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“Five,” Damissan repeated, nodding. “That sounds…manageable.”

More than he wanted to manage, but so was one, so that seemed a moot point, and — Damissan winced as his guard’s target insect screeeeched its objection to being skewered — Xilarn seemed more than capable of handling at least a handful. Damis’ gaze flicked from one moving critter to the next. One, two, three…

Four, five…

Six…

Seven…

He squinted.

Eight…

“Ah…”

In retrospect, Damis wasn’t precisely sure how exactly it happened. He heard Xilarn instruct him to ‘run along’, and while that was unfavorable on its face — he wasn’t a coward…surely? — the older man did say he would follow, and perhaps there was no cowardice in avoiding a deadly situation which he had admittedly no concept of how to handle in any better way.

Except that before anything could happen, the critter before him — whether stirred into action by the wounded-cry of its company or simply impatient and hungry — was snapping forward. Damis’ feet, in an attempt to move immediately away, tripped or slipped, or otherwise failed him in the unpredictable underbrush, and a moment later he was far lower to the ground than he wanted to be, pulse lurching into his throat. In the next instant, and for several instants to follow, he was fairly sure it was only the brace of one of his blades very poorly keeping the beast from crushing him entirely, and as it scuffled in, armored belly solid as stone compared to his flesh and overhead like a low, falling ceiling—he felt like he imagined a small pebble or insect might feel, trapped between a foot and the earth as something larger and unrelenting pressed down.

He scrambled. He twisted. It would later occur to him that he might have said something and shouted out, but in the moment, keeping all the breath in his lungs that he could seemed priority—

Until suddenly it wasn’t.

As quickly as it had encroached in on him, the critter was skittering back like any other bug startled by unexpected light or noise. Damis, on his rear and elbows in a backwards lean in the mud, stared — for a moment as surprised as the beast for all accounts, his chest still rapidly rising and falling with breathlessness — but around them, the other bugs in the ‘swarm’, some dozen or more of them, were all clicking their pinchers, bodies alert and bug-eyes blinking as though sensing sensing something in the wind that they hadn’t. Then, as surely as a hive called away by their queen, all moved in tandem, spreading back out and disappearing into the dark of the forest as quickly as they’d come.

After several moments of staring blankly in continued bewilderment after them, Damis coughed, and then rolled a shoulder with a lopsided, winced-smile in his guard’s direction. “Well, I’m impressed. I think you managed to intimidate them.”

You might have died.

While the possibility had admittedly seemed very real moments ago, something about hearing the words seemed to emphasize the fact that it was no longer an immediate concern, giving Damis all the more reason to grin—at least for a moment. He had lived. Xilarn had lived. The insects were retreating, and Xilarn was there, expressing concern for him, so, “No, of course I’m not inj—”

Damissan’s sentence cut off halfway through by no choice of his own, his throat locking up on him temporarily because when he tried to move, suddenly there was pain where there hadn’t been before: a shooting spear of it down his right side and to his upper thigh cutting just under his skin like a muscle pull except infinitely more potent. He hadn’t felt himself get hurt. But then, hadn’t it been said that certain pains occasionally got blotted out by the body when in shock or already reacting to an intense situation? Surely that was a myth. It didn’t keep Damis’ brow from furrowing briefly as he reached, but he managed a nod.

“Yes, I’m…” Dark as it was, it was hard to tell at first, and the tone of his skin didn’t help make the distinction: mud and grit smeared across his palm and gleaming in the dark with a sheen of dampness, “…fine.” His side still throbbed, but pausing had given his body enough time to adjust and he felt better, if nothing else. Fine, he decided. He felt fine. “And filthy,” he agreed, agreed aloud, his grin returning — if, perhaps, with not quite so much gusto, but there still — as Xilarn’s finger plucked away at stray forest muck.

He took the man’s offered hand, managing to ignore still for the most part the slight slickness to his grip, blaming it on mud and gritting through the next needle of pain. It would pass. A strained muscle, perhaps. Regardless, he was upright, so it couldn’t be that bad, and whatever bumps or scrapes either of them had attained would be better cleaned once they found a safer, more open space to make camp. He held on to Xilarn’s grip longer than he intended, his body taking its time in finding its equilibrium. In the meantime, he spoke up again.

“You won’t hear me complain. Perhaps somewhere with less bugs. But from your look…” Damis hesitated only a moment before asking, though he knew he wouldn’t likely appreciate the answer, “I assume they don’t normally all change their minds at once out of good will or mercy…?” Having found his balance, Damis’ hand returned instinctively to his side, holding there for a moment while his palm warmed against the damp—mud. Damis’ frown returned. He lifted his palm again to eye it, its slickness catching the dim, ethereal light of the forest and looking, for a moment almost red-purple. Dizziness prickled behind his eyes. “Ah…mm.” He cleared his throat, shaking his head as though that would slow the sudden, renewed throbbing of his pulse in his throat. “Fine. It’s fine. It’s just a little…it’s not even that much—”

His step wavered.

“—blood…”

Looking back on the moment later, Damis would blame his reaction on a combination of shock factors and general lack of mental preparation for such a moment. It wasn’t a horrendous injury. It did not even hurt that badly, and it wasn’t as though he had never seen blood before. Just never his own, on his own hands, in quite such a quantity. He was simply surprised, that was all. It certainly didn’t merit fainting like a woman with her corset strung too tight.

But that was, nonetheless, what his body seemed to consider appropriate at the time.

Damissan stirred.

In the initial fog of his mind, there was a half moment wherein he was in his room, on his bed, sore for some inexplicable reason—though that wasn’t necessarily surprising, and by the gods did his side hurt. But his bed was cool, oddly textured, vaguely dank and scratchy. Everything smelled of earth and the sounds were all wrong. There was the distant crackling of fire, his eyelids prickled and—

“God,” he mumbled, and squinted open one eye, then the other.

The dark shape cut out against the rest of the murky night and outlined by the red-orange of the fire he’d almost certainly started wasn’t a wild tribesman, at least, or an alien amazon, but Xilarn, and as the brief fantasy of familiar territory faded fully into the periphery and out of sight, he supposed he could work with this as second best. Preferable, certainly, than a variety of other very real possibilities under the circumstances.

You might have died.

Pinching his eyes back shut, Damissan grunted, attempted to shift his weight — immediately regretted it — and held still, head dropping back to the patch of reasonably soft plant life underneath him. Without moving them, really—or at least not his arm as a whole—Damis flicked his fingers curiously through the foliage. Grass. Moss? No, grass.

An odd sensation.

“It’s almost…like a green mattress,” he said. “I’m not dying, am I? I was fine. It was just a little—” At the memory, something prickled at the back of his eyes again, and Damis scrunched them, pursing his lips and then exhaling in a puff. “That’s never happened before. It won’t again. I couldn’t say why it did this time. You know, it only barely…” ‘…slightly, quite a good bit, actually, now that I think about it…’ “…hurts. I can hardly feel it. There won’t be more of them, will there?”

In the fraction of a second that he paused after that, another thought occurred to him, the light of Xilarn’s fire reflecting in his eyes as he tossed a puzzled, almost accusing glance towards it.

“How long was I…resting? You built a fire in that time. Where are we?”

“Not God,” Damis repeated, a quiet, distracted parrot of a reply as Xilarn’s fingers pushed at his clothes, and his attention moved with the touch. He squinted. Surely a knife wasn’t necessary—but then, it was already being put to use, and Damis’ brow furrowed, but he said nothing. These were perfectly good (bloodied, inevitably torn, muddied and in the way of his wound) pants that oughtn’t need to be cut apart, let alone shredded so far down his le—

Damis blinked, though, lashes flicking up with his gaze as Xilarn tapped his cheek, and as quickly as that, his mind was no longer on the knife. “Ah…” There was a throbbing at his thigh, still, but in that moment, Xilarn’s face was framed from the dark night by the soft red-orange light of the fire, he looked almost pleased — which was perhaps a poor thing after all, given Damis’ state, but in the moment it wasn’t objectionable — and—

“I’m not dramatic,” he objected. “I’m—”

Pants were gone, at least in some significant portion, and he coughed, wincing and feeling heat move for his cheeks despite all. “I didn’t mean to pass out. And if I was traveling alone—” ‘This wouldn’t have happened?’ That, somehow, didn’t seem fair. Or likely. Or even in line with what he meant to convey. ‘If I had been alone, there simply wouldn’t have been any bugs, or sandstorms, or—women…? ’ “Regardless, I am not. I am generally pleased that you’re here, but I’ll be less so if you insist on—”

Damis grit his teeth as his leg was further wiped at. Then the alcohol was opened, and he could smell it before it was even poured onto the rag. His eyelids narrowed a half fraction.

“Xilarn. Is that going to—”

The older man leaned, dropping closer than he’d been before and his hand was between Damissan’s knees. It likely ought to have been foreboding, to be braced in such a way, but given the stripped state of his thigh, his prone position, and the overall placement, there was at least a moment where ‘how the alcohol would feel upon contact’ was the farthest thing from his mind.

Then it was in contact, and he hissed, body going rigid in the less pleasant way. He managed — mostly, at least — not to jerk.

“I do hope—fffffnnnk—this isn’t what you do with most men after the first time you start to take their pants off…”

In retrospect, there were probably more advisable things to say, but unfortunately, the moment didn’t lend itself to any of them.

Damissan blinked, and then scoffed, shaking his head. “Mocking me for something I didn’t intend to do. No, I am grateful for your aid. I said I was. Not that I would expect you to leave me in the forest to die to begin wi—ttthhhhhh…nnnnn…”

Damis shut his mouth. And his eyes.

Fortunately, at least, it didn’t take especially long. Xilarn seemed to know well enough what he was doing, and didn’t appear to be intentionally causing him any undue pain. It wasn’t especially bad. After the initial sting, some of it wore off, leaving only a throbbing ache accompanied by a softer, lingering burn, and that dulled with washing. When the hands on his leg withdrew, Damis opened his eyes again, glancing and listening as the other fetched bandages.

“Surely if I did, there are more who would do the same under the given circumstances. Most of those I grew up with would not even set foot in this jungle…” After a his gaze trailed Xilarn from face to hands, he glanced away. “Though, given your apparent distaste for our capitol, I suppose those aren’t likely the sort you’d court to begin with and that’s a moot consideration. I’ll take heart that I’m not boring you? A variety of different types of excitement never hurt…” He paused, squinting at his leg. “Well, it’s not hurting you, in any case.”

As instructed, he lifted his leg, enlisting the aid of a hand and pushing up to a half sit as he did so. It wasn’t that bad of an injury, and though he was fairly sure he’d never been cut so severly before, that wasn’t saying much of anything. He would certainly be able to walk fine, so long as the bandage kept tight and he didn’t bloody whatever he attempted to wear. Still, his cheeks and neck warmed at the commentary.

“I am not attempting to look greatly pained…I’d think if I were, you’d know.” He glanced to his company. “Long is preferable to deep? Don’t they usually go hand in hand?”

“It did not.” While he could have been insulted, he supposed, the suggested action was so out of line with what he knew of Xilarn’s character that Damis felt no need to take it seriously, and the corner of his lip curved up in amusement instead as a result. “You took time out of your day to ‘spare’ me from being stoned by an excitable crowd, putting your own safety at risk even when you knew nothing about me. Now, you’ve committed yourself to keeping me well. And you have far too much of a sense of duty and good intentions, besides.”

Damis’ gaze, for lack of a better place to be, trailed to Xilarn’s fingers, watching as he wound the bandage. “My apologies, though, for taxing your energy. I like to hope my presence is invigorating to most people, but you are not most people and you do seem to have a penchant for finding the world exhausting. Just the same, I—”

Xilarn’s palm covered his mouth, skin to his lips. Immediately, Damis’ gaze flicked up, to Xilarn’s, and the man was—right there. For the skip of one heartbeat, his mind rifled through a variety of things ranging from, ‘Oh, that’s close…’ to noting the heat and brush of the older man’s breath, and the slip and skirt of his hair on Damissan’s stomach, and the fact that they had surely never actually been this near to each other, ever, and Xilarn’s eyes were a very soft, clay red-brown that looked darker in the dim light, and his mouth was—

“You’re annoying, Damissan.”

Heat — the result of some combination of bafflement, mild peevishness, abashment, and the fact that his eyes were actually still on Xilarn’s mouth — crawled up from the collar of his throat, to his neck, and into his face. He shot the man a Look, which was meant to convey his irritation, or some similar emotion, but may not have completely succeeded in its delivery, given the combination of distracting factors. By the time Xilarn’s hand dropped away, Damis’ face was thoroughly warm, his expression pinched, but attention flicking down the older man just the same.

Hand on hip and all.

He gave a quiet snort.

When Xilarn offered him a hand up, though, he took it, pulling to a careful stand and testing himself. “It really isn’t that bad,” he conceded aloud. The faint, he concluded, could only have been due in great portion to shock. “If you think making camp is best, though…then yes. An early start tomorrow, perhaps.”

So they did, and through the process, Damis paid as much strict attention to the details of tent-making as his mind could manage. This here. That there. Do not do thus and so, and no, don’t knot it like that, either. Inadvertently, though, in unasked for spurts scattered throughout the ordeal, his mind would flit back to the ridiculously short and unassuming period where Xilarn had leaned near to him, and when the opportunities presented themself, his eyes would — of their own regard — slip to analyze Xilarn’s backside. And in those seconds he wondered if the interaction had been intentional.

But it couldn’t have been.

It wasn’t Xilarn’s fault that their first encounter with unfriendly inhabitants of Jauhar’s wood had lead to bleeding conveniently located on his thigh, and all the rest was happenstance. Or, so he eventually told himself. Xilarn was attractive, for an older man, but had made it very clear thus far that he had other preoccupations, and for all that Damissan knew, the man did have someone at home. Despite talk around the subject briefly in the tavern bar, he had never said he hadn’t, and had said he had a child.

And the man generally seemed altogether too stiff to intentionally tease in that manner. So Damissan dismissed it, and by the end of the tent-construction, he thought he had a decent grasp of how to go about mimicking the process himself.

Not a wasted day, all things considered.

He fell to sleep content.