#uuuuuuh christ its been so long since ive done this

[bosspigeon]

How about one of those "I thought I lost you" moments (with hugs? kisses?) for Hawthorn and Ortega? Either one can be the hurt one but thorny boy letting himself reveal his worry for Ortega would be Very Nice.

Hellebore disappears with the sound of sirens.

He gives Ortega a long, long look where he lies half-conscious on the grey shore. His tattered cape drips on the algae-covered rocks, his eerie white eyes flickering over the Ranger’s battered body with… well, it’s impossible to tell even when you’re not waterlogged and rattled (not to mention broken in a few places) from falling a couple dozen stories into freezing water, but it almost feels like pity.

But he looks. And he looks. And he keeps looking until the sirens are too close to ignore, and he silently melts into the creeping shadows thrown by the lights of the bridge far above them, the blue and red of police responding to the chaos, and the city beyond. But the weight of that eerie gaze lingers until the medics find him and shuffle him off to the hospital for treatment.

And when Hellebore disappears, Hawthorn appears. There’s a significant amount of time between the two events, of course. He’s got to be treated for shock first, probably hypothermia as well, they’ve got to set two or three bones at least, and that’s not to mention the collection of lacerations and bruises that may not be just skin-deep. It’s almost two in the morning when he’s finally left to his own devices, as much as he can be while plugged into half a dozen monitoring machines and IV drips.

It takes him a while to even realize he’s not alone, but Hawthorn’s always been quiet. Subtle. Not like grandiose, theatrical Hellebore, with his monstrous mask and rumbling voice and wicked laugh.

He jerks out of his light doze suddenly, a few hours later. He’s not sure why. Hawthorn doesn’t make a sound when he enters the room, doesn’t so much as creak the door, and doesn’t say a word once he’s in. There’s just a moment of not being aware of him, and then he is, just like that. Ortega suspects there’s a part of him that’s just attuned to Hawthorn when he’s near.

But there he is, hiding his eerie black eyes behind dark sunglasses, looking at Ortega lying half-conscious in bed, beaten and exhausted. There’s a blotchy purple bruise along his jawbone. His lip is split but it’s scabbed over already. Ortega’s mind flashes back to the solid punch he landed when he’d managed to surprise Hellebore earlier, snapping his head around. There’s a matching bruise on his ribs where Hellebore got even, snarling in his face and ramming a fist into him with the force of a fucking truck.

Ortega sits up as much as he can (a few machines around him beeping in protest of his accelerated heart rate, the tug on his IVs) and Hawthorn still doesn’t say anything.

He just looks. And he looks. And he keeps looking until Ortega clears his throat and says, low and rough and just a little bit wry, “Saw the news, huh?” (Plausible deniability, for both of them, his traitorous brain whispers.)

Hawthorn looks away. He looks so small, like a shadow smeared against the stark white wall in his oversized sweater and dark jeans. For once, his hair looks carefully groomed, shiny slightly-damp curls clinging to his forehead. “Yeah,” he rasps. He swallows audibly and frowns. His hands are wedged into his pockets to keep from fidgeting. He’s always been fidgety, but he tries to hide it, like every other “sign of weakness” he’s ever forced down or choked back. “I thought… You were…” He makes a noise deep in his throat, and bites down on it before it can slip past his clenched teeth.“Didn’t expect Shadowfell to show up,” Ortega grunts. “Must have some serious beef with Hellebore.”

Hawthorn’s fingers curl tight, his scraped knuckles turning pale. “He’s a fucking animal that needs to be put down,” he snarls, and his voice goes low and rough with anger. No– anger is too gentle a word. That’s barely-restrained fury boiling under his skin. That’s a not-so-subtle promise that Ortega forces himself not to think about too hard, which is thankfully pretty easy with his head swimming from medication.

He tries to lighten the mood, because of course he does. Can’t help being who he is, even when he should keep his mouth shut. “I mean, to be fair, Hellebore’s pretty damned feral himself.”

He can’t see Hawthorn’s eyes, but the corners of his mouth tighten, plush lips pressing together. His clenched fists tremble. He doesn’t say anything, only looks towards the big window that faces out over the city. He can see the bridge from here, spirals of dark smoke still curling up from the smoldering cables and towards the sky. It’s got to be six or seven in the morning by this point, sunlight just barely breaking through the dense cloud cover.

“I thought he’d killed you,” Hawthorn rasps. He doesn’t look away from the window, staring out over the sprawl with an expression Ortega can’t even hope to read. “I saw you… I saw you go down. I saw you hit the water. And I was so sure you were…” He chokes and cuts off with a frustrated snarl that can barely be considered human, and for a moment (completely unprompted, he forces himself to think, really out of nowhere) he wonders how much of Hellebore’s beastly snarls and eerie howls are synthetic and how much come from the rage of the person inside the armor.

Hawthorn shoves his glasses up into his hair and rubs angrily at his eyes with his knuckles, clenching his teeth so hard his temple visibly throbs. “Fuck,” he hisses.

“Hey,” Ortega calls gently. “Come here.”

Hawthorn freezes like a startled animal, and slowly turns to look at Ortega again. His endless black eyes are shining, red-rimmed. He looks like he’s been crying for hours. Ortega wisely keeps that thought to himself.

Ortega shifts over, patting the bed at his side. “Come on. I don’t bite.” He grins, and he knows he probably looks like roadkill right now, but he still tries to look as charming as possible.

Slowly, Hawthorn crosses the room like a sullen ghost. His boots make almost no sound on the linoleum floor. He sits down gingerly, like his body aches under his thick, dark clothes. Ortega feels a throb of guilt in his gut, so he’s very, very gentle (for his sake as much as his friend’s) when he slips an arm around Hawthorn’s waist, settling his hand over the slightly concave curve of his belly. Hawthorn’s breath hitches, but he doesn’t shift away. He feels more corporeal now, like a person and not a specter, and Ortega can’t help but be relieved to touch him, like he needs reassurance even after so many months of (admittedly stilted) conversation and sporadic contact and frantic, clandestine kisses neither of them talk about that Hawthorn is really alive, and not just some cruel figment of his imagination.

The throb in his gut returns, but this time he thinks it’s just the ugly bruise there, rather than guilt. Other than the usual low-grade background guilt that he’s dealt with ever since the funeral, of course.

God, he’s tired. He rests his head against Hawthorn’s, smelling anise and black coffee. Hawthorn goes stiff for a split second before his body relaxes, and his hand slips over Ortega’s knee and clutches it through the blankets like a lifeline, audibly forcing himself to calm his breathing.

Ortega can practically hear him cursing himself, like he did back when he was Sidestep, furiously working over a heavy bag in the gym and muttering “weak, weak, weak” fiercely under his breath before he realized Ortega was watching him.

“Stop,” Hawthorn chokes out, snapping him out of the memory. His voice is strained, almost pleading. “Just stop. I’m not… He’s dead, and he’s going to stay dead.”

Ortega winces. Hawthorn always told him he thought entirely too loud, as he did literally everything else. Too loud. He supposes he always loved Hawthorn too loud too.

“Stop,” Hawthorn begs, his voice cracking. His glasses are still pushed up into his hair, and Ortega watches the tear slide down his cheek and drip off his chin in profile. “Please.”

“I can’t,” Ortega tells him, tightening his jaw and tilting up his chin. Challengingly honest, even broken down in a hospital bed and helpless as a newborn. “I don’t know how.”

Hawthorn make a noise, somewhere between a sob and a growl, and furiously rubs at his face with his sleeve. “Fuck,” he hisses. “Fuck.”

“Not until I heal up a bit,” Ortega quips weakly. He can’t help himself, desperate to bring some levity back into a situation that is far too close to… something.

Hawthorn chokes, almost doubling over. The look he gives Ortega from the corner of his eye is scalding, but… he was always strangely addicted to that sort of burn. He only smiles crookedly in response, and eventually the glare fades into something softer, almost… considering?

He almost chokes on his tongue when Hawthorn straightens up, leans in, and kisses him. It’s only once, quick but firm, and before Ortega can do anything– grab him and kiss him back, or maybe just plead pathetically for more than a little peck– he’s pushing himself up off the bed and putting his glasses back over his eyes. The only hint of emotion left visible is the faint redness to his nose and cheeks, and the surprisingly soft quirk of his mouth.

“I have to go,” he says brusquely. He turns and heads to the door, but pauses with his hand on the knob, while Ortega is still stunned speechless. He glances over his shoulder, taking a deep, fortifying breath. “Try not to do anything stupid until you heal up a bit.”

And then he’s gone, silent as always, and for a dazed moment Ortega wonders if he was ever actually there at all. But his lips still tingle a bit, where Hawthorn’s pressed to them, and when his hand brushes the sheet where he was sitting, it’s still warm.

He’s still in the hospital, two days later, when he turns on the news just in time to see Hellebore holding Shadowfell by his neck and dangling him over the edge of a building. There’s no audio under the news achor’s voiceover, but Shadowfell is visibly struggling. His mask is cracked open, and the camera angle changes, showing one wide, frightened eye as he scrabbles at the clawed gauntlet wrapped around his throat.

And then Hellebore drops him.

Ortega’s breath hitches, and holds until the next segment assures the viewers that Shadowfell is alive, if badly injured, and will be transported to a maximum security hospital where he will be treated until he is recovered enough to be transferred to prison. The hunt for Hellebore and the investigation into what caused the altercation is still underway.

They discharge him that evening, with appointments for physical therapy and a warning not to do anything too strenuous for a few weeks, as well as paperwork to be signed by Steel. He’s more restless than he is sore, two days bedridden leaving him rattling with nervous energy that feels like sparks under his skin.

And almost the second his foot hits the curb, his phone chirps at him. He checks it distractedly, keeping one eye out for a cab to hail, and doesn’t recognize the number.

But he does recognize the name of the diner in the message preview window. His heart judders in his ribcage, and he almost trips into traffic.

He hails his cab, and instead of heading back to the Rangers headquarters, he gives the driver the name of the diner in the message, which has no signature, no indication of who it could possibly have come from. But Ortega knows. He knows, in spite of Steel’s sharp voice in his head telling him he could be walking into a trap, and immediately upon being discharged from the hospital to boot. He ignores the logical part of his brain, and instead, he heads straight for a rinky-dink nowhere diner with his heart pounding.

And Hawthorn is there, of course. A smudge of black he spots from the corner of his eye, tucked into the furthest booth from the door, staring at him silently, as if waiting to be noticed.

With a smile and a wave, Ortega heads right for him, sits down, and then all he can think to say is a breathless, inane little, “Hey.”

“You came straight here? After just getting out of the hospital?” Hawthorn asks incredulously.

“Yeah,” he answers.

“Steel’s not going to be happy.”

“I know.” Ortega can’t stop smiling, and Hawthorn is looking more and more as if he thinks he’s completely lost his mind. “I missed you,” he adds helpfully, earnestly, as if Hawthorn can’t read his intentions easily enough.

Hawthorn’s cheeks redden just a bit, barely noticeable with his complexion, and his mouth does that little pinchy thing it does when he’s trying not to smile. Ortega hasn’t seen the pinchy thing in years.

“Shut up,” Hawthorn grumbles, ducking his head and sipping from his mug to hide his face.

“I didn’t say anything,” Ortega offers, still grinning like a loon. “Nothing at all.”

“You don’t have to,” Hawthorn sighs, tapping the mug with his fingers. Softer, looking up so that Ortega can just see the fan of his lashes above the black lenses of his glasses, he adds, “You never have to.”

This is a bad idea. A terrible idea, and he knows it. And he knows Hawthorn knows it, but neither of them seem able to care at this point. He doesn’t need to be a telepath to know that. But when Ortega reaches slowly across the table to peel one hand from the mug and lace their fingers together, he doesn’t pull away.