The shots still echo in the tunnels behind them and even though she knows they're coming from outside it feels like they're right behind. Her heart pounds, lungs burn, legs screaming in the effort to keep going, just to keep going. Erik's breaths behind her are ragged. Is he hit? Please God don't let him be hit! She'd rather take the bullet herself than let anything happen to him and he would never see it anything like that, would always prefer to keep her safe but that's no good to them now, not if he's hurt. She'll die if he's hurt, she'll die, she knows it.
They burst out of the tunnel, onto the shore of the lake. They just need to cross, just need to get to the boat, and Erik's fingers slip from her grasp as he groans and she hears him stumble.
She turns around, breath catching in her throat, in time to see him fall to his knees, hand clutching his side as he gasps, head bowed.
Oh God if he's hit—
She's at his side, kneeling down, tearing at clothes. "Where are you hit?" The words come out in a tumble and Erik is saying something, voice rough but she can't make out what he's saying not when she's pulling his hand away, tearing open his clothes, buttons popping and hopping away.
There's blood staining the side of his shirt, stark against the white, more blood welling out through a rip, and her fingers are poking, seeking, finding and—
And it's just a gash. Just a gash.
Her head spins, and Erik's words filter through to her at last, breath hitching. "Just...a graze." And it strikes her all at once that she's never touched him before, never touched him apart from his hand or his face and she is suddenly aware of how warm his skin is beneath her hand.
She's suddenly, keenly, aware of how easily she could have lost him. And before she quite realises it she's reaching out, holding his face, leaning in—
His lips are soft beneath hers. And he whimpers as she presses closer, swallows, and slowly, slowly, parts his lips.
A/N: I was going to put this into Fragmentations, but when I posted it on Tumblr over the summer klausscrimshaw did a fabulous comic of it, so in tribute to that I made it it's own fic
