It was all real. The arm was gone; was probably shriveling and blackening on the forest floor where they’d left it; it would have swelled and split, first, crawled with flies and maggots, and the flesh stripped away by beetles and ants and…
The wall at his back shifted, because it wasn’t a wall at all, but Tris. His arm curled around Francis’s waist, and his face pressed into the back of Francis’s sweat-damp neck. “It’s alright,” he rumbled, voice still thick with sleep. “Shh, it’s alright.” He stroked his chest, pressed the pads of his fingers to the racing pulse at the base of his throat.
Francis swallowed with difficulty. “No – no, it isn’t. It’s not…” His teeth started to chatter, and he clenched them tight.
Tris shifted behind him, and when Francis turned his head on the pillow, he saw that he was propped up now, hovering over him, so he could see his face. He wondered what he looked like, if his eyes were white-rimmed, and his face slick with sweat. If he looked every inch the frightened child that he felt. It was easier, during the day, to drape himself in a confidence he didn’t feel and pretend that everything would work out.
But fresh from ugly dreams, in the near-dark, with Tris looking at him with worry etched in the lines of his face, Francis couldn’t pretend.
“They’ll send me home,” he choked out. “I only have one arm – and I can’t – they’llsend me home, and I don’thave a hometo go to, I don’t–”
Tris covered his body with his own, a warm, heavy human blanket, a heartbeat thumping steady and reassuring against what remained of his left arm. Lips touched his temple, and lingered there. “Nobody’s gonna send you anywhere. Not if you don’t want to go.”
Francis tried to laugh, and it sounded pathetic and full of cracks. “You can’t – can’t guarantee that.”
Strong arms encircled him, the sure press of them soothing in a way nothing had ever been. “Yes, I can.”
Francis turned his head, seeking, so they were pressed cheek-to-cheek, Tris’s beard rough against his skin, the scent of him full in Francis’s nose, drowning out that faint, chemical tang of the hospital that still clung to him. Tris smelled of cordite, and Kevlar, and cold silver, always, even now. And of sweat, and sex, and the wall that had come down from between them.
“You’re alright,” Tris said again, the low purr of his voice vibrating through Francis. “You’re alright.”
He didn’t believe that, but he wanted to, when Tris said it like that, and sleep eventually reclaimed him.
~*~
“He doesn’t want to be sent home.”
Lance looked up from the paperwork he was signing at the tiny desk in his room and fired Tris a sharper glance than he thought was warranted for this situation. “What?”
“Gallo. He wants to stay on and not be discharged. The docs are saying–”
Lance waved him to silence. Stared at him a moment – then sat back in his chair, grinning. “You should see your face.”
It was something Francis had said several times in the past week – though his twinkling smile was much more welcome than Lance’s smug amusement.
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
Lance chuckled. “Sir Tristan Mayweather, laid low by love.”
“Hey, jackass.”
Lance’s chuckles died, and his face smoothed with shock.
“I’m not ‘laid low’ by anything. And you’re one to talk, moping around after that girl, even though she’s still in love with a dead man.”
Tris was shocked by his own vehemence. He was older than Lance, and had grumbled his fair share of untaken advice in the past, delivered some affectionate insults, but he’d never spoken to him this way. Lancewashis superior, after all.
Lance cleared his throat and said, “Ceasefire?”
Tris jerked a nod. “Yeah.”
“Okay, so.” Lance shuffled some paperwork that probably didn’t need it. “He wants to stay?” He managed to sound almost casual. “I don’t have any problem with it, but I don’t have the final say-so.”
Tris knew as much. He folded his arms and braced his shoulder in the doorjamb. “But you could put in a good word.”
“I’ll happily put in ten good words.” He braced his elbows on the desk, finally, and glanced up at Tris, dark gaze assessing, and not without true sympathy. “And given how short-handed we are…” He winced at his own choice of words. “There’ll be something for him to do around here.”
“He wants to be a Knight,” Tris pressed. “He wants to stay on with the company.”
