Jericho’s anger suddenly turned to panic. He wouldn’t let this happen again, couldn’t let this happen again. He had promised it wouldn’t happen anymore. He couldn’t let this happen, couldn’t- he couldn’t- he couldn’t stop.

Wall. Wall. Wall. Wall. So plain that he couldn’t even tell where the door was. Nothing. Nothing, no one, no way to know what was happening. No way to know how long it had been. A few minutes? An hour? Had it been a whole day? Had it been more? Was he over- or underestimating the time? Wall. Wall. Wall. Wall. Nothing. No one. How much time had passed by now? How much of this was in his head and how much was actually happening? Was any of this even real? Wall. Wall. Wall. Wall. How long had it been? He couldn’t tell if it felt like forever had passed or like no time had passed at all. Nothing. No one. How long had it been? Would the air in here run out? Why did he feel like it was all already gone? How long had it been?? Wall. Wall. Wall-

“Jericho?”

Jericho snapped his head towards the sound, towards Claude who had taken his mask off and was standing in the doorway. Immediately he forced all his fear back into anger, and what had almost been tears turned into seething.

Jericho almost hated how much he had wanted Claude to come back. He wanted to have someone again, to not have to hide, to not be alone. He wanted to let Claude tell him that everything would be alright, with an intensity that would make Jericho actually believe it.

But he didn’t get to have that now. Claude was right there but Claude wasn’t his, so now Jericho had to be just as guarded as he was around anyone else.

Jericho didn’t actually know what he was going to say, didn’t know what combination of words his rage was going to put together when he opened his mouth. But he didn’t get the chance to find out, because Claude was harshly shushing him before he could say anything. Claud was trying to mouth something to him, pointing to Jericho’s bed as he did. Jericho couldn’t hope to make out exactly what Claude was trying to say. But he did catch the word ‘please’ and that finally made him trudge back to his bed and sit down.

Jericho’s eye narrowed as Claude sat next to him, then widened as Claude pulled his hood down and took him by the shoulders to pull him close. Claude had been gentle with him, but that didn’t stop Jericho from struggling when his back lightly hit Claude’s chest.

“Jericho stop,” Claude said quietly, trying to plead. He had to pull Jericho back every time he tried to sit up, had to grab him tighter every time he tried to wrench away.

To hell with gentle, Claude finally decided, gritting his teeth. He got Jericho’s body against his again with a sharp tug, quickly wrapping his arms around Jericho’s shoulders and holding him tight.

“He can’t hear,” Claude hissed in Jericho’s ear, and immediately wished he had started with that. Jericho froze, save for his breathing getting heavier as the exertion finally caught up to him. “He can’t hear if we’re this close and this quiet,” Claude continued in something that was lower than a whisper, and Jericho finally gave in. He crumpled against Claude with what Claude hoped was relief but feared was exhaustion, and there was a moment where neither of them said anything.

Jericho leaned his head back so it was as close to Claude’s as possible, and Claude told himself that his voice was stuck because he was for Jericho to get somewhat more comfortable. Really, though, his voice was stuck because he was stuck.

His gut reaction with Jericho being this close was to hold onto him, to make sure that he was alright. This was followed by something far less innocent, Claude wanting to revel in how close his teeth were to Jericho’s neck, maybe even take advantage of it. Finally, though, he circled back to a more intense version of his first reaction. He didn’t need to make sure Jericho was alright, he already knew that Jericho wasn’t. So he needed to make sure that everything he did had some chance of making Jericho feel better. And dammit if he did anything with even a shred of a chance of making it worse.

“Why did you do it?” Jericho whispered finally, and Claude was unfortunately aware of the accusation in his voice.

“I’m sorry,” Claude murmured, “I know I scared you, but it was the easiest way to get the memory. It’s okay, though. We just have to make sure he can’t hear. You can still talk to me, it’ll just be harder for a little while. But once you recover and you’re stronger than him again, you can block him out like he did to you and it’ll be like he was never there.”

Jericho wanted so badly to relax, to let himself trust Claude again, to be able to believe him. There was still one more thing, though, the elephant in the room that neither of them had brought up yet. “But you won’t tell me what the memory was,” Jericho whispered, and his voice had only grown darker.

Claude shook his head. “I will. He was wrong. I’ll tell you everything, I promise.”

And Jericho finally did relax, as Claude whispered a dangerous lie in his ear. Finally believed that Claude was still his, as Claude told him a story that had been spun with just enough truth and nothing more.

It still wasn’t completely safe for Jericho. If Claude had told him something that couldn’t have harmed him, Jericho never would have believed the possibility of Claude not telling him. And the lie would catch up to him eventually, Claude knew it. But he had no other option right now, and he could decide whether to cross or burn that bridge once he got to it.

By the time Claude was at the end of the story he had built on his way back to the Sour Grape, Jericho was smiling to himself. Claude was still his. He had Claude and the memory, even after Rex had tried to take both from him. Once Claude finished, though, Jericho started to squirm a bit.

Even though it had been ignorable before, the position Claude had put them in was uncomfortable in more ways than one. Jericho had to strain his neck to keep his head up, and Claude was far too aware that Jericho could feel his every breath. Not only that, being this close in the first place was just plain weird to them. Claude didn’t mind as much, because Jericho needed to be kept safe for now and there was nowhere safer for him than in Claude’s arms. But Jericho was getting hot and starting to feel constricted, and if there was no reason for him to be laying on Claude anymore then he wanted out.

Thankfully, this time, Claude let go of him when Jericho tried to sit up. Jericho glanced at the closed door with suspicion as he pulled his hood back up, realizing that anyone could have walked in on that near-embarrassing vulnerability if they were there. If anyone was there, they still could walk in him and Claude. Claude had made Jericho feel safe, but he needed to remember that he still wasn’t.

“Are you okay?” Claude asked softly, breaking Jericho out of his thoughts. He had tilted his head to try to see what was left of Jericho’s face, but righted it when Jericho turned towards him a bit.

“I’m fine,” Jericho whispered. But he couldn’t make eye contact with Claude for more than a second.

“You should lay down,” Claude said, stupidly gentle and still quiet. “You look tired.”

Jericho didn’t react for a second, but then his eye landed on Claude’s leg. Then he nodded, starting to slide back and all the way onto his bed. “Are you going to stay?” he asked suddenly, and would have hated how quiet he had to be if not for the idea brewing in his head.

Claude nodded and, somehow, almost felt something that was close to happy when Jericho managed to smile a bit. He turned the lights off as Jericho laid down, deciding not to fight about the blanket. In the end, it didn’t matter if Jericho was lying on top of the blanket rather than under it. Claude just needed him to finally get some sleep.

——————

Rex’s scion kind of hated nighttime now. It hadn’t mattered much for most of their life, because Rex hadn’t slept either so it could still be entertained by whatever Rex was doing. And even after he had gotten a face and started sleeping, it still got the same memories that he did.

Rex had finally gotten all of Mikiah’s memories, though. And the scion was only aware of memories, not any of Rex’s dreams. Which, honestly, was probably for the better. So now that Rex had gone to bed and fallen asleep, there was nothing that it could be occupied with.

There had been a second where it thought that it could use Claude to entertain itself now. Except Claude wasn’t stupid. He had been talking, probably (no, definitely) to Jericho, but too quietly for the scion to actually make out any words, plus he was still wearing pants.

Any relief the scion felt when Claude finally put shorts on was cut off when it realized that Claude had changed… to go to bed. Right. Claude slept too. Wait, had Claude gotten into the same bed as Jericho? Now that was hilarious.

Between Rex’s right arm not being completely under the blanket and the streetlight just outside the window, the scion could see a clock on the wall. This was both a blessing and a curse. It had a concrete way to know how much time had passed, but that was also a concrete way to be taunted by how much time was left in the night.

After about twenty minutes, it was able to hear Jericho asking for Claude. A few moments of silence confirmed that Claude was asleep, and then Jericho pulled the blanket away.

Oh. Oh it didn’t like this at all. Jericho’s room was almost completely dark. Seeing nothing because Claude’s leg was covered was one thing, but being fully able to see yet still seeing nothing was something else. Not a good something else.

I know you can hear me, Rex, it heard Jericho say, and if the scion had eyes it would have rolled them. Rex could, in fact, not hear him. I hope you don’t actually think this will last. Any of this. Whatever control you have now is going to be mine again the minute I’m strong enough, so don’t get used to it. Or to people coming to save you.

Well, this was certainly something to keep the scion occupied. It just hoped Rex didn’t wake up in the middle of the night. He would actually be affected by this.

What do you think is going to happen, now that everyone knows what that memory is? It made Mikiah think that we both needed to die. Didn’t it even make you think the world would be better off without you in it? How long do you think it will take for everyone else to come to that same conclusion? Not long. I bet some of them already have. They’re going to keep you around long enough for you to get rid of me, then they’ll get rid of you, too.

And Jericho kept talking. Just kept talking, in a flat, detached voice that didn’t change, no matter what he brought up. He talked for an hour, which was pretty much just a huge waste of his time.

He talked about the people Rex had hurt, about how they hadn’t forgotten that, and did Rex really think that wouldn’t catch up to him? He said that everyone Rex was allied with now had been hurt in some way, that every single person who either cared about Rex or Rex cared about had been through pain, and in every single case it was Rex’s fault in one way or another. He said that even if Rex could somehow beat him, that would still just be Rex hurting someone. He built up a scenario where everyone realized that Rex was still very capable of hurting people even though he was ‘good’ again, and started to doubt his loyalty to them because if he had already turned once, who was to say he wouldn’t turn again. He said that even if the memory didn’t somehow make everyone want to get rid of him, that train of thought would.

He was wrong about a lot of it. Rex had already thought of most of that, had already brought it up, had already been promised that no one was going to think about him like that.

Jericho was right about one thing, though. If Rex had been awake, all of that would have done exactly what he intended. He had hit a terrifying amount of Rex’s insecurities, had figured out exactly what to say that would make Rex break again. That part, the accuracy of it, that was what made the scion scared.

Finally, Jericho paused, and for half a second it actually thought he was done. It was wrong.

You’re safe at home, Jericho started saying. You always have been. You’ve been safe and loved all your life, while almost every other half blank in the world hasn’t. Do you know what happens to most of them? The ones that are still in homes are shoved in attics or basements or closets, chained up and never let out. They’re shameful secrets, and they’re only still alive because their parents don’t have the stomach to drop them in a lake. Most of them hardly ever see anybody, because someone only checks on them to make sure they’re still there. Some of them don’t even know what their parents look like.

This was something that could start to get to the scion after a bit. And that was scary — no, that was terrifying. The thought that it had listened to Jericho show that he knew exactly what would hurt Rex the most, and now he was going to do the same thing to the scion. It knew how Rex would have reacted to everything Jericho had already said. Now it was scared that it was going to be the one to have that reaction.

Do you know what happened to the half blanks that aren’t in homes anymore? They got shipped off when their parents decided they were too much of a burden, and now they’re in labs. Want to know what happens to them there?

No. No, don’t start talking about that.

But Jericho did start, and then he didn’t stop. He just kept talking about the labs and what happened there, kept talking in a flat voice that somehow made it even worse. At first the scion was able to stop itself from getting scared or guilty like Jericho wanted it to be. It could make itself be angry instead, when Jericho talked about everything humans would do. It could seethe instead of crying when he talked about the half blanks in labs being taken apart, and melted, and shut away all alone, and treated like things that just happened to be able to move, all for humanity’s sake. It could make anger its only reaction… until it couldn’t.

Until Jericho started talking about what it was actually like to go through all of those things. He talked about how he had to watch his own limbs grow back when they were taken off, how the world almost looked and felt distorted when he had been fully taken apart, how he couldn’t tell where the water ended and his own body started when he had been dissolved. He went through every single thing in excruciating detail, until the scion couldn’t stop itself from imagining feeling like that.

By the time another hour had passed, the scion would have been shaking if it had a physical body. It hated that it was being affected as much as it was, but it had made the mistake of letting Jericho get into its head, and now it was learning that the price to pay was even more expensive than it had thought. It had wanted to try to wake Rex up, so desperately wanted to not be alone while it couldn’t itself from hearing all of this. But Rex would handle this even worse than it was, so it knew it couldn’t.

You know… Jericho’s tone changed for the first time, sounding like he had just thought of something. The fact that he sounded pleased with his idea only scared the scion even more. When your ‘friends’ do finally realize they should get rid of you, they won’t want to do it themselves. They’re going to hand you over to the blank hunters so they don’t feel guilty. And the blank hunters aren’t going to give you the mercy of just sending you to Dusk Island. They won’t even kill you. No, you’re going to get sent off to a lab too. I guess you can consider all of this a preview, then.

No, the scion wasn’t going to think about this. It wasn’t going to let him force it to think about this. Except there was nothing it could do to stop him.

I’ll tell you something: I was actually lucky when I was in that fucking lab. The ‘scientists’ there didn’t know about my scion.

No. No, don’t talk about that.

You’re not going to be anywhere near that lucky. They’ll know you have your scion. In fact, I think it’s going to become their new favorite thing to play with.

No. Stop it.

I think I’ll do you a favor and tell you what I think they’re going do to both of you. Then you can know what to expect when you finally get abandoned there.

No. Don’t.

Let’s see… they’re going to want to know how the healing with blank space works. They’ll probably cut you up like a jack-o-lantern first, they won’t want to risk breaking their new toy right away. Then they would start cutting off pieces of you. Probably chop each finger off first, then your hand, then they’ll probably go down your arm a few inches at a time. Oh, and they would probably leave you awake every time. They wouldn’t even do anything to numb it, to be sure that the blank space will grow it back. They might hit you with a tranquilizer or something, but only because they’ll think you screaming is annoying. Actually, no, they would probably just tape your mouth shut and call it a day.

Was Jericho laughing to himself??

They’ll want to know if it would be any different when your scion is the one in control. And whether it reacts to pain differently. You, I know you can hear me too.

And then everything the scion had been scared of started to happen. Jericho knew what to say to make it break too, especially after he had forced it to hear all about the labs, and now he was going to show it.

He told it that the scientists would want to know how its regeneration compared to Rex’s and a normal half blank’s. He told it that they would tear it apart over and over just to watch how it put itself back together. He told it that they would knock Rex out and shut it in solitary confinement to watch the way it moved their body and how it would deal with being completely alone. He told it that they would trap it in a tank of water to see if it took longer to dissolve than a normal half blank. He told it that they would burn it with fire until it was barely there just to see if it would be able to reform.

And don’t even think that you could stop them. Because you won’t be able to.

Stop. Please.

Do you want to know what they would probably do if you fought back or tried to defend yourself, or even just tried to keep Rex safe? They’re going to do the exact same thing to you that they do to the normal half blanks, they’ll just have to get a little creative. Give them a few tries, and they’ll figure out just the right dose of sedative. Enough that Rex will only barely be awake, nowhere near able to let you out. But not enough that he’ll eventually pass out.

No, he didn’t know this. He couldn’t know exactly what it was most scared of, there was no way he could know what the last thing it wanted to hear was. He couldn’t make it break enough to try to get Rex. Except he could.

It doesn’t matter what you end up trying to do, they’re going to find a way to keep you trapped in his head, just like you were back when he didn’t even know you were there. And they’ll keep you trapped for longer and longer until you let them take both of you apart to their sick hearts’ content. Imagine that: finally thinking you would never be stuck like that again, only for exactly that to start happening again.

“Rex!” It was letting Jericho win. It was letting Jericho win but it couldn’t find the strength to care anymore. All it could do now was survive, all it could think about was making all of this stop. And not being alone was the only thing that gave it a prayer of lessened suffering.

By that point an hour had passed again. The scion wouldn’t be able to handle another one. It didn’t know what it was going to do if it had to go through another hour of this while still alone. It would have been scared to think about that if Jericho had given it the space to think.

“Rex!!” It couldn’t be sobbing, it didn’t have eyes to cry with. It almost sounded like it was, though. And it wished it could, just to have a way to let all of the pain out.

I just had an idea. Rex, maybe you shouldn’t let it out anymore. Just leave it in your head like you used to, like you don’t even know it’s there. That would probably give you a little more time before everyone realizes they’re better off without you, if they don’t have to interact with your blank half. And then maybe it’ll have a chance of not suffering as much when it gets itself trapped again in the lab.

“Stop it, stop it, stop it! Rex!!” It couldn’t cry, but it could scream until Jericho’s voice was almost drowned out, until the throat it didn’t have was raw.

And, by what the scion hoped was all the noise in his head rather than some miracle stroke of luck, Rex woke up.

In less than a second he was shooting up, startled fully awake by everything happening. Finally able to let itself out, his scion nearly split itself in half trying to materialize and bury itself into his arms at the same time.

“He won’t stop!” it cried, “He won’t stop, he won’t stop talking, I can’t stop hearing him! I don’t know how to not hear him!”

“Oi, wh…” Rex trailed off as his scion quieted enough for him to hear what it was talking about. To realize that they were both seeing through Claude’s leg, both hearing, and neither of them knew how to block it out when the blank space wasn’t covered.

Have you thought yet, that it’ll only make everyone want to get rid of you faster? That was Jericho’s voice. And they were hearing him through Claude’s leg. I mean, half of why they hate you is that you’re a blank. Seeing your blank half out and about is only going to remind them of that faster. And remind them that you could still hurt any one of them if you wanted to.

No. No, he was not going to let Jericho do this. Rex could find a way to drown him out, to find something else to focus on, he had to. In an instant he was out of bed, holding his scion tightly as he made a beeline for the bathroom. When the lights were flicked on and the door was locked behind him, Rex stepped into the shower and turned it on.

The water was freezing, and for a moment it actually distracted him from hearing Jericho. But the scion could only remember everything it had heard about being dissolved in water, could only imagine the feeling of losing itself like that. Being scared by any kind of interaction with water was irrational. It knew that. But its anxiety had been dialed up to an eleven, so the harsh stream from the shower terrified it anyway, and it could only try to escape. Needing to get out with a desperation it couldn’t have described if it tried to.

Rex quickly turned around so his back was against the water when it started squirming, thinking that it had just been startled by the pressure of the water hitting it. That almost made it better, but then it realized that his hair and clothes were already soaked, and that was still water. There was a second where Rex could barely hold onto it, the scion suddenly struggling again with a renewed violence. The amount of force it was using to try to get away from him was heartbreaking, and he was already almost crying when he finally managed to tuck it into his chest again.

“Sh-shhhhhhhh,” Rex whispered, wrapping his scion in his arms as it kept fighting against him. “Shhhhhh, it’s okay. It’s me. It’s alright, you’re safe, you’re…” and then he trailed off, seeing the water run from his head and shoulders onto it. “Shit, is it the water?!”

His scion couldn’t nod fast enough, and Rex was immediately out of the shower like the water was scalding rather than freezing. It kept struggling until he was able to wrap it in a towel, and only then did it finally calm down to the point where it was just curled up and trembling in his arms again. Rex was able to reach back into the shower with one arm to turn the water off, and after that moment he realized that some of the water running down his face was tears.

“I’m scared,” his scion whispered, and Rex had never heard its voice shake like that before.

“I know. It’ll be okay. I’m here now.” Rex realized that, with the way he had wrapped it in the towel, his scion was basically swaddled like a baby. He hoped it was just too tired to care, because the only alternative was it being too tired to even notice in the first place.

All of that had actually kept both of them occupied enough to not hear what Jericho was saying, but that blessing was over once the panic was gone. The only thing Rex could think to do now was pace back around the bathroom and talk too, trying to talk over Jericho.

You haven’t forgotten, have you? It won’t be very long before you have nothing. You’ll both lose everything and it will be all your own faults.

“It’s okay. It’s okay.” Rex was nearly sobbing already, though for right now he was more hurt by the state that Jericho had put his scion in rather than what Jericho was actually saying. “It’s okay. We don’t have to listen to him. You don’t have to listen, we don’t have to listen to him. It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

There’s nothing you can do. You’re going to lose everything, and ultimately it will be because of what you are. All of us were doomed to have nothing from the moment we were born, and it’s about time you learned that.

There wasn’t a clock in the bathroom, and Rex wasn’t thinking clearly enough to leave and find one. He kept trying to talk, but it was barely a distraction from Jericho. Neither of them knew how long (or how little) it took for Rex to eventually be crying too much to keep talking.

Jericho did keep talking, though. He told them that Nia’s inability to phase through him thanks to the red blank serum was going to catch up to all of them. He told them that Nia was going to get frustrated and angry by this new limitation, and resent Rex for technically being responsible. He told them that eventually Nia was going to get very hurt now that she couldn’t phase through him. He told them that her dad was going to realize that it was all because Rex wasn’t stronger than him, and then realize that Nia getting hurt was Rex’s fault. He told them that he would go after Lyss again, but this time he would half-miss on purpose so she could still mostly recover. He told them that it would be Rex’s fault for not being able to protect her, and that she would realize that in the long time it would take for her to heal. He told them that Rex was still partially responsible for what had happened to Desmond. He told them that Rex had said he was going to make sure everyone was safe, only for one of his old friends to end up so badly hurt even when Rex had been right there.

He told them that neither of them were going to be able to keep anyone safe from him. He told them that it didn’t matter how much anybody promised to care about them. He told them that, one way or another, everyone was going to want to get rid of them.

At some point Rex had sunk to the floor, unable to even keep pacing around. He was just a mess leaning against the wall, holding his scion so tightly from outside the towel it was tucked into. Jericho didn’t stop talking, though, kept talking for so long that Rex’s hair and clothes had dried.

When Rex finally realized that he wasn’t wet anymore, he managed to carefully take his scion out of the towel. And that was how he remembered that it hadn’t spoken in so long, and realized that it wasn’t moving at all. It wasn’t even shaking anymore, it didn’t even try to crawl out of the towel, it didn’t even curl back up around itself when he held it again.

“Oi, s- scion?” Rex was scared. No, he was terrified. That didn’t improve when his scion didn’t respond, and only got worse when he pushed it away a bit to hold it by the shoulders and look at it. It just sunk in on itself, head falling forward and completely limp in his hands. He was scared to even think the word ‘lifeless’.

Rex’s hands were shaking when he pulled its head back up, heart aching when he realized he didn’t know how to tell if something was wrong. “Hey, y- you have to be okay, alright? I need you, I- I can’t lose you too, I’m not going to. I need you to be okay, I need you.”

The scion managed to lean its head into one of Rex’s hands, just barely, and for a second he was so relieved that he almost relaxed. Rex was trying so hard to stop crying as he pulled it back into his chest, trying so hard to be strong for it. But he couldn’t make himself take an arm away from holding it, so he couldn’t wipe his tears away, so he couldn’t stop more from falling.

You got really fucking lucky, you know that? Jericho’s tone actually changed, became almost angry, and Rex hadn’t realized until then that Jericho had been nearly emotionless. I told you earlier that almost every other half blank in the world has never been loved. Do you really think you deserve to be one of the few that has been? When so many others have felt nothing but pain just for the crime of being born?

Rex curled around his scion tighter, like he thought he could protect it from what Jericho was saying. Because, whether intentionally or not, he knew that it was included in what Jericho was talking about.

Every other half blank locked away in a house somewhere has never done anything wrong. None of them deserve to be chained up like that. Can you really say the same? Why did you get to live a good life when you’ve hurt people like this? You kept a good life from someone who actually deserved it, I hope you know that. What about me, Rex? When we were born we were exactly the same. What the hell made you more deserving of a real home than me??

“I’m sorry,” Rex sobbed, and he wasn’t sure if he was talking more to Jericho or his scion. It had reacted to what Jericho was saying now, even if only minimally. Pressing itself against him just a little bit more, and Rex knew that it saw itself in what Jericho was saying even if neither of them wanted it to.

Jericho seemed to have taken a liking to this topic, because he kept talking about it for even longer than Rex thought was possible. He told Rex every little thing about growing up in almost complete isolation. He told Rex what it was like to have nothing and no one. He reminded Rex of how many innocent half blanks had lived and still were living like that. Every few sentences he brought up all the bad things Rex had done, then asked if Rex deserved to have been spared from that when he had done all of those things. Every time he did that Rex cried harder.

Because no matter what Rex wanted to think, he knew that Jericho was right. He didn’t deserve all the love he had gotten throughout his life, not when he had betrayed his friends and family and hurt them all.

He was letting Jericho win. He was letting Jericho win but he couldn’t find the strength to care anymore. He wanted to scream but that would have scared his scion, wanted to rip his hair out but that would have required him to stop holding it, wanted to slam his head against the wall but that would have left it alone with Jericho’s words again.

His scion had managed to drag itself up, able to wrap its arms around his neck in the closest it was able to get to a hug. The thought that his scion was trying to make him feel better even though it had suffered more almost made him cry even more, almost added to his guilt. But that was ignored in favor of relief over the fact that it was moving again.

Neither of them could even guess how long it had been, but finally, finally finally finally, Claude woke up. They both had to hear Jericho make something up about taking the blanket because he had been cold, both had to watch Claude insist on fussing over him, both realized they lacked the strength to strain to listen when Claude pulled Jericho close to talk to him in a whisper. Then Claude finally put pants on again, and they both wished they were actually relaxed instead of just exhausted.

Rex couldn’t hope to guess how much longer he sat there for, barely able to even think. But he could faintly think about the way Jericho had been talking. He had been so unbothered almost the entire time, and Rex was pretty sure he had figured out why. Jericho hadn’t been bothered because none of what he’d said was new to him. Jericho had spent his whole life tortured by every single thing he’d talked, and now that he had the opportunity he was going to make sure that the same thing happened to Rex and his scion.

“How long had he been talking for?” Rex whispered eventually, “Before I woke up?”

“…I think three hours.” His scion was barely audible, and if its answer hadn’t almost made Rex sob again, its tone did.

“Do… do you want to talk about it?” Rex already knew what the answer would be before his scion managed to shake its head, but he had to ask anyway.

For a long time they just sat there, not saying anything, barely even thinking anything. No idea of how to calm down except for waiting.

Then Rex heard a few voices calling for him, and when he turned his head he felt like he had been put in slow motion. After a few seconds the knob on the bathroom door rattled, and Rex managed to keep one arm around his scion when he picked himself up.

“Rex?!” That was Aunt Lauro, and Rex couldn’t unlock the door fast enough. He practically fell into her once he did, starting to cry all over again.

“Was he in there?” Nia was calling, and if Rex had been paying attention he would have sensed her skidding down the hallway.

Rex took less time to calm down again, and by that time his scion had recovered enough to be fine just sitting on his shoulder. The morning felt long, everyone wanting to know what happened, trying to coax life back into him but him and his scion too tired and scared to do anything close.

Lyss had tried to get him to go back to bed, Nia had told him that nothing could happen while Claude was awake. But he was too scared to leave his scion alone again, not without the concrete knowledge that it could wake him if it needed him.

And then, eventually, when Rex had mostly regained the ability to think, the fatal question occurred to him.

What would they do the next time Claude went to sleep?

Chapter Text

Claude wasn’t home.

For some reason or another he had to go on a trip for work, and now he was gone for a whole week. A trip itself wasn’t new, over the years Claude had gone on a few here and there, but up until now the longest had been three days. He had always come back before Jericho even realized he was starting to miss him.

A whole week, though? At first Jericho had told Claude that he could keep himself alive for a week, that a week wasn’t long enough for him to figure out how to burn the building down, that he would be completely fine. And he had thought that it was true.

But then he had to push down a cold feeling in his stomach while he drove Claude to the train station. He told Claude that he was going to tell everyone Claude had found a new boyfriend in another city and run away to start a new life there, that Claude was a terrible horrible boyfriend for punching him once in the shoulder, that he was going to throw out half of Claude’s socks if he didn’t get a kiss goodbye.

Then he drove home and ordered food from the Chinese restaurant that he liked but Claude didn’t. He let Scion onto the couch while he watched a movie Claude didn’t like. He watched one more episode of the show he and Claude watched together, just to be an ass about it.

The next day was Monday, so Jericho went to work with the story he’d told Claude he would lament with. He got exaggerated, fake sympathy, then moved on with his day and texted Claude about it during lunch. He spent that night similarly to the one before, and Tuesday was the same too.

Until, at least, Jericho had gotten home and eaten dinner. He’d needed to bring a piece of beadwork home to get it done on time, so after he ate he sat on the floor and worked on it on the coffee table. The beads were different shades of red, and at some point Jericho had the thought that Claude would probably like it.

And, just like that, the mystery cold feeling was back. It had still been present, had been getting harder to ignore but Jericho had been able to ignore it anyway. That wasn’t the case now.

By the time Jericho was done with the beads, it was almost ten o’clock. Claude was always home by then, even when he was working late. But Claude wasn’t home now. That hadn’t bothered Jericho before when Claude had been on trips in the past. But this time he would still be gone for five more days, and that made Jericho feel his absence ten times more.

And now Jericho knew what that cold feeling had been. He missed Claude. He missed Claude and wanted him to come back. He wanted to bicker over what to get for dinner and what show to put on, wanted to put his arm on the back of the couch for Claude to lean his head on, wanted to feel like he was getting high from the way Claude tasted and come down while laying next to him.

He took a picture of the finished beading and sent it to Claude, captioned with ‘look at the awesome thing i did’. Claude responded within the minute, leaving a heart reaction on the picture and replying ‘Don’t accidentally break it before you bring it back to work tomorrow’.

Jericho half-smiled for a moment, then sighed. He still wanted Claude back. He wanted Claude to scold him for sitting on the floor only to be convinced to sit on the floor with him anyway. He wanted to work on the beads while seeing out of the corner of his eye that Claude was trying to be subtle about watching him. He wanted to show Claude the finished piece and watch Claude try to cover up the extent of how impressed he was, then make a game out of nagging Claude into complimenting him.

After a few minutes he was pulled from his thoughts by his phone buzzing from another text from Claude. The ‘You better go to bed soon’ text that Jericho received any and every night when Claude wasn’t there, to be exact. This was followed by ‘I actually looked at the dates and realized I come back on Valentine’s Day. If you do anything stupid or romantic I’m going to break up with you’. Jericho just laughed.

“Thank you for the reminder,” Jericho said out loud, smug and grinning to himself as he sent back a salute emoji. He put his phone in his pocket and picked Scion up, bringing the lizard back to his tank.

“Hey, man,” Jericho said, placing Scion on one of his rocks. “Can you be nicer to Claude? I mean, it’s funny when you climb into the sink when he needs to brush his teeth, but you don’t have to do it all the time, you know? I don’t know why you don’t like him, but I do like him. I- I like him a lot…” Jericho pressed his lips together, unsure of why this felt like a confession all over again. “…Do you think I tell him that I love him often enough? Actually, no, I don’t need your answer to that. You’d probably say that the first time was, like, three too many.”

Then Jericho actually went to bed like Claude had told him to. He wasn’t sure how much time he spent staring at the ceiling before the idea slid into his brain. He wasn’t sure how much time it took for it to go from a prank idea to serious. He wasn’t sure how much time he spent trying not to internally panic over it. He wasn’t sure how much time he spent debating with himself over whether it was even a good idea at all. But eventually he got up and wrote it down, just to make sure he would be reminded of it the next day.

Wednesday was normal in the same way Tuesday had been, as in a normal work day that was no longer normal once he got home. Jericho had not forgotten about his idea from the night before. He was pretty sure forgetting about that was impossible.

If he was going to do this, then first things first. He spent at least ten minutes pacing around, trying to plan what he was going to say in case he froze up like an idiot, trying to think of counters for any possible objections they could bring up.

Then he finally called Claude’s parents.

——————

The remainder of the week had passed in an anxious blur for Jericho. The rest of Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were spent on preparation and planning, and Jericho found that cold, lonely feeling to finally be gone.

On Saturday Jericho cleaned their apartment top to bottom, an unspoken tradition referencing the first Valentine’s Day they had together, when he had thought cleaning up was a good present. He took pictures of the clean apartment and sent them with a smiley face to Claude early on Sunday morning, getting an eye roll emoji in response.

Then he nearly had a panic attack from second guessing himself while he put everything together. This level of anxiety was almost completely foreign to him. For most of his life, Jericho had been able to either make himself confident about something or at least pretend that he was. Now, though, he didn’t have a chance in hell at being able to pretend anything. Talking to Claude had almost been scary at first, in their first semester of college when Jericho had realized that Claude could see through the vast majority of his bullshitting. That was still the case, and there was generally little use in Jericho putting up a facade. But not being able to pretend in the first place was something else. Something that he was scared to let even Claude see.

Jericho had ended up sitting in a corner, almost ready to completely quit and forget that he’d ever had this idea in the first place. He almost called Claude’s parents to tell them that he couldn’t do it, almost threw everything into a box that he would shove under their bed for now and burn later.

Why did the one time he was unconcealably anxious have to be now??

…Because it was for Claude. Because anything soft or vulnerable had a chance, however small it may be, of hurting Claude or making things more complicated for him. Because he knew that their normal life was fine, that it was comfortable, that it made Claude happy. Because this was going to irrevocably change that normal, for better or worse. Because if it ended up being the latter, Jericho wouldn’t be able to take it back or forgive himself for fucking it up for the millionth time.

But it was for Claude. And even when it did change everything, the odds were that it would be for better. And as much as Jericho wouldn’t be able to forgive himself in the slight chance that he hurt Claude again, it would be just as difficult for him to forgive himself for not doing this. And if this would make Claude even a fraction of how happy the thought of it made Jericho, then dammit he was going to do it.

So Jericho got himself together and stood up. He left the apartment as early as he could, first going to the store and rushing through the shopping he had purposely been putting off, then finally going to the train station to pick up Claude. He proudly told Claude that he was alive and completely unharmed, that he was such a good boyfriend because look he had done all the grocery shopping, that he was going to slouch in his seat and refuse to drive until he got a kiss hello.

As Jericho drove home he told Claude that all of his coworkers had agreed that Claude was mean and awful for leaving him for so long. Claude told him that he was full of shit and they both knew it, though he wasn’t fully able to stop himself from smiling. Once they were home, Jericho insisted on grabbing all the grocery bags so Claude only had to carry his suitcase. He managed to bring them all (except one) to their apartment in one trip, to Claude’s hidden amazement, though he nearly dropped some.

Jericho dumped all of the grocery bags in the kitchen when they got to their apartment, then grabbed Claude before he could bring his suitcase to their room. Next thing Claude knew, he was sitting on the couch with Jericho kissing him and holding him so close. He let Jericho push his jacket off before running his hands through Jericho’s hair. Knowing Jericho, this wasn’t going to end anytime soon, and after a week of being away Claude wasn’t about to complain. Then Jericho pulled him closer, kissing down Claude’s jaw until he pressed his cheek against Claude’s.

“You’re wearing one of the vests I made you,” he whispered.

“Pretty sure I have more vests made by you than not,” Claude whispered back. He dropped his head into Jericho’s neck, taking a deep breath and smiling to himself against Jericho’s skin. “Surprised you haven’t given me shit for wearing a turtleneck under it yet.”

“Oh, I will. Later.” Jericho moved so he was fully hugging Claude. “I have a surprise first.”

“Jericho, are you okay?” Claude was starting to sound worried from the somewhat difference in the way Jericho was acting, and it caught Jericho’s attention and concern immediately.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Just… missed you more than I thought I would.”

“Are you sure?” Claude was still tentative when he hugged Jericho back. Not completely convinced.

Jericho nodded. “Just missed you.” Then he kissed the top of Claude’s head, grinning when Claude reacted to that.

“Okay, okay, enough,” Claude said, ducking out of Jericho’s arms. “What’s the surprise that’s apparently so important?”

“Oh, it’s in our room.” Jericho pointed down the hallway. He stood up after Claude did, but walked to the kitchen instead and quickly started pulling things out of the grocery bags.

“You said the surprise is in our room,” Claude called, having followed Jericho and now standing in the kitchen doorway with suspicion.

“Yeah, you go to our room,” Jericho said. He grabbed Claude by the shoulders in an attempt to point him in the direction of their bedroom. “I’m going stay here to put away groceries and give myself a few extra seconds before I have to deal with your reaction.”

Claude spared Jericho and his finger guns one more glance, then took a hesitant step down the hallway. Jericho turned back into the kitchen but didn’t even wait until he had gotten back to the grocery bags to double back again. He grabbed the car keys as he sped through the kitchen, catching Claude’s attention.

“Pretty sure I left a bag in the car,” Jericho called, leaning back to talk to Claude because he was already mostly out the door. “You can still look now, I’ll be back in, like, two minutes.”

Then Jericho shut the door on Claude and his rapidly growing suspicion. He walked at a normal pace until he knew Claude wouldn’t be able to hear his footsteps, then was nearly sprinting. If he wanted to be safe, then he was going to put as many steps as possible between him and Claude. When Jericho got the car and grabbed the bag he had accidentally (on purpose) left behind, he stood there and waited for another two minutes before he started the trip back.

This time he walked at a normal pace the whole way. If he wanted to be safe, then he was going to give Claude as much time to cool down as possible. The anticipation was getting more intense with every step he took back to the apartment, and it wasn’t in a good way. By the time Jericho got to the door, he was only able to open it with the ripping-the-bandaid-off mentality.

A mentality that immediately evaporated when he was met with Claude crossing his arms and leaning against the wall.

“Oh, there was actually another bag in the car,” Claude observed, raising an eyebrow as Jericho froze. “Seriously, Jericho, that couldn’t have possibly been more suspicious. Honestly, I think I expected better.”

Jericho felt like a deer in headlights for what was quite possibly the first time in his life. Unable to fake even a shred of self-assurance, just as he had known he would be. He felt like he could barely breathe as he closed the door behind himself, felt like his entire body was shutting down.

“Why, exactly, did you want to be that far away when I found your surprise?” Claude narrowed his eyes, daring Jericho to come up with an excuse.

But there was no point in lying, not that Jericho could have in the first place. “Mental safety..?”

Claude sighed and got off the wall. “You’re coming with me when I see what it is,” he said, motioning for Jericho to come along as he started down the hallway.

Jericho could do nothing but drop the bag and follow Claude, too tense and anxious to even think. There was a lone rose petal that had ended up right outside of their closed bedroom door. It made Jericho flinch when he saw it. That wasn’t lost on Claude, who just looked at him with a raised eyebrow again. Assuming the worst from the fact that Jericho could barely even look him in the eyes.

Then he opened the door and nearly walked away right then and there. A trail of rose petals that started with a few at the door and became denser until it ended at their bed. Which had a pile of even more petals on it, which had a box that was probably chocolates in the middle of it, which had some trinket and a note on top of it. Claude could not have been more confused. This just looked like a Valentine’s Day prank that, honestly, he should have expected. What about this was making Jericho genuinely nervous?

Claude looked back at Jericho, who was basically hugging himself at this point and staring at the floor. Slowly Claude made his way into their room, trying to avoid stepping on the petals.

“They’re fake,” Jericho spoke up behind him, and it made Claude jump. “I- I got fake ones so you wouldn’t have to worry about them staining the carpet.”

Claude blinked, then kept walking toward their bed. And then he could see what the little thing on top of the box was. A ring.

Hands shaking, Claude slowly reached out and picked up the notecard that had been standing next to the ring.

And there it was, in a red cursive font that swirled so much he could barely read it: Will you marry me?

Well, that explained pretty much everything.

So Claude picked up the ring, by now barely breathing too. A pattern of red glittering crystals, lined with black, set in a gold band, and it was on a black leather cord. There was a second where all he could do was run a finger over it, any anger or frustration that he could have had disappearing.

“Jericho.” Claude finally looked up again, getting Jericho to walk into the room after hovering in the doorway. He sat down on the floor, waiting for Jericho to catch up and hesitantly sit next to him.

“I put it on the cord because that’s how I would wear mine,” Jericho said suddenly, pulling another ring on another cord out of his pocket. “I thought since I wear rings all the time it would be more special if I put it on a necklace, so I got another cord for yours in case you wanted to do that too. I can get you a new one if you don’t like the length, and it- it’s okay if you don’t want it at all. I’m pretty sure I guessed your size right in case you wanted to wear it normally, and we can get it resized if it doesn’t fit. And- and I wanted us to match but I was pretty sure you would think that’s cheesy or something, so I got mine to be the opposite so we still match but it’s not obvious. It- it’s okay if you don’t like it, I can get new ones, or-”

Then Jericho’s rambling cut off just as abruptly as it had started. Claude had put a hand on his, pulling it closer to look at their rings next to each other. He didn’t realize he was starting to smile before it was too late. It was one of the few times in his life when he didn’t feel the need to stop it. Jericho’s ring was the same style as his, but instead was bright green crystals lined with gold and set in a black band. So opposite that they were matching. Matching because they were opposites. The only thing that could possibly be more Jericho would have been a ring pop.

So Claude clasped his own cord around his neck, then took the other cord to do the same for Jericho. Whispering ‘yes’ against his lips right before kissing him.

One of Claude’s hands stayed at Jericho’s neck to keep himself close, the other sliding into Jericho’s hair to grab it. Jericho had one arm around Claude’s waist and his other hand supporting Claude’s head, slowly leaning him back. Then Jericho dropped Claude onto the carpet, barely giving him time to wince.

Kissing him so hard he may as well have been revoking Claude’s breathing privileges. Ducking his head with the intention of finding the pulse point next to Claude’s throat, of feeling Claude’s heartbeat under his lips. Trying to pull down the neck of Claude’s sweater and failing when the thick fabric refused to stay bent to his will. Giving Claude enough time to catch his breath and slowly raise an eyebrow in amusement.

“Alright, now I’m giving you shit for the turtleneck,” Jericho huffed, realizing the possibility that he had been deprived of the ability to get his mouth on Claude’s neck.

Claude only laughed as Jericho kept struggling. “You’ve been defeated by a sweater!?”

“No I haven’t!” Jericho cried, trying to salvage his self-image as he was, in fact, defeated by a sweater.

“Whatever,” Claude said, starting to push him away. “We’re not doing this here anyway.”

“It won’t be anything the floor hasn’t seen before,” Jericho pointed out.

“I don’t care about the floor,” Claude snapped back. “I care about the mess you made on it!”

So Jericho sat up on Claude’s legs, wordlessly picking up all of the petals that were near or under Claude. Claude just watched him, moving when he needed to so Jericho could grab the petals he had been laying on. After two or three minutes Jericho had collected a decent pile of petals. Which he then blew directly into Claude’s face.

Claude could only sputter as he tried to get the petals off his face, while Jericho nearly fell over from laughing. He did slide off of Claude’s legs anyway, letting Claude sit up and try to shake the petals off. By the time Claude was certain that there weren’t any petals still in his hair, Jericho had mostly stopped laughing, but was still not calm. No, he was buzzing with eagerness and anticipation, lying in wait for the perfect opportunity.

Claude was just starting to stand up, so Jericho swept up handfuls of petals from the floor to throw at him again. That garnered a reaction very similar to the first time, but with the notable addition of Claude smacking Jericho’s shoulder which only made him laugh harder.

“Worth it,” Jericho gasped while cackling. “So worth it.”

Claude just groaned and rolled his eyes, finally actually standing up and brushing the petals off his clothes. “Get yourself the hell together. I probably need to call my parents to tell them I’m home. And we are not telling them about this yet. They’ll make way too big of a deal out of it.”

Jericho had to pause then and take a tense breath, starting with “Yeah, about that…”

Claude could only stare in disbelief. “What. Did. You. Do.”

“Aren’t you supposed to ask someone’s parents first before you propose??” Jericho was nearly yelling as he stood up too, trying to decide between defense and offense in case this started a battle.

“Jericho you meant to tell me that you. You! You called my parents to ask- you asked?! You asked for permis-” Claude’s sputtering came to a stop, clawing at the air for a second in hopes of somehow grasping the lunacy. Then he just dropped his head in his hands. No battle.

“They definitely told your siblings,” Jericho added, grinning when that made Claude yell into his hands. Picking offense anyway, because it was funny. “And maybe a few other family members.”

“I am about to divorce you before I even marry you,” Claude muttered.

“Hey, you should be grateful I asked your parents!” Jericho snapped back. “I wasn’t even gonna get a ring so you couldn’t yell at me for getting something you didn’t like, but then your mom yelled at me until I said I would!”

Claude just flipped him off and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He almost called, then stopped for a second to look at Jericho again. “I’m just gonna FaceTime them, they’ll both probably want to see rings. And this has enough material for them to talk forever, how are we going to get them to shut up about this?”

“Just tell them you still need to unpack all your stuff,” Jericho said, shrugging like he thought Claude should have been the first one to think of that. “It’s not a lie. And they don’t have to know it won’t be the first thing we’re doing.”

——————

Jericho stared at the ceiling, not asleep yet despite it being night and the lights being off and him and Claude being in bed. Light from the street lamps outside had found the window, just enough to make the rings shine when he turned his head to look that way. The only things Jericho had been careful with when taking their clothes off. He shifted onto his side, finally able to see Claude next to him again.

“Claude?” Jericho waited until Claude rolled onto his back just enough to turn and look at him. “…Can I lay with you?”

“Oh, fine,” Claude sighed, shifting a bit closer to the middle of the bed before trying to get comfortable again. “To be clear, this is a one time thing.”

Jericho grinned as he slid over, pulling Claude right up against him to curl around his back. “What about when we actually get married?” he asked against the back of Claude’s neck, a fake innocence in his voice that almost made Claude elbow him.

“Maybe,” Claude said, at that moment more occupied with pushing the blanket away to avoid overheating.

“What about anniversaries?” Jericho had pulled the blanket away for him, then propped his chin in the crook of Claude’s neck to make puppy eyes that Claude couldn’t see. This time Claude did elbow him.

“Don’t push it,” Claude hissed, rolling his eyes as Jericho exaggerated a wheeze.

After that they both settled down. For the most part, at least. Jericho moved to softly kiss the back of Claude’s neck, and to carefully drape one leg over Claude’s, and to press his head enough to whisper to Claude.

“Happy Valentine’s Day.”

“You’re gross,” Claude whispered back.

Chapter Text

It was hard to sleep through the night in the jungle. Even if he slept in a tank top and shorts and no socks, even if he didn’t use a blanket, the heat and humidity woke Mikiah up in the middle of the night more often than not. He never caught Claude awake, but maybe Claude had an easier time sleeping because he had to adjust less. His default was warmer than the dry, chilly north, after all.

Jericho, on the other hand, was almost always awake when Mikiah’s eyes opened in the middle of the night. There had been a few times here and there when he had been asleep, and on those nights Mikiah had sat up and just watched him for a while. It was always nice to see Jericho sleeping, to see him look calm and peaceful after spending most of his waking hours constantly finding new things to do and never slowing down. It was even more nice because everyone and their mother (especially Claude and Mikiah) knew that Jericho never got anywhere near enough sleep. It was impressive and borderline concerning that Jericho always had the amount of energy that he did.

On the nights when Jericho was awake too, though, there were a few potential things for Mikiah to do. If Jericho was in the tent, Mikiah could talk to him for a bit, or play a card game, or immediately try to go back to sleep and see if Jericho would decide to nag entertainment out of him. If Jericho wasn’t in the tent, Mikiah usually just tried to go right back to sleep, but he could also get up and find Jericho.

The latter was the option that Mikiah chose that night, when he woke up to the familiar and expected sight of Claude sleeping and Jericho’s mattress empty. He walked to the edge of the tent first, trying to see if he could find Jericho without having to put shoes on. In this case he could, quickly seeing Jericho lying on a tarp just outside their tent.

“Oi, Jericho..?” Mikiah’s voice turned to a yawn halfway through his short sentence. He shook his head a bit, and that managed to clear most of the sleepiness.

“Hm?” Jericho looked oddly melancholic, lying on his back with one arm under his head as he stared into the sky. No possible mischief, no scheming or planning, just looking up at the stars. It was strange, in an almost sad sort of way.

“Are you okay?” Mikiah asked gently, carefully stepping onto the tarp and sitting next to Jericho’s head.

Jericho turned his head, technically facing Mikiah but not looking up at him. There was a second’s pause before he spoke. “Yeah,” he said finally, “Just… thinking, I guess.”

“You should go to sleep,” Mikiah told him, his voice halfway to a whisper.

Jericho just shook his head, though. “Don’t want to.”

“Jericho.” Mikiah gently ran his fingers through Jericho’s hair, catching Jericho off-guard and making his eyes widen. “You should go to sleep. It’s not good for you to get so little rest. And you always have circles under your eyes.”

Jericho hesitated, purposefully making sure he didn’t glance at Mikiah. The only thing weaker and more vulnerable than what he was going to say would be saying it while making eye contact. “Mikiah… c-can I tell you something?”

“Of course.” Mikiah’s hand slowed, carefully stopping and resting his fingers against Jericho’s head.

“I- I used to have a brother. A human one.” Jericho’s voice caught, but he managed to swallow back the lump in his throat and keep talking. “We were like you guys, I guess. My mom was with some human guy and had him, then she had me, then she raised him by herself. He hated me. And I ended up getting his face. I don’t know how much you know about blank development, but we get most of our memories when we sleep. I mean, we get them anyway, but we get more at once when we sleep. When I was developing I had to get all the memories of him hating me, and wanting me gone, and trying to get rid of me. And if I went to sleep, I would get more of them at one time. So I never slept, if I could help it. And now I still just… never want to sleep.”

For a second Mikiah could only stare, frozen as Jericho’s words set in. Heart aching for a friend whose injuries he couldn’t mend, whose pain he probably couldn’t ease. Then he forced himself to move his hand again, gently stroking Jericho’s hair.

“It’s okay,” Mikiah whispered. Combing his fingers through Jericho’s hair, breaking up any pieces that were stiff with gel, fixing any tangles from the unforgiving humidity. “You don’t have to worry about that anymore. You can go to sleep, it’s safe for you to sleep now.”

Jericho slowly pushed himself up a bit, rolling onto his side and dropping back down with his head now in Mikiah’a lap. There was a disgusted hissing in the back of his head, but in that moment Jericho couldn’t bring himself to care. Not when he felt this safe and at home.

“It’s okay,” Mikiah repeated, and Jericho finally worked up the courage to look up at him. “I’m here. We can pretend I’m your big brother, if you want. And once we find what we’re looking for here we can go back up north, and you can meet Rex. It would probably be nice for both of you, to meet another half blank. We can pretend you’re our brother too. And, I don’t know, Claude will be there too, I guess?”

Jericho laughed, then turned to snuggle into Mikiah’s lap. Through half-lidded eyes he caught one of Mikiah’s hands resting close by, and pushed his head against it. Mikiah snorted with laughter, which only got worse when he saw Jericho glaring at him. Jericho butted his hand again, grumbling impatiently with his unspoken demand.

“Okay, okay,” Mikiah gasped, getting his laughter under control enough to hold Jericho’s head with one hand and start petting his hair again with the other. “Is that better?”

Jericho didn’t respond, but he did settle down with a self-satisfied grin, and that was enough. Part of him was spitting with anger in the back of his head, but the other part of him wanted to curl up in Mikiah’s lap and never leave. Wanted to tell Mikiah the whole truth, wanted to hear Mikiah say that he really would be Jericho’s big brother.

But he couldn’t bring himself to do that. So instead he settled with basking in the feeling of Mikiah stroking his hair and letting his eyes drop shut. Was this was what it was like to have a big brother?

“Go to sleep,” Mikiah told him softly. “I’m here. I’ll keep the bad dreams away for you.”

——————

Credits rolled as the movie ended, and Jericho grinned as he looked over and saw Rex still forcing his eyes to stay open.

“Hey, didn’t think you’d stay awake!” Jericho threw an arm around Rex’s neck, making him yelp as he was pulled close so Jericho could ruffle his hair.

Claude, Bell, and Nia had all left, one by one going to bed. But Rex had been stubborn in his determination to stay awake, had insisted on staying up with Jericho so he could see the end of the movie. Rex swatted at Jericho’s hand with a groan, then ducked out of the loose headlock to lay down. Jericho almost laughed out loud as Rex curled up on the couch, apparently intending to sleep right there.

Then he paused, smile fading as he felt a wave of nostalgia that was laced with mourning. Rex had settled next to him, and there was a moment where Jericho almost had to blink back tears.

“Hey, Rex?” Jericho started, making Rex stir and look up at him. “How much of the jungle do you remember?”

“Not much yet,” Rex mumbled. “Only you guys getting there. Why?”

Jericho just shook his head. “Just wondering.”

He nudged at Rex’s head, getting Rex to lift it up in tired confusion. Then he slid closer, and Rex only blinked before laying his head in Jericho’s lap with a content sigh. Settling down again and shifting to get comfortable on his new pillow. Jericho smiled again, carefully stroking Rex’s hair as his eyes closed. This was what it was like to be a big brother.

“Go to sleep,” Jericho told him softly. “I’m here. I’ll keep the bad dreams away for you.”

Chapter Text

It started on the night Rex was stabbed.

When Claude had sunk that knife into Rex’s stomach without a second thought, had left him bleeding and trembling on the ground. When Desmond had nearly gone blind with rage, had felt nothing but cold when that rage faded. When he had to drag Rex back home, had to watch him keep bleeding until he finished the stitches. When he had tried to calm Rex’s heavy breathing, had to recover from his own breath catching when he saw Rex wiping tears away.

When he had helped Rex put his sweater on, had told Rex what the least painful way to sleep would be, had gone to his room to go to bed himself. There had been a knot in his chest that, frankly, made no sense. Desmond was a doctor, of course he had been concerned for Rex’s wellbeing, especially when he was responsible for Rex’s care for who knew how long it would be. But Rex’s injury was only as serious as a large scrape, considering how little he had developed. The only possible scenario where Rex wouldn’t have been completely fine would be the wound getting infected, and Desmond had made sure that wouldn’t happen.

By all accounts Desmond should have felt relief that Rex would be perfectly okay, that he knew he wouldn’t have to do too much extra to care for Rex. If anything, he should have been frustrated at Rex for making him have to do anything extra at all. And Desmond had felt those things, to some extent. But he had still been worried, for some reason.

When he had gotten up an hour or two later to get water, Desmond passed by the couch to check on Rex and make sure he was asleep. And then it had hit him, the full extent how much he already cared. He had known this dumb half-blank for a day, and he was already at a level of care that he used to only have for Lyss (and probably Reese’s sister, but that was a whole other can of worms).

After that, Desmond kept a bottle of water in his room until Rex had healed. It was easier than having to face how much he wanted to sit by the couch and hold Rex’s hand.

——————

Desmond’s heart was in his throat.

It’s only a matter of time before Rex develops the injury that killed his brother… and it could potentially kill him too.

Desmond’s first reaction had been why the hell hadn’t Rex told him about this?? He voiced that almost immediately, joined by Rex’s godmother. Why would Rex not bring this up and when had he been planning to? Why had Rex gone with Desmond over the doctor who already knew what was going on? What was Desmond supposed to do if Rex’s godmother hadn’t come and laid everything out herself? How could Rex expect Desmond to save him from a spontaneous fatal wound with only an at-home medical kit?

Desmond and Rex’s godmother probably could have kept going for the rest of the night. But their scolding got to Rex sooner rather than later, and the next thing either of them knew, he snapped. It was a brief outburst, thankfully, but pained and emotional and draining all of Desmond’s anger nonetheless.

So Rex’s godmother finally sent him to bed, and Desmond just watched Rex hug himself as he walked back inside. And in the quiet and what was almost brief peacefulness as he sat down, Desmond realized everything that this meant.

The idea of something like the stab wound from months ago but taken to a severity that could be fatal. The thought of Rex’s pain and tears from when Desmond had stitched him up being a dozen times worse. The responsibility of Rex’s life. The fact that he could lose Rex .

He was able to distract himself by talking to Rex’s godmother. They talked a bit about being Iberan. Desmond listened to her talk about how much worse off Rex had been a year ago. He heard about what a horrible state Rex had been in. He was incredibly glad that he had his mask to hide most of his expression.

When he did finally go back to the apartment, Desmond grabbed a bottle of water before he went to his room. He would rather not risk once again dealing with wanting to hold Rex’s hand.

——————

Rex developing that fatal wound happened in the worst possible circumstances.

Rex had just had a… well, Desmond wasn’t even sure if ‘fight’ or ‘falling out’ could cover whatever had happened between Rex and Lyss. Neither of them knew where Rex had been before he came back. Neither of them realized he was back when he first came in. Lyss didn’t realize that something was wrong until she heard him collapse and found him bleeding out. There was no way to tell when Rex had started bleeding, so no way to tell how much blood he had already lost. Desmond had gotten no heads up about when Rex thought the wound would start developing. He was scared that he had nothing that would be able to help Rex.

And before Desmond could even find out the hard way whether the things he had on hand would be enough, he heard Lyss sob from the living room. When he dashed back to the living room to see Rex limp in Lyss’s lap, he wasn’t sure if his blood had ever been so cold.

Then, before grief could even start displacing Desmond’s shock, Rex’s eyes opened again. But this wasn’t Rex behind those eyes anymore.

Desmond didn’t know who or what this was, only that this wasn’t Rex. This couldn’t be Rex, and Desmond hoped that was a fact and not just something he was telling himself.

Once it was all over, Desmond could hardly put everything together in his head. He remembered the sudden dread when… whatever that had been said it wanted to slit Rex’s throat. He had the sharp memory of even sharper claws sinking into his shoulders. He wished he couldn’t so easily imagine that look of hate in what were supposed to be Rex’s eyes.

The only group of consecutive seconds that were clear in Desmond’s head were quite possibly the last ones he wanted to remember. When Rex had finally come back, far too late, and the first thing he did was get worried for Desmond. Lyss standing between them because of the cruel irony that it had been Rex’s hand that did the damage in the first place. Desmond managing to tell Rex to just go, just run, just get away because Desmond didn’t know where Rex would be safe, but he knew it wasn’t there.

The hours after that were even blurrier. He had been in an ambulance. He had been in the hospital. Then he was back home.

And then he was seeing on the news that Rex was in fact one of the red blanks, that he had nearly been caught, that he had been caught enough for Lyss to find his severed arm. That no one knew where Rex was now, that there was no confirmation that he was dead but certainly no confirmation that he was still alive.

Desmond spent a long time having to put himself back together every time he remembered that he might never have another opportunity to hold Rex’s hand.

——————

“Rex!”

In the second that Desmond had yelled Rex’s name, it was simple. It was just him on the stage holding Shnee’s leash tight, and Rex on the roof looking so different and far away. Desmond felt nothing but alarm, not even sure what direction it was going in. But that second passed, and the next second was so much more complicated.

Anger, betrayal, pain, longing, relief. The alarm translated to anger for the briefest moment, before giving way to relief that held traces of longing. For a moment that wasn’t much longer than the last one, Desmond was just relieved to see that Rex was alive, had some false hope that maybe everything could go back to the way it had been before. But the rest, and most, of that second was a reversion back to anger. Anger at the way things had ended up like this, anger at Rex and the fact that Desmond couldn’t figure out if that was misguided or not, and betrayal from the way part of Rex had hurt him and Rex had just run away. And, through both the relief and anger, an undertone of pain that refused to go unacknowledged.

Desmond could barely bring himself to fight Rex. But Rex was more than ready to fight him, clearly just as angry and Desmond had been. Probably even more.

Desmond didn’t know why he thought he could talk Rex out of whatever this was, even when he was on his back in the cracked pavement while Rex was poised to strike again. He tried anyway, and somehow, some way, he might have actually gotten through to Rex, if only a bit. Because, one way or another, no one ended up hurt, and that was the best that Desmond could have realistically asked for.

Later, his head felt like a nightmare. Once the heat of the moment was gone, he had to face everything. He had to tell Finze every last thing about Rex. He had to know that Rex would see all of his own secrets publicized along with the fact that Desmond had been the one to spill them. He had to go over the entire encounter a dozen times in his head, because he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about it. He had to relive the anger from months ago that he’d thought was sufficient any buried.

He had to remember seeing that hate in Rex’s eyes with someone else — his ‘scion’ Rex had called it — behind it. And Desmond was so glad that Rex had been wearing a mask, especially a full-face one. Because he didn’t think he would be able to handle seeing that hate again, not when it really was Rex’s.

When he laid in bed that night, Desmond almost found himself wondering why he had ever wanted to hold Rex’s hand.

——————

Desmond could probably count on his hands the amount of times that he’d had his breath under control since Lyss had publicly offered up her face.

At first it was the whole idea of the exchange, of how important it was going to be, of how much it would affect Lyss. But by that morning he had gotten himself together over all of that. And he was forced to admit that there was one more thing on his mind.

They were going to see Rex again, for real this time. More importantly, Desmond was going to see Rex again, for real this time.

He knew that, as much as she wanted to see Rex too, Lyss would also want to talk to her blank. She needed to talk to her blank. That left Desmond with no buffer. He was going to have to talk to Rex. He was going to have to really talk to Rex.

What could he even say? There was something that Rex needed to hear from him. Probably several things. But Desmond could only grasp at straws for what those things could be.

There was something he needed to say to Rex. Several things. How could he even say them? What was he supposed to do, just tell Rex how much and for how long he had wanted to hold his hand?

And before he knew it he was standing in Finze’s office, and only had a few minutes left to think of how to say this. Because, ready or not, Rex was going to walk in at any moment, and the universe was nowhere near merciful enough to give Desmond more time.

And then the door opened, and for a second Desmond nearly stopped breathing.

And then Rex walked in.

…Holding someone else’s hand.

Chapter Text

“Please let me tell you something else first…”

Next thing Jericho knew, Claude’s lips were on his. For a heartbeat he was just taken aback. And then he was kissing Claude back before he could even think, wondering why he had ever hesitated in the first place. There had been a hundred feelings in his head, and now they were all replaced with one. Only one thing that Jericho could focus on, only one thing that he could feel, and that was Claude.

And for a few perfect seconds, none of that changed.

“…What was that all of a sudden..?” Jericho asked softly, having finally pulled away. Looking down at Claude with no less than every bit of affection he was capable of giving. He had settled his right hand on Claude’s shoulder, gently running the back of his left hand along Claude’s cheek. Going beyond soft all at once, like that kiss had flipped a switch in his head.

Claude knew what he was going to say. He had planned this all out. But Jericho’s hand brushing his cheek made him look up, and then he saw the way Jericho was looking at him. Soft, and kind, and adoring, and dare Claude even think loving. It made him freeze, and he almost wished that he would waver on his decision. It had been so long since Claude had seen Jericho genuinely smile, and he knew that he had to tear that apart.

It was only for a second that Claude’s face changed, but a second was enough. Enough for Jericho to see that something was very wrong, and more than enough for him to react.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Jericho said softly. Claude tried to look away, but Jericho quickly turned his head back. He had meant to be comforting, but everything only seemed to be worse when he made Claude look at him again. “Shhhhhhhh, it’s okay. Just talk to me.”

But Claude couldn’t talk to him, couldn’t talk at all.  Because Jericho was still looking at him like that, so worried for him but still with that kindness and care that was so overwhelming. And Claude was still going to ruin that.

If he had gotten a few more seconds, Claude could have brought himself to start talking. He wasn’t sure if he was grateful or felt horrible that Jericho didn’t give him those few seconds. Instead Jericho’s face quickly turned into what Jericho thought was understanding.

“This has been a lot on you, hasn’t it?” Jericho asked softly.

Claude, now frozen again, could only nod in what was almost fear.

“It’s okay.” Now Jericho’s tone was almost like how he had talked to Claude last time they spent the night together. “I know. It’s hard to think about what happened in the jungle so much. Especially what you thought happened. You don’t have to keep thinking about it.”

Claude could only stare, not sure if he would be able to go along with what Jericho thought was going on. In the back of his mind, the thought emerged that he could postpone the inevitable pain if he went with this.

“Rex told you everything, right?” And there it was, that tone in Jericho’s voice. Care.

So Claude nodded again, leaning his head into Jericho’s hand.

“Then you’ll still remember it in the morning.” Jericho moved his hand to hold Claude’s chin, pulling him just a bit closer and smiling now. “You don’t need to worry about that right now. Right now, I think you deserve a reward.”

Claude’s eyes widened, breath catching once before Jericho pressed another kiss to his lips.

“Let me take care of you again?” Jericho’s voice was so sweet, nearly pleading for Claude to say yes.

Claude’s guilt was only going to get worse if he let it go that far. But Jericho looked like he wanted to. And Claude would have been lying if he said he didn’t want it too. So, in near disbelief, he nodded before he could think himself out of it.

Then Jericho kissed him again, almost fully pulling Claude’s body up against his own. Neither of them cared when Bell slipped out to hide in the basement again, didn’t even notice at all. Because for a short, perfect bit of time the only thing that was important to either one of them was the other.

——————

(remember when I said part of this gets like a sentence away from nsfw? yeah that’s this part)

——————

Claude could hardly catch his breath, and he wouldn’t have had it any other way.

On his knees on Jericho’s bed, Jericho knelt behind him and between his legs, holding Claude’s body against his. Jericho’s hand was over Claude’s mouth, pulling his head back and into Jericho’s left shoulder. His right arm had been tight around Claude’s hips, though it was looser now. Claude’s heavy breathing became more audible when Jericho’s left hand slid off his mouth, instead trailing down his bare chest and starting to gently rub his side.

Jericho was still kissing his neck, now whispering praises into his skin. Whispering that Claude had done it, that he had known Claude would do it, that Claude had gotten everything for him. Whispering that Claude deserved all this pleasure and more, that Claude had been so well-behaved for him, that he wanted to give Claude everything he deserved. So many wonderful things that Claude couldn’t bear the mere thought of lifting his head from Jericho’s shoulder.

It wasn’t until later that Jericho realized what a mistake it had been to mindlessly promise Claude anything.

But, before that, he kept holding Claude, kept saying what he hoped was everything Claude wanted to hear, kept making Claude think that he was finally feeling what everyone meant by ‘cloud nine’. Finally, only when he had no new praise left to give, Jericho started to take Claude’s body off of his. Claude whined at first, though it had clearly been unintentional with the way he froze and clamped his mouth shut. Embarrassment set in, but it faded when Jericho only turned Claude’s head to kiss him for a moment and softly hush him. Claude had to bite back disappointment when his body really was taken off of Jericho’s. Jericho managed to gently slip out from between Claude’s legs, setting him on the bed.

If Claude could think that far, he would have wondered if this could be considered a type of tunnel vision. This was no haze that he had to focus through, not thinking only of Jericho because he didn’t have the capacity to think of more than one thing at a time right now. This was a complete and utter devotion of all his attention and remaining energy. Focusing on nothing but Jericho, basking in Jericho’s gaze like it was sunlight, leaning into every touch like it was the last time Jericho would ever do that specific thing for him.

Not even in the back of his mind could Claude count the number of things that were likely lasts. Which was a good thing, because that number was all of them. It included the way Jericho held his body close, like he was going to keep Claude all for himself. It included Jericho helping him with his clothes, helping him put his pants and shirt on. It especially included Jericho grabbing his collar, pulling Claude close to fasten the buttons on his shirt for him, clearly loving the way Claude flushed and couldn’t keep his breath even.

Jericho had come to the conclusion (entirely through his own thoughts) that Claude probably needed water. So he kissed Claude softly, saying to stay right there because he would be right back, then disappeared. Leaving Claude to eagerly wait at the edge of the bed, only staying put instead of tagging along because he had already been praised for obedience and didn’t want to misbehave now.

If Claude could think that far, he would have thought that — other than having patience — he was acting almost like a puppy. Nia had been right, it turned out, in more than one way when she called him Jericho’s lapdog.

Jericho returned quickly, just likely he had said, giving Claude a small cup of water. Truth be told, Claude hadn’t really wanted it. But Jericho wanted him to, wanted Claude to have it so much that he had actually went and gotten it himself, so Claude drank it anyway to make them both happy. He watched Jericho fix the blanket and sheets as he did, and was pretty sure this was the closest he had ever seen Jericho come to making his bed.

Finally, when Jericho was satisfied, he turned back to Claude. He did some combination of lighting up and sighing with relief when he saw Claude had finished the water. So he took the cup from Claude to put on the nightstand, then sat on the edge of the bed to kiss him again. Jericho was holding Claude’s head in both hands when he pulled away, looking down at Claude and only getting more and more lost in those pink eyes. He snapped out of it when Claude moved, closing his eyes and nuzzling into Jericho’s left hand. That quickly caught Jericho’s concern. He hadn’t even realized how tired Claude must be by now.

So Jericho slid back onto his bed, Claude following before Jericho could even tug him along. Claude let Jericho lay him down, ever so gently, snuggling into the pillow with a happy little hum and reveling in the way Jericho handled him like he was precious. Then Jericho laid down in front of him, softly kissing his forehead. He ran his fingertips down Claude’s temple with his left hand, pausing to nudge Claude’s eyes closed before lightly resting his hand on the side of Claude’s face.

“Go to sleep,” Jericho whispered. “Get some rest. You deserve it.”

Claude had cracked his eyes open at the sound of Jericho’s voice, but quickly closed them and settled down before Jericho could correct it. As he laid there and tried to finally process everything, there was a moment where he couldn’t even try to put words to his feelings.

If he got to have Jericho all the time then this entrapment, no matter how minor, would have been making its way to suffocating. But he almost never got to have Jericho, so anything felt like everything. This was everything. Jericho was laying with him, Jericho wanted to lay with him. Treating Claude like he was something dear, like he was worth keeping close and protecting, like he was valuable. And for a minute Claude actually believed that was true, that Jericho actually thought about him that way. He wanted that feeling to last forever.

But it couldn’t.

The thought set into Claude’s head like an anchor on the sea floor. In a few hours this would be gone. Even if Claude didn’t ruin this, it wasn’t truly real anyway. The intimacy, all the praise, the treatment that Claude could almost mistake for love, it was all temporary and false. Only a reward, just like Jericho had said, to make sure his loyalty would remain.

Although… it hadn’t all been false, right? Jericho had genuinely been happy with him. He had gotten something that Jericho had wanted so much for so long. That accomplishment was real, Jericho’s excitement had been real, maybe even some of the praise and care had truly been real.

In the end it didn’t matter, though, did it? Everything Jericho was doing was for something that would never come. Because, no matter how much it made all these good feelings wither away, Claude knew he could never tell Jericho anything. It was going to be horrible once it came to that. But it couldn’t be worse than the consequences of giving Jericho what he wanted. Nothing could be. Which meant nothing could make him give Jericho the memory.

Claude didn’t know how long he laid there, letting his misery fester, keeping his eyes closed because he knew opening them would only allow tears. Feeling Jericho’s hand still resting on his cheek, every once in a while moving to brush at his hair or lips or the corner of his eye. Affection that he knew he would never deserve. It took everything Claude had to not break down, to keep his face in a safe neutrality instead of crumpling.

Jericho, on the other hand, hadn’t stopped smiling to himself. So fondly looking down at Claude, assuming he had dozed off. Jericho didn’t know exactly what had been going on with Claude earlier, but he would fix whatever it was.

Claude had gotten him the memory. Jericho finally had the memory, and it was all thanks to Claude. The second he knew it for sure, he may as well have become Claude’s prisoner. Jericho had no choice but to treat Claude like he was the memory because, for the time being, Claude was the memory.

If Claude was overwhelmed, Jericho would give him as much time as he needed. If Claude needed his attention and affection, Jericho would keep giving him every bit of it. No matter what Claude wanted, Jericho was in no position to deny him anything, not right now. That was something that couldn’t be disputed, no matter how much his scion hated it.

He did his best to appease it anyway, still also bound — permanently, at that — to satisfying the hissing in the back of his head. Nothing he did had to be real as long as it was real to Claude. Jericho didn’t have to actually give Claude what he wanted, just make Claude think that he had been given what he wanted. That was exactly what was happening. That was all that was happening. And that was just an explanation, not excuses. Jericho didn’t need to make excuses. Because what he’d done for Claude that night hadn’t really been genuine (…right?).

Eventually Claude cracked his eyes open, no longer able to just lay there and pretend to be sleeping but finally able to keep any tears from forming. Jericho noticed immediately, suddenly attentive now that he knew Claude might need something. He saw Claude’s expression and that there might be something wrong, but also saw the lack of focus in his gaze and that Claude was staring at nothing. Only in his own head, which at least looked like some sort of peacefulness, and Jericho didn’t want to disturb that by saying something. Instead he slightly pressed his hand down, actually holding the side of Claude’s face instead of just laying on it. Hopefully letting Claude know that Jericho was there for him.

They were able to stay like that for some time, but nearly as long, before Claude started getting restless. He blinked himself back into the present moment, then seemed to be trying to curl in on himself. Jericho’s heart almost dropped as he pulled Claude a little closer, left hand moving to gently rub his back and trying to whisper comforting things into his hair. Claude kept shifting around, though, mouth pressing into a line and almost whining as he squirmed.

After a moment of hesitation Jericho lifted his left arm, letting Claude quickly slide out to sit up. “Are you okay?”

“Just… couldn’t lay down anymore,” Claude mumbled, rubbing his eyes. Too tired and relieved to be free for him to overthink the fact that Jericho had let go of him at all.

“So you’re feeling better?” Jericho was suddenly sounding hopeful, quickly sitting up too. “You’re alright now?”

Claude nodded, smiling a bit at Jericho still at least acting like he cared.

To Claude’s endearment, Jericho lit up like he had when Claude first returned. “Well come on, then! What was the memory?!”

…Ah. Claude had to stop his face from falling. Of course this wasn’t actually for him.

“I have something I wanted to tell you,” Claude started. “Can I tell you that first?”

“Okay..?” Jericho didn’t seem disappointed or annoyed, but his confusion was still such a change from the excitement that Claude started feeling guilty already.

“I just… wanted to remind you one last time…” Claude took both of Jericho’s hands in his, mustering the courage to look Jericho in the eye with a hopeful smile. “That it’s not too late, Jericho. It’s not too late to run away! To start over again! For us to have every day be like this.”

“What… what are you talking about, Claude…?”

Claude’s smile wavered, but he made himself keep going. “We could just leave the city! Leave everyone and all the problems behind! We could go somewhere remote where they’d never find us! Maybe back to the jungle! I’ll get a new identity, get a job to support us, we can make this work! We can be happy… like that night… like tonight…”

In the next few seconds they just stared at each other, Jericho looking almost terrified, Claude feeling almost manic with the way he forced himself to keep his smile despite the fact that he was trembling. Trying so hard to not let go of this. Trying to will Jericho to see what he saw, to see a future where he had the opportunity to have Jericho’s adoring smile every day. To see the one possible future where he knew they would both survive. At the very least, he just wanted Jericho to see that this was his last chance to keep Claude.

But either Jericho didn’t see that, or even that wasn’t enough.

Because he didn’t smile back at Claude, didn’t kiss him again, didn’t say yes they could run away.

Instead, Jericho pulled his hands away from Claude’s, slightly trembling too. Claude’s hands and face and heart all fell at the same time, and he so wished that he didn’t now know Jericho’s answer. Wished that he could change something, go back in time and do anything that would keep him from hearing Jericho’s next words.

“Claude… you and I both know we’re long past that point…” Jericho looked regretful, but even if that didn’t make it worse, it was still far from softening the blow.

Claude didn’t know exactly what he had expected his own reaction to be, but it hadn’t been this. He had expected something like begging, desperately trying to change Jericho’s answer, every final plea he could think of, something that would have looked like spiraling into insanity, at the very least crying. He had expected something.

Instead he got silence and stillness. Quiet defeat, disbelief yet still acceptance even though accepting this was the last thing he had ever wanted to do. Unmoving as he felt his heart crumble to dust. Mourning that dampened any other feeling yet was somehow so all-encompassing that Claude could barely feel that either. He could only keep staring at Jericho, not even feeling the tears slowly run down his face, looking so betrayed even though part of him had been expecting this. There were no overwhelming feelings that he needed to get out, no last thing that he wanted to say before this was truly over.

This was the last time Claude was going to be able to sit with Jericho, in any way, for any reason at all. But instead of trying to cherish it, to keep it for as long as he could before it was over forever, he just realized that his mourning wasn’t for the person in front of him. Because he finally knew Jericho now, truly knew who and what he had become, and Claude wasn’t grieving for that. He was grieving for any shred of hope he had been clinging to, for the lies he had told himself so he could avoid this very moment, for everything Jericho had ever done that Claude had mistaken for signs of real care. He was grieving for the person he loved.

This wasn’t Jericho in front of him, not anymore. Jericho had Simon behind everything, deep down still had a true desire to make things better and be able to live freely. Jericho had a warmth in everything he did, even if Claude was the only one who knew how to see it. Any trace of Simon was gone now, cut out like a tumor, and Claude was realizing just how long that had been the case.

This wasn’t Jericho in front of Claude. This was the scion. There was no warmth or humanity in anything he did anymore, everything about him had gone horribly cold. The only thing behind his face and actions now was the scion holding ultimate control.

Everything that Claude and anyone else had thought was compassion or kindness had been shallow beyond belief, as easily put on or taken off as a mask. Masks for a number performances that couldn’t be counted, not even by the person performing them. Some so convincing that it had continued backstage for a bit, but nevertheless always having a curtain drop.

There was someone who talked with that voice, who was looking at Claude with that face, who Claude had spent the night with. But he wasn’t Jericho. At best he was remnants, scraps of who he said he still was. And at worst he was nothing but an appendage for the scion.

This wasn’t the person Claude loved, no matter how much he seemed to be. He was barely a person at all anymore. He didn’t truly care about anything or anyone. He was empty, hollowed out to make room for an endless desire to do nothing but cause pain. Everything he did was either on the scion’s whim or permission. And Jericho, Claude faintly thought, had always hated being told what to do.

Claude wasn’t losing the person he loved. That had happened a long, long time ago.

Finally Claude got out of bed, not yet breaking his stare. “You’re wrong,” he said finally, causing a flinch when he suddenly broke the silence. “You’re the only one past that point. And I can’t follow you past it any further.”

Then Claude turned on his heel and walked away. Grabbing his shoes and the rest of his clothes from the floor as the scion finally got itself together and started getting out of bed after him. He locked the bedroom door behind himself, but that didn’t stop him from hearing the scion yell for him with a voice that didn’t belong to it. Claude was numb as he put his shoes and jacket on, listening to it bang on the door and continue to yell.

The sound got fainter as Claude made his way down the stairs. His tears had dried by the time he grabbed his mask to put it on, and a tiny part of him wondered why he had been crying over the scion to begin with.

Then Claude started to run, because he heard the scion finally cut through the lock and slam the door open. He could clearly hear its screaming again but didn’t know what it was saying, too numb to realize its words. It caught up to him as he left the building, standing in the doorway of the Sour Grape, yelling his name loud enough to get him to turn around.

“You’ve been right all along,” Claude called out, finally. Its face had been twisted into rage, but Claude talking made it pause. Claude was nearly hesitant too, when he looked at what used to be the face of the only person he’d ever loved. But it wasn’t, now, not anymore. “About being so in sync. There’s really only one of you, now. There’s no difference anymore.”

And that must have gotten to it enough to make it pause longer, because he had a second to start running again. Claude wasn’t sure whether he was surprised that his words hadn’t brought new tears.