Chapter Text
Adam sat in one of the many old and worn upholstered living chairs that had found themselves strewn about the multiple floors of the oversized farmhouse on Tuck’s Pig Farm, gazing through the window of the bedroom that had been designated as his and his partner’s for the night with a lit cigarette in hand. The changing colors of the leaves on the trees outside sprawled along the shifting hues of the mid-autumn sky. A crisp chill had begun settling into the air, signaling that his favorite time of year was finally upon them, or at least what had been his favorite time of year up until three years ago when some jerk off cancer patient with too much money and time on his hands decided to put him in a death trap to teach him to “appreciate his life”.
Truthfully, he didn’t at the time, but in that rust and shit encrusted bathroom, he’d been confronted with death- real, material death. It went from something hypothetical that he’d mulled over on his worst days, at his lowest points, to a tangible thing that was going to happen right fucking now, for fucking real, and, most importantly of all, in all of that, he’d met the love of his life.
So now here he was, clad in black eyeliner, black nail polish, and a long sleeve wedding dress, white lace expanding across his chest, over his collarbones and about a third of the way up his neck, and down his arms to his wrists over a white bodice that turned into a poof skirt that extended around him down to the floor. The bride to be on the three year anniversary of that fucked up day. The day his life ended and began anew, when he learned what fear truly was, and what it meant to be trapped and helpless in mind, body, and soul, at the mercy of a man who should have wanted to put that bullet in him a lot sooner and a lot higher.
Adam survived.
However, thanks to Lawrence, he’d yet to truly escape.
But today was going to change that. Once he and Lawrence were married, they would finally be out. They’d finally be done with the work that Adam’s new spouse had inexplicably decided to dedicate himself to since the day he first awoke outside that bathroom, thus ending their time as accomplices to the infamous Jigsaw killer once and for all.
Adam hated Lawrence for becoming part of this, and hated that he’d allowed his intended to drag him along with him. Hated that he’d knowingly taken photos for the man he loved that led to people like them being maimed, tortured, and killed. Hated that Lawrence seemed so convinced that they were doing good by taking up their captor’s cause. Hated himself and his heart for loving Lawrence so deeply that he forgave him for it.
But at least once they were wed, it was going to be over. No more Jigsaw, no more “tests,” no more of his beloved sneaking off into the night to do God knows what to people who mostly- with a few exceptions- did not deserve whatever he was doing to them.
They just had to get married here first for some fucking reason, surrounded by all those same fucking people that had put him and Lawrence in that bathroom to begin with, and a few that had joined in Jigsaw’s crusade in the years since. In a farmhouse that could be more aptly described as a mini-mansion given its grossly obnoxious, grandiose size. Who knew there was so much money in raising and slaughtering pigs?
The place had been shuttered as a working farm due to an outbreak of some pig disease, and thus became another abandoned building in John Kramer’s repertoire of hideouts, despite still being owned by…Jill’s aunt? Her cousin?
Adam didn’t fucking care.
All he cared about was getting through his wedding day, and then never having to see any of these people, the warehouses, the blood, the pain, this place, ever again. Lawrence promised, and Lawrence kept his promises.
He wouldn’t lie to him, after all.
Adam lazily brought his cigarette to his lips and slowly filled his lungs with the burn of its contents.
This was fine. This was going to be fine.
It’s not like nearly every marriage he’d ever known had ended in divorce, including his soon to be husband’s previous one. Adam’s parents were still together, as much as he really fucking wished they weren’t, and he’d be damned if his marriage was going to be anything like theirs. He sure as shit wasn’t going to put Diana through anything like that, even if Lawrence only had custody of her on the weekends.
Adam slowly closed his eyes and exhaled smoke through his nose, quickly opening them again and stubbing out the butt of his spent cigarette in the ashtray he’d set on the windowsill. Not a second passed before he was reaching over to the pack on the vanity next to him to retrieve a new one, popping it between his lips and lighting it, taking a deep inhale of its fresh contents.
This whole thing was surreal, to say the least, for a variety of reasons. He never really thought he’d get married, for one thing. It was something he’d wanted, sure, a chance to right the wrongs of his upbringing and prove to himself that he could be a better father than his was. Though he’d hoped, he never honestly thought that anyone would actually look at him, the colossal fuck up of all fuck ups, and say, “Yes, I want to spend the rest of my life with this man, he should raise my babies,” let alone want him to join the family they already had. How Lawrence came to that conclusion, Adam really didn’t know, but he was grateful that he did. He was grateful that someone did.
His eyes wandered down to the vine covered archway and folding chairs that had been set up on the grassy area below and scoffed at the cliché of it all, a welcome distraction from the anxious nausea that had been building in his gut from the moment he’d first tried on his dress only a month ago.
To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or worse. For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.
‘Til death do us part.
The words washed over him, the weight of them. From this day forward, for better or worse, for every terrible thing they’d done and all the good things they’d do in the future, Lawrence would be his husband and he would be his. For richer or poorer, hopefully never having to share a home like Adam’s shithole apartment again like they did after first being released from Wilson Steel, (thanks to his soon to be spouse’s money), in the sickness of the work they’d done, the circumstances of the day they’d met, in the recovery and health of their future.
Until death did they part.
And even though you pulled me into a murder cult that definitely hates me- your leader left me for dead and his pretend daughter tried to kill me- I honestly can’t wait to get you out of here and spend the rest of my life with you.
“Likewise.”
The sound of Adam’s least favorite word in the English language barged through his thoughts from somewhere behind him.
Was he just saying all of that outloud?
Shit.
Adam turned in his chair to see his betrothed standing in the doorway behind him in a royal blue suit with black lapels and a black tie, dark brown walnut cane in hand. His straight blonde hair was neatly combed over in contrast to Adam’s dark, wild locks that he’d done his best to flatten and style into a part almost down the middle despite an unruly tuft that insisted on sticking up in the back. He was impressed with Lawrence’s restraint, having yet to hear a single “I told you so” in reference to Adam not getting a hair cut before their big day.
Perhaps it was just that the older man found the sight of his soon to be wed just as distracting as Adam found him, an unchaste smile creeping up the side of the brunette’s face as he drank in the delicious sight of the broad, much taller man before him.
Fuck, he looked good in blue.
“Hey gorgeous.”
Lawrence silently laughed to himself, eyes bashfully flicking down to the floor and then back up to his fiancé.
“Hello, sweetheart.”
Adam gently bit into his lower lip, “You’re lucky that suit isn’t a rental.”
Lawrence stepped into the room, adorned with his irresistible playful smile. “And why is that?”
“Cuz it’s about to be turned into a pile of cum rags.”
Laughter burst from the other man’s chest, the most beautiful music in the world, as he continued his slow, purposeful stride toward his love. “Wait until after we’re married,” his voice dropped to a low, concupiscent pitch, “and then we can take apart and use this suit however we want.”
Adam giggled, hips wiggling in his chair. He knew damn well that Lawrence had gone with a suit and tie instead of a traditional tux because of all the ways Adam liked incorporating the doctor’s ties into their sex life. It wasn’t a kink he’d ever explored before this relationship, but then, he’d never dated anyone who wore ties before this relationship. It was something he and Lawrence had in common.
The younger man jumped to his feet, cigarette in hand. He was delighted to see the way his intended’s eyes scanned over his body, quickly followed by an all too familiar disappointment when all Lawrence had to say was, “No heels?”
Adam shoved aside his dissatisfaction and tried to save the moment with a flirty, “You don’t wanna save ‘em for later when you have me bent over the bed?”
Arousal flashed over the blonde’s face as he closed the distance between them, cupping the shorter man’s jaw with a warm, secure, and practiced hand, “I’m looking forward to it.”
Their lips came together in a slow, lingering kiss that Lawrence was the first to pull back from.
“Yum, ashtray.”
Adam held out his still burning cigarette to his beloved, “Want some?”
He wasn’t all that surprised to see the practicing oncologist take it between his fingers and pull a deep drag. As much as Lawrence constantly gave Adam shit for smoking, it wasn’t unheard of for him to partake every now and then, an old habit that he’d indulged in when he was his espoused’s age, and for the most part had left behind in his youth. If anything, Adam was relieved to see a sign that his ever composed soon to be husband was just as nervous as he was, if not more so given how badly he fucked up his last marriage.
Lawrence leaned against the windowsill and nodded towards the group of all of Adam’s least favorite people beginning to gather around the ceremony site that had been arranged for them, pulling the cigarette from his lips, “We should head down there. It’ll be time soon.”
“Do we really have to do this here? Why couldn’t we just elope like a couple of normal fags?”
Lawrence scoffed in disapproval with another drag before handing back the cig, “Don’t use that word.”
“Sorry.” Adam rolled his eyes and took a drag of his own, savoring the other man’s lingering taste on the filter.
“Besides,” Lawrence countered, his tone more lighthearted, giving a gentle boop to the scarred bump on the bridge of Adam’s nose, “is there anything normal about our relationship?”
A deeply enamored smile and the emerald shine in Adam’s eyes betrayed his dramatic sigh, “No, I guess not.”
“And that’s what makes our love so special, right?”
Adam took another breath from his cigarette, “Yeah, that’s what makes us so special.”
Their eyes lingered on the other’s for just a few seconds of quiet tenderness, before Adam decided that on today of all days, he wasn’t going to bite his tongue on his fucking wedding day.
“But seriously, why are we doing this here? You know how much I fucking hate this and you know they all hate me, too.” Lawrence groaned, annoyed, as Adam continued, “What’s Diana gonna say when she finds out we did this without her? We don’t belong here!”
“Why do you care what they think of you? Isn’t it good enough that I love you?” Lawrence gestured to his own heart as a pang of remorse stabbed into Adam’s, his gaze drifting back to nothing in particular in their marital suite. “And whether you like it or not, these people are important to me. They’re important to us. And in any case, after this,” Lawrence gestured towards the archway outside, “neither of us are ever seeing any of them again.”
He placed a broad palm, flat against Adam’s chest, directly over his beating heart. “I’m making that conceit for you, because I love you. No more pain, no more stalking, no more bloodshed. You just have to do this here, with me,” Lawrence tilted his head towards the group outside, his eyes never leaving his love’s, “with them, and then it’s over. Alright?”
Adam released a deep sigh of smoke, face painted in resignation. “Ok. Fine.”
“We’re already here, do you want me to-”
“I said it’s fine, Lawrence.”
Adam’s eyes dropped to the floor, and his soulmate gently took one of his cheeks in his left hand, thumb under his jaw, tilting the shorter man’s face up until their eyes were forced to meet, softly, pleading, “This is the first day of the rest of our lives. I don’t want to start it by fighting with you.”
“Yeah,” Adam’s eyes fell away from his betrothed’s again, sullenly mumbling, “me either.”
He looked back up at the man he loved more than anything else in the world, the sadness on his face. Fuck, they weren’t even married yet and he was already ruining this.
“Look,” Lawrence gently removed Adam’s smoldering cigarette from between his fingers and snuffed it out before taking the younger man’s hands in his, their fingers intertwining on the handle of his cane on Lawrence’s right. “You are the most important person in my life, second only to Diana. You come before everyone else. I mean that.” Lawrence gave his fiancé’s hands a squeeze and was pleased to see a small tug at the corner of the young man’s lips. “You are the other half to my life, my whole world. I’m a better person because of you. I can’t imagine my life without you. Without you, I’m just-”
“One of us.”
Their attention was pulled to the flat feminine voice that came from the doorway.
“Sorry, am I interrupting something?”
Adam’s attempted murderer turned rescuer- Amanda Young.
While Adam had chosen a full on white wedding dress for the occasion to further shove this whole marriage in the face of the bigot who raised him, Amanda went with a chocolate brown suit jacket and pants just a shade or two darker than the color of her shoulder length hair pulled back tightly in a bun. The bronze bow tie fixed between her collarbones matching the hazel in her eyes made sense, but the robin’s egg blue button up under the jacket was certainly a choice. Adam had never seen her in such a cheerful color.
“My almost husband was just telling me about how he can’t wait to never see any of you again because he loves me,” Adam snapped back.
Amanda stepped into the room, mockingly raising her eyebrows, “Good thing I married a replacement.”
Ah yes, Lynn, the surgeon who gave Jigsaw a craniotomy on his last sick bed before his miraculous remission. Amanda was ready to be done with this whole thing until she saved that woman’s life from her ex-husband’s bloodthirsty revenge, (and of course, her dear leader’s at the same time), and manipulated her into becoming part of this whole thing with her instead. While sympathetic, it didn’t make Lynn any less culpable for the lives she’d ended through unthinkable violence, and Adam wasn’t any less forgiving towards her.
Amanda stopped short of the engaged couple, giving the young groom- or “bride” as he called himself- a solid glance up and down.
“Like what you see?”
Lawrence gave his cane a brusk, quick tap to the floor, his fingers still interlaced with his partner’s on the handle.
“You know you don’t have anything I want,” Amanda shot back, much more friendly than Adam had been as she turned to Lawrence. “Isn’t it supposed to be bad luck for the groom to see the bride in her wedding dress before the ceremony?”
“Well,” Lawrence responded before his significant other had the chance to say something uncalled for, “I guess I just believe in livin’ dangerously.”
Amanda cast a knowing smirk that Adam did not like the look of to his fiancé, “I know just what you mean.”
“Do you want something?” Adam cut in.
She turned her attention back to him. “John sent me to get you,” her eyes darted between the couple, “we’re ready for you.”
She paused, focusing on Adam. “Are you sure you wanna do this? You don’t belong here.”
“Amanda!” Lawrence growled.
“I mean that as a compliment.”
“And that’s why you’re never seeing us again after this,” indignation flooded Adam’s words, “both of us.”
Amanda pursed her lips, and exchanged another loaded glance with Lawrence. “Ok, I’ll see you two outside.”
There was something in her voice that Adam did not like, but before he could question her, she was gone, and the bespoken couple was alone again.
Adam waited until the sound of her footsteps down the hall were gone before demanding of his groom, “What the hell was that about?”
Lawrence gave Adam a bemused look. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t pull that shit, what were those looks the two of you were giving?”
“Honey, what looks are you talking about?”
Adam made no effort to hide his annoyance. “It’s a murder thing, isn’t it?”
Lawrence leaned forward and pressed his forehead against his beloved’s, softly cooing, “None of that today. Today is about us.”
The reminiscent gesture was enough to reduce Adam's rising temper down to a simmer. “Yeah. This is our day. And then it’ll just be us.”
Adam pulled his hand free from the fingers that bound him to the handle of Lawrence’s cane, and rested it on the curves of the older man’s large, plush chest, raising himself up on his toes just high enough for their lips to meld together in a slow, tender kiss.
When Adam pulled away, for the first time since they’d arrived at the farm, Lawrence was visibly nervous.
“You didn’t answer Amanda’s question. Are you sure you want to do this?”
This sudden show of uncertainty caught Adam completely off guard.
“Since when did you care about that?”
Lawrence sighed an exasperated, “Adam…”
“You know I want to marry you.” He took his fiancé’s hands in his again. “You also know I don’t want to do it here, with your fucked up cult of psycho killers,” Lawrence rolled his eyes as Adam continued, “but if this is what I have to do to marry you and get you- us- away from them, then yes, I want to do this. Why are you having doubts now?”
Lawrence shook his head, “No no, it’s nothing like that,” and leaned forward to give his partner a kiss to keep Adam from pressing the issue. “I guess we should head outside then. Are you ready?”
“Oh fuck no.”
Darkness. Complete blackness.
Then,
His back against a wall.
Chain cuffed around his ankle.
Lawrence on his belly on the floor, blood pouring out of the blue dress shirt tied around his calf, gun pointed directly at him.
“No, I wanna live! I WANNA LIVE!!”
“I’m sorry…”
“I wanna live…!”
“My family…”
A scream bursting from his lungs, a gunshot, then-
Beep. Beep. Beep.
A steady electronic sound.
Adam groaned softly in the dark.
What was that?
Beep. Beep. Beep.
A light chill was seeping into his skin, his arms, something scratchy covering them.
Adam tried to pull apart his eyelids, and immediately slammed them shut again when an overwhelming bright light pierced through them.
Another soft groan escaped his dry, hoarse throat. He was…under a blanket? In a bed? Not a very comfortable one, but it was king sized 5 star resort accommodations compared to the frigid, shit and blood stained floor of the last place he remembered being in, encompassed in a void of wreaking rotting flesh- his own and others’. Starving, thirsty, cold, alone, for fuck knows how long. His only friends in that place were a corpse he’d created, the severed foot of the man who’d shot and abandoned him, and the growing infection spreading from the pathway a bullet bore through his right shoulder.
His eyelids pinched together tighter as he winced, trying to move, abruptly being reminded of just how fucking bad it hurt to get shot. At least the wound didn’t feel like it was on fire anymore. He didn’t feel like he was on fire anymore, in between the moments when he felt like he was shrouded in ice.
His throat hurt. Of course it did. Adam didn’t know how long he’d been screaming until he gave up. Or when he started telling himself Lawrence must have died out there. There was no way his co-captive could still be alive, right? Alive, as bacteria coated maggots made a home in the hole he’d forced through Adam’s flesh and bone. Lawrence promised he’d bring someone back. He promised. He wouldn’t lie to him. He promised.
Lawrence wouldn’t lie to him.
Or maybe he would.
Maybe he did?
If Adam was honest with himself, he couldn’t blame him for it. Adam was a fuck up, a low life burn out art kid that dropped out of high school. His parents knew it, (and reminded him of it frequently), his friends knew it, all of his ex-girlfriends knew it. Just a massive disappointment and waste of potential just like he’d heard over and over again. It was all true. At least he got to spend some of his time fucking over rich assholes who hated their cushy, spoiled lives.
Lawrence was one of those assholes, and, like it or not, that also meant he was someone who mattered. Mr. Big Shot Oncologist. He had a family- a wife and a daughter. He shot Adam for them, to save them. He left him for dead for them. They were always going to matter more than he ever could, to anyone, not just to the man he’d shared that bathroom, the worst day of his life, with.
Adam was a stranger, and before they’d woken up in that room together, Lawrence was just another mark.
Why would he ever give a single fuck about him?
And…his face. A budding intense pain in Adam’s face, radiating from his nose.
His memory was foggy…why did his nose hurt? Did he crush it against the tile when he fell to the floor after being shot, or did it get hit in the scuffle when he was smashing that other guy’s face in?
He did that. He did that.
He suddenly felt sick.
He did that.
“Adam?”
A man’s voice.
Adam scrunched up his face, grumbling in protest like his mom was getting him up at 6am after another night of no sleep to drag his ass to school.
Calloused finger pads lightly grazed the back of his. Warm. He heard his name again, and cautiously turned his head towards the source, carefully opening his eyes. As soon as they adjusted to the man sitting at his bedside, they went wide in stunned disbelief.
“Lawrence?”
“Oh my God, Adam!”
Before another thought could cross Adam’s mind, the two men both lunged forward and embraced as best they could. Their range of movement was inhibited, Adam realizing he had all sorts of tubes and wires running from his body to various pieces of medical equipment around him, and Lawrence was in a wheelchair. Made sense, given the state Adam had last seen him in.
He squeezed Lawrence as tight as he could, fighting back tears. The man in his arms had already seen him cry enough.
“I thought you were dead,” Adam whined softly into the blonde’s ear, his voice nearly cracking under the weight of the sobs he was fighting to hold back.
“I thought you were, too.” The relief in Lawrence’s voice was audible, genuine, his chin resting gingerly on the shoulder that he’d shot, holding Adam tight against his wide, plush chest.
Lawrence began to pull back, the two disengaging from their embrace, and Adam reclined in the- hospital bed?- he was lying in, his head landing gently on the pillow with a stifled grunt. Lawrence rested one hand on the bed beside his afflicted arm.
They’d made it. They’d actually both made it, and were here, alive, together in this….“Where are we?”
Adam took the opportunity to peer around the room. Lawrence was dressed much more casually than he probably usually liked to be in front of people that he barely knew, grey sweatpants and a worn t-shirt that looked like it used to be white tight against his round chest.
Nice tits.
Adam pulled his eyes away, and an uneasy sense of dread began creeping into his mind as he took in more of the details of their surroundings.
He certainly was in a hospital bed, but the only place he’d ever seen a hospital that looked anything remotely like this was in Silent Hill. Rust and decay covered the walls, and the windows of this room had been covered, blacked out.
Lawrence reassured him, “We’re somewhere safe. You’re safe now.”
“Nothing feels safe about this place,” Adam mumbled, his eyes still pacing around the room. Maybe he did die and get sent to Silent Hill.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Lawrence leaned in closer and laid his fingers across Adam’s. The radiating warmth and solace from the touch reigned in Adam’s attention, his eyes first falling to their hands, and then to Lawrence’s silky blue irises before closing them again.
A tidal wave of memories. The two of them on the bathroom floor. Consumptive rage, fear. Just being so fucking done with the whole thing. He was not going to let Lawrence die, they were both gonna out of here, they were both gonna see their families again. Adam was going to call his mom, he was going to make amends.
Lawrence crawling over to him. Grabbing him and pulling him down onto the floor to get him to stop bashing in the skull of the man who’d abducted his wife and daughter. Who Adam thought had abducted his wife and daughter. He was pointing a gun at Lawrence’s head. He was going to kill him. That man, Adam thought he put them there. He was going to kill him. He did this to them, all of this, you sick fuck, you wanna chain people up-
A sturdy, strong hand on his forearm. Adam collapses, exhausted in fear and anger and grief. Cries out. Their foreheads come together, Lawrence puts his hand on Adam’s cheek and caresses it with his thumb as he tells him he’s going to be alright, he’s just wounded in the shoulder. Gripping onto his arm under where Adam held a hand against it, as if somehow that would stop the pain and the blood from rushing out of it.
He was just wounded in the shoulder. Just wounded, in the shoulder. No big deal. He was going to get help. Adam clutched onto him and cried and begged him not to leave him alone. He was so scared. So scared to be alone. Please anything but alone, anything but alone with the man he killed, the man who did this to them, “Don’t leave me,” he left him, he left me, he left-
I just wanna go home.
Adam’s eyes shot opened and flicked down to where Lawrence’s fingers rested delicately on top of his.
“That man…the man who was in the bathroom with us, the one on the floor. He wasn’t dead Lawrence, he wasn’t fucking dead,” Adam sat up in the bed, ignoring the pain in his shoulder and the chill in his arms. He met Lawrence’s gaze again, his own eyes wide, distressed, confused at the lack of concern on the other man’s face. “He got up and shut the door and left me in there, he fucking left me Lawrence and then…Did you see him? Did he go after you??”
Finally, unease washed over Lawrence’s features. Adam felt Lawrence’s fingers resting on top of his twitch. “Do you remember anything else before you woke up here?”
Adam’s bewilderment quickly shifted to annoyance and anger as the beeping of his heart monitor began to quicken its pace.
Beep, beep, beep, beep
“Yeah Lawrence, I remember sitting in a shit stained bathroom for God knows how fucking long with a hole through me that you put there,” Lawrence flinched, “chained to a pipe with your rotting foot and some guy I killed to save your life!”
The levee broke, and tears began to rush down Adam’s cheeks. “Is that what you wanna hear about, Larry? Wanna hear all about what it was like to sit there waiting for you to come back, not knowing if I’d ever see you or my mom ever again? Just waiting for death to finally fucking take me so that shit could be fucking over with?! So I wouldn’t have to just sit there alone forever thinking about how big of a fuck up I am??!”
He jolted, a violent trash at the last few words, and cried out in pain.
“Adam,” Lawrence’s voice was calm, easy, but it was all too much. Adam pulled his knees up to his chest, wrapped his arms around them, and sobbed into the harsh, old fabric that covered them.
He felt sick.
It was real, it happened.
He felt sick. It was so much, fuck it was so much.
Lawrence pressed gently on the younger man’s arm, a cautious plea to relax, “You don’t need to do that.”
“What the fuck is going on?!” Adam’s voice cracked, a whine that was almost a scream. “Where are we?!”
He very suddenly did not want to be in this fucking bed anymore. His tears halted to a stop as he grabbed the line for the IV in his left arm.
“Don’t!” Lawrence reached forward as far as he could and took hold of each of Adam’s wrists in one of his hands.
Fuck, his shoulder hurt, it hurt so fucking bad, he couldn’t fight him, his shoulder hurt so bad.
Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep
“Adam please, I need you to relax, I can explain everything-”
“No! I want to go home right fucking now! Let me go!”
Just then, another man strutted into the room like a whole fucking melodrama wasn’t unfolding in there right before him, and made his way around to the left side of the bed, opposite Lawrence. He was tall, and clearly well built under the scrubs he had on, with short dirty blonde hair, green eyes, and a big, fake smile plastered across his face.
Adam’s voice cracked, “Who the fuck are you?”
This new man smiled and reached out a hand to introduce himself. Adam didn’t take it, and the other man quickly pulled it back as if nothing was amiss.
“Dr. Nelson. You can call me Logan. I’ve been helping Dr. Gordon take care of you these last few days.”
“Days?!”
Beep, beep, beep, beep
Adam sat in stunned, disgruntled silence, looking back over to Lawrence. His voice was quiet, “How long was I out?”
Lawrence pursed his lips and looked over at Logan, then turned back to Adam. “5 days.”
Adam choked. “5 days?!”
Logan kept up the overly friendly, matter-of-fact doctor schtick. “You were severely dehydrated, malnourished, and septic. It’s a miracle you’re still alive, Amanda got you out just in time.”
Lawrence shot Logan a look and cleared his throat at the mention of the woman’s name.
“Adam-” Lawrence started softly, his focus shifting entirely to the younger man, carefully taking one of his cold, smaller hands in his.
Before he could continue, Adam’s brow furrowed. The memory was fuzzy- “There was a woman…there was a woman who came into the bathroom.” The rapid tones of the heart monitor matched the increasingly frantic beating in Adam’s chest as his recollection came into full view.
His face. The toilet. He couldn’t breathe.
He broke his nose, fighting for his life with a sheet of plastic over his face.
“She tried to kill me.”
He turned to Lawrence, eyes wide in terror, “She tried to kill me!”
Adam was done with whatever bullshit was going on here. It didn’t matter where he was or why, he did not want to fucking be here anymore. All of the peace he’d finally felt the moment he saw Lawrence here with him, the two of them alive, the delicate tones of his voice and reassurances of his touch, all of it was consumed by panic.
Frantic, Adam surveyed the bed, the room, trying to figure out a way up and out of there, trying to lift himself up.
“It’s ok now,” Lawrence was pleading, one hand gentle but firm on Adam’s shoulder just below the bullet wound, the other gripping onto his left wrist, “You’re safe now, no one is going to hurt you.”
Adam couldn’t hear him.
Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep
“She tried to kill me! She came into that bathroom to kill me!!”
Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep
Adam honed in on Logan as he struggled against Lawrence trying to hold him down on the bed, “Was that her? Who the fuck are you and why do you know her? What the fuck is this?!”
Lawrence grunted as he fought to pin the younger man down, “Adam, look at me-”
“No, fuck this, don’t fucking touch me!” Adam pulled away from Lawrence’s grasp, swatting at his hand as he saw Logan move out of the corner of his eye, turning just in time to see him injecting something into one of the ports on the IV line.
“NO!” Adam grabbed the tube that fed into his arm fully intending to rip it out of him.
“STOP!” Lawrence’s voice was loud and commanding as he caught and squeezed Adam’s wrist, hard. Adam yelped at the sudden intense pain, physical and emotional, instantly releasing the tubing with tears welling up and overflowing from his eyes at the betrayal.
Lawrence continued pleading, frustrated, “You need to stop, your sutures-”
“I don’t give a FUCK, Lawrence!!” Adam screamed as Logan planted strong, heavy hands onto his shoulders. Lawrence continued reaching over the bed to hold down the wounded man’s arms as best he could as he continued to fight against him. “What the fuck is that shit? What the fuck are you doing to me, what the fuck is going on?!”
Adam was thrashing now, a cornered and frenzied animal, blind to the throbbing and tearing pain in his nose and shoulder.
He just had to get the fuck out of here, where ever here was, he had to fucking…had to get out of here…had to….
Beep, beep, beep, beep
The heart rate monitor slowed. Adam’s eyelids were heavy.
“No, let go of me-”
“There you go buddy,” Logan soothed in his overly friendly voice, “you’re just gonna take a little nap, ok?”
“No…” The fight in Adam evaporated, his muscles spaghetti. His head flopped over onto his right cheek, sinking into the pillow. Shiny jade irises implored Lawrence for any kind of comfort the man was willing to bestow on him.
“Lawrence…”
Sad blue crystals shone back into his fading green ones. “You’re going to be alright.”
Beep. Beep.
“I promise.”
Beep.
Before Adam could chide Lawrence about what happened the last time he’d made him a promise, he was once again unconscious, asleep.