Lu tried to empty his festering tide pool of fears as the days crawled by. He distracted himself by drawing every new angle of Adon he remembered, without posting them. The real Adon wasn’t for curious Platform fans, and he no longer needed to pacify himself with illusions. He found himself stuck waiting for Adon until he figured out what moving toward Adon might look like. The worlds they built together always collapsed. Lu always ran skittering for familiar shadows, expecting Gideon’s fist or Benny’s pity or Sias’ grip around his neck, but there’s nowhere to hide when the sky is falling and he’d always pushed Adon forward and hid in his shadow…. 

Lu scoffed at his thoughts, erasing a grotesque sketch of Adon being shot in the park, because he’d seen Adon later in the diner, he was fine. He was being dramatic, he could feel it, taking all the guilt because it was a familiar weight, easy to fix if it was only his. The truth was far simpler and it made everything else so much harder: the only world they’d built together had been immature and hurting in every way. They were traumatized kids, and they’d been scared. Gideon had still had a hand over Lu’s mouth while Adon had been stubbornly determined to climb and pull Lu up beside him. They’d been too naive to notice how their dreams didn’t match then, and he’d erased every part of himself since then, so that he could fit wherever Adon might let him when. Was that what was wrong? There wasn’t enough of Lu to move toward Adon? There was only a shadow hiding in a shadow? Was that why Adon didn’t come back even though he’d promised? Was that why three weeks felt longer than his decade in the Mids? Lu floundered between thoughts, pausing between every half-folded towel with another debilitating epiphany that squealed and popped like a firework, fizzling out into nothing, one after another. 

His annoyance solidified into fury after the fourth week passed. 

When Adon finally returned to Lu, it was at the end of the sixth week since Lu had dragged him to a hospital then watched him run into the dark, chased by guns, and four weeks since Lu had seen him stalk into Nyx’s and been advised by everyone that it wasn’t Adon, but the Finder. Adon knocked on Lu’s door instead of entering his own birthday into the keypad, and it was only then, all his rage melting at the sight of Adon’s lopsided smile and innocent wave, that Lu realized Adon might have actually forgotten it. He opened the door with a huff and stepped back, taking Adon’s coat, intimidated by the cold in his eyes no longer blurred by the identification screen. Lu swallowed all his contempt before it could bubble into something angry and undeserved, surveying the half-healed injuries while Adon stepped in hesitantly peering into every shadow for threats that weren’t there. Lu closed the door and leaned against it, because stepping too close to Adon made all his stifled frustration grow teeth. 

Adon limped out of his boots, shuffling awkwardly to the couch. He sat with a grimace, glanced at Lu, then back into the shadows, looking for something. He relaxed into the couch, inhaling twice to start an explanation, cutting himself off with silence both times. He let his head fall backwards into the back of the couch, unsure where to start. Lu sat in the chair beside the couch, arms folded patiently, giving Adon a chance to explain, looking him over and seeing only bandages and scars and scabs and half-healed scrapes that he hadn’t had in the hospital, the bulk of a brace wrapping a knee, all his weight shifted onto one side, carefully guarding ribs that weren’t the ones he’d gotten stabbed in. Lu wanted to drag him to a Med-Pod right then, to review the new damage, to tuck him into his bed and never let him out. He wanted to yell and cry and answer every question with a warm hug, but before he worked himself up to breaking the tension of silence, Adon sighed and pulled the dark green knit hat off his head and Lu’s anger faltered. He’d never seen Adon with a shaved head, and he’d forgotten how odd his natural hair looked on him, clashing with his sun-sick skin-tone in a way Mess and Aphy’s never did.

Adon the Cat jumped up on Adon’s lap and he smiled. Adon pet the cat absently and Lu pouted because he couldn’t put it past this Adon to have returned for the cat. Lu watched Adon the Cat tilt its head and relaxed because if the cat was willing to approach, maybe Adon wasn’t as cold as he looked. But then the cat tightened it’s body and Lu hissed a warning too late, wincing as the cat raised a paw and swiped sharply at Human-Adon’s cheek, smacking him hard in the exact spot Lu might have aimed for if he hadn’t renounced every bit of Gideon’s shadow that had once lurked in his chest. 

Adon yelped, jerking upright and tossing the cat gently toward the other end of the couch. Lu hopped up to grab the med kit, tsking disappointedly at Adon the Cat while Adon the Human howled that he didn’t even do anything this time, whatever that meant. Adon the Cat butted his head against Human-Adon’s knee and by the time Lu came back with the plaster can, the cat was sleeping in Adon’s lap, Adon cradled and snoring in the crook of the couch. Lu smiled and tucked a blanket around them, then folded his knees against his chest on the other side of the sofa and stared at the new map of scars and scabs, letting his heart break for every half-healed injury he knew Adon must have kept hidden from him. 

Something terrible had happened, but Adon had returned, as promised, so Lu didn’t let himself pull at Adon’s layers of fraying sleeves to see how many new tallies he was hiding. Adon would tell him, because Adon was there. Adon was real. Adon the Cat crawled out from under the blanket and curled into Lu’s chest while Adon the Human shifted in his sleep, and Lu smiled for what felt like the first time in years.

☆

Four weeks ago:

Adon held Lu’s face between his hands and made sure he understood how serious he was, that he would comfort Mess and get them out of there. He looked from one quivering eye to the other, and realized Lu had no idea who was chasing them, or why. He probably thought it was related to Adon being stabbed, not his own shitty father not intervening on a Quartet hit order Arty had denied, or his shitty brother stalking him. Lu was so planted in the Mids that when Adon told him to wait, hide, then run, he’d only nodded and let Adon kiss his forehead then dash away. 

It was kind of nice, giving orders and knowing they’d be followed. Adon understood why the Quartet wanted to keep their position in the Wells, why Gideon might want that kind of power. But he could only scowl at the idea, that brittle loneliness closing in again as he fled, sprinting down the path, measuring his options, every inch between him and Lu-Lu stretching until it shattered and he was only running. Running to keep them safe, or running as part of the game, or running just because he woke to find himself running, he didn’t know and it didn’t matter. Run, Adon, Run had become his normal, and everyone he knew cheered him on in every race. It was only Lu who cried when he left, only Lu who reached for him, who followed him, who waited for him, who made him promise to return. At least to his face, he knew Y worried, he knew Mess waited, knew Phios and Xeri messaged nonstop and Nika would let him use the Med-Pod if he asked, if he needed it… probably. But they still asked him to go find things, and it felt strange for Lu to ask him to return. 

Adon gripped his side and let Orestes’ stupid friends get close enough to spot him so they wouldn’t look for Lu, then sprinted ahead. He didn’t know the Mids, he didn’t know the park, he didn’t know his own body, and he was still very much influenced by the last of the drugs running out of his system, and probably a little dazed, people didn’t just sprint away from offers to bake a cake for fun. He ran along the banister of the drop, gripping his side and listening for a passing rail. There was no rumbling, not even a warning light, so when a ghost gun spit a round of bullets into a tree, Adon apologized to it, ticked off it, then launched himself over the barrier and into the river luge, crossing his arms and hoping it fell into a deep enough tank, gritting his teeth for impact, already sputtering the water as the aqueduct sloped sharply downwards and he lost sight of the city, enclosed in the snaking drain. 

Halfway down, he regretted everything, three-quarters of the way, he forgot what he was regretting, inhaling just as he was dumped unceremoniously into a loud cavern. His shoes broke the surface of the plunging water reserve tank, and he splashed loudly to the surface, unaware that he could swim, unsure if what he was doing counted as swimming, and kicking himself for jumping in the water when he couldn’t swim. He bet Lu could swim. Lu was probably a swim champion in some Mids league where they had little metals and matching team suits. Adon kicked his way toward a slimy wall and gripped a rung, probably meant for fishing out jumpers. 

He coughed until he could breath around the bandages that had tightened with water exposure, and followed the system with his eyes, registering a series of grated pipes that filtered the water into storage tanks where it would be decontaminated. So yeah, he was in the body-catch. He shivered and hauled himself out of the water with a frown, pausing to scan the water. He faltered on the slick rungs and let out a which was then filtered into a series of lower storage tanks to decontaminate. None of the Wells guys had followed, probably because they were cowards… and because sheet music didn’t have anything on hospital drugs.  

Adon climbed out of the recovery basin. It took four tries with a panic attack after three, sliding down the smooth plated sides of the rounded tank and throwing a fit, punching the water and crying because the cold had sobered him too much and now his side felt like his ribs might be poking through his skin. They weren’t, but they might as well be if his side was going to hurt so much. He checked constantly, feeling down his front while kicking frantically at the water, his hospital shirt floating in the water around him, the tank too dark to see past his eyelids. He finally got up the side of the basin, but that took all his remaining strength, so he rolled over the thin edge and slid down the other side, hoping for the best. Luckily, he landed in a heap on a deck ringing the basin for the workers who checked levels and filters and likely fished out jumpers and rail-kill before it contaminated their precious water. 

Adon exhaled, then kicked the deck beams with a frustrated shout because everything hurt too much to think about anything else. When the echo faded and his side stopped pulsing with his heartbeat, which might have been minutes or hours, he rolled himself up and limped toward the Wells. He had a promise to keep. 

Adon spent the next two weeks tracking Troy and Mykos because they were the only faces he recognized. He pictured the fear pinching Lu’s face a hundred times, the way concern had cemented around his eyes, certain that he wasn’t allowed peace unless Adon was also ready to rest. He thought of Benny’s cruel artwork branding Lu’s back and Gideon’s hideous smile watching him in the Pits. How young they’d been…. Adon pieced together the bruises covering Lu’s arms back then, the way he’d shrugged and listed a dozen ways he might have gotten them riding the rails, jumping track at Nika’s, his required training, and how he might have said father, but Adon hadn’t noticed. 

How easily Lu’s early growth had betrayed his pain, his vulnerability, a child in a man’s body that the Janes feared and the Johns thought of as only aggressive. None of them asked about Lu’s absences. Had Lu asked them for help? Had he tried to escape before? How many times had Caldera shoved him back into Gideon’s pocket before he’d met Adon? How eagerly had he gripped Adon’s hand, how willingly had he stepped into his own cage, thinking Adon was flying free somewhere overhead while he remained alone? 

Adon remembered the greenhouse fire, souring bitterly at his new understanding of the event he’d later rewritten as merely a temper tantrum. He was now haunted by how eerily Lu had sat, unmoving, waiting for the smoke, desperate for any way out when he couldn’t believe in his own freedom. Lu had been waiting, always waiting. Lu had been waiting for Gideon to give up on him, for his freedom, for Adon. Lu had spent his entire life patiently crawling out of shadows, trudging upward with a steady hope that Adon admired and envied. Adon couldn’t think of tomorrow yet, he couldn’t even think ahead an hour, ducking around corners, following Mykos with a hand gripped to his aching side, unsure if it still hurt or he just thought it did, rolling his eyes at Lu, who was waiting indefinitely, because there was always a bigger shadow. 

Adon was determined to create a world between them, one where Lu could come out whenever he was ready and Adon would protect him. He would stab Sias a million times and tear Gideon limb from limb if it meant Lu could wander wherever he wanted. He could make Lu safe, because he was already broken, already missing whatever it was that Lu kept looking for in him. Lu seemed to think the violence was the only problem, the med-print-o a thing that could be fixed, Adon: a thing that could be fixed, and a renewed fear settled uncomfortably in Adon’s gut. He ignored it, because if the Pits had taught him anything, it was that everything was scary all the time. Grief was part of love, failure part of success, sadness part of contentment. He could only have one as much as he was willing to endure the other, and he was willing to endure anything now that their future was dangling so temptingly in front of him.