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Nate looks at him, lovely and open, and he wonders if he knows how dark his eyes truly are. How flaying his gaze. 

His hand outstretches, and Adam watches it like he would a knife--but he does not pull away. A hesitation, a slight curl of Nate’s fingers, waiting for Adam to draw back. When he doesn’t, Nate wraps his palm between his two, his thumb following the arch and bend of his knuckles. A tender, private gesture.

His hands are warm enough to burn.

They measure time differently. Years flicker by when you are unhindered by the passage of it, the days and nights unbroken by little need for sleep, little need for rest. Adam has become quite good at that, too. Always moving. 

The last time Nate looked at him like this was three years ago--perhaps four?--years ago, their last night in Rome after a particularly agitated coven of witches had broken the treaty they’d brokered with the Agency. Nate had looked beautiful then, under the full-bellied moon and the blinding, filmy streetlights, the quiet hum of the people, looking at everything with such open warmth Adam could barely stand the weight of it. 

(He’d tasted of the wine they’d shared and daylight and they never spoke of it, as they never speak of it in the aftermath.) 

He’d wondered then, as he wonders now, what it’s like to love the world for the sake of it. How Nate can hold his heart as open as he does.

It is impossible to consider, but even more terrifying to watch. Nate would not be the man he-- the man he is, if not for his heart, for his unrelenting spirit, and Adam resigns himself to keeping a watchful eye for the things in the world that would take advantage of it. 

The one thing he can’t protect Nate from is Adam, himself. And the way he can never--

(He will never admit to any of this.)

“Are you alright?” Nate asks, winding their fingers together. It is kinder than anything Adam deserves. Far more than anything he can accept.

When Adam wrenches his hand free, Nate lets him go without argument, without reprimand. He asks for nothing (and Adam wants to give him everything, but he can’t, he can’t), but his hands are open; an offer of comfort, safety. If Adam will take it.

He won’t, and they both know it. But the offer remains.

“I need--” Adam flinches at the sound of his own voice, low, rough with emotion he doesn’t dare name. I need. I need. I need. And Nate straightens up, alert.

“What?” Nate whispers, careful, soft, as one might approach a frightened animal.

Adam wrenches himself free of Nate’s gaze, glaring at the ground, cursing himself for this-- this unacceptable error in judgement, and every error before it.

Nate is the only mistake he makes again and again and again. And it is not a mistake, not really--Nate could never be a mistake. No, this is a self-inflicted wound Adam carves. To know the warmth of an embrace and then to deny it, even now. 

(The feeling of Nate’s hand lingers, a phantom pain.) 

“I need to go speak with Agent Blackwood. Before we arrive in Wayhaven. To discuss... discuss the case.”

He leaves. He doesn’t dare look back.

--

Agent Blackwood’s daughter has eyes just as dark as Nate’s, like black earth after a rainstorm. A stubborn set to her jaw, her rounded shoulders pushed back and straight. 

She turns that flinty, hard gaze on him, and he is reminded, distinctly, of a shield being bashed into his skull, the pommel of a blade slipping from his fingers. Disarmed. Unmanned. It strikes a cord of-- fear? No, nothing so base or animal as fear, but an emotion not unlike it--through him.

He cannot, will not, be intimidated by a human woman, no matter how heavy her presence is. He waits for her to drop her eyes, so that he can finally breathe again.

She doesn’t.

It has been many years since Adam was forced to look away first.

(It will not be the last.)

--

She makes Nate laugh.

They huddle on one side of the small table pushed into her office, the limited space forcing their shoulders to brush, their hips to knock together. Each time it happens, Adam looks away right as Nate looks to him. There is something clawing at his chest, some strange and raw feeling he cannot put a name to. It rakes its nails down his lungs, every time Winona smiles at Nate, and every time her smile is met in kind.

Is it jealousy? No. This is not the first time Nate has caught someone’s attention, or even indulged in that attention, looking for connections, taken with a need for intimacy Adam doesn’t understand, but respects. And even if it were something so flimsy and ridiculous as jealousy, they have never created boundary lines for whatever it is they carry between them. Immortality makes it different. There is no need to cling, to drive away. They always fold together, at the end.

(There are many things Adam is not, many more things he cannot be, but he knows this much: the roots of their bond sink deep into the earth, tended to for centuries, and they are not so easily torn, certainly not by this.)

But Winona is--

Bright-eyed. She’s bright-eyed, whirlwinding around them both with her fast hands and faster mind. Already, they have had to redirect, to veer her away from the cliff’s edge she doesn’t know she walks. She asks good questions, and Adam knows she rarely believes their excuses. It is commendable and insufferable in equal measure. 

He wants to call it respect, whatever this-- this feeling is, that digs under his skin when he looks at her. He can respect someone and want nothing to do with them. At first, he thought it was that. She’s quick on her feet and unfazed by things that would leave others in her place uncertain, slow to action. He can admire those traits, even if she doesn’t have the entire picture, even if she will undoubtedly falter in the face of reality (Nate still insists it would be best to simply tell her, and Adam recoils from the idea.)

But this is not respect. This is...

Nate hums something charming, drawing another wry grin to her lips even as blood stains her cheeks a rosy hue, and Adam realizes, with blistering fear, that he wants her to smile at him. 

--

The scent of adrenaline pumps through her blood, and the scent sticks to his teeth, his throat. “Don’t fucking touch me.” Winona snarls, her back slamming into a wall as she stumbles from Nate’s open hands, his open heart. She turns her fear into anger, into a will to live, not yet seeing that she is not in danger. 

There isn’t a single prey instinct in Winona’s body. She would fight before she would run.

She would lose. 

Nate recoils, the hurt tearing across his face like a wound, and it is a stabbing pain in Adam’s chest. Nate had wanted to tell her everything, to peel back the layers and lies they weaved around her, and Adam knew, he knew what would happen.

She looks at them exactly like he expected her to, with all the fear and shattering of a human faced with the truth.