Prompt: donovadam, “I’m not jealous.” for @soledadcatalina o3o. Silent Night killed me
ao3
“Oh man, Carl,” Adam says as Donovan all but limps into the cell, his arm clamped to his wounded side. “You look like total shit.”
“Speak for yourself, asshole,” Donovan replies through gritted teeth. It takes all his energy to get himself upright against the metal bedpost at the end of their bunk. He hisses in a breath through his nose, licks salt-slick sweat off his top lip as another wave of pain grips him like nails in the ragged skin of his wound. He lurches towards his paper-thin mattress, wincing as his legs give out and he all but topples into his perch on its edge. “A little help would be nice, y’know.”
“Christ,” Adam mutters. His expression, just a soft jeering grin a moment before, twists into sour concern as he approaches Donovan like he was a rabbit trapped in a faulty snare. He shifts under Adam’s gaze, drawn eyebrows and clenched jaw perusing his clammy skin, the paleness of his face and the tension in his aching muscles, and feels his heart begin to beat frantically in his ribs. “You okay?”
Donovan snorts, cursing when the jump of his chest pulls at the raw skin. He clamps his hand down, feeling the outline where Santiago’s shank had torn through him to the sinew beneath, trying to breathe away the agony of it.
“Again with that question, man,” he laughs to himself, even as panic rises up from his stomach to his throat at the look on Adam’s face. He tenderly kneels down in front of him, letting Donovan lean forward onto his shoulder. “You’re like a broken record. You ever got anything new to say?”
Adam’s hands are warm as they wrap around his, unwinding it from around his abdomen. “I could use an answer.”
“Uh,” Donovan stammers, glaring incredulously, “yeah, I’m just fine and dandy, thanks! Being stabbed has just been a walk in the fuckin’ park, y’know? Doesn’t even hold a candle to the Boxing Day crowds out there.” Adam chuckles at that, glancing up to meet Donovan’s eye as he reaches for the hem of his shirt, and Donovan nods to his unspoken question.
Adam lifts the shirt up over his stomach, quietly apologizing when he has to peel the fabric away from the dark, drying blood that has clotted against it. He slowly reveals the dark skin underneath, marred by the unnatural hues bordering the gash in the firm flesh of his stomach.
Donovan chances a glance down, his heart drumming feverishly light against his seizing lungs like a frightened hummingbird. The border of the stab wound, red and raw yesterday, now took on a darker, deep brown. It had spread farther since that morning, blending into purple as it curled around his side behind him, fading into a greenish-yellow where it has seeped up almost to his chest. His muscles are stiff and sore as Adam gestures for him to raise his arm over his head, sucking at his teeth as he inspects the wound with the graze of his fingertips.
“This infection might just give me a nice New Year’s vacation to the infirmary,” Donovan wheezes jokingly. The laugh he forces out sounds more like a sob, and he looks up into the metal wiring of the bunk above him, trying to blink back the stubborn tears as dread begins to crash over him. “Belated Christmas gift to myself.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Adam replies. “You’re not oozing anything green, not yet anyway.” Donovan feels his fingertips press gently into the skin bordering the injury, but it doesn’t hurt, his hands and eyes meticulous in their careful inspection
“See something you like?” Donovan says after a minute. He flashes Adam a smile when he looks up to raise a questioning eyebrow at him, flexing the bicep of his raised arm with a laugh.
Adam snorts, darting his eyes back down as the concern on his face blooms into a gentle joy, shaking his head as his cheeks grow round and flushed with his sheepish smile.
“You talking about the gaping hole where Santa stuck a shank in you?” Adam shoots back. “Trust me, I’m not jealous.”
Donovan laughs at that – a genuine, breathless laugh that masks the screaming protest in his muscles, makes the anxiety in his veins ebb away. Adam yanks the stained, threadbare fabric of his prison shirt back down, gesturing for Donovan to move over.
“You’re fine, dude,” he says. His hands press against Donovan’s back, easing him down the mattress as he lies down before following suit, stretching his legs out as he props them on a ladder rung leading up to the top bunk. “It’s just bruising – a crap ton though, for sure. Jesus Carl, what did you do?”
“Chipping rooms,” he replies. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath that is stifled by the wall on one side, Adam’s arm flush against him on the other, the world just this small sliver of bedding and warmth for the moment. “Nothing out of the ordinary, though.”
“If you could call anything here ordinary,” Adam murmurs, Donovan just close enough to hear the breath of his words. “Wait – you still went to the chipping rooms today?”
Donovan feels the bed shift beneath him, opening his eyes to see Adam hovering over him, his eyes narrow.
“I mean,” Donovan stammers. He tries to sit up, to keep him on equal footing with the palpable concern that Adam’s looming form dangles over him until pain grips him and pulls him back down. “I was assigned?”
“And you didn’t tell me?” Adam asks. He jolts back, his eyebrows rising high above narrow eyes hidden in the darkness of the top bunk above them. His face is lined with the shadow of the bars in front of their bunk, the uniform lines caging the angles of his cheekbones and curve of his frown. “Or Batek? I told you, you’re on laundry, kitchen at least until you’re better.”
“And what were you going to do about it? Take my spot?”
“Yes!” Adam exclaims. He looks down at Donovan quizzically, as if the answer were common sense or he had grown a second head. “You think I’d let you strain yourself down there?”
“And let one of you take the fall?” Donovan retorts. “I’m trying to survive, but I’m not heartless.” He shifts, trying to turn his back to him and giving up when his injury complains again and he has to clutch his side again. “And you’re smarter than that.”
“You and I both know the blacksuits don’t track whose where,” Adam says. “And even if they did, I’d rather risk that than have you pass out chipping with one of them breathing down your neck, or opening that gash in your stomach again until it does get infected.”
“You crazy, man,” Donovan sighs. “You’re gonna get yourself killed for me.”
“Yeah, well,” Adam says, “I’d be willing to.”
Donovan turns to look at him, feels a wave of shock and disbelief and something familiar that he can’t recognize from the time and torture and hard labour alienating it from him. He opens his mouth to speak words that won’t come to him, watching Adam stare out to the platform outside, to the bodies milling across the expanse of the prison, the jeers and hollers that form Furnace’s all too familiar din.
“Carl,” Adam sighs. He closes his eyes, the warped shadow of prison bars painted on his eyelids. “We’re all trying to survive here. And it’s futile and worthless as all shit, I know that, but there’s no point if I just give up on everyone else here. And I don’t want to do that, I don’t want to watch you suffer when you don’t have to.”
He opens his eyes, the fluorescent glare of the prison spotlights shining in his pupils. He leans forward, the shadow of the bars giving way as he presses in close, lying down with his head propped up on his hand to keep his eyes on Donovan. His permeating gaze keeps him frozen, fixated as the sounds of the prison fizzle away against the rhythm of their shared breathing.
“I told you that,” he says slowly, his eyes flitting back and forth before finding a dirty spot on the mattress to stare at. “At least, I think it’s important. Keeping your heart, bringin’ it down here, even if it gets broke.”
His hand inches forward, and Donovan thinks he’s going to pick at the spot there and stall for time as he chews over his words before it breaches the small gulf between them. He takes the hand Donovan has clamped to his side, lifting it from the wound, and as Donovan exhales the muscles lose their tension, sink into an uneasy but painless rest just as his hand tenderly sinks into the given embrace. Adam’s fingers tremble against his, his thumb just brushing over Donovan’s nails, picking at the callouses there.
“I mean, you and Batek,” he continues, and something in the quiet of his voice, in the slight shake of his fingertips as they brush back and forth against Donovan’s palm, goes timid. His eyes, now wide and wondering, look up into Donovan’s face as if searching for a solution to a puzzle he can’t quite understand. He realizes just how close they are, how small the world has gotten with Adam pressed close to him – how the metal clangs and red rock walls have melted away, the world just the two of them colliding where Donovan moves to grip his fingers.
“Carl, you and I,” he says. “We’ve been here for so long; you’ve had my back when all my life I’ve had people sticking knives in it-“
“A goddamn Bic,” Donovan murmurs, and the two of them fumble into laughter, giggling like school children. They lean into each other, and Donovan can feel the rush of Adam’s pulse in his wrist.
“Hell, Carl, honestly,” he wheezes, his body still trembling with stray laughter as he looks up to Donovan again. “I’m trying to pour my heart out to you, and here you are, just…”
Adam sucks in a breath, steeling himself. The question is in his eyes again, as they slowly search Donovan’s face for the answer. “You know you’re part of the reason for that, right? You’re why I keep my heart down here with me. You’re why I want to keep living down here.”
Their faces are inches apart - Donovan can feel the soft rush of Adam’s breath against his cheek, knows he can feel the gasp that rushes out of him as he grows numb with joy he hasn’t felt in years. His heart squeezes, his mind ready to float off the mattress and ascend through the ceiling, past the miles and miles of stone that threaten to press down on them, and he grips Adam’s hand tight as if he can bring him up to freedom with him.
But his tongue is lead, and before he remembers how to use it again, Adam is shuffling uncomfortably beside him, trying to get another inch or two between them on the narrow bunk. His hand retreats, threatening to break the tenuous bridge they had just formed across the vast expanse keeping them apart before Donovan squeezes it, pulls him forward until they’re pressed beside each other again. The world shrinks ever smaller into itself as Adam pushes against him, and the compressed mass of it threatens to give under its weight –
Donovan closes his eyes as his parted lips press into Adam’s, his heart ready to burst as it hammers away in his chest like a giddy little bird in an open cage. He can feel Adam, coiled tight like a spring beside him as he sucks in a breath through his nose before releasing every last piece of tension, the weight of his years off his shoulders as he melts into the kiss.
It’s electric and short, the shock of it leaving an arch between them when their lips quickly part. The world returns with it, snapping back into place like an elastic band that had been stretched taut, the density of their small, small world echoing vibrantly as it implodes and rebounds against itself.
Donovan chances a dubious glance outside the cell, once he’s come to – there’s no one out there, no one outside to watch them or spy on their small moment of intimacy, and they realize together that for the second time in two days, they had escaped for just a moment, found freedom with their hearts intact and gotten away with.
Adam bursts into laughter beside him, his body wracked with enough joy to make the metal bedframe rattle under his body. He rolls onto his back shyly, an arm flung over his eyes but his smile shining like the sun under it. Donovan can’t help but mirror him, his cheeks aching. Their hands are still wound together, clasped lovingly and hidden between their bodies as they lie side by side on the bottom bunk.
“You okay?” Donovan says, his burning wound masked by the laughter bubbling out of him like soda fizz, his sides sore and his heart aching for the boy beside him.
Adam lifts the arm on his face slightly. One dark eye peeks out from beneath it, glimmering under the prison lights.
