A rustle from the other end of the train car. "He asleep?" April asks, tense.
Donnie's hand falters over his shell for a moment, then drifts back up to rest over Leo's neck. Gently, it presses in beneath his jaw, the persistent thump, thump, thump of his raddled heart cascading from carotid to the tips of Donnie's clever fingers; a data transference, the slipstream surge of information all centered in the rhythmic adagio of Leo's desolate pulse.
Donnie's hand shuffles away again before reappearing at his right wrist to take the same measurements. His fingers coalesce in a ring around it for far longer than necessary, thumb rubbing in slow, distant sweeps over the soft skin just below Leo's calloused palm— the most unassailably human part of him.
Beneath his plastron, Donnie's weight shifts, rearranging the way he's nudged Leo to drape over him with tiny, precise motions; the kind of meticulous care reserved only for the most delicate of experiments; the fine-boned cadence of two steady hands. "His heart rate is consistent with stage one NREM sleep, so— yes, I believe so."
The hand at his wrist drifts across his pulse point one last time before coming to rest with warm, insistent pressure against the top of his nuchal scute.
April sniffs, suspiciously wet. "Good." Then, tremulous: "What even was all that?"
Donnie's next breath hitches in the middle, stuttering back from the meditative pattern he'd cycled under Leo for well over an hour— a missed stitch in the downy, woolen haze Leo now floats in. "Best guess? Panic attack with an extra side of meltdown." Donnie pauses, and even mired in fog Leo still constructs the image of sharp teeth digging into Donnie's lower lip effortlessly. Deep in his mind's eye and on the edge of sleep, Donnie worries at it, chewing with a middle-distant stare as he churns over whatever words he's dredging next. "The real question," he says at length, "is why, and what exactly triggered it."
"That big brain of yours don't have any ideas?"
Donnie snorts. "Well, obviously it has to do with the invasion— who could have guessed, shocker, I know!— but the data I don't have are any of the specifics." Pensive silence palls around them. "It must've been bad," Donnie murmurs, "to affect him like this."
"Yeah," April agrees somewhat faintly. "Must have."
Donnie's hand shifts to cup the back of Leo's head, a protective curl forward that brings Leo even closer under his chin. The animal instinct to run, freeze, hide slowly suffocates beneath its gentle heat, and Leo slides another inch deeper into the drowsy haar of half-consciousness.
"He hasn't said anything about the— uh," April says abruptly, a whistle in the quiet.
"You are going to have to be way more specific than that." Donnie's voice is dry.
April sucks in a sharp breath. "The prison dimension." She says it plain, and a distant, muffled jolt lances down Leo's spine. "He hasn't talked to you about it? Said anything about what happened?"
Donnie hunches over him a fraction of an inch further. "No," he says, voice throbbing.
"Nothing?"
"Less than." An inarticulate noise rattles in the back of his throat: half-scoff, half–bitten-off–hiss. Pressed flush to the soft underside of his jaw, it thrums in Leo's browbone. "He's…"
A rapid shake, skimming over Leo's head. "I… contrary to popular belief, I do have an understanding of emotional behaviors and processes, but this is… I don't know." The words fount as if torn from the meat of his throat, dyed red and dripping helpless viscera. "I just don't know, April. He's been— weird."
"You mean weirder than usual?" A hint of wry amusement flickers to life in April's voice only to gutter just as fast. "Weird how?"
"I don't even know how to describe it," Donnie repeats, every subsequent syllable coiling around the room tighter, tighter, into the frayed silhouette of a noose. "He's not… something's different, but I just can't put my finger on it. He isn't Leo anymore."