Thirst

By Kay

Disclaimer: Don't own. Just worship.

Author's Notes: Slightly AU, a sort of "What If?" kind of piece that flitted into my head. Implied slash, but nothing concrete. One-shot.


Jalil drinks like the damned, water sloshing down the front of his shirt as it misses his mouth.

Christopher is watching him; wearily, uncritical, his long legs bending under him like a spider crouching to the ground. He will drink, too, before they leave, not because he needs to quench a thirst, but because he needs to feel the cold hit the pink of his gums and wash away the ache residing there. The blood is a maroon crust of lipstick over the lower stretch of his mouth.

His feet have never hurt like this before.

"We'll keep moving," Jalil is saying, voice raspy. He scrubs his hands efficiently under the water, dark eyes wide and fixed on the current. "North, along here. Towns build on rivers. We have to hit something sooner or later."

Christopher is wondering if David is dead.

"Christopher?"

He pushes the thought away and tries to grin at Jalil, but something falters deep inside, tucked under the numbing surface. He needs to drink, not because he needs to quench a thirst, but beacuse he needs to feel the cold hit his mind and break through the calm barrier, to wake up from the nightmare. "I think I lost about half of my shoe sole," he says finally.

Jalil glances down without moving his head. "Yeah. You did."

Christopher is wondering if David is dead.

"If we see some thick bark later," Jalil says, "we can bind it to the bottom of your shoe. It should last for a while, at least."

"Okay." He kneels next to the river and stares into its turbulent face, but doesn't drink. His hands are limp against his lap. He's thirsty for more than dank water and mold, Christopher thinks listlessly, and lets his fingertips glide against the first trickles nearest to him.

Behind him, the forest is silent. He doesn't know how long it will last, and Jalil is casting furtive, hard glares at the stillness beyond the trees, an old and unreadable look on his face that turns it to stone. His shirt is still wet, but drying already. The night will be warm. They are lucky.

Christopher lets his hands drop into the water and tries not to cry. He can't find the strength to pull himself out again, not anymore, and for a moment he entertains the idea of just letting it happen, allowing the current to suck him under and swallow him into the blackness below, eating into his lungs and eagerly housing in the crevices of his throat. But then it is gone, and Jalil's hand is on his shoulder and heavy as the rock-hard mask of his expression.

They don't say anything. Jalil is silent and uncaring as he tugs at Christopher's shirt from the back and brings him to his feet by brute force alone, and if Christopher makes a hopeless, soft sound that is not a sob, could never find its way out except in the utmost quiet, then neither of them will acknowledge it. They hold between them the drawn, tight breaths and flitting dark eyes of prey.

Jalil's hand lingers on his back, barely touching. Then it is gone and Christopher sucks in the noise that never was, blinking away the sheen in his eyes the blurs the canopy of leaves above his head.

"We'll keep moving," Jalil mumbles, and nothing is alright anymore. But Christopher follows, limping over the slime of the river rocks as the last link to his world stumbles over the bank.

End