#when you realize that living on a vineyard property means you're miles the fuck away from anything including medical services YIKE

[sadserotonin]

[  INCOHERENT  ]: for whichever of the dummies you’d prefer

[  INCOHERENT  ]: while sick/feverish/intoxicated/otherwise incoherent, the sender tells the receiver that they love them.

Waiting for the best doctors in the country to be flown in specially to aid him should not have been such a grueling experience, but for Connor, it was hard to focus on much more than the bullet holes that had been ripped into him earlier that day. He hadn’t missed a beat between retaliating to the attack and settling himself somewhere safe to self-treat despite the tremble in his hand and the sweat sheening his forehead. There was something almost nostalgic about fashioning a tourniquet to save Edgar yet again, just in a different sense this time. But it was worth it now just as it had been then, and Connor made as much known.

Or at least he tried to. Further than spilling out in his native tongue, Connor’s words were fragmented at best, crammed between pained groans and involuntary chills. He wasn’t a man who easily reached for comfort but gripping Edgar’s hand seemed to ground his feverish skin from its boiling point, and he drank in the precious seconds he was spared to simply breathe. Losing the train of thought he was on a moment earlier, Connor found a moment of focus in the hazel of Edgar’s eyes to ask in English, “You’re okay, my love?” 

Whether he licked his lips from the unfamiliarity of the endearment or the faint metallic taste on them was unknown to even him. And though he waited for an answer to his misplaced worry, whatever Edgar provided was fleeting in the haze of his mind anyway. 

Connor knew very well that he was supposed to stay awake in these situations, but every last bit of strength left in him was busy relentlessly pressing his fingers against Edgar’s. He was tired. “Min kärlek…” he mumbled, belatedly realizing that he couldn’t expect Edgar to have actually retained any snippets of Swedish he’d playfully imparted in their sweeter, more relaxed moments between the sheets. “Min kärlek.”

His blink this time lingered longer than the last. As the darkness behind his lids beckoned quietly, he wondered, had he prefaced his question as well as he meant to? Had he reminded Edgar that he wasn’t to blame in any of this, reminded him why the outcome of Connor’s sacrifices were so important? Had he explained why he acted as he did with the right combination of syllables? The real important ones, those three foolish words that he’d never spoken to another soul before?

Connor would have to ask Edgar himself when he awoke. And he would wake, for leaving the man at his side alone was simply not an option. For now though, he would rest.