* @seiismic - our thread is not tracked because it does not track properly due to multiple reblogs from other threads with other blogs, that sprouted from the original open. she is still aware of it. thx.
“James—hey, hey. Take a breath. Look at me. Just breathe.” —ncshimuri
SERVER IS NOT RESPONDING. PLEASE CONTACT YOUR SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR @ncshimuri
it takes twelve hours for them to get ev back.
twelve hours to get him to the hospital. he’s probably going to lose a couple of his toes, given how they had split like cloves of garlic under the brute weight of a sledgehammer. six of his fingers are bloodied, nailless stumps. the doctor relays as much to him, with james’ face as unflinching as if he had told him that ev suffered no more than a couple bumps and bruises, as if his mind isn’t toiling under the distinct cocktail of impotence and shame, as if he doesn’t bite his tongue until his mouth swells with the taste of thick cooper.
james doesn’t have a panic attack then. not even when he closes his eyes and knows too well exactly what does the kind of damage the doctor describes, because he’s personally forced that violence on other people. he doesn’t even have it when he stops in the next day and ev’s awake, a brief reprieve in the drug-induced sleep, and cracks a joke about the terrible sitcom they keep on loop in his room. apologies sting the crescent moons james has bitten and rebitten into his tongue, but he swallows them back with the blood. no amount of I’m sorry can fix what he was never supposed to permit in the first place.
no, the panic attack hits him on the third floor of the parking garage, prefaced with a single thought: they hadn’t found who had ordered the kidnapping to begin with.
from there it’s a dizzying spiral of:
they’ll come back, they’ll do it again, they’ll take more this time. this was a warning; they could have killed if they wanted to. this was meant to maim. this was meant to hurt. and ev wasn’t even the intended victim— he has to live with the injuries, sure, but every day, james is going to stare at two missing fingers, the hiccup in his gait, and know he’s responsible for that.
that rattling is the sound of james’ keys shaking in his hand. they ring out like malformed bells, and james thinks he’s set off the emergency alarm because somewhere between intended and injuries, his knees had felt weak enough that he needs to grip the nearest vertical surface to stay up.
“james?” adam’s voice comes a little ways ahead of him, having not noticed james’ footfall stop a few steps before his own.
they’re going to come back, they’ll take someone else, they’re going to be smarter this time, they’re going to cover their tracks, and when dedsec gets there it’ll be a corpse—
he tells himself to breathe, forces his lungs to draw in air, but the only thing that comes out is a helpless, syncopated noise, like a fish on the shore. except james is six miles out in hurricane paranoia with a raft made of guilt and a pack of matches.
he’s himself just long enough to look adam in the eye, gaze blown wide and wet, before everything falls apart. glasses his concrete. knees follow after, stinging at the impact. he curls until all he can see is the fringe of his hair and his legs tucked under him, hands over his mouth like they can muffle the sharp, hyperventilating gasps that james barely comprehends is himself, head too full of his heart hammering and doom wailing in his ears.
“hey, hey. take a breath,” and adam— bless every part of him, from the coconut smell of his hair to the softness of his clothes to how he’s around james in the space of an erratic heartbeat— sits in front of him like a lighthouse in the storm, hands firm on his shoulders, propping him upright to look him in the eye. “look at me. just breathe.”
adam is blurry like he’s looking at him through one of those funhouse mirrors, and james realizes it’s because he’s crying.
the sound that comes out of his mouth is half a word. certainly there’s intent there, like he means to say something, but the broken language of grief is currently only understood by james and james alone. so all he does is nod, because james can hear adam’s voice clear through air raid sirens and tornadoes and five-alarm fires, and his mind clings to the single word.
breathe.
it’s a word he’s told himself all his life. when things begin to fall to pieces, james shuts his eyes and reminds himself:
breathe.
eyes snap shut. he moves his hands to twist them into adam’s chest and draws in a shuttering breath, forcing it out at the same, steady rate. ten. he does it again. nine. all the way to one. and when he gets there, he feels like he can move his legs again.
a hum, soft on lips drawn taut from too much stress and too little sleep. fact: james works well under pressure. james would argue he works best under pressure. but that doesn’t mean intra-organizational trouble that can most accurately summed up as michael doing his usual amount of ineffectual dick-waggling doesn’t affect him. worse, he’s actually managed to get someone half-competent with a gun behind him this time. michael’s asinine crusade has gained more traction than it ever had any right to.
and so michael noshimuri graduated from “passive pain in the ass” to “physical manifestation of james’ two-day migraine.”
james traces that same stress and lack of sleep in adam’s expression, a condition james notes with a bitter taste is worn far worse on his husband’s face than his own. he knows too that the root of it isn’t in declarations of war— because haven’t they dealt with plenty of those already?— but in the declarer himself: someone adam considers family. and while that word might mean nothing to james, it means something to adam.
“you’re still thinking like the yakuza,” james’ gaze rises from the table, as if successfully divining a new solution from the scratches accumulated by dinnerware and game pieces. “there’s another option.”
of course james would be the one to take a third option. that’s what hackers do, isn’t it?
41. Resting foreheads together - ncshimuri ( you wanna talk abt chronology? B y e. )
Platonic TouchStatus: Acceptin’
He doesn’t hear the easy hey that drifts through the room. Not over the deafing sound of the fire fight in his head. Doesn’t feel the shift in the air, because he’s been assaulted with sand kicked up by stray bullets and scurrying feet. Doesn’t register the sound of his god given name, because his call signs being screamed to loud over the radio. Doesn’t realize the glass of whiskey in his hand is sloshing over trembling muscle, because the rough metal against his palm is vibrating with recoil to strongly.
But it’s just memory. A replay he doesn’t have the power to stop but then–
Then there’s hands on his shoulders that don’t fit into the hell inside his head. That move and shift in some attempt to ease muscles he doesn’t even realize are taut. And there’s a forehead against his own, and eyes darker than his that take up his gaze and…
Sand gives way to carpet. A hollowed out hum-v fading into a couch that probably cost more than his entire apartment put together. Desert dry is washed away by proper AC, and the blinding sun put out by something just as warm but not so harsh. And he settles back into the reality around him. Focuses on the gaze that’s holding his, a twitch of a smile stitching up one corner of his mouth. And words that aren’t entirely true nor entirely a lie, are breathed out.
“M’okay.”
But he doesn’t move away does he? Doesn’t brush it off nearly as quick as he usually does. No he remains, lets the moment be for a while. Blue curtained from the world by heavy eyelids. A little more weight given over to the forehead against his own, and he just is.
Because sometimes his hands shake. Sometimes his mind gets the better of him. Sometimes the cracks show. Sometimes he just has to own up to the fact he’s not as bullet proof as he seems. And sometimes there really isn’t any sense in crying over spilled whiskey.
“What’r you doin’ up, anyway? Y’should be sleepin’ off yer jetlag.”
