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Nathaniel's consciousness flickered back into existence, slowly and painfully like an old light that hadn't been used in ages. Gravity fought against his eyelids but after a few laborious attempts, he finally managed to keep his eyes open.
His vision was blurry though it didn't matter since there was nothing worthy of seeing. Just various shades of black walls, a constant reminder that he was trapped in a literal hellhole.
A silent groan slithered out between his parted lips as he tried to move. This was the part where Nathaniel had to assess the damage done to him in order to start reversing it. First, he wriggled his fingers and after realizing they were all still there and none were broken, he used them to check on the upper part of his body.
He felt the skin stretched across his hips, tracing the lines of long healed wounds and searching for new ones. There were no fresh cuts but he could feel bruised areas at his sides. Nathaniel didn't think about the implications and continued his assessment, trailing his fingertips up his chest to his neck.
Even light pressure elicited a hiss of pain from him and he found an answer to a question that his broken mind hadn't had the time to form yet. Somebody choked him, that's what caused him to pass out. It was a small mercy, Nathaniel thought, he much preferred this to a hit in the head. A concussion usually followed that and those were a bitch to deal with.
But just because he wouldn't have to walk around with a dizzy head and double vision, didn't mean Nathaniel was lucky. The lack of open wounds on his torso was suspicious and he was worried what it meant for the rest of his body.
After giving himself a moment to take a long breath, Nathaniel lifted himself onto his elbows. A sharp pain shot straight up his spine, making him gasp for air. His hands clenched the sheets underneath him and he struggled to keep the bile down. The pain was familiar and Nathaniel could no longer pretend not to know the origin of the bruises littering his hips.
Rough, cruel hands left those behind, Nathaniel just didn't know who they belonged to. Maybe Riko, maybe the other backliners in his close circle. In truth, it didn't really make a difference who it was or how many there were, Nathaniel felt sick to the stomach regardless.
He could feel the phantom touch, fingernails leaving imprints etched into his skin in an effort to keep his unresponsive body in place as they…
The hairs on his arms stood up as a violent shiver ran through him like an earthquake. He shook it out and the sudden movement only brought more attention to the pain in his lower back. Cursing did little to soothe it, but Nathaniel kept a stream of it as he moved one leg after the other, painstakingly, inch by inch until they dropped over the side of his bed with a quiet thump.
Getting into a seating position was torture enough but when he tried to stand up, his shaky legs gave out underneath him. He accidentally bit his tongue when he collapsed to the floor and the taste of blood filling his mouth made him double over and retch. Nothing came out of his empty stomach other than some blood laced spit.
Nathaniel swiped the back of his hand across his face, then gathered himself with deep breaths just like Jean taught him. He would breathe with him, one hand tangled in Nathaniel's hair to ground him and the other one pressing into his wrist, feeling the rapid pulse underneath. For one childish moment, Nathaniel sulked over the fact that Jean wasn't there to help now, but he squashed that feeling just as quickly as it came.
If Jean wasn't here, there was a good reason for it and Nathaniel would just have to drag himself through the rest of his routine alone. With no one to help get him up on his feet, he started crawling his way to the bathroom.
The humiliation of it never registered. There was nobody to witness his pitiful journey and the need to scrub himself raw was growing the more aware of his body he became. The aches festered under his skin and the feeling of hands on him was becoming unbearable, like the hot press of an iron.
He had long ago learned that the fingerprints on him could never be erased, only piled up. Nothing would ever truly make him feel clean again, but at least the burning pain between his thighs would get lost in the sensation of scalding water hitting his back.
Nathaniel needed to get into the shower.
It was all he could think of by the time he reached the door and pushed them open.
He stilled when the door hit something and stopped halfway. His brain shut down and for a terrifying second he couldn't make sense of what he was seeing.
There was too much red.
Entirely too much for the little bathroom. Which didn't make sense because color wasn't to be found in the Nest. There just wasn't any. It was all black, suffocating and all consuming, contrasted by the clinical and impersonal white ceramic of their bathrooms. The effect was maddening but Nathaniel would have much preferred that to the terror that was setting in at the sight of blood filling the space between the tiles.
Nathaniel knew horror, he knew it better than the back of his scarred palm but the paralyzing chill in his bones was an entirely new sensation. Jean's freakishly long legs were what obstructed the door and before he could blink, Nathaniel was trudging through the blood, soaking up his sweatpants.
Jean was shaking on the floor, his arms a battlefield of open cuts, long, short, shallow and deep, nonsensical in their placement.
Nathaniel didn't think, there was no time to. He pulled the towels from the cupboard and tried to slow down the bleeding. Jean produced a small whimper at the pressure and his bleary eyes searched for the source.
"N-Nat," he whined out and Nathaniel locked his gaze with his partner for a brief moment in acknowledgement before he moved on to grab the medical kit from under the sink.
"Nat, I…" Jean tried again, while Nathaniel struggled to push the end of a thread through the needle with unsteady hands.
"I'm sorry ," Jean slurred in French on the third try and Nathaniel nearly stabbed himself with the pointy end. "I'm sorry, I can't, I couldn't…they said…"
He didn't want to know, he really didn't but he would rather have Jean talking than saying nothing.
"They…Riko…he made me watch…he said he'd make me…," he stuttered and Nathaniel breathed through the nausea, pulling one of Jean's arms toward him to start stitching him up because gauze wouldn't be enough for all of this.
Jean made another wounded noise when the needle punctured his skin and made a weak attempt to get away from Nathaniel.
"Nat, you…it– it hurts."
He didn't dare stop, not even when what little remained off his heart shattered further upon hearing the pain in Jean's voice.
"Please…I'm…I'm sorry…Nat–"
At some point the words turned into broken sniffles, Jean's protests getting weaker and weaker. That's when Nathaniel picked up his end, murmuring the closest thing he knew to comforting words in French, all the while still pulling at the thread messily.
"It's gonna be alright, Jean."
He would disinfect later.
"Stay with me."
His ears buzzed with static.
"I'm right here."
He kept going.
"You're gonna be okay."
One stitch after the other. Everything around Nathaniel was white noise, and he stayed laser focused on the task. Eventually he ran out of words to say and he got stuck repeating the same mumble of words over and over again like a mantra.
Hold on. Hold on, Jean. Just hold on.
For me, for Kevin, for yourself.
Only after every single cut on his body was closed with a black thread, did he lift his head to look up at Jean's face and found his eyes closed. Long dark lashes casting shadows over his pronounced cheekbones.
Nathaniel froze for a second before calling out. "Jean?"
Nothing happened and before panic could completely take over, he repeated his name again, this time with more urgency. "Jean. Wake up."
His partner didn't respond, didn't even stir and Nathaniel reached his bloodied hand out to his pale cheek, pinching it lightly before slapping it when that still didn't produce a reaction.
"Jean, stop fucking with me, wake up," he croaked out and grabbed his shoulders, leaving red handprints in his wake. Nathaniel shook him and watched with creeping dread when Jean's head simply lolled to the other side and thumped against the glass of the shower stall.
His body was completely limp, a puppet cut off his strings, no master to control him anymore. Nathaniel shook him again, getting more desperate with every try. "Wake your sorry ass up," he spat at him, ignoring how his voice broke over French vowels. "Jean."
Jean remained silent. Only then did he realize that his partner was being too silent.
No.
No, no, no.
"No," Nathaniel screamed at him. He could've sworn he had seen Jean's chest moving, that he had heard his shallow intakes of breath. There was none of that now, just dead silence.
"No! Jean, don't you fucking dare!"
Nathaniel dragged him to the ground, his fingers digging into Jean's neck. He couldn't feel anything.
"No," he commanded this time, then kneeled above him and started pressing against his sternum with everything he had. "You fucking bastard, you're not dying on me," Nathaniel ground out through his teeth before putting his mouth over Jean's, blowing air into his.
No matter how many times he repeated the process, Jean remained motionless. Nathaniel could barely see through the tears that were rapidly building in his eyes. Forgoing all procedures, he slammed his fists against his partner's chests, begging for the first time since he was a child.
"Please, Jean, please come back," he cried as his arms gradually lost strength. "Don't go, please, don't go," he whispered, letting himself slump down and sobbed into the pale expanse of skin that would never get a chance to bruise from the hits it took.
"Jean, I–" Nathaniel started but never finished.
There were too many things to say, there were none at all.
Instead of trying to form words, he let his lips rest above Jean's heart, saying goodbye with a gesture foreign to the both of them. After all, gentleness was not a thing that grew in the brutal environment of the Nest and yet, Nathaniel made sure to be gentle with Jean this one last time.
With a carefulness Nathaniel didn't even know he possessed, he kissed Jean's chest, then brushed a strand of black hair out of his face before lowering himself down to curl up next to him.
He lay there on the bathroom floor, his face pressed into Jean's unmovable side, tears eventually drying out. His body was locked into place and Nathaniel held his breath, willing himself to pass out again, hoping against hope he would wake up to a different reality. One where Nathaniel regained consciousness faster and didn't waste precious time checking his own injuries. Not while Jean was silently drowning in a pool of his blood.
However, there were no second chances, not in his miserable life. Betrayed by his own survival instinct, he took a stuttering breath even though Nathaniel didn't want to live in a world without Jean. A world where he not only was nothing but he had nothing.
He had nobody.
Kevin was long gone and after years of fighting to stay, Jean had chosen to leave too. He didn't – couldn't – blame him, but that didn't change the truth.
Nathaniel was well and truly alone now.