Watcher
By Kay
Disclaimer: If I owned it, millions would weep in horror.
Author's Notes: Christopher and Jalil friendship fic. If you want to see slash, go ahead, but it's innocent. This time. Heh. As always, I can't thank anyone enough for reading it, even if they don't leave a review.
He wakes up to Christopher reciting every joke he knows.
"That's not even remotely funny," Jalil mutters, wearily stretching his hands out and checking his body. Nothing broken. Sore, aching, bruised, cuts slathered in medicine creams and wrapped with itchy bandages, but he's used to that. "What happened?"
Christopher is laughing tiredly. "Club to the head?"
"A club? What the hell?"
"Yeah. David's going to give you shit for letting your guard down, but I guess no one was expecting the Hetwan to grow brains. They jumped the camp at night with some nasty goblin-things. I don't even want to know what they were. You want some water?"
Jalil nods. There's a clay pitcher on the ground next to the cot. Christopher just hands him the entire thing, and when he manages to cup it securely, Jalil tips his head back and lets the coolness run down his throat. He can feel some trickling over his mouth and down his neck, dampening the blanket, and as always relishes the silence in his own head that follows. Maybe someday he'll stop luxuriating in simple actions like getting his hands dirty, but two years later and the gratitude still burns fiercely.
"You slept most of the day, it's already evening. We're mostly alive. I guess the Hetwan didn't realize that Vikings use their axes as teddy bears," Christopher continues. "It's pretty gross out there."
"Thanks for the imagery. You should have woken me up right away."
"April said she'd castrate me if I ruined the opportunity to make you sleep a normal eight hours like everyone else."
"Charming," Jalil mutters, dropping the empty pitcher to the dirt. He tries to rise; gives up and slumps back down. "Ouch. That was a bad idea."
"I could keep telling jokes?"
"You could. And I could strangle you in your sleep later."
"And I could not tell jokes, too."
"You occasionally have good ideas, I suppose."
They are silent for a while, simply enjoying the peace. Jalil closes his eyes and rests his fingers against his forehead, searching for pain—the dull throbbing at the back of his head is almost a memory, though, and he lets them fall away. Christopher kicks the pitcher across the tent space. Outside, men are laughing.
"He who laughs and runs away," Christopher mutters suddenly.
"Lives to fight another day?"
"David should have watched more cartoons when he was a kid."
"I don't even know where it's from. If we ran, do you really think anyone would be alive?" Jalil almost laughs, but it's not funny. He snorts, bitter. "Don't be naïve. It doesn't suit you."
"I thought it was a good color on me," Christopher says, leaning against the cot. Jalil allows it because it's not intrusive—sometimes a person just needs to know someone else is there, feel their weight near, their body heat. It's rational. Christopher is the type, he knows, that will freak out if he thinks he's alone.
And he'd stayed until Jalil woke. It's almost touching, if slightly stupid and humiliating. "If you were naïve, I'd have to drag both you and April back to Daggermouth screaming. I don't have that kind of energy."
"Getting old?"
Yes, Jalil thinks. He is.
Christopher must understand because he doesn't pick up the jibe again. He groans and buries his head against the edge of the cot, tufts of blond sticking up with dried mud in them. "I don't wanna go pick up Hetwan goo."
"So don't."
"I'm supposed to let David know when you're awake. He needs you for something."
"Damn it." Jalil struggles to get up again and succeeds this time. Christopher wrinkles his nose but doesn't protest, knowing the stubborn streak in his friend and not really caring. Jalil finds that understanding just another sign of the strange, unexpected empathy between them—it occurs to him, wobbling on his feet and Christopher sitting against the floor and the frame of the cot, that Christopher is his best friend now. Somehow, sometime. Maybe it's the head injury, he thinks absentmindedly. Then, it's abrupt; out of his mouth before he even realizes it. "Take a nap. You look like death warmed over."
"Whatever."
"Seriously, just take half an hour. I'll come back and wake you up. Do you really want to wade around in alien guts right now?"
Christopher scowls. "Dude, that's playing dirty."
"It's being truthful." Jalil kicks him lightly, just enough to get a reaction. Christopher makes a face, but it's still exhausted. "Take the cot. It's free now, after all."
"You got it wet."
"Don't be a wimp."
"I'm not a wimp if I sneak out of duty and take a nap before dark even hits?"
"No, because the General's main strategist orders you to."
Christopher is quiet for a moment. "Only if you come back and wake me up in half an hour," he finally says.
Jalil has no intention of doing that and he figures Christopher probably knows it. If he doesn't, he should by now. "Of course."
He puts on his boots with his eyes steadily fastened on the lacing, so he doesn't have to see Christopher crawling into the bed still warm and indented from his own body. It feels weird. He can hear him, though, shifting under the blanket. The low, grateful sigh.
By the time Jalil looks up, Christopher is already asleep.
"Idiot," he mutters, watching the soft rise and fall of Christopher's chest. He's not sure what to make of this feeling—embarrassed, protective, irritated. Christopher isn't something Jalil can keep, really. Too complicated, too difficult.
But just for now, maybe—
This one thing, then. Jalil carefully closes the tent flap behind him, resisting the urge to sit and wait, like his friend had, until reality returns to them both.
The End