Characters: Michael, Baird (OC), Lee, Ceri (OC). Rating: T. Genre: Family, Hurt/Comfort. Warnings: burn injury, swearing

"I've got him," Michael heard, the voice familiar through the darkness. "Go give Ceri a heads' up, and see if you can find Lee, too."

Muffled words, further away from him and too hard to make out, replied. Michael frowned, trying to peel his eyes open – why the fuck where they closed? What the fuck was happening? He'd been on the climbing wall. That wasn't black. The lava made sure of it.

Arms slid underneath him and then he was floating and oh no they fucking weren't. Suddenly no longer glued shut, his eyes snapped open as he squirmed.

"Put me the fuck down!" he demanded, not even looking at the fucker that had picked him up as he writhed, pushing to get away.

His leg moved and he screamed.

"Hey, hey!" the fucker – Michael recognised that accent but his leg hurt and he couldn't think – protested. "Relax, Michael. You'll hurt yourself more if you keep moving." The arms holding him tightened, pinning him against a much larger body. He tried to wriggle his torso free without moving his leg, which fucking burned, but everything went white and he screamed again.

"Naw, I've got this," he heard the older demigod say as the white faded away. "Don't crowd him, guys. Shoo, shoo."

Michael cracked an eye open and glowered up at the other son of Apollo. "Put. Me. Down," he growled, tilting his head back to glare past the demigod's long dark ginger hair where it spilled over his shoulder and at his half-brother directly.

Fucking half-siblings. He'd run away from the fucking things; there weren't supposed to be more where he ended up!

Even if these ones didn't treat him like shit.

Baird shook his head. He was one of the oldest of Michael's newly-discovered half-siblings, seventeen and broad-shouldered, as well as a fucking good archer – Michael had spent a lot of the time at the range with him, learning about shit like technique.

He was also proudly Scottish, with a soft accent that was distinctly not-American but also not how Michael had thought Scots sounded – not that he'd asked Baird about that. He wasn't that interested.

He had, however, told him that he had better be wearing fucking boxers under the kilt he frequently wore. Several times. Baird just grinned at him and told him not to look every time, which wasn't a fucking answer.

"No can do, a ghille," his half-brother told him, a small smile on his face. Michael had been promised it was a term of endearment and not an insult. He didn't know if he believed it, but he wasn't the only one Baird called that, so he let it slide. "That lava chewed your leg up pretty good. You're not going to be walking on that."

The fucking lava had what.

Michael twisted, putting his escape attempt on hold for the moment in favour of trying to see his leg. Now he was aware of it, the pain was impossible to ignore, and Michael had a horrible feeling it was making him cry. His eyes were itching.

Baird held still as he moved, although his grip was tight enough that Michael couldn't really move much. Still, he managed to tilt his head enough to catch sight of pale, waxy skin blotched with red and pink and looking entirely too wrong, never mind the fact his pants had singed away to the knee.

"Fuck." The word came out like a sob. His eyes prickled more and his cheeks stung. Baird seemed to take that as a cue to start walking and Michael glared at him. "Put me down."

"You need the infirmary, Michael," Baird told him, raising one shoulder in half a shrug. "I can call for a stretcher instead if you really want, but this is faster."

Michael was no more impressed with the idea of a fucking stretcher than he was about being carried. "I heal fast," he protested, scowling as salty water trickled into the corner of his mouth and rubbing at his eyes furiously. Why the fuck was he crying? It was only a bit of fucking pain.

"And you'll heal even faster when Ceri gets a look at that leg of yours," his half-brother countered immediately. "So is this okay, or do I need to get someone to bring a stretcher instead?"

Neither option was fucking okay, but Michael shoved his face into Baird's chest, using the bright orange t-shirt to soak up the fucking tears. Being carried like a kid was fucking embarrassing but a stretcher would be even worse. "Hurry the fuck up," he mumbled.

"Okay, okay. Hurrying up." True to his word, Michael felt Baird speed up, taking bigger steps and holding him a little tighter. If anyone was looking – they had better not be, Michael would shoot anyone that ever fucking mentioned it – no-one said anything and Baird didn't acknowledge anyone, either. Michael kept his face pressed against his half-brother's t-shirt until the noise of Baird's steps changed.

"Michael!" Lee's voice had him raising his head. His blond half-brother was looking at him with wide eyes from inside the infirmary. Next to him, long red hair shoved back in a messy bun, Ceri was pulling on gloves, barely looking at them.

Lee's presence made Michael feel a little better, not that he'd ever admit it. Baird wasn't terrible – his archery coaching did put him in Michael's okay books despite his refusal to admit if he wore boxers under the kilt or not – but Lee was Lee.

Michael would never fucking admit it, but Lee felt a lot like how he thought safety should.

Baird sat him down on one of the beds, and Michael couldn't stop the whine of pain as his burnt leg straightened. Immediately, Lee and Ceri were there, shooing Baird out of the way and taking his place.

A moment later, the bed behind him dipped, and he glanced over his shoulder to see Baird smiling at him reassuringly. Michael hadn't expected him to stay.

"Here, drink this." Lee caught his attention again, dragging it away from Baird and focusing it on the cup of golden liquid Michael knew was nectar. It tasted good, like cherry candies, but best of all it stopped his leg from hurting.

Ceri knelt on the floor in front of his leg and gently dabbed at it with water while Lee grabbed his attention and started asking exactly what had happened, as though he thought Michael could fucking remember. All he remembered was climbing the fucking lava wall, then Baird's voice as his half-brother fucking picked him up without even fucking asking.

"Michael missed a foot-hold," Baird filled in after Michael replied to Lee's worried questions with a non-answering shrug. "He got caught by the lava when he fell. Fainted for about half a minute, Ceri."

"Noted," Michael's older half-sister said, setting the cloth aside and softly laying her palm over where the burn was the worst. Like Baird, her accent was decidedly non-American. Michael hadn't asked where she was from but she and Baird both liked to mock Geoff from cabin eleven for being English. All three of them were about the same age, although he was pretty sure Ceri was at least younger than Baird.

It wasn't like he actually cared about that shit, though.

"Hold still, Michael," Ceri told him. "Lee-"

"I've got him," Lee interrupted, a bright smile crossing his worried face. He sat on the bed next to Michael, completely ignoring Baird behind them. "Ceri's going to fix you up, okay?" he said. "It'll feel weird, but a good-weird."

Before Michael could ask what the fuck that meant, she started to chant softly. The words weren't in English, but Michael understood them perfectly in the strange mindfuck way that Ancient Greek had.

He'd seen Ceri and Lee both healing others over the summer, as well as some of the other half-siblings whose names he didn't remember because they'd fucked off at the end of August and there were too fucking many of them to remember, anyway. He knew they sang to Apollo, to the guy that used to pop into his dreams almost every night and now only showed once a week, and that that was somehow enough to heal injuries. Sometimes it was even faster than Michael's natural regeneration.

This was the first time he'd been hurt badly enough that the cherry-candy flavoured nectar and his own fast healing couldn't heal him since arriving at camp.

It tickled.

Michael squirmed at the golden light brushing over his leg, then glared at Lee when he put his hand on his upper leg to hold him still.

"Stay still," his brother told him firmly. Baird pressed a hand against his back.

"You're doing good, a ghille," he said. "The less you squirm, the more healing Ceri can do."

Michael sent him a dark look but tried to stop moving. It fucking tickled, though. Lee's hand on his leg helped keep it still, but did nothing for the tickling as Ceri's healing chant continued, a faint golden glow around her hand and his leg.

After an eternity of what felt like fucking tickle-torture, Ceri stopped chanting and pulled her hand back.

"Third degree," she rasped, voice hoarse. Baird leaned past Michael to give her a bottle of water, which she threw back without hesitating. "But it'll be fine. Your healing is something else, Michael. I don't think it'll even scar once it's done." She waved a hand loosely at Lee, who slipped off of the bed to kneel in front of him, next to Ceri. Michael leaned forwards, surprised to see his leg had already lost the weird pale look and was a shiny pink. It disappeared under the bandages Lee started to wind around his leg. "Take it easy; stay in here until dinner time."

Michael frowned. "You just said it was gonna be fucking fine."

Ceri sighed. "You still have to give it time to heal, Michael. Baird, go grab him some fresh trousers from the store. I'll see if Marian can salvage these, or the harpies if she can't."

"Sure." The bed shifted as Baird stood up, and Michael glanced back at him. The Scot grinned at him. "Listen to Ceri, a ghille. She knows what she's talking about." A large hand rested on his shoulder and he twisted around to glare properly at him. "And be a bit more careful on that wall in future, yeah? I'm not a fan of charbroiled kid brothers."

Michael's stomach did a little twist, the same way the fucking thing did when his half-siblings – these half-siblings, the ones that shared his dad – called him their brother, like it was natural and he was one of them.

"Whatever," he muttered. Baird squeezed his shoulder slightly and grinned at him.

"Back in a bit," he promised as he walked away, "with trousers." He paused in the doorway and a smirk spread across his face. "Unless you'd rather a kilt?"

Lee laughed and Ceri sighed as Michael swore viciously at the now-empty doorway.

This idea would not leave me alone today, so have some more Michael content, and also some of my Apollo cabin OCs finally make an appearance! This is set significantly pre-canon - Michael is ten, Lee is eleven. Shout out to my sister for providing the Gaelic! A ghille, I am informed, more or less means "lad".

Thanks for reading!
Tsari