'When darkness comes upon you
And covers you with fear and shame,
Be still and know that I'm with you
And I will say your name.'
"Be Still" ~ The Fray
"Ed? Whatcha doing?"
Spike doesn't realize something's wrong until Ed stops walking. That in itself isn't entirely strange; they've taken lots of micro breaks since this evil version of a woodland trek started. Bathroom trips against a tree, stolen minutes when they share the water bottles, crouching down to avoid the van's pass. More arguing over whether Ed would be justified to fire Spike if they were a band of superheroes.
But Ed's skin isn't flushed anymore. His eyelids slide and flurry.
"Ed?"
He starts to sway and it rolls up into Spike's stomach, along with a sudden zing of adrenaline. They're going down…
"Ed!"
At the very last second, intuition saves Spike his own concussion—he shoots out an arm to brace his fall. It's a messy spill, hitting the ground hard and then rolling to protect his head, just like with the basement stairs. His left palm rips against a stump, but better his hand than his scalp.
They're thrown apart by Ed's swan dive and Spike is scared to find that his legs are shaking too much to stand. Once the world stops spinning, he struggles to figure out how to move. In the end, all he can do is army crawl up to the too-slow lilt of Ed's chest.
It's the eighth wonder of the world: Ed is still awake. He hasn't passed out.
His eyes blink up at the foliage overhead with obvious puzzlement, as if to ask when the ground became the sky. Not in shock, but pretty close.
"Give a guy some warning next time." Spike holds the man's neck while turning it. "I'm just checking on that head wound, Ed. Okay?"
He gets no reply. Spike is scared for an entirely different reason.
He makes sure his hand is between Ed's cheek and the leafy ground. What Spike sees, even if he wasn't a trained first responder, does not inspire confidence. The bandage has been re-dressed at some point, but it still looks old. Spots of blood decorate the tips.
Needs stitches after all.
"You've lost too much blood," Spike rambles. "Not to mention that splitting headache you think I haven't noticed. What is it with you and the macho stereotype anyway? Nobody buys it. I saw you cry that time Izzy handed you a drawing of her beloved giraffe stuffie. It's over, man."
Ed twitches at Izzy's name.
"Ed? Can you hear me?"
Spike pats him down for injury and is relieved to find none. Just some new bruises on his shoulder, where he fell against the gun. Their heart rates are wildly different, Ed's a bluesy kick drum pumping lazily along and Spike's a snare rat-a-tat-tatting in faulty rhythms. Sometimes he'll physically feel the pause, the tachy gap where a beat should go, against the artery in his throat.
Spike closes his eyes, hand on Ed's chest. He doesn't like this. He doesn't like feeling so helpless, with no idea why they were taken in the first place. "It's a miracle that thing didn't go off."
"S'fty…"
Spike jumps. "What was that, Ed?"
"Safety is…on."
"Of course it is, Mr. Prepared For Everything." Spike can't quite find it in himself to smile, though his voice sounds upbeat, at least. You get points for faking it, Spike figures. "You alright? Wait, stupid question. I have a better one. You gonna pass out on me?"
Ed's feverish eyes pick a spot—Spike's left ear—and stay there. "Sorry, Spike. Adrenaline crash."
"That makes two of us." Yet another bubble of pain pops in Spike's hip. Then one in his back. He grits his teeth, alight with that shackled feeling of someone who's run out of choices. "We can't keep doing this, Ed."
Ed gazes back at him.
"Why haven't we seen another building?" Spike insists. He's furious about this, suddenly. "It doesn't make any sense! No power lines, no other cars! Not even a summer cottage. Where are we?"
Spike hiccups on a fiery breath. He knows better, when it comes to talking. Too much, too fast…toomuchtoomuchtoomuch.
His lungs feel thick, coated with honey, sticky and sweet and awful. Breathing through a brick wall would be easier.
In all the textbooks in all the SRU archives that he's read, Spike has zero frame of reference for what this is. It's not a substance his teachers ever expected him to encounter on the streets of Toronto, clearly.
He wishes dearly they had painkillers, for both he and Ed.
Right on cue, Ed groans and runs a loose hand over his head. "Bulldozer in my brain."
"Aren't we a winning pair?"
Spike's arms tremble under the strain of keeping his body upright. Small dignity after how vulnerable they've seen each other, but he refuses to collapse, belly flop, in front of Ed.
Ed catches it immediately. He takes a few steadying breaths and his face does that signature retreat, which says he's made up his mind about something.
"Here's the deal." After a few skittering attempts and with Spike's help, Ed makes it up to his knees. "I don't know about you, but I can't take another step and the sunrise is hurting my eyes. Time to hunker down."
Cool relief rinses through Spike. He hasn't slept properly in at least…well, too long. They're no good against attackers anyway if they can't even stand up, let alone brace for a shoot out.
The sound of Ed shucking the backpack and unclipping his rifle is such a familiar, comforting sound, as if they're out on a call that just happens to be in a rural area, that Spike closes his eyes without a second thought. He can imagine that it's simply a dawn shift, Winnie in his ear, Jules interviewing a suspect, Leah talking down someone with a weapon. A flash of pain ruins the illusion and Spike clams his hand back and forth. His palm bleeds, sluggish, gummy between his fingers.
Still, exhaustion wins out. He moves to curl up right then and there when a large hand bodily flips him onto his back.
"Ed, I thought we were sleeping. What are you—"
"Come here, Barry Allen."
Spike shuffles around to see Ed against a nearby maple tree. It's at the bottom of a little hollow, tiny, but impossible to see even from five feet away. A nest, if you will. Ed sweeps leaves over himself until he's nearly submerged, both for concealment and insulation.
Then he opens his arms without a second's hesitation. One hand holds a banana.
Spike sighs and it steams off into the hovering twilight. "Not getting out of this, am I?"
"Nope." Ed doesn't look one bit self conscious. "I'm cold. You're making me suffer by stalling. Hustle, Scarlatti."
Spike drags himself over. He totally does not grumble, especially when Ed reaches out and yanks him the rest of the way in with a careful hand around his bicep. He seems disturbed by the minor hand injury, tutting over it and humming a frustrated note. He tears off a two inch strip of his T-shirt's hem and knots it around Spike's palm.
"Sorry about that."
"It isn't your fault you have a concussion and it made you faint. We'll blame the whole thing on Tattoo, for giving it to you." There's something mesmerizing about watching the bleeding slow down and then stop, clotting. Spike pokes at it. "Thanks."
"Here." Ed peels the banana for him and hands it over.
Spike accepts a few bites of the banana, but only once Ed has his fill too.
"Feel nauseous?" Ed asks.
While the persistent, ship-in-a-tempest roll of Spike's stomach lingers, it doesn't intensify any. "I think it'll stick."
"Good. You need it. Lean back, bud."
Ed folds his arms across Spike's chest. Spike knows it's coming, can mentally picture it, but he still stiffens, tense. His heartbeat goes through the roof.
In truth, he's still not over Kyle Hurley, the instinctive reaction to a larger man's hands on his body. Sometimes they would hit or strangle or shove.
But he knows these hands. Knows them with his eyes closed. They've never hurt him, only used for comfort and healing and direction. They've pulled him off ledges, backed him into a wall to avoid bullets, hugged him close after a bomb threat.
Ed doesn't say anything, though his grip loosens in response. He eases it back, letting Spike acclimatize to the touch. His arms are light enough that Spike can throw them off if he wants.
He doesn't.
It's darker here, in the hollow where sun can't reach yet. The smell of rotting leaves and tacky sap, coupled with Ed's particular musk and the oil from his rifle, puts Spike at ease in seconds.
These smells are the SRU, Wordy's cookouts, and raking maple leaves in Greg's back yard.
Safe, they say.
Being slightly shorter, his head rests on Ed's right shoulder, legs ending at the same length. Ed makes sure his calves are on top of Spike's socked feet for warmth. He also coats Spike with the leftover leaves until only their heads remain visible. When he curls around them, his chin is propped on Spike's left shoulder.
It's…secretly rather nice. In a 'if we're going to die, at least it's with people we trust' kind of way.
The slightly-upright position also makes it easier to breathe. Ed must realize this, his hand rubbing circles on Spike's chest. Ed is very much awake, in the sense that all of his attention, however much he has to spare, is on keeping his charge relaxed.
"Clever survival trick with the leaves, Dr. Kimble," Spike whispers. Now he's smiling.
Ed's chest rumbles at the base of Spike's neck. "If you think I learned that from a 90's crime thriller, I pity you. And whoever taught you basic survival training at the Academy."
"Romans and woods, I tell you." Spike closes his eyes. "There's totally a spider crawling on my hand down there. If I get one in my mouth, you owe me."
"Mhmm."
It's a non answer. One that again buzzes through Spike's back. There's humour in the sound, and Spike knows he should figure out what's so funny, but he can't seem to open his eyes.
"…'m I hurting you?"
Ed's arms tighten. "No, bud. Not a bit. I could play flour toss with your scrawny butt. You're not hurting me."
Spike's vertigo morphs from distress to something lulling. If he focuses just right, he can feel the faint radar ping of Ed's pulse where his elbow brackets Spike's rib cage, along with the accordion press of his diaphragm in the hollow of Spike's back.
"Thanks, Ed. For comin' and finding me."
"Thank you for patching me up and protecting me while I was out. That must have been harrowing."
It was. I'm never letting you out of my sight again.
"You can go to sleep, Spike. I'll keep watch for a bit."
"Mmm." Belly half full, birds beginning to sing overhead, Spike can almost imagine they're on one of Sam's spur of the moment camping trips. Fireflies over the water while Ed plays that raggedy guitar and Greg tries to catch a fish. "Hey, Ed?"
"Go to sleep, Spike."
Spike ignores him. "Think someone's coming for us?"
Ed is quiet. His arms go tighter, if possible, with a little jolt of something too fast to name. It's constricting, but Spike doesn't protest, as it seems more for Ed's benefit than his.
The sound of the van passes again, going slow this time. Both men hold their breath.
After a minute or two of silence, Spike taps Ed's knee. "Ed?"
"Sshh." It's meant to be a soothing sound, Ed patting his chest with a slight rock. "I think…I think we'd better keep up our strength and start making a plan. Okay? Just in case no one does and we're on our own to get home."
For some reason, this is the first time Spike is shot with real homesickness. It bursts over him with fireworks, rockets, church bells, the whole nine yards. Ed's gentle tone reminds Spike of tough calls and how they follow up with him after.
He wants the command truck. He wants his team. He wants Greg's lousy poker face and Winnie's Caribbean cooking and Sam roping him into ever-elaborate schemes to impress his wife on date night.
He must make some sort of noise because Ed's lips are closer to his ear. "Sshh. We're safe for now, Spike. I'm not leaving you. I'm sorry this is happening so soon after Kyle."
"'S not your fault."
A funny, static sensation flutters along Spike's shoulder. Ed's breathing goes shallow. "We'll face this together, however it plays out."
"Ditto, Gerard."
There's a poke of ribs along Spike's spine, like Ed's trying not to laugh. His lips are still shaking. "I thought I was Kimble?"
"Oh no, I take it back. He's definitely Greg, with the complete inability to turn a blind eye on someone who needs help, regardless of how it might affect his own safety or comfort. Gerard, with the refusal to give up on a case and bark at everybody in the immediate vicinity while doing it, is you to a T. Plus he wears the cool vests."
"Does that make you Noah Newman?"
Spike lifts a brow, impressed with Ed's memory. "I'm honoured, except that he dies in the sequel, shot by Robert Downey Jr."
"Spoiler."
"That movie came out over twenty years ago!"
Ed's definitely laughing. Better than the almost-crying, and Spike feels a smug sense of victory about it. They're both avoiding the obvious—Spike can't take a full breath without coughing up blood and Ed sways every so often, eyes dilated at uneven levels—but they're mutually indulgent and they need this.
"Sleep. Now, Michelangelo."
"So bossy." Spike swallows down the hurt, the fear, and tries to relax. It gets easier when Ed strokes his stuttering sternum. It bucks from the pain and laboured breathing.
"Well, you said I'm Gerard," Ed murmurs. "I'm in charge and therefore allowed."
"Does this mean I get to grow a ponytail?"
The last thing Spike feels is Ed's swat to his shoulder. "Absolutely not."
AN: This was one of my favourite chapters to write and a huge motif that will return later in the story.
