Title: survival of a species
A/N: For Nagamas! I'm pinch hitting for Hero-of-Hell-No who wanted Yarne/Laurent with a fic that wasn't so vanilla you couldn't tell it was a ship. XD Hopefully this suffices!
Summary: Yarne winced as Laurent bandaged his wounds. First-aid wasn't supposed to be so painful and the medic definitely wasn't supposed to be glaring at him. Maybe it wasn't too late to find Lissa or Brady.
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Yarne winced as Laurent tugged on the long, white gauze, the material tightening around his forearm. At this point, he wasn't sure if his arm hurt from his wound or from Laurent's 'first aid'. Maybe he should have gone to a healing tent. Maribelle or even Brady would have been better than this. Even if the camp had limited healing wands, he could probably convince Lissa to use one just by grovelling pathetically in front of her. As another jolt of pain ran through his arm, he shot the mage a grumpy look and complained, "That hurts! I'm allergic to pain, you know."
Looking up from the injury, Laurent gave him a long, cold stare. A shiver ran through Yarne's spine at his expression: thin lips, narrowed eyes, furrowed brow. Laurent was angry and he could only guess why. "Then how did you get hurt?" he asked tonelessly.
"I…" His ears flattened as he looked away. He kicked his feet against the crate he was sitting on. "It was an ambush."
Laurent resumed bandaging and Yarne was certain his manhandling got worse, not better. "We were expecting enemy reinforcements."
"Not that many," Yarne argued weakly. It would be a miracle to win an argument against Laurent—even Lucina and Severa failed against him, and they were the two most stubborn people he knew. Still, he had to try.
As though to indicate his displeasure, Laurent tugged on the gauze. "That's what our training was for. You have to expect the unexpected. Or at least, know how to handle changes on the battlefield."
Well, that much was true, Yarne had to admit. If there was anything he had learned from Laurent's incessant training drills, it was that anything could happen. Hesitantly, he tried again. "They had archers to pin me in?"
The tug this time was harder. "Are you guessing that's what happened?"
Did his tone just get drier? Just how angry was he? Yarne was afraid to look. He scratched his cheek with his free hand, racking his brain for some reasonable excuse. Something that could explain the long cut on his arm or the arrows in his back. "I…" There wasn't anything he could say, really. "I didn't pay attention."
"No, you didn't." Laurent paused in his administrations. His fingers gently pressed down on the bandages. "I thought you were the last of your kind. I thought you were going to keep your self-preservation before everything else."
"I do!" Insulted, Yarne jerked his head back to Laurent and growled, "That's always on my mind when I fight!"
"Then how did you get hurt?" Laurent asked again, looking up now. He didn't look angry anymore, just worried. Just afraid. "You were just the decoy. All you had to do was run away. Why did you fight?"
"Because…" Yarne trailed off, not sure what to say. He couldn't even explain it to himself. Running through the forest, swordsmen and archers on his heels, he had been terrified for his life. That was par course. But then he'd spotted a familiar wide-brim hat in the midst of the fray, hemmed in on all sides by the enemy and—
And he'd stopped thinking. Started fighting. Perhaps this was what his mother meant by having a warrior in his blood. He didn't know. Just that his only thought was about Laurent. "I don't know," he admitted helplessly. "I just had to."
"You didn't," Laurent rejected immediately. Ignoring Yarne's surprised gasp, he finished wrapping the bandage and pinned it in place. "But…" With a sigh, he shook his head and squeezed Yarne's hand. "But you did good. I knew you had it in you. Just…just be careful, next time, okay?"
Laurent smiled tenderly and Yarne blushed. "Y-yeah." His heart was running a mile a minute, which was fast even for a rabbit. Maybe he was dying. Or sick. Or both.
"Good." Laurent patted his hand one last time before letting go. Yarne's hand felt instantly cold. Back to business as usual, Laurent's expression returned to its default blank state and he adjusted his glasses. "I'll grab Noire and Virion for our next training session. You need to practice dodging arrows."
"Right." Yarne sighed, he should have expected that. Laurent had always been more of a stick than a carrot person. Of course he'd already be planning a new training method. At least his heart rate had gone back down. "When is that? Today? Tomorrow?"
Laurent shook his head. "Not until you've healed. Take it easy for now." He smiled once more and turned around. "I'll see you later."
"Y-yeah," Yarne managed to spit out, his heart in his throat. Did Laurent always look that gentle when he smiled? Or handsome? When was the last time he smiled? Almost every time they had trained, Laurent had looked some shade of annoyed or disappointed.
Well, maybe not recently. Actually, the more he thought about it, the opposite was true. Laurent had been smiling more often when they were together. And this wasn't the first time he'd bandaged him after battle, thought it was the first time he'd been angry about it. Yarne brushed his fingers against the gauze, remembering Laurent's panicked voice when the sword had cut him. Or his gentle touch as he'd assessed the damages, his fingers kind where his words weren't.
Or how, in battle, Yarne feared for Laurent's life more than his own. Yarne's heart thundered in his chest, his skin burning, and—
Oh.
He liked Laurent. That was it, right? It explained a lot—training these days was more for Laurent's rarely given praise than for a self-preservation mechanism. Even now, he could feel Laurent's hands on his arm, see his smile burned in the back of his eye like he'd been blinded.
"Oh shit," Yarne groaned, burying his face in his hands. He liked Laurent.
His species was definitely going extinct.
Maybe he could convince Panne to give him a sibling or two.