(AN: here be Heronstairs smut)

In the aftermath of the shooting the hallway became a makeshift hospital. Jem and Edith had taken on the task of bandaging up those who had made it back inside. The body of the man Jem had tried to save still lay on the floor by the wall, abandoned in the chaos. In a flurry, Silent Brothers had been sent for and people dispatched to search for the shooters.

Amid all the activity, Will was left a useless adjunct to everyone else. He tried to help but he didn't know what he was doing. He kept having to shuffle back against walls to get out of the way of other people. But to back away completely and stop helping meant sitting still and that opened the door to thinking about Alison. She still lay on the steps beyond the door.

She was dead.

To keep himself from think about that he did whatever he could. He was the one who found out where the linen closet was when Edith demanded towels. He was the one who held people in place while Jem did something that hurt them. Every once and awhile Jem's eyes would come up from what he was doing and he'd only go back to it once he'd found him.

It left Will feeling seen which was a strange sensation. He had never been one to be ignored. He'd never felt unseen or unnoticed but he'd also never had anyone look at him like that. No one looked at him like his presence was essential if the world was to continue to turn.

When the Silent Brothers arrived Jem turned over the impromptu little hospital to them and backed away. They drifted in, moving like bone shadows with hollowed out faces. Will tried to imagine Jem's mouth sealed shut and his eyes caving in as though there was nothing below them. He tried to imagine Jem's voice whispering through his head instead of into his ear. Even in a room full of blood and death that was a painful thought.

Jem was explaining something to one of the brothers about the patient with the wound in her upper shoulder when he looked up and found Will again. He whispered something that must have been an apology or maybe a last detail and then he cross the blood streaked floor to Will.

Will held a hand out and then let it drop. He didn't know if he was allowed to touch Jem with an audience like this. Even if their attention was all on other things, there were too many people in the room. He kept his hands to himself as he turned and Jem followed him silently back to his room. They might have gone to Tessa's but barging in there blood soaked and upset while she was still recovering herself seemed like a type of cruelty.

Inside the door he turned around and touched Jem's arm first. The wound was gone, the iratze faded, nothing but the torn fabric and a faint white scar to show there had ever been anything there at all. Then he ran his fingers over Jem's cheeks and the runes there. The evidence of his time as something other than human etched on his face. There were runes on his fingers too and Will ran his hands over them next.

Jem was silent as he did it but he was softer than he had been out where all the other people were. He leaned in, close and warm and alive and the idea of him as one of those breathing statues made Will's chest hurt. Jem was too bright, even dying he had been too alive to possibly be like that. He had given up his personality and his music and his infinite capacity to love for more than a century.

"That's long over," Jem said in answer to the words Will couldn't force himself to say.

"It hasn't happened yet," Will said.

"I'm right here," Jem said cupping Will's face and turning him so he could look him in the eye. The runes drew his attention for another moment but then he let himself get lost in Jem's eyes. He leaned in so they were forehead to forehead. Neither of them mentioned how close they had come to dying but Jem held him near enough that they were breathing the same air. It made Will sure he was thinking the same thoughts.

"Come here," Will said. He pulled Jem into the bathroom and sat him on the edge of the bathtub. Jem watched him with a little smile on his lips as he wet a towel and sat down on the lid of the toilet to try and wipe the worst of the blood off his face. Jem let him fuss without protest but he took his free hand and played with it in both of his. Will stopped to pull him in close.

"I won't lose you," Will said.

"Right here," Jem repeated.

They were still in the silent room for a long time. It was comforting to have him there against his chest. He remembered Tessa telling him they were dreaming when she had curled herself into his arms like this. That had been the night he'd gone to Magnus to have the curse broken. It had been just a little bit dreamlike but this wasn't. This was half dried blood smeared on bright white tile and Jem's breathing a little uneven against his neck.

The little things that Will was learning about Jem made him falling in love with him seem a forgone conclusion. His need for physical reassurance. His ability to command a room of Silent Brothers. His eyes. Even things Will had always known made loving him inevitable. It has always been inevitable. His kindness. His strength. His gentle hands.

Was it possible to avoid falling in love with someone who looked at you like you were the only thing that could keep them from losing their mind? Someone who settled into you like you were simply two pieces of the same whole and always meant to have been together?

"I need to shower," Jem said pulling back.

"Of course, you can use this one if you want, I'll go after," Will said and released him. Jem gave him an incomprehensible look. Will gave him a blank stare in return until he could make sense of it. He tensed because he wasn't sure what it meant. It was an invitation but beyond that, he wasn't sure what Jem was offering. Jem dropped the look and smiled. He cupped the back of Will's neck and pulled him in to kiss his cheek.

"Don't worry about it," Jem said.

"Maybe I want to," Will said.

"Nobody wants to worry," Jem said with a little laugh. The moment was gone. Jem's body language had all changed and the look in his eyes was gone. Will couldn't pick out the individual changes only the sense that Jem was letting it go.

"What did you want?" Will asked grabbing his hand and pulling him back before he could stand up and go anywhere. Jem looked at Will's hand wrapped around his wrist and an echo of that look came back. Will didn't let go. Jem's arm was bloody well past the wrist, like a stain. The pattern on his family ring was almost obscured by the smears. Will looked up from his hand because if he was going to be demanding rather than letting the moment go, he wasn't going to be bashful about it.

Jem didn't answer immediately but he smiled again and it was that same invitation just spoken with a different dialect of body language. Will had no idea how you went about learning this language but he could see it in Jem and Tessa and wanted to be a part of the conversation. Jem tugged back on Will's hand and Will stood.

Will's eyes were shut and Jem's fingers were on his face when he managed to collect himself enough to say, "I could stay. This century is so wasteful. Showers use far too much water for one person."

Jem laughed. The sound was bright and startled and happy.

"If you get in there, I will touch you," Jem's voice wasn't quite steady. It snapped Will's eyes open because he expected Jem to be as calm and collected and confident in this as he was in everything else.

"I find I enjoy that," Will said. He was bolder for having found this little crack in Jem's practiced calm. He stepped closer and had let go of Jem's arm in favour of touching his waist. Will's entire experience of touching the bodies of other people like this involved women fully dressed in corsets and heavy dresses. He paused in his attempts to talk Jem into crossing a line he didn't quite understand to run his hands up the line of his body.

Jem wore thin cotton that didn't keep the warmth of him from Will's palms and his shape was different from a girl's. Will's hands had found their way to the small of his back and up the contours of the muscles on his way to his shoulders. Jem was quiet but responded by pulling Will in and wrapping his arms around him in a hug that was brotherly and comforting. It was at least until Will started tracing his fingers back down and Jem pressed his body closer.

"Am I taking advantage?" Jem asked in that unsteady voice that made Will's stomach warm.

"Am I?" Will said. When Jem had pressed his hips in, Will had grabbed on and was holding onto him. Jem's hips were narrow and sharp beneath Will's hands but strong. Jem, this Jem, had erased all Will's fears of his fragility. This Jem didn't need Will to worry about him. Will still did and suspected he always would but he could feel the strength and it eased the worst of his concerns.

Jem pulled back enough to look him in the eye while Will kept their lower bodies held tightly together. Will didn't know what look was on his own face but he felt everything he saw on Jem's. Warmth and confusion and a shimmering kind of anticipation.

Jem slid his hands from Will's shoulders down to the buttons on the shirt he wore and undid one before he paused and met Will's eyes. There was a question in that expression.

"Yes," Will answered it before he leaned in for a kiss.

It was still so new. Every kiss was unlike the one before it and every kiss made Will's heart rate take off like it was trying to run for its life. This kiss was gentle and tentative but Will had to remind himself to breathe. Jem's mouth was on his as he undid the buttons one by one and his fingers brushed Will's skin underneath. His fingers were careful and insistent as he pushed the shirt away and let it drop to the ground.

Jem gasped as Will slid his hands up under his shirt but even still the kiss didn't break apart. Jem was warm, almost feverish and his skin was silk smooth even where it was broken by scar tissue. Will's hands found his ribs and was reminded how thin he was even healthy. Beneath the layers of taut skin and muscle, Will could feel the bones.

The kiss broke when Will's hands had pushed the shirt as high as it could go without coming off. Jem was obliging but let him be the one to pull it away. Will paused to run his fingers down Jem's stomach and decided that he liked the lines of those muscles. They tightened and released under his fingers.

Jem smiled at him and leaned past him to turn the water on and his bare shoulder touched Will's and Will almost lost his ability to think at all. That sense that he was well out of his depth came back.

"Will you forgive me for being a bumbling idiot?" Jem asked looking apologetic. It was the most baffling sentence he had heard in a long time.

"You aren't. I don't think you've ever bumbled anything in your life. If you were, I would," Will said. "I'm the bumbling one, I promise you. I haven't any experience with any of this."

Jem smiled and leaned in to kiss him again. They were close and the sound of the rushing water had erased the last little reminders of the world beyond them. The traffic noise was gone. The distant sound of voices were gone. There was just water and this person in front of him and that was all he needed. If Jem was nervous too it gave him permission to let the anxiety that he would do something wrong go.

He hooked his fingers into Jem's waistband and pulled him in closer with a little jerk and that startled another one of those bright laughs out of him. Jem's laughter was something he hoped he would have years to explore. Will fumbled with his belt and Jem leaned in to kiss his way down Will's neck and that made the fumbling worse.

They managed it.

They left the ruined, blood stained clothing in a heap and stumbled into the shower. Will was embarrassed and self-conscious until the water hit him and cleared his head. He stood in the spray and Jem stood in front of him and there was humour in his eyes. Will pushed up the wet hair the water had dropped into his eyes with both hands. Jem grinned and, thinking he was being mocked for something, Will flung some of the spray at him.

"You're kind of beautiful," Jem said.

"I am radiant. It is good of you to finally notice," Will said and Jem flicked water into his eyes with another laugh.

The water around their feet swirled pink as the blood was washed away. Will reached for soap and washed Jem's hands clean. Washing the mess out of the hair on his arms and scrubbing between his fingers was a methodical and intimate thing. Will pulled his ring off and left it with his own on the floor outside the tub so it wouldn't get washed away down the drain. Jem had a small smile on his lips throughout the entire process.

Once his hands were released, Jem ran his fingers through Will's hair and washed it. Will got closer as he did it. He'd been shy before but that was swirling down the drain with everything else. Touches he'd never considered before thrilled him. Jem's thigh brushed his when he leaned in to push Will's head back and rinse away the soap from his hair. It was electric and under the spray of the shower the electricity jumped and bounced between them like a lightening strike.

Will shook water out of his eyes and his hands had pulled Jem's hips in again. It put parts of himself that other people didn't touch up against warm wet skin and he shivered to his toes. It reminded him that for all his inexperience, his body knew what it wanted. Jem's mouth was against his neck again. The kisses were insistent with little grazes of teeth and fragments of pressure that Will felt in lower places.

He let his hands wander until he paused with his palm against Jem's stomach. He was tense and shuddered a little at the touch. Will's hand was low enough that his finger tips brushed curls of hair. Jem leaned into his hand and tucked against his face in against Will's chest. He nodded and muttered something in Chinese that Will missed most of but included the word for love and ended with, "I don't want you to stop."

The water pounded against his back and Jem couldn't seem to keep his mouth off of his skin. He licked at the water spray where it beaded on Will's shoulder and he nibbled on his collar bone.

Will's hand explored and Jem tensed and relaxed and tensed again as he did. Jem pushed against him when he liked something and whispered little suggestions when he didn't. He was hard when Will started and got harder as Will wrapped his hand around the length and started to stroke.

Will ran one hand through Jem's tangle of wet hair while the other kept going slowly until Jem let out a frustrated groan against his neck. He sped up the motion of his hand. There were things he liked when he did this alone that he'd never considered doing to someone else. He circled his thumb around the underside and Jem groaned and pressed himself into Will.

Jem's body changed as Will pressed a little harder and rubbed a little faster. Jem gasped and Will steadied them both against the wall until Jem's orgasm was over. The feel of him in Will's hand changed. The mess had gotten all over his stomach and his thigh but the water was already washing it away.

Jem looked up with hazy eyes and a smile and kissed Will before his hands slid down. Will was momentarily unsure of what to do with his own while both of Jem's were touching him. Rivers of water ran down Jem's shoulders so he traced those. Jem was smiling and watching him and it made him shy. It was not the hand massaging, nor the one stroking that made him blush. It was the way Jem watched him like he was trying to memorize his expressions.

Will was very good at expressions. They were controlled and maintained to present the image he wanted to present. At that moment though, his expressions were a secondary function of Jem's fingers. His eyes fell shut when the pressure increased, his mouth dropped open if Jem touched him in the right place. The right place kept changing and Jem kept finding it over and over.

He teased and stroked. Will didn't think it should have been so unlike any of the times he had done this to himself but it was. It was the difference between candle flames and bonfires. This was not hurried or guilty. This was slow and sumptuous. Between the water and Jem's skin under his hands the sensations were all broader than he had ever imagined.

Jem's chest brushing against his wasn't a part of what his hands were doing but every piece of them was connected. Every touch was a part of every other one. Will let himself get lost in it. He stopped worrying about the look on his face and the potential for embarrassment or about whether he was bumbling and childish. He was sensation and skin and water and not entirely his own anymore. He handed himself over to Jem in body and soul. Trust was a blade at your throat but Will was glad of it.

Release hit hard and Will wasn't expecting it. He gasped and Jem kept going a moment too long and the wave of pleasure crested until it almost hurt. Will shuddered and Jem gathered him in close and held him while his body calmed. Will's eyes fluttered shut and he took a turn to be the one who pressed his face in against skin in search of physical comfort.

When they finally made it out of the water. They were clean and the hot water and all the touching left Will feeling relaxed. He had to hold other thoughts out to maintain that feeling. As long he didn't think too hard about the rest of the world he could drift.

They dressed out of Will's closet and went upstairs. Tessa was still asleep and Will stood in the doorway and looked at her for a long time as Jem crossed the room to touch her hair. Will watched as she sat up and smiled at Jem, still half asleep. Will closed the door and locked it because he wanted the rest of the world with its bloodstains and threats and dangers to stay away.

He sat down on Tessa's other side and she reached out a hand to him. He took it. She wasn't a tiny person but her hands were smaller than Jem's and Will smiled at it as he held it between his.

"Can I sleep here?" he asked her.

"Of course you can," she said. "What's happened?"

"There was another attack. I'll tell you about it later," Jem said. "Will and I spent most of the last hour in the shower pretending it didn't happen."

Tessa looked between them, suddenly more awake. She raised her eyebrows just a fraction at Will and he smiled and dropped his eyes. It hadn't felt indecent until he needed to explain it to her.

"If you two keep leaving me alone in bed while you're off making out in dance clubs and showers, I'll get jealous," she said and while it was said with a smile, there was something in it that made Will take notice.

"I've known you for months," Will said turning her face to him and sliding a little closer so he could wrap an arm around her. She settled into him and waited for him to continue, "I love you more every day. From the day I first told you that I loved you, that love has grown. Jem has had centuries for his own feelings to grow."

"You are my heart," Jem said to her, "I left it with you when I joined the Brothers and you've never given it back."

Tessa laughed and cuddled into Will a little tighter. With Jem on her other side, they settled back against the headboard. Jem's arm wrapped around Tessa and his hand settled at the back of Will's neck. A tangle, Tessa had called them before and Will hadn't thought that being tangled could be this good.

"I'm going to tell you I'm jealous more often," Tessa said into the side of Jem's face as they both smiled.

Will took one of Jem's hands and laced them together. He put their little knot of fingers on Tessa's stomach. He didn't notice it until she was running her fingers over theirs but they'd picked up the wrong rings when they'd gotten dressed. The imprint of birds was on Jem's hands and the pattern of castle crenelations was on his.