Chapter Text
Tick, tick, tick. Three hours and forty nine minutes.
It’s bad this time. Doctor Fawn, as usual, assures Captain Blue he can retire to his quarters; he’s been cleared of his own injuries. He nods, ‘in a while’ murmured low on his lips as he scrutinizes Paul’s corpse, searching for any sign of life. His guts are knotted and thrashing with the familiar storm of anxiety as he pulls out the chair at the head of the Sickbay bed Captain Scarlet occupies. The metal feels like it’s been molded to the weight of him, like he’s worn it into the shape of his worry over the years he’s spent sitting with Paul until he comes back to life.
He is sickeningly pallid and entirely still, but finally his chest lifts slowly with his first inhale. Tick. Three hours, fifty minutes. Better than last time. It had been nearly five hours the previous time he’d gotten a head injury like this before his body had healed enough to start breathing.
Sickbay’s medical instruments sit idly at the wall for the next patient, this one doesn’t need them, and it is eerily quiet this time of night. The clock hanging on the wall over the door clicks as its hands turn over to the next minute, and it glows a steady cool white in the darkness of the medical wing. Sterile. There are no other patients, and the staff filter around idly, busying themselves with other tasks. There is nothing they can do for the man in this bed.
Tick, tick, tick. Three hours, fifty seven minutes. There is a green glow seeping from the wound in Paul’s forehead, and Adam watches as flesh seems to materialize from nothing, stitching up the injury with such perfection that he’d believe it if you told him it had never been there in the first place.
He knows what to expect, but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch his best friend die again and again and again. Paul breathes, slow and ragged, weak, and Adam lifts his hand, fingertips extending to brush against the torn skin on his knuckles. They haven't healed yet, but in a matter of hours, this flesh too will be brand new. He’s still so cold. He sounds like a dying man taking his final breath, yet this is the first inhale in this rendition of Paul Metcalfe’s endlessly broken body, healed by a miracle and an eternal curse.
Paul will always wake up. He always has.
Another breath, and Adam closes his fingers around Paul’s, watching his chest lift and fall again. Tick, tick. Three breaths now. They’re slow, so spread out that they can’t possibly be giving his body enough oxygen to function. It’s that green light flowing through him keeping him alive now, not yet his own bodily systems.
Paul’s hand is limp in his, unsettlingly familiar in its coldness, and Adam squeezes it hard. He’ll be okay. He will be. He’ll likely be up in a few hours, and he’ll walk down the hall to his quarters for a shower like nothing had ever happened. Back to duty too, refreshed and unscarred, by the time morning comes. It’s a mystery if he’ll even remember what had gotten him killed in the first place or if Adam would have to fill him in on the way he’d watched the life bleed out of him today.
Adam knows the rhythm of this dance, he’s rehearsed the steps, but the practice doesn’t make it any easier to perform. He still has to keep count so he doesn’t trip, and he can’t seem to stop watching Paul’s steps instead of his own.
He can’t stop waiting for the moment Paul stumbles, for when he falls flat on his face and cannot get up again.
How many more times can they do this dance before his counter is up? He lives on the life support of this Mysteron curse, but eventually the battery has to run dry. How long does he have? How many times can he die and return?
Adam squeezes again, and Paul inhales. Tick, tick, tick, tick. Four hours and forty minutes. Paul’s heart beats steadily now; Adam can feel his pulse beneath the two fingertips he has pressed to the veins in his wrist. He is breathing evenly and deeply, and the color has returned to his face.
The chair slinks away and rolls into the wall with a thunk as Adam stands, and he tucks it back into its place with his foot. Paul’s hand remains slack in his own, but it is warm and filling with life, that sickly green glow fading and leaving the flush of human blood beneath his healed skin. Adam lays Paul’s hand down onto the bed beside him, tucks it beneath the blanket, and retires to his quarters until morning debriefing.
A bird sings off to the left, cutting through the incessant tick, tick that Captain Blue can’t seem to shake, and Scarlet's eyes shift towards the sound before turning ahead once more. That sharp gaze assesses to sniff out a threat, but it really is just an innocent bird this time. The muscles in his jaw tense as he swallows, cheeks rough from the stubble sprouting across his face. His whole body looks wrought with tension, he is laser focused, and the hard line of his shoulders is stark against the soft clouds in the skyline.
Blue swallows, but the lump in his throat makes it thick and painful. He drags his gaze away from the way Scarlet has his lip pinched between his teeth in concentration, cutting into the skin with his sharp incisors. Tick, tick, tick. They’ve been here for an hour and thirteen minutes, and Blue’s stomach is starting to turn. The skin of Scarlet’s forehead is furrowed tight with concentration, but it’s unblemished. It holds no memory of the way it had been chopped open two days prior, split down to the ivory of his skull and pouring blood. Adam is the only one who remembers that.
How is he ever going to shake the strangeness of this life? How do you stop questioning why a dead man rises to walk and talk again, over and over and over? It has been nearly six years of this, and it is old news to everyone but Adam. No one stops to consider it anymore. No one pauses to think about the repercussions. Cloudbase relies on this man’s regeneration to function. The world needs him. They can’t train agents fast enough to replace the way Scarlet dies for the human race time and time again. Captain Scarlet is their greatest weapon, and Captain Blue is stuck at the trigger to bear constant witness to the bloodshed.
Scarlet’s lips move, drawing Blue’s attention, low words rumbling deep from his throat. They are stained red with blood, scarlet uniform dark and drenched with it, and Blue grits his teeth as he glances over his shoulder. Tick, tick, tick, tick. Mysteron is still down. Good. Blue had blasted him straight through the chest, he damn well should be, but you never know with those bastards. Scarlet hacks a cough that’s wet and thick, and Blue grimaces as bright red droplets splatter across his arms. He shifts his grip on the cloth in his hand, applying more pressure to Scarlet’s forehead.
It isn’t good. Medical should be here at any moment, but Blue will do what he’s able to until they arrive. Granted, there isn’t much he can do when Scarlet’s flesh is split so deep the frontal lobe of his skull is exposed. Even his eyes have seeped bright red into them from the blood that has poured over his brow and dispersed like an oil spill across his tear film.
Scarlet coughs again, it rattles and sounds like he’s drowning in his blood, and Blue meets his gaze. His stare is far away, glossed over, and he looks so pale. Sweaty from the pain, and Blue can see his consciousness waning in the way Captain Scarlet blinks fast and frantically. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick! There is so much blood. They’re both covered in it, and it is so warm where it’s soaked into Blue’s sleeves.
Scarlet reaches up to grip his partner’s forearm, weakly, chest shuddering with his next inhale. He looks like he is barely holding on, and his form is weighed down heavily with agony. Each breath is wheezing slower, more spaced out from the last. Tick, tick, tick. Blue can’t help him. Scarlet doesn’t have long, and he can’t do anything but try uselessly to save his life and stave off some of the pain. He will retrometabolize, but Captain Blue can’t live with himself if he doesn’t try to save him, if he just lets his friend bleed out without doing something.
“Captain Blue.” He presses down harder; he can hear a chopper’s blades cutting through the air nearby. Soon. They’ll at least be able to give him something for the pain, something to make his passing a little less tortuous. They’re always reluctant to do it when it’s wasted on a man who’s felt the same pain a hundred times over, whose death is set in stone, but they concede when Blue demands it of them. “Captain,” Scarlet says again, more forceful this time. He must be summoning the last of his strength to speak. It sounds so ragged, voice punched out of him.
“Adam.”
Captain Blue blinks, and Scarlet frowns as he stares into him. He’s crouching on the ground beside him, binoculars lowered beneath the rim of the wall they’re backed up against. There is no blood, no gaping head wound, and Blue can feel the scrutiny in those icy eyes as Scarlet looks deeply into his face.
Blue can feel the question in them, but he won’t answer it. He has a feeling Captain Scarlet knows what’s in his head anyway without him having to explain. They have a job to do anyway, one Blue is compromising right now. This isn’t the time or place to unpack his demons.
“Found her?” he asks instead, shifting to a knee as he peers at the building across from them. He can see the vague blotchy shapes of people through the windows, but he could never hope to pick out their target from here. Hence the binoculars. Paired with Scarlet’s keen eyesight, there’s no hiding.
Scarlet doesn’t reply, and Blue can feel the prickle on the back of his neck from his eyes on him. His skin is crawling, and he shifts to the other knee. Captain Scarlet’s expression is tight when Blue turns to meet the officer’s gaze, and a painfully elongated moment passes between them. Concern, the weight of the shared trauma between them, years of camaraderie and blood splattered on both their hands. Blue can’t always read what he’s thinking from his expression alone, Scarlet’s always been closed off with his emotions, but he can feel the heaviness in the tense way he holds his jaw, the way he looks into him like he’s reading the wrinkles in Adam’s brain.
Something screams beside them, and they both duck. A bullet slams into the brick behind Blue’s head, and his heart accelerates. Tick, tick, tick, tick! Scarlet takes a breath, braces himself with a thick soled boot in the dirt, and lifts his rifle to his shoulder.
Adam hisses as Doctor Fawn presses antiseptic to his bicep, pulling the cotton back bright red and damp. The cut isn’t deep, but it stings badly, and it doesn’t help that it’s being prodded at.
“You’re alright,” Fawn murmurs, focusing solely on Adam as he dresses the wound. Paul lies nearby in the bed opposite his own, chest rising and falling slowly. Doctor Fawn had barely given him a glance. Fifteen breaths per minute. Adam can hear the steady tick of the clock hung on the wall, but it’s drowned out by the comforting sound of Paul’s lungs filling.
“This is the cleanest you two have come back in a while, huh?” Doctor Fawn muses, and Adam hums passively in response. Scarlet’s heart had restarted in the plane, and he’d already begun regaining color by the time they’d rolled him into Sickbay. It had only taken thirty nine minutes for his heart to start pumping again after being shot clean through. It was a new record for him. “You could use an easy job once in a while. It’s good for you both.”
Adam slips off the bed, and Sickbay’s doors slide shut after him. His hand still stings from the leftover warmth of Paul’s he’d held clutched in his own on the flight here. For thirty three minutes he’d held on, from the moment he’d been able to. How long would it be before that residual warmth faded?
Scarlet. There’s so much scarlet. Wet and hot, burning, it covers his arms, and Blue can taste the tang of it on his tongue from the metallic smell in the air.
Scarlet is on the ground too, Blue knelt beside him. His bloody hands are clasped around the stump where his leg was once attached, the makeshift tourniquet had only helped so much, and they’re shaking violently as he leans his weight into the mangled meat of Scarlet’s thigh.
This is bad. This is very, very bad.
Captain Scarlet’s face has drained of all color, and he is trembling all over. His eyes are unfocused and far away, brows knitted together, and his jaw is clenched tight tight tight to keep the agony in his voice restrained.
“You’re gonna be fine,” Blue croaks, a deafening tick tick tick tick screaming in his head. It’s been too long. Death would be merciful now, but he’s been bleeding for eleven minutes and he just keeps bleeding and bleeding and it won’t stop. “You’ll be okay. I’ve got you. You’re gonna be okay.”
Blue’s heartbeat is roaring in his ears alongside a haunting mechanical tick, and his head spins as he leans down to peer at the wound again. He’s covered what he was able to with his tunic, the fabric stained a deep eggplant, but there’s blood everywhere, and there’s bone fragments and flesh and tendons and he can’t make it stop, can’t cover it all, can’t hold it all in.
“Bloody hurts,” Scarlet laughs, humorless. His head rolls where it’s tipped back against tree bark, and his groan is low and pained like a dying animal. He is the dying animal.
Captain Blue can’t laugh. He chokes on his inhale, and it ricochets in his chest before it rips out of him in a shuddering exhale. His eyes are burning, stinging white hot, and the tick, tick, tick in his head is shrieking and high. The light in Scarlet’s eyes is flickering, but he’s still breathing, still suffering. Why won’t it just end? Why won’t he just die already?
Blue shuts his eyes, like that’ll erase the scene before him or finish this whole thing. His throat is so tight it feels like he can barely breathe, and his cheeks are wet with blood splatter and tears. Scarlet’s breathing is loud and strained, and he’s making these pitiful sounds, choked off like he’s trying to hide it but just can’t anymore.
If he had the strength, he could end it right now. His gun is heavy in its holster, resting on his hip, but Captain Scarlet would never ask that of him, and Blue could never do it. Adam couldn’t do that.
He opens his eyelids as Scarlet moans, and his stomach lurches. There’s fear in his eyes, and they’re more awake than they have been the past fourteen minutes since he’d gotten his leg blown off.
Two green rings sit dead center on his chest, illuminating his whole body in a sickly green glow. They lurch into motion, panning across the length of his torso, up over his throat and onto his face, skull encircled with the steady glow of the Mysteron life support he depends on.
There is terror in his expression. Paul isn’t breathing, and when he blinks up at Adam, his irises light up green.
Captain Black drawls from the heavens, voice lazy and slow, certain. “Earthmen, we will have our revenge for your act of aggression. Our final act of retaliation will be to reverse Captain Scarlet’s ability to remetabolize. He will be killed, once and for all. You will not succeed.”
Tick, tick, tick!
Paul’s hands clutch around his arms, he chokes Adam’s name in a horrified plea for his life, and Adam-
Adam opens his eyes.
The room is dark around him. His sheets are wet with fearful sweat, and there is a tightly wound knot at the pit of his stomach. His hands are shaking, and there is an ever present ticking at the back of his mind. Tinnitus. Must be tinnitus.
Paul is asleep in his quarters on the other side of the wall, head mere inches away from Adam’s own on his pillow. He lifts a hand, pressing his palm flat against the wall. The paint is cool against his fingerprints, but Adam still remembers the way the warmth had bled back into Paul’s fingers as he’d come back to life, seeping into Adam’s own flesh and spreading across the back of his hand, syrupy and thick, where their skin touched.
He is alive. He is alive and breathing. Adam had counted his breaths, the thump of his heart. He’d stayed until he was sure, and he hadn’t slept until he’d heard the hiss of Paul’s door open and close in the hall.
His time isn’t up yet.
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.
Two threats had come and gone, and they’d taken care of things. Scarlet had taken a bullet, but he’d stayed awake and breathing while his body had healed itself. Captain Blue had watched the whole time as they flew back to Cloudbase, counting the minutes between each subtle wince in Scarlet’s brow. He masked the pain well, but Blue knows him closely enough to know it hurt as his guts stitched themselves back together. It was always worse when he was conscious for it.
Doctor Fawn had lifted Scarlet’s shirt to peer at the injury when they’d landed, and it was little more than a scar by then. Just a pink little circle tucked high on his abdomen, off center from his navel. It had only been forty two minutes. Fawn smacked Scarlet’s shoulder with a heavy thwack, congratulating him on a job well done. “You managed not to die this time! Great work.”
Blue’s mouth pressed into a frown. He scrubbed his hands across his pants, palms itching, and shut his eyes as Fawn took his vitals.
Cleared for duty, Fawn shooed them both away, and they separated at their respective doors with a nod goodnight, exhausted.
Tick, tick.
It had been too long. The clock’s batteries had run dry, or maybe the hands had begun to spin in reverse. It had been too kind to them, and time was up.
Eleven hours and fifty eight minutes.
Paul lay flat in the silence of Sickbay, prone in his bed, entirely still and so so cold. His hand is frigid and dead in Adam’s grip, and Adam’s knuckles ache from keeping his fingers bent for so long. His index finger lives against Paul’s wrist, waiting for the jump of his pulse as the Mysterons revive him.
Tick, tick, tick. Last time he’d fallen from a roof, it had only been seven hours and six minutes before Paul took his first breath. Granted, that had been from the 70th floor, but it’s not like this time was much higher. Twenty five additional floors didn’t make much of a difference when just six were fatal.
Twelve hours. Tick, tick. Adam squeezes hard, like he can get the blood flowing from his grip and kickstart the beating of Paul’s heart. It doesn’t work, it’s as useless as desperate field CPR, and he breathes out slowly as he lays his forehead against the edge of the mattress.
If only his hand could pull Paul back from the dead, could wrench him from the chilling grip of the Mysterons and this endless curse. His heart aches with the desire to take some of the pain of this all away from his friend, to squeeze his hand and let them share it. If he could, he’d reach straight into Paul’s soul and hold on as he was being pieced back together so he could give him a piece of himself to share the agony of it.
How many more times could his body do this? Tick, tick tick. Adam had lost count of how many times he’d waited for Paul to remetabolize over the years. Each death was in Captain Scarlet’s file, but Adam didn’t want to count the entries, didn’t want to scroll and scroll and scroll just to get to the beginning of this nightmare. The beginning, when Captain Blue himself had killed him and this nightmare cycle began.
Someday his ability had to run out. Someday he would die and he wouldn’t wake up.
They would have no idea it was coming. Captain Scarlet would throw himself into the line of fire like he always did, and he’d save the world again, but his counter would turn to zero and he’d be gone.
Tick, tick. Twelve hours, eight minutes. Tick, tick tick.
A faint pulse thumps once beneath Adam’s fingertip, and the timer until Death meets him again begins anew.
Tick, tick, tick, tick.
The sun is warm on his cheeks, and Adam tips his head back as he soaks it in, breathing deep and slow. His lungs fill with each breath, and the maddening tick in his head is muffled. It's peaceful on the flight deck, despite the constant drone of engines as the Angels run drills. It’s familiar, and when the weather is nice, it’s one of Adam’s safest places to just breathe.
His thighs still ache from how many stairs he’d climbed the day prior. Scaling ninety five floors was not an easy feat, and no amount of cardio could prepare him for it. He is alive though, and otherwise unharmed, apart from a few bruises and scrapes. He has Scarlet to thank for that. The job had been a rousing success, according to the Colonel, but that doesn’t mean his body or his mind agree.
Tick, tick, schwick. Adam twists his body as he opens his eyes, and they land upon a tall figure in the doorway behind him. Schwick, tick, tick. One, two, five steps, and Paul lowers himself into the chair beside him.
Perhaps it’s the sun, but his skin is radiant with warmth, and his hair is damp like he’d just gotten out of the shower. He’s dressed in thick sweatpants and a close hugging turtleneck, and he looks so alive. He’d been splattered against the pavement yesterday, his flesh had been just a sack of broken bones and ruptured organs when they’d flown up to Cloudbase, but he was whole again and moving like anyone else. Healed fully, once again.
“Morning,” Adam mutters, clearing his throat as he snaps his head forward. His heart rate ratchets to ninety beats per minute, and his palms are stinging as he folds his hands beneath his arms. He manages a smile, but it’s tight lipped and tense.
“Good morning,” Paul replies, his eyes following Adam’s as they watch the Angels slide smoothly into formation forty two thousand feet in the air. Their engines roar, and that persistent clock ticks louder in Adam’s ear.
He slides a glance towards his field partner, and the set of Paul’s shoulders is rigid. Life had kissed him good morning, but Adam knows him well enough to know it wasn’t without scars.
“You sleep in your own bed last night?” he asks, attempting some levity despite already knowing the answer, and Paul’s responding laugh is sharp.
“Of course not,” he sighs, head tipped up towards the sun. It’s bright on his cheeks, but his whole frame is dark with tension. “I was cleared…” He twists his wrist up and drops his gaze to his watch. Tick, tick. “Forty five minutes ago.”
Adam had left almost three hours ago. Paul’s breathing had returned to normal, and his heart rate rested at a steady sixty eight beats per minute. The color had returned to his skin, and he’d looked peaceful in his slumber. The Mysteron power within him had given him back his health, returned him to life, and left him to wake on his own with his body whole again.
Adam’s answering nod is slow, and his eyes pass over the tightness in Paul’s jaw, the stillness of his shoulders, his entire frame wrought with his demons. He doesn’t have to say it out loud to know they’re thinking the same thing. It had been early evening when their assignment had started going south yesterday, and the sun is ablaze with the strength of the late morning now. He’d been down a long time.
“We should have a couple days off now, unless these damn aliens decide to blow something else up sooner.” Paul huffs another hollow laugh in response, and he tips his head in Adam’s direction to slant the ghost of a smile his way. Adam is being optimistic, but he’d do anything to ease some of the stress in Paul’s head.
Adam’s heart rate ratchets up to one fifteen, and he wets his lips before he swallows. Rhapsody’s engine bellows as she lands, and he can see the blurry edges of another pilot waiting just inside the Amber Room’s windows to take her place after refueling. He breathes, in and out, steady, and his heart slows.
“We’ll see about that.” Paul’s tone is amused, but the harsh line of his shoulders hasn’t eased.
The Mysterons might have given him life, but they left him with the memories of pain, of dying. That part they couldn’t heal.
The clouds roll beneath them, and the sun continues to rise.
Tick, tick, tick, tick.
Captain Blue shifts his glance to his watch, fingers laced together on the desk, and breathes slowly through his nose. Colonel White has been speaking for thirty two minutes, and Blue’s mind has been elsewhere for twenty six.
He blinks, and a flash of blood spurts behind his eyes. Scarlet chokes, coughs, and the bright scarlet droplets spray out over Blue’s arms. He’s barely clinging to life, and his limbs lay twisted on the ground at grotesque angles. He’d been run over by a vehicle transporting a nuclear weapon, arguably one of the more mundane ways to lose his life, but it had brutalized him, and Paul was left sweating and breathing fast and shallow in his agony, crumpled on the road.
There was nothing to do but let him pass. It had already been two minutes, and with the way the light was flickering from his eyes, it wouldn’t be much longer before death took him.
“…Blue will be stationed at Koala Base to assist with resistance training this year.” God tugs at his spine from the heavens, and he straightens in his chair. There is a grating tick in the back of his head, and his palms crawl with the ghost of Scarlet’s dying hand in his own. Colonel White continues, and no one can see the plague tormenting his mind.
Captain Blue slides his arms off the desk and into his lap. Captain Scarlet sits beside him, back rigid and head held high. He is the perfect model of military attention and focus, but he is dripping with gore in Blue’s mind and begging for his life to end.
His fingers ache for the weight of Paul’s in his own. Even limp and cold and dead, they help settle his nerves, help slow his racing heart and the incessant screaming fear of when this will all come crumbling down around them. Maybe it didn’t help Paul any, Adam was always gone when he woke, but it made him feel like he was doing something to help with the agony.
His gut churns, and he presses his lips into a tight line. Colonel White continues to speak, and Blue blinks the blood from his vision.
As useless as his presence may be, Adam won’t leave him, not until he is sure he’ll pull through.
He is breathing, up and down, slow, steady, and Adam’s own lungs fill in time with Paul’s. He is still unconscious, but his heart has been beating for nearly twenty seven minutes, and it has evened out into a solid seventy nine beats per minute. His respiration had been uneven at first, but that had improved too, and the warmth was returning to Paul’s body as he healed.
The tick, tick, tick in his head hasn’t stopped, but it quiets as he squeezes Paul’s hand. The heat of it seeps into Adam’s skin, and he inhales deeply as he lifts it to his face. The stench of metal is gone from his skin, replaced with that sterile scent of Sickbay.
Adam closes his eyes and presses Paul’s knuckles to his brow, his nose brushing against the veins in the back of his hand that are pumping blood through his body and slowly reviving him. If he listens close, he can hear the beat of his freshly mended heart, and it fills Adam’s mind.
Seven long minutes pass before Adam stands, tucks in his chair, and crawls into his own bed to let Paul wake on his own. His chest still rises with the pace of his friend’s breathing, and his hand is warm with the memory of Paul’s skin.
Clink, clink.
Adam frowns, and he steps back from the table to chalk the end of his cue. Red and yellow balls collide, and red rolls to a halt about four centimeters from the left back pocket. There is a sea of yellow balls on the table, and only three red. He’s losing, and terribly at that.
Paul bends at the waist and levels his cue at the white ball. He closes one eye as he lines up the shot, forehead wrinkled in concentration, and draws the stick back. Clink! One red ball rolls smoothly into the middle right pocket, and the one Adam had accidentally set up for him slides in as the cue ball bounces across the table. He looks smug as he stands, and Adam sighs.
“Good shot, Scarlet!” Patrick claps, his laugh loud and obnoxious, and Paul wanders around the table as he assesses the remaining balls. Only one left, and then the eight. Donaghue watches with chagrin, lounging in the plush bench to their left. “You’re the only guy I know who can get their arms blown off and still be good at pool. Hell, you’re the only dead guy I know that’s good at pool too!”
Paul’s face remains impassive, and his gaze is sharp and concentrated while he bends over the table. Adam’s knuckles clench around his cue, tick, tick, heart skipping into a staccato beat, and he counts one, two breaths before Paul holds it as he shoots and the counting halts.
Red and white fly across the table, and a pair of yellow balls ricochet off their trajectory. Paul’s final ball sinks into the front right pocket, directly in front of where Adam is standing.
Paul straightens, and their eyes meet across the table. There is a discerning sort of concern in those ice blue eyes, and Adam knows Paul can see the ghosts in his mind. There’s something else in that gaze too, something softer, but they don’t talk about that part. Maybe they don’t have to, or maybe they’re both afraid of what happens if they speak it into existence. Connections are a liability, and the entire world depends on their ability to stay professional. It is their job to be partners in the field, and Paul is nothing if not a staunch professional, at least most of the time.
Adam clears his throat, and he drops his chin to assess the table.
“Maybe I’m just terrible at pool,” he murmurs, scratching at the back of his neck. There’s a lingering prickle of eyes on him, and Adam bends to take his shot.
He loses the game.
“It’s not supposed to be you getting hurt.” Scarlet’s voice is tense and clipped, and Captain Blue laughs. White hot pain shoots through his torso from the way his abdominal muscles tense, and he gasps, pressing the makeshift compress harder into his ribs.
“Tell it to that guy,” Blue huffs, nodding towards the corpse four feet to his right. The knife he’d caught Captain Blue with lay beside him, clattered to the ground and sticky with his blood.
“You’re the one who pushed in front of me!” There’s sweat on Scarlet’s temple, and he lifts his wrist to check the time. The only blood on his hands is Blue’s own, and there is silence in his head where there is usually a repetitive tick. His cap mic flicks down, and his tone is sharp as he requests an ETA for the ambulance again. This is the third time in the last two minutes he’d demanded it, and it is the same answer as he’d been given before. Eighteen thirty four: about seven minutes out, and while Blue was hurting, he certainly wasn’t bleeding out. Pending any serious internal damage to his intestines or any organs, he’d be perfectly fine.
Technically though, Scarlet isn’t wrong about what happened. Blue had seen the replicant lift his arm, and his body had just…moved on its own. He’d shoved in front of Scarlet, throwing himself in the direct line of fire, and the guy’s startle response had made him swing down hard with the knife. It had caught Blue right in the gut, easily sliced through his vest, and sunk into his abdomen. He hadn’t even felt it happen, his body was alight with adrenaline, but in the time it took Scarlet to fire one strong shock into the replicant’s head, Blue was on the ground. Then it hurt.
Blue shifts his shoulders against the ground, Scarlet had insisted he stayed lying down in case he lost consciousness, and he rolls his gaze up to his partner. He is uncharacteristically frazzled, but maybe this whole constantly fighting for their lives thing was starting to get to him.
“Least I could do for you when you’re constantly getting hurt for me,” Blue replies, and he grunts as another wave of fire washes through him. It hurts to speak, every word makes his stomach tense, and the wound does not agree with that at all.
Scarlet’s face flickers with something like fear, and then morphs with anger, brows pinched and his mouth set in a deep frown. “It’s my job to keep you from getting hurt,” he snaps, and he kneels to replace Blue’s hands on the compress he’s holding. Scarlet presses down a whole lot harder, but Blue refuses to wince. “I should have taken that, and you know it. I was right there.”
Captain Scarlet won’t look him in the eye. Blue can see the rage in the tightness of his shoulders and the harsh line of his mouth, but he’s cautious as he peels back the layers of the gauze compress to check the bleeding. He’s not hemorrhaging by any means, but it’s not great either.
He doesn’t want to admit it, but Scarlet is right. He’d purposely gotten in the way to take a hit that wasn’t meant for him. He hadn’t even thought about it, just let his body move on instinct to block him. It was stupid and reckless, especially considering the fact that Scarlet would have been good as new in an hour. Blue wouldn’t have gotten in the way like that for anyone else, and no one would do it for Scarlet. He would have healed so quickly, but Captain Blue isn’t so lucky.
Despite the mess he’s gotten them into, he doesn’t regret it. He doesn’t want Paul’s blood on his hands anymore, and he doesn’t want to listen to that damn incessant tick as he frets over him. He doesn’t want to watch him die today.
Captain Scarlet’s eyes flick up to Blue’s face, and he meets ice blue firmly. There’s so much concern swimming in those eyes, like neither of them had ever had worse before, and they shine in the light as Blue looks into them. He’s pristine, aside from the blood on his hands, and Adam is immensely grateful they made it through this without him getting hurt, even with the pain he’s in. Paul is safe, entirely uninjured, and furious. Anger won’t kill him, though. Maybe it would raise his blood pressure, but it wouldn’t kill him.
“He could’ve killed you,” Scarlet snaps, his stare dropping to his watch again. His teeth gnash, and Blue can hear them grind together. His eyes remain glued to Captain Scarlet, and he watches the way his jaw shifts, so taut. “That was incredibly foolish of you.”
Blue scoffs, and it hurts. He clenches his fingers in the fabric of his pants, but it does nothing to displace the pain. “Sorry for the inconvenience,” he mutters, and irritation curls in his chest as he slants a look towards the ceiling. Right or not, Scarlet doesn’t need to scold him like a damned child. “You have to actually use your first aid knowledge now. Can’t just let me bleed out.”
Scarlet grabs both his wrists, lifts his arms, and presses Blue’s palms into his compress again with sharp motions. He stands rigidly, boots grinding against the gravel on the ground, and his whole body is tight with restraint. Blue can feel the exasperation pouring off him, the anger and frustration, and both his hands clench into themselves as his mic flips down again. He turns away from Blue as he speaks and retreats to the entrance of the building to meet the approaching sirens.
Captain Blue sighs, and he closes his eyes.
He knows it was stupid, but he can’t keep watching Paul get hurt. He can’t just stand around and do nothing, can’t just let him die for him again and again like it wasn’t tearing them both apart. Of course he is grateful for the way he protects Blue, he would have been dead a hundred times over if it weren’t for Scarlet, but it doesn’t mean that he can’t return the favor once in a while. Adam can’t just stop caring about his life, even when Paul doesn’t have enough concern for himself to not throw himself on the sword without hesitation, regardless of the way the pain and the memories of it linger and rot in his head. Spectrum doesn’t have anyone else that can do what he does, and there are often situations that will end in his demise, but inside the new body carrying him each time he dies is a man who has to live with the memories of that pain.
Adam doesn’t regret his choice.
The drive to the hospital is tense and silent.
Scarlet sits across from him in the back of the ambulance, fuming, arms crossed over his chest and staring daggers into the medic working Blue over. The poor girl doesn’t even bat an eye, she must deal with angry brunets often, and the world goes fuzzy. There’s a prick in his elbow, and she straps a mask over his nose which Blue reluctantly accepts.
He breathes in slow and deep, and her voice suddenly sounds far away as she speaks to him. All the jostling getting in here moved things around, and he’s hurting, quite badly. He turns his head to the side, and scarlet fills his field of view before he closes his eyes.
Adam spends three days locked up on strict bedrest in the medical wing of Cloudbase. He was half awake on the flight up, but he doesn’t remember most of it. There’s glimpses of a familiar pale face, of dark hair and a presence beside him, but when he woke fully, he was alone. Doctor Fawn is a consistent presence, but otherwise, Adam is left to his own devices.
After a thorough inspection, Doctor Fawn clears him to leave Sickbay. He is under no circumstances to do anything strenuous, and active duty is suspended indefinitely, per his healing. There’s nothing but free time in his immediate future, and Adam doesn’t know what to think of that.
Two hours after he returns to his quarters, he is summoned to the Control Room. Adam knows full well what’s coming for him, and his stomach twists with anxiety as he dresses. It’s awkward and painful, the motion aggravates his gut, but he grits his teeth and settles his cap on his head. He has to face this eventually, and he steels himself as he makes his way down the halls.
Captain Scarlet is already seated at the round desk, and Blue lowers himself into the chair to his left. Colonel White’s mouth is set in a firm line, and he steeples his fingers in front of himself. Scarlet does not look at him, facing stiffly ahead, but perhaps that’s for the best. The Colonel’s stare is heavy enough, and it turns Blue’s stomach with a fresh wave of nervousness.
“Captain Blue, I trust you are healing well,” he starts, terse. Blue nods once, and the Colonel looks between the two of them. His frown is set firmly on his face, and it ages him. “Do you understand the situation you’ve put us in?”
Ah, so this was the conversation he feared it would be. Blue shifts in his seat, and he swallows, nodding resolutely. “I do, Colonel. I apologize. Doctor Fawn gave you his report?”
Colonel White nods, the movement sharp, and the wrinkle between his brows deepens. “Several weeks before active duty. Yes, I read it,” he retorts. “We are now down an agent for a month, possibly longer, due to the irresponsible and erratic choice you made. It was unbelievably foolish of you to be injured like this, Captain Blue.”
Blue’s eyes drop to the desk, and he swallows. There is nothing he can say, and nothing he should, frankly. Captain Scarlet sits beside him, chin held high, faced forward. He is unaffected, and Adam wishes he could say the same for himself.
“Captain Scarlet would have returned to duty the following day,” the Colonel continues, and Adam feels a bit like a child being scolded by his father. These are things he already knows, he’s had more than enough time to think these past few days, and he doesn’t need to hear them. “You and I both know who should have taken that blade.”
Captain Blue clears his throat, silent for a few moments. There is nothing he can say to explain the reasoning behind his instincts. No way to justify this to either of the men sitting with him in this room. Without exposing the demons in his head and catapulting them into an even worse situation, there is nothing he can say that will help.
“Colonel, I-”
“It was my fault.” Scarlet’s voice cuts in suddenly, and Blue’s spine snaps to attention. He jerks his chin towards his friend, eyes widening slightly, but Captain Scarlet stares unwaveringly towards their Colonel. “I wasn’t fast enough, sir. I let him get hurt, and I apologize for that. It was on me.”
Blue tightens the line of his mouth, and he folds his hands together in his lap, fingers clenched. He can count on one hand the number of times he’d heard Scarlet lie, except during card games. They both know that wasn’t the way things had happened. Colonel White looks between them, discerning the truth of this statement, and Scarlet does not falter.
“Is that so?” White asks. Neither of them respond. He nods slowly in understanding, and he shifts his gaze to Scarlet, frown still set in place. “In that case, I apologize, Captain Blue. Good work. It’s a shame you were injured due to Captain Scarlet’s poor reflexes.” The muscle in Scarlet’s jaw twitches, and the Colonel pauses, as if he’s waiting for him to crack and admit to the truth. He doesn’t, and Colonel White sits back in his chair. “You’re both dismissed. Scarlet, I’ll be reassigning you a temporary field partner until Captain Blue heals. We’ll speak about this further once I receive your full report.”
They both stand, and their chairs sink beneath the desk into the floor. “Thank you, sir,” Scarlet murmurs, and Blue replies with his own “thank you, Colonel” before they turn and depart from the Control Room together.
They walk in silence, and Blue follows without question as Scarlet leads them down the hall. Cloudbase is quiet at this time in the afternoon. Most of its agents are out on assignments or training; Blue can’t imagine what he’s going to do for the next three weeks trapped in here. He can only sit on the Flight Deck for so long before his eyes will fall out of his head, and he’d go insane with boredom playing pool all day, especially without his favorite opponent.
“Paul,” Adam says suddenly once he’s sure they’re out of earshot of the Control Room. Colonel White is suspicious enough; he doesn’t need to overhear this conversation. “Why did you lie for me?”
Captain Scarlet halts, and there’s something like irritation or frustration in his expression as he turns to face Adam that he can’t quite parse out. He hasn’t seen Paul at all since returning to Cloudbase, and normally he’d at least have come to check on him. Last time he’d been hospitalized, Paul had spent an entire free day playing card games with him in bed and disobeying the medical staff’s orders. It was very unusual to not have caught even a glimpse of him in the last three days. He certainly seemed to be harboring some anger, so why would he lie to save Adam from a grilling he deserved to get?
Paul sighs, and he turns his face away, sliding his hands into his pants pockets. “You didn’t need him to chew you out for it,” he replies, but the tight look on his face says there’s more to it than just that. Adam may not be able to read him as well as he’d like, but he knows Paul enough to be sure there is something else to it.
Adam doesn’t reply, and Paul hesitates, but he meets his eyes. There’s guilt there, like he blames himself for the situation Adam is in, and understanding dawns. Blue folds his arms over his chest, and he huffs, “You think the Colonel’s never come down on me before? I don’t need you to protect me.”
“I don’t need you to protect me either,” Paul retorts, and while his tone is harsh, the look in his eyes is anything but. There’s a softness there, something that says ‘I wanted to’ and ‘I understand why you did it’, and Adam swallows down the fluttery feeling bubbling in his chest. It’s not the first time Paul has looked at him like this, but it’s the first time he’s maintained it after Adam catches him in it.
There is an unspoken understanding between them that passes through their eyes in that moment, and there’s something more in the implication of it. Something they can’t discuss, for fear of the collateral of it. Then again, maybe they don’t need to talk about it to make this thing that has been building between them for years real. His heart is pounding, and Adam swallows the rock in his throat with difficulty.
“I’ll just get hurt again, you know,” Paul murmurs, his voice hushed and soft. The look in his eyes is velvet, and Adam’s palms itch with desire. “You don’t have to throw yourself on the sword to keep me safe.”
Regardless of the truth of that statement, Adam still doesn’t regret what he’d done. He’d hurt himself a million times over to keep Paul safe, to save him from some pain. He dies for Adam every other day. A lie may seem like nothing in comparison, but to Paul, it is monumental. Adam knows the gravity of it, and Paul knows that he understands.
“I know,” Adam breathes, and he wets his lips. Their gazes linger, and a heavy weight hangs in the air between them. It curls up in Adam’s chest, and it makes him feel like his breath is caught beneath its mass.
Adam is the first to break the staredown, and Paul steps back a single pace. “Go rest up,” he commands, voice honeyed, and turns on his heel. He retreats down the hall without looking back, and Adam is left with a throbbing heart and sweat on his palms.
He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. His hands are stinging from the memory of warmth in them, and his stomach is turning from the mixture of emotions in him.
There’s something. What it is yet, Adam isn’t certain, but there’s something.
How to admit it, he doesn't know, but he has a feeling Paul doesn’t either. He doesn’t have to, really. The look in his eyes is confession enough, and the unending way he protects Adam.
Whatever happens, whatever they are, they are a team, and Paul would be there for him when he healed.
They’d figure the rest out later.