The door slams open, the wood rattling and the handle colliding with the wall to drive right into it. Lux flinches badly, trying to curl up and tuck his face into Emory’s lap as he makes panicked sounds. He’s going to be hurt again, he knows it, the group’s boss is furious and they’re gonna take it out on him, they’re gonna make him sob again, and that makes it so hard to breathe with the tape over his mouth, and he’s gonna hyperventilate…
Something loud is happening. A fight, maybe. Lux pushes himself further into Emory’s lap with a pitchy keen. What if they don’t hurt him this time, what if they’re going to kill him? What if they take Emory away and Lux is left all alone?
The loud sounds, the crashing and scuffing of shoes against the floor, it all stops nearly as soon as it starts. Lux is breathing loudly in his panic, complaining in the only way he can - with animalistic sounds muffled by the duct tape - when Emory’s hands stop combing through his hair and pressing against his back to hold him close.
“Lux, Lux, look, it’s okay,” Emory says, and Lux doesn’t understand. He doesn’t want to look. In four days, he’s gotten used to how this works; if he’s not being held or shoved down into the bed, he doesn’t want any part of it, because new is dangerous.
“He’s scared,” His partner tells someone, and Lux frowns against Emory’s middle. Is he talking to the men who have been hurting Lux? Is he going to ask for mercy, or is he just going to point out that Lux is cowering before being pulled out of the way?
There’s a moment of silence, and then a shifting on the bed as weight settles down at the edge of it. Lux really can’t curl up any tighter, any closer to the only source of comfort he’s had in the past few painful days.
Something moves the zip-tie where it connects Lux’s wrists behind his back, and he tenses - but there’s no new contact with his skin, and suddenly the tie bursts open, his arms no longer being held in their unnatural position. Lux draws a sharp breath in through his nose and slowly, achingly pins one arm under himself, pulls the other one close to his chest with a stream of whines.
A hand presses lightly to the back of his left shoulder, and as soon as he realizes it’s not Emory’s, he nearly tries to twist away - but then blissfully cool numbing magic sinks into the throbbing joint, and Lux’s next sound is a longing moan.
The same magic is pushed into his other shoulder. Lux lets out a shivery breath against Emory’s side.
“Hey Lux,” Says a familiar voice, and the warlock squeezes his eyes shut as he tries to place it. “It’s Alex. Tare’s here, too.”
“Yeah, took out those bastards,” She adds, although her tone is more gentle than her words.
“Emory, how hurt is he? Can he walk?”
Lux doesn’t hear an answer. He wonders if Emory nodded or shook his head in answer. Lux isn’t going to walk, no matter what anyone says. He would pass out with the first step, crumple to the floor.
His arms tingle loudly, sharply, as feeling returns to them; his fingers are pink and feel hot with the return of blood flow. Lux tries to focus on the pins-and-needles instead of the concept of how hurt he is otherwise.
Emory’s fingers return to his hair just long enough to tip his head to the side and expose his face. Lux closes his eyes against the assault of bright light. Emory’s fingers pry gently at the edge of the duct tape, and then peel it away; Lux thought it would hurt, but it’s surprisingly easy to remove, after all the sweat and tears. He gasps, coughs, and pants as soon as he can open his mouth, but he doesn’t venture to speak.
He’s scared that if he tries, then he’ll seem more okay than he is, and when he breaks down very soon, everyone will be disappointed with him. So he keeps what would probably be croaking, stammered words to himself and presses his face to Emory’s stomach again, relishing in the sheer comfort of it without tape across his face.
“I’ll carry him,” Emory says, and Lux nods his weak agreement, saying yes, please, I want that, without a sound.
“It might be better for me to carry him, if you’ve been stuck here a while,” Taryn says, sounding logical as ever. “You might not be able to.” She pauses, and Lux imagines that Alex gave her a look.
“-but you can do it either way, we can make him lighter with magic,” Alex adds, and probably is gratified by Lux visibly relaxing.
After the spell is cast, and Lux is carefully bundled up in Emory’s arms, they make their way out of the house, Lux hiding so that he doesn’t have to see the bodies of the men that hurt him like this. He doesn’t want to add guilt over their fate to what’s already weighing on his chest.
~
Lux doesn’t feel safe, exactly. Doesn’t feel free of the grimy, sticky horror that’s been buried in his gut for a few days now.
But the cargo pants and big sweatshirt from Alex, they help. Lux doesn’t feel like being bundled up in blankets, even if it would make him feel better to be hidden from sight - he feels like he needs to be able to move away from touch, so he’s sitting cross-legged on the couch, hands in his lap. He’s wary, but at least he’s focused, and not crumpling in on himself making those sounds anymore.
“D’you want some tea?” Alex asks from the kitchen, and Lux nods when Alex glances over. He can speak, he’s done it since they got here yesterday, he just prefers not to right now. Feels like it would make things real.
Alex brings it over, along with a mug of his own, and sits down on the other end of the couch casually. Lux is glad for the distance, although he sort of wishes Emory would sit right next to him instead of in a different chair, looking worried and careful.
Everyone’s being careful. It helps, and it hurts. Lux stares down at his tea in the quiet room for a few minutes before he decides to just do something.
He leans over toward Alex, holds his hand over that mug, and lets some of his magic flow down into it. Alex looks almost offended - surprised? - for a second before he looks at his friend.
“What’s that for?”
“Makes me feel better,” Lux answers, his voice still raspy and quiet, and he sits back, content.
“Makes you feel better to give some of your magic away?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that makes me feel better too. Can I numb your shoulders more, do they-”
“Nope, don’t want that.”
Alex falls silent, then seems to decide that making Lux happy is more important than acting like he isn’t always lacking magic. He shrugs and takes a sip.
“Does that really make you feel better?” The healer asks.
“Uh-huh.” Lux loses a bit of his newfound levity as he adds, “Wanna help someone… be able to do something.”
“That’s fair,” Alex replies, drinking more of the tea now that he knows it really does make Lux feel better just to do something helpful. He can relate to that. He still hasn’t had his offer of more healing accepted yet, and he gets that too, since Lux has already had enough done to him. He probably doesn’t want to feel any touch, even the touch of healing magic, not yet. Lux’s wrists are still bruised, where they rest in his lap, looking knobbly and thin even though he wasn’t trapped for long enough to actually get skinnier.
“You want to watch a movie, maybe?” Emory suggests from his seat, and Lux brightens up a bit, nodding. That sounds like fun, sounds relaxing. Maybe partway through, Lux will ask Emory to come sit with him, and he can try out - try out holding Emory’s hand, or leaning on his shoulder, toward the end. Lux thinks he can do that.
~
By the end of the movie, Lux and Emory are sprawled out on the couch, limbs tangled with Lux on top and slipping over to be wedged against the cushions, arms wrapped around his boyfriend’s middle. He snores lightly against Emory’s shirt, shifting occasionally only to settle down when Emory’s slipping fingers find their place again in his curls.
Taryn grins at the couple, and then shakes her head at the sight of her twin lying on the floor on a pillow and blanket, where he swore he was comfortable but she knows he was just eager to get out of the way when Lux actually asked Emory to be closer.
She lowers herself onto the floor to wake her brother up quietly, then drags his sleepy ass over to his room, nudging him inside with fingertips pressed to his back. Once he’s in there, and the other two are confirmed to be sound asleep on the couch, she heads to her own room. She can’t believe Lux got away with slipping Alex some extra magic when he wasn’t even draining himself to heal someone. Maybe she can conspire with Lux for him to do it again, once or twice more. It’ll make Lux feel adventurous, more alive, to have a secret plan like that, she thinks. She should know, from having a brother all her life, one who recharges by helping others.
Tomorrow, she’ll talk with Lux, and probably with Emory too, since that guy is just as broken up over what they went through as anyone. She knows what that’s like, watching the pain.
Those two will heal just fine, she knows. They’re strong, and they love each other, and there’s nothing that can break two people when their strength is in each other. Not a damn thing.
As Anders moans, pupils blown wide with agony, jolting and gasping with his head held in Vic's lap, magic is poured into his mangled leg.
"You're doing so well, cariño, stay with me, I've got you." Vic's thumbs stroke the side of those sweaty, pale cheeks, and he dips down to press a kiss to Anders' brow in an attempt to envelop the warlock's focus for just a second. But the pain is too big, too deep, and the moans press on, hitching into whimpers when bones shift, when jagged skin torn open by concrete is mended back together to keep his blood from spilling out.
"Fix him, Lux," Vic begs, orders, repeats. Whatever works - if he has to be patient, or angry, or needy, whatever works, it's all tied in together, all laid out in the thrumming horror of his voice. Whatever it takes to make Anders stop whining for mercy.
"I'm trying," Lux answers, and for once, it's not a miserable, apologetic utterance, but a promise. His magic is working, it's flowing into that leg and snapping it back into something that looks once more like a human limb.
"Anders, Anders, look at me." Those pain-fogged green eyes flick up to Vic's face, nearly losing focus when the next push of magic snaps muscles back together. Vic clutches at the sides of his cariño's head. "I've got you. I've got you. Don't look, just focus on me." If Anders sees what his leg looks like now, messy and crooked, he'll pass out again, and Vic is going to lose his mind with worry.
But then Anders whimpers something that changes his mind on the turn of a dime.
"Please, knock me out." Another jolt, and the pain in his eyes, it's sickening. "Please, please, V."
"Lux," Gasps Vic, reaching out a hand toward the other warlock without looking up, trying to grab his attention. "Stop, come here, help him."
"I'm - I am - what?" The magic stops for a moment, and Anders' breaths nearly shudder to a stop in anticipation of it starting up again.
"Please..." Those green eyes flick over to Lux, now, and Anders Reyan's chin is trembling.
Lux doesn't ask for clarification. He presses two bloody fingers to Anders' temple, and lets him pass out as soon as he goes into that mind and severs the last feeble tie to consciousness. Anders sags into Vic's lap, face going slack, and it's a blessing.
~
The pain is too much. Too much to make Anders wake back up. But Vic refuses to give him morphine (fearing the inevitable thank you, Mistress being murmured in awe), and Lux is still working on that leg, unable to keep Anders unconscious and heal at the same time.
So Anders comes to, a moan building up in his throat as soon as he can feel his own body, with Vic rubbing circles into his temples and Lux weaving numbing magic into that leg as he restores some of the damage done. With every swell of the numbing spell, Anders sinks down and lets out a wavering, deep sound of relief. His fingers twitch restlessly; each time he starts to drift off, his whole body jerks back into awareness, the weight of exhaustion and breaths slowed by drowsiness feeling too similar to being pinned by something inescapable and suffocating on dust.
Lux's fingers press carefully, hesitantly, into the knotted-up muscles of that leg, find the cracks in the bone and mend them. Anders tries to jerk out of the tight grip, sometimes, on instinct. Vic goes shh, shh, and Lux's hands keep that limb from pulling free and getting jostled worse. Anders is lulled back into a kind of restless acceptance of what's happening.
And eventually, with enough magic poured into his leg, with enough time spent registering and biting down on the pain, Anders is able to relax into a kind of doze, guarded against spikes of agony by the ones watching over him.
He’s survived just over two decades as a warlock in a magic-hating, warlock-killing state. He’s been drained of his magic and somehow kept on rasping in breaths, recovered. The mindfucker has laid hands on him and, for some reason, let him live, let the Resistance sneak in to save him.
After all that, it looks like a stupid snowstorm is what’s going to do him in.
Not just unlucky weather, he supposes. A very Taryn-like voice in his head nags, Think it’s the fever, Lex? How about going outside in a snowstorm when you have a fever? Forgetting to put gas in the car? Trying so hard to prove something to the Resistance that you die on the way to a mission you weren’t cleared to join?
“Sh’ddup, Tare,” The warlock grumbles dizzily, slipping down against the side of the car to plop down in the snow that’s half-buried it. It’s coming down so fast, the seemingly solid white mass of cold wet stuff, so fast that it clogged up the unused pavement and swallowed up the car’s tires before Alex could even think of stumbling to the nearest gas station to get a canister of gas.
He’s not too far out of town, but he isn’t sure which end of this snow-drowned street he came from. Wouldn’t even be able to tell that it was a street if he hadn’t been driving down it.
Squinting, slipping down until freezing dampness seeps into his sweater - no coat, since the fever made him feel like he was boiling - Alex tries to force his mind to work. The mission, the one that he wasn’t invited to join, it’s probably going fine without him. It’s good to have a healer nearby, just in case, but not critically important. No one knows he snuck out like an idiot with a hundred-and-four degree fever and a penchant for proving his meager worth, although they might scry for him if the mission does go wrong, if someone needs healing.
“S-s-sorry, T-Tare,” He stammers to the blinding white emptiness around him, sounding an awful lot like Lux. If only he’d remembered to fill up the tank, he could have made it to the mission. If only his stupid phone could withstand ridiculously cold temperatures, he could have called his sister, texted Lux, something - the people who will be upset that he needs help (shouldn’t have been so stupid), but who would be infinitely more upset if he actually died. Daniel is all Resistance work all the time, but there have been a few moments when genuine, untempered worry flickered in his eyes, so Alex knows he’d be upset by the loss too. Anders would be pissed, like he is about most things that entail deaths of the wrong people, or a lack of deaths of the right people.
Frigid, creaking fingers burn with the biting cold even where they’re tucked into his pockets. There’s ice clumping at the ends of his short hair, on his eyelashes too. The joints that the Hunter messed with are aching with the cold, and he can’t feel his legs below the knee. How did he feel so hot just earlier today? He’s so cold now, so cold that he must have been shivering his whole life. Has he ever been warm? These must be sub-zero temps, he can’t possibly ever warm up after freezing this deeply.
Short, shuddery breaths escape him in misty puffs as he finally flops onto his side to be embraced by the snow. He just wanted to be useful, wanted to help. He didn’t mean to mess up, to worry anyone. He is cold, and tired, and furious with himself for thinking he could do anything right. What a useless way to go out.
A little circle, broken here and there, is darkened from the touch of the coffee-dripping bottom of a mug each time it’s set down. The Hunter leans back on the couch as he idly reads, bored enough to leaf through a magazine.
The next time that he sets down the mug, his forefinger jerks straight in a simple gesture.
From downstairs, the cellar door left open to let out sounds, a cracking groan can be heard. Smiling as he imagines the one lying on the floor down there panting and pleading into the floor for mercy, he makes the gesture again, this time turning his hand.
The groan becomes a rough, guttural scream that fades out into sobbing. Like the magazine, it’s not entertaining enough for him to go watch, but it’s just amusing enough for him to absentmindedly make it happen.
Anders didn’t behave very well today. Hesitated, when the Hunter made him say thank you. Completely failed to ask for more pain after something was snapped in his leg for not leaning into touch. After each disobedience, there’s always a flinch and wide eyes, maybe even a breathless *s-sorry*, but it’s too little too late. The Hunter isn’t in a forgiving mood today.
A third gesture, smoother this time, earns a pitchy keen and scattered gasps. The Hunter smiles and picks his coffee back up, taking a sip and flipping to the next page.
Even as he continues to keep Anders’ pain ramped up to the level it’s at, the Hunter sits down beside the prisoner, touching that messy hair and running his fingers through it. Dazed green eyes, crinkled at the corners from agony, watch him helplessly. Anders’ body is tense, trembling, his leg making occasional popping and cracking sounds. There’s magic on his chest, too, to keep his breaths shallow and difficult to draw.
Anders hasn’t been allowed to sleep or fall unconscious. Just a long night of constant, uninterrupted pain.
“Do you want it to stop, darling?” The Hunter asks, his voice soft and warm. He’s amused, he’s proud and dearly fond of the one lying broken in his cellar. “Do you think that I’ve punished you enough?”
Pale lips part to answer, then close again. Anders shudders, eyes wide and glassy. He doesn’t know the right answer. He wants the pain to end, needs it to, but if he asks for mercy and hasn’t earned it yet, he’ll be hurt so much worse.
“W-wanna be good,” The captive answers finally in a small voice. Then a moaned, “Please...”
Grinning, though not unkindly, the Hunter releases the magic all at once, leaves the pain at its normal level. Anders’ body goes limp as he ekes out a sigh of relief. He’s still in wretched condition, still in agony, but it’s not being twisted into something massive and inescapable now. Obediently, having screamed and cried and whimpered out all the pride he’d had left, he leans into the Hunter’s touch when his cheek is cupped with a calloused hand.
“You’re going to be very good so that you don’t upset me again, aren’t you? Hmm?”
Anders nods eagerly, in small movements so as not to jar his broken body. “Yes, yes, I’ll be good, I will, I promise.”
The Hunter, beaming in pride, continues to card through Anders’ hair. He loves making the tough ones shudder and obey whole-heartedly. “That’s good, darling, very good.”
“Only screamed once today,” One of the businessmen says, leaning back and straightening out his tie with an expression of perfect boredom.
“We could leave him alone for a few days, let him dehydrate, that could soften him up, huh?” Another contributes, unbuttoning his jacket as he leans back. “He’s got information, we want it, don’t we?”
The leader of the group leans forward, his movement making the other two straighten up and pay attention. “He dies. Waste of time, resources, energy - if he doesn’t want to talk, we’ll find some of his friends, make them scream.”
Lux tenses imperceptibly in his chair. "It's more of a waste to kill him. That's Anders Reyan in there. His scars, the way he's holding out - the ones with the most intel always hold out the longest. I can make him talk, it'll just take time."
"How much time?" The boss asks, turning his deceptively demanding glare on him. "You're a contractor, of course you want to drag it out, earn more money. What do you have to show for the four days you've spent working on him already?"
Lux doesn't falter, although he dearly wants to back down and find another way out of this. One that doesn't break Anders, or ruin the mission. "Has anyone else been able to make him scream? Here's a question: has anyone made him beg yet? Because I can guarantee that he'll be sobbing, begging for it to stop, by sundown. No one else can promise you that."
The man in charge hums in thought. Lux's eyes watch, flitting warily to the movement, as the man reaches to his hip and pulls up his revolver to set it on the table. Classic, outdated in terms of weapons; six rounds, the man says as a motto, not for six chances, but six deaths as the cost for one failure.
"I like that guarantee. Everyone who works with me knows the price for wasting my time. I've got nothing to lose. You succeed, and I've got a breaking man who'll spill his secrets soon enough; you fail, and I get to keep the money I would've paid you. Get to put all six of these rounds in you, too..." He looks Lux up and down coldly, eyeing his knees, middle, shoulders, and head in order. "Your head taking the last, of course."
"Of course," Lux answers, hiding his fear under a matching business-like mask. "Trust me, pay or no pay, threat of death or pat on the back, I want to break him down. Personal goal, you know. Break Anders Reyan."
That's the first thing to make the boss smile all day. The other two, in their suits and with nothing to show for their work so far, bristle silently.
Anders isn’t moaning, exactly. He’s not lucid enough to recognize that he’s in pain or uncomfortable or feeling miserably sick. He’s just making sounds, here and there, when an ache restricts his restless shifting, or when the fever climbs to a temperature that mimics flames licking at his scarred skin. Anders is just coming out of one of those hours that was filled with mortified keens and breathless apologies; Lux has finally given him enough water, and cold washcloths lying from temple to temple, and careful magic, to bring that fever back down to a safe level. The tension in Anders has settled down into general exhaustion, muscles trembling and then going lax.
His lightly scarred face smoothes gradually as lines of pain are eased from around his eyes and mouth. Lux thinks it might be from how he’s being held and comforted, right now. Anders is lying on his back, his head on a thin cool pillow in Lux’s lap, only a thin sheet over him since the switching between the sensation of burning and then freezing exhausts him too much to move blankets onto and off of himself. Lux could move the blankets, but Anders grows restless and makes a single low, mournful sound in his throat when Lux moves away.
Lux is carding through Anders’ messy hair gently, scratching his nails lightly against his scalp and running his fingers through only to start over again, a hundred times. Anders is relaxing, relaxing. It’s horrible that he has to be mostly out of it and exhausted from struggling against fever dreams, but Lux has never seen him look this peaceful.
When Lux twirls a lock of Anders’ hair absently, his mind wandering after combing through with his fingers for twenty minutes, Anders tips his head to the side a bit, into Lux’s other hand.
A tired moan morphs into a nearly hummed word: “Vvvvvic.”
Lux frowns a little. “Hey, Anders,” He says, about to explain that he’s not Vic, even though he’s a little scared that this Anders is going to cry upon hearing it. The older warlock is so tired, so relaxed, and it’s because he thinks he’s being held by his… his Vic.
“V… I, mm-, I...” Anders blinks his eyes open to look up at Vic, but instead, in his blurry vision, he sees curls and a worried face. His hazy green eyes struggle to focus and then slip closed again. Anders shifts and turns his head enough so that Lux pulls his hands away.
“...Miss him,” He mutters, and settles back down, not pulling away but no longer welcoming the fingers in his hair. He doesn’t want to forget that Vic is gone, not again. Having that comfort and then losing it in one sweeping realization, the wave of guilt and shame, it’s not worth it. He’ll take the rest of it, though. Lying with his head in Lux’s lap, having someone close by who’ll give him water and magic without making him ask for it. It’s enough. He doesn’t need anything else. Doesn’t need anyone else.
borrowed @whump-sprite‘s oc dev for this lil drabble!
Something's happened.
Dev isn't sure, exactly, what has happened.
They were fighting. Struggling.
Don't struggle, now, darling. Don't be difficult.
Not fighting Mistress. Fighting a man. Guy was fucking ripped, stronger than Dev - not as quick on his feet, but sturdy. Shoved them into a row of pipes along the inside of the plain concrete wall of the boiler room. The pipes that have faded stickers that read WARNING: HOT SURFACE, DO NOT TOUCH.
Dev remembers, as distinctly as Mistress' citrus perfume and the curve of her cruel lips, the smell of their own burning flesh. This time it was mixed with the stench of singed clothing - material that was burned into their skin, hissing smoking metal cutting through old rough scars on their back and shoulders.
They stumble out the emergency exit, offering only a muted flinch in response to the screeching of alarms. They stagger away from the building, leaving behind a pistol on the floor and their torn, crispy skin on the smoldering exposed pipes. There isn't a corpse left behind. Dev was too busy screaming to kill the fucker that burned them.
Peyroux. Guy likes to help those who need someplace to hide out. Peyroux is the goddamn savior of the desperate. Not that Dev is desperate. Burned, yes, losing their mind to terrified thoughts of Mistress, sure, but not desperate.
As long as they don't pass out on the sidewalk before they can make it to the guy's house, Dev isn't going to have to come face to face with someone who will make their burns worse, except for in their mind. Hell, they hope they don't get an infection from this, a fever on top of the burns would be a shit show.
They'll make Peyroux fix them up, then get back out of there before their mind goes completely off the rails, if a fever comes. No way they're gonna let some idealistic dumbass watch them go wide-eyed and pleading for a sip of water. Their vision isn't fading to black right now, their knees aren't giving out, their cheek isn't now pressed to the cool porch floor in front of Peyroux's door... Dev is in control.
