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When Rune comes back to consciousness, he doesn’t remember where he is. He reaches out to find Brand’s hand before he even opens his eyes, and then realises he’s already holding Brand’s hand, his grip feverish and clammy. “What–” he manages.
“Addam, he’s awake,” Brand says sharply, and a sudden beam of sunlight hits Rune as Addam moves away from the window, letting in the flickering light. Oh, wait, he realises. It’s not sunlight. It’s firelight.
“Hero,” Addam says, moving to stand next to Brand and take Rune’s other hand. He sounds relieved, and Rune realises they’re both soot stained and battleworn. Right.
“Did we kill it?” he asks, squeezing Addam’s hand. He feels like he has a sunburn, and he doesn’t know if that means someone used a healing sigil on him, or if he stood too close to the inferno still raging on the grounds outside. The room they’re in is bare, whitewashed wood, cobwebs in all the corners. The second floor of the abandoned infirmary building, Rune thinks, which escaped being vandalised as much as the first floor. And with a better vantage point over the extremely haunted grounds outside, which is why he assumes Brand chose this room. He’s been laid on a bare table, with Brand’s jacket bundled under his head. He sits up, releasing Brand and Addam’s hands, and swings his legs over the side.
“Yes, we did,” Addam confirms, and Brand snorts.
“We didn’t have much to do with it,” he says, shifting his weight from foot to foot and back again, like he’s ready to bolt at any moment. “You killed it. Extensively.”
Right. The ghoul had come up behind them, silent as the grave. It had clearly been feeding for a long time here, powerful and bitter. Rune hadn’t blamed it. This is hardly the worst they’ve seen in the process of cleansing the last vestiges of the Hanged Man’s properties from New Atlantis. Rune drops down from the table, takes a few cautious steps, and determines that nothing hurts. The ghoul had reached for Brand, and Rune had taken objection to that. His Aspect becoming a firestorm is the last thing he remembers before waking up.
“Okay, good,” he says. He brushes flakes of ash from his shirt. At least he still had all his clothes this time. “I don’t know how long it was feeding here, but it must have been decades at least. If someone had stumbled onto the grounds not knowing it was here…” It would have been brutal. He can see it all too clearly, some stupid, childish scion, himself at fifteen. A dare, and a vault over the fence into darkness and then the crunch of bone.
“I know,” Addam says, “But not anymore. Now drunken teenagers can roam the gardens as they wish.” He gestures expansively around the room. Rune knows Addam understands, because they have their own handful of teenagers to corral.
“Whatever’s left of the grounds, at any rate,” Brand mutters.
Rune takes two steps towards the window to see, then– registers the weirdness coming from the bond. Concern is the undercurrent, easy enough to identify. The rest is…
“What?” he says, pausing. “I’m fine now. Just used too much magic too fast, I think. Did my Aspect do something weird, or something?”
Addam comes over to him before he can look out of the window, and takes his face in his hands, kissing him gently for just a moment.
“No,” he says fondly, as Rune looks at him. “Your Aspect was very normal. Impressive, as always, of course,” he adds hastily, clearly seeing the joke Rune’s about to make from his face. “No. While I do not know for certain what you’re feeling from Brandon right now, I can make a guess based on his face alone.”
“His face?” Rune says, pulling away from Addam to stare across the room suspiciously at Brand. “What’s wrong with your face?”
“Nothing’s wrong with my face,” Brand says, exasperated, but he won’t meet Rune’s eyes. “Addam’s just dramatic.” His face does look normal, Rune confirms. Just a slight flush that deepens as Rune stares at him. He scrubs his hand across his stubble as if that would hide it.
Rune looks at his companion for one moment longer, then suddenly stands bolt upright. “Oh!” he says, jabbing an accusing finger at Brand. “Since fucking when do you think that me using my Arcana powers is hot?”
“Yes, Brandon,” Addam says, and he sounds so teasing that Rune knows they’d been having this conversation over his unconscious body. “That’s usually my job, is it not?”
“I don’t—” Brand says, before Rune cuts over him.
“You’ve never once been impressed with my ‘magic bullshit’,” he says, incredulous, half accusing and half triumphant.
“That’s not fucking true–”
“Not once! It’s all ‘be careful, Rune’ and ‘why did you blow yourself up instead of waiting for back up again, Rune’–”
“Well, if you stopped fucking blowing yourself up I’d stop saying–”
“Heroes, please,” Addam interjects, before Rune can start physically shaking Brand’s shoulders. “Rune, come with me and look out of the window.”
Looking between Addam and Brand, who turns away and puts his red face in his hands when Addam mentions looking out the window, Rune follows Addam to the window.
Outside, the fire is dying out. The shrubbery surrounding the large lawn is looking distinctly worse for wear, but the lawn…
The majority of it is untouched. It’s just that across the entire thing, sprawled and smoking, is the infinity loop of the Companion symbol, burnt black into the very earth itself.
Rune puts a hand over his mouth. “Oops.”
“Did you mean to do that?” Brand demands, coming up at his shoulder.
“No,” Rune protests. “No, I was just– you know, the ghoul was going after you and I didn’t want it to hurt you, and you’re… you’re my guy. And I guess my Aspect… uh, ran with the theme… Sorry?” he adds, glancing at Brand out of the corner of his eye. The bond is still tense, uncertainty lacing through it with icy fingers.
Brand just pulls him roughly into a sideways hug. “Don’t fucking apologise,” he says. Rune lets himself be gripped.
Addam comes to drape his arm around Rune’s other shoulder, hand resting on Brand’s upper arm beside Rune’s ear. “Our hero torched his love for you into the ground,” he says. “With an extremely recognisable icon. In the middle of an undercover mission.” He sounds inordinately fond, and Rune ducks his head.
“We can’t take you fucking anywhere,” Brand says, and he, too, sounds so fond Rune’s eyes prickle with it.
“It was an accident,” Rune says. “But. You know I mean it, too.” It isn’t a question, because it doesn’t need to be. He just lets the bond turn warm, lets it say companion, companion, companion.
Brand squeezes Rune’s shoulders. “Thanks for the assist,” is all he says. “I could have taken out a singular fucking ghoul, but… thanks.”
They watch the last remnants of the fire flutter out in the damp morning, and Rune knows it’s all going to be okay.