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Sebastian let out a short scream when Hess laid him on the bed and his wound pulled.
“Fuck.” Hess reached for him again, but Sebastian twitched away instinctively.
“I’m fine.” Sebastian squeezed his eyes shut as the pain faded back, then sank into the beautifully soft mattress with a groan. “I’m fine. Oh, that feels good.”
Dangerously good, perhaps. Like maybe his body was too eager to fade away into the comfort of sleep. But he could barely remember why he might want to fight that. Other than that Hess was standing right over him with an anguished expression that made something else hurt inside him.
He started to raise his hand toward him, but then a kind face with rectangular glasses and a deep frown appeared in front of him, and Sebastian’s lips pulled up into a smile.
“Maxwell.”
“Stop grinning like an idiot.” Maxwell sat on the bed at his hip and started peeling apart the layers of ripped fabric coated in mud and blood around his midsection. “You’re dying.”
“Am not—” Sebastian gasped as agony shot through him when Maxwell pulled a piece of fabric that felt like it had been embedded in his skin. Hess appeared at Maxwell’s shoulder with a snarl, but Maxwell shot him a look, and he backed out of Sebastian’s line of sight again.
“Are too.” Maxwell started threading a nasty, curved needle with thick black thread.
“Am not.” Sebastian eyed the contraption. That was going to hurt. Except usually, that was the second hurt, inflicted after Maxwell poured burning antiseptic all over him. Had Maxwell done that yet? Sebastian didn’t think so. “Neumann is going to die. Not me.”
“Well, we don’t have another body for you, so if he dies, you die.” Maxwell arranged himself with his suture over Sebastian’s open wound, which Sebastian very much still did not want to look at. He could feel Maxwell starting to poke at its edges and arrange pieces of cloth to sop up the blood still flowing and trickling out of it.
Sebastian jutted his lip out stubbornly. “You’d be more upset if I was dying.”
Maxwell shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. Now get ready.”
“I am—agh!” Sebastian locked the scream behind his teeth at the last second. He reached out blindly, and a warm hand caught his. He squeezed it tightly as the waves of agony rolled over him, administered with Maxwell’s cool, smooth, professional movements, stabbing into his skin and pulling over and over again.
Sebastian tried to keep count of the number of stitches Maxwell stuck into him, hoping it would indicate how long this would all last. But after only five, he lost track and just existed in the pain, anchored only by the broad hand still gripping his. A second hand wrapped around his, and Sebastian clutched at it, squeezing so hard he felt the bones in it start to flex, but it helped in some small measure.
When the pain finally eased, it took several more moments for clear hearing and eyesight to return as his other senses remembered how to function.
“…be fine for an hour or so,” Maxwell was saying. “Garrett and I will—”
“Fuck Garrett,” Sebastian muttered hoarsely, blinking his eyes open.
Maxwell gave him an unimpressed look. “I see you’re back with us.”
“Will he make it that long?” Hess asked Maxwell without bothering to even look down at Sebastian.
Sebastian wrinkled his nose. That was rude of him. Sebastian tried to move his hand so he could poke Hess for his lack of consideration when he realized he couldn’t move his hand at all.
Because it was still clasped tightly between both of Hess’s.
The movement did make Hess glance back down at him, though. They locked eyes, and Sebastian’s breath caught at the rawness in Hess’s normally steely gaze. Hess glanced down at their clasped hands, and his eyes widened briefly as though he were as surprised to see them as Sebastian had been.
Sebastian felt Hess’s death grip on him loosen, and his panic spiked. His hand clenched around Hess’s. “Don’t…” Let go. But Sebastian swallowed the rest of the words before they could get out.
Hess’s lips parted, and something more complicated than simple rawness flitted through his eyes. He didn’t say anything, but he nodded slightly and tightened his grip again, enveloping Sebastian’s blood- and grime-slicked hand in the warmth and roughness of his own.
Maxwell cleared his throat, and Sebastian jerked his gaze back to him with a vaguely guilty feeling. Maxwell glanced between them with narrowed eyes that made Sebastian think he knew more than he let on—and disapproved—before settling his gaze on Hess.
“As long as he doesn’t start moving around or pull those stitches, he should make it.”
Maxwell turned to the door, but Sebastian made a choked noise and reached for him with his free hand. “Wait, Maxwell, isn’t there”—he flushed with shame to ask for it but forced it out in the face of the night of agony that loomed before him—“something you can give me for the pain?”
Maxwell shook his head with a firm expression. “It’ll just give you a false sense of security. You’ll move and bleed out.”
“But all night? Maxwell, ple—”
