pretty boy

Lives depend on you.

The little note greeted Gustav every morning, and every morning, he lay in his bunk to stare at it, taped to the ceiling above him. Some days he greeted it with more resentment than others, but most days it was just reiterating what he already felt deep down. The weight of at least a thousand workers, families, and passengers depended on him keeping the Forge going. So he did.

He scrubbed at his hair and slid into his work jumpsuit, his work boots, and slipped a cigarette between his lips as he left his quarters. His bedroom was nearest the engine room, so it was always muggy and damp with heat, the kind that not even sweat could fully cool off. They were in the bowels of the Pennydarren, tucked under the first link of the chain of cabs that, to Gustav, seemed to go on forever. It was impossible to tell really; only fog divers were allowed outside the train. Not unlike saturation divers of old, they had to be acclimated to survive out in the dense fog outside the reinforced steel walls of the Pennydarren in order to patch holes in her hull. Again, he thought of the poor shmucks going crazy in the diving bells, and again he was thankful for the job he had in engineering.

He waved and greeted the others working on the machinery, the walls tens of feet high, some with tall enough components a man had to be hoisted by a pulley to work on the mechanisms. Another job he didn’t envy. They all nodded respectfully back. Another perk of the job compared to others. Folks knew their lives depended on him too. If the engine went dark, they’d be swallowed up in the fog.

Adam was already on the walker as he drew nearer the panel of glass separating them. “Good morning, Tav,” he said, a little out of breath. Tav checked his watch. Adam's skin glistened with sweat, and judging by the time he was nearing the end of his mandatory exercise routine. “What’s so good about it?” he said, stubbing his cigarette out on the wall, scorched black in one spot from this ritual of his. The door slid open between them and he stepped through as Adam flashed him that warm smile. “We could be in the back of the train shoveling shit.” “Fair enough.” He grabbed his tattered wheelie chair and rolled it over to the other man’s side. “Tell me a joke,” Adam said as the walker under his feet slowed and finally stopped, a panel sliding back over it.

He retrieved a small spiral notebook from his breast pocket and a pen, clicking it a few times. “Why was the politician out of breath?” He said as a metal chair, or throne, as it had always seemed to him, shaped out of riveted paneling in the floor underneath the other man and Adam sat as well. “I don’t know,” he said, already smiling. “He was running for office.” said Tav.

Adam laughed, a good natured laugh that wrinkled his eyes to slits and showed off his pearly teeth. “I like that one.” “You always like them.” Tav turned to his equipment laid out nearby. He rolled over behind Adam and began checking the ports protruding from his back. Six of them, three on each side, starting at his shoulder blades and going down in tighter circles to the small of his back. From these, huge ropes of cable hung up into the engine, which hummed with orange and yellow fire from the ever burning fuel within. The fire was mimicked in Adam’s chest, which glowed bright as an xray. His ribs, cartilage, and organs cast shadows, along with the webbing of nerves and veins where the glow turned sort of reddish from the thin tissue. His heart was a flashlight burning from inside his body. It was Tav’s job to keep that heart in good order. Adam, similarly, had only one job: keep his heart beating strongly.

Being that this was entirely an unconscious matter he had no real control over, he did as he was asked. He allowed himself to be poked and prodded. He did his cardio every day without fail, as well as strength exercises to keep his body in peak form, though it had once seemed a waste to have a perfect body when one was relegated to however long the cables reached. He ate the disgusting nutrient slurry they provided which kept his every hormonal and blood level in balance. He read when there was downtime.

Mostly, he watched Tav. He was the only one allowed inside the inner chamber of the Forge, outside of skittish Fetchers who brought him his meals and supplies and the engineer who sometimes worked on the engine. On his birthday, they let his mother visit.

Where Adam was all tone and muscle from a life where his every physical need was met, Tav was scrawny and underfed. His head was shaved on the sides, and tattoos of every shape and color peeked out from the edges of his clothes. He was literally stamped by an existence outside the walls of the chamber which had been most of Adam’s life. He drank. He smoked. He lived beyond the twenty feet of cable tethering Adam to the life of a Forge. He was not stuck with an umbilical cord to an unfeeling mother made of bolts and steel.

He went through his checklist (Shortness of breath? No. Deficiency cravings? No. Muscle cramps or weakness? No. Fatigue? Always, he’d secretly wanted to say. No.) and when he was done, he retrieved his stethoscope. He rolled the chair close enough their knees touched and Adam suppressed a shiver at the minor point of contact. The bell was warm where it had sat between Tav’s palms and he gave the diaphragm one last warm breath before settling the circular piece of metal under his nipple, at the apex of his heart. He pressed two fingers against his throat to feel the pulse at his carotid. This was the part he liked the best, never knowing that Tav liked it too. He lingered always a bit too long when he had the excuse to touch him.

Tav’s eyes flicked up to watch his heart moving, silhouetted by the light behind his ribs. There was a small surgical scar down his sternum, the only mark on his body, from where he had been implanted with the spark that made him a Forge. He’d been a child, picked out of many, to serve as the new heart of the train. Tav had been in that crop of children too, but he was always skinny and too sickly to be of any use. Once, he’d envied that Adam had been made special. After years as his Keeper, he no longer envied him. He situated it over the tricuspid point between the swell of Adam's pectorals. His heart beat steadily against the steth, louder in his ears now that he was closer to a valve as it opened and closed with each pulse of blood. He watched the shadow of his heart as it moved in his chest, contracting and expanding in tandem with the beat he heard swelling in his ears.

"What's new topside?" he asked as Tav lifted the bell to reposition again. He sat the diaphragm against the aortic site near his collarbone, his hand drifting down to touch the pulse at his wrist as well. "Well," sighed Tav, "Nothing, as per the usual. Some weirdo zealots have been tagging the mess hall again. Separatists or whatever." "The radio was talking about them." "It's all the radio is talking about because it's the only thing happening. The people in the lower cars are having a tizzy about it because they're told it's this big uprising, but it's nothing. Couple kids getting a hold of spray paint. Deep breath." Adam obliged. Then he said, "Do they really think we could survive out there? In the fog?" "Who knows what they believe. Kooky shit, mostly. Bet none of them have spoken to any of the divers. Stick any one of them in one of those diving bells for an hour, they'll stop yapping about leaving the trains pretty quickly."

Adam looked around at his chambers and wondered if the diving bells were much smaller, or much more claustrophobic than his own living quarters. It was hard to imagine a place being smaller. He was quiet as the stethoscope was pressed to both sides of his neck and the sequence repeated with the bell of the stethoscope. When Tav made a 'come here' gesture with two fingers at the end of it, he sat up. His head settled in against the smaller man's shoulder as he stethed points around his ribs and his back. He breathed in steadily and deeply, and if he noticed Tav turning his face in towards his neck to soak in his body heat, even in the sweltering humidity of the engine room, neither of them said anything. He didn't want to bring attention to it and break the spell. Tav smelled like whiskey and smoke. He turned in towards him as well. "Deep breath for me." Adam drew it in through his nose, so close now to Tav's skin he was almost touching his cheek.

"It's picking up a bit," said the Keeper, bringing his other hand up to touch Adam's shoulder. "Try to relax." How could he? There was no hiding how the other man affected him. His traitorous heart wanted to bust from his chest and leap into his hands. Do something with me, do anything, I'm yours. Just make me useful to you. He swallowed in a dry throat. Behind them, the engine's cradle glowed a little bit brighter. In the other cars, the lights warmed and brightened, and a few people had to shield their eyes for a moment before the regulators kicked in and diverted the unexpected power surge into other channels. He hated knowing every denizen of the Pennydurren knew when his heart was speeding up. During his exercise sessions, the engineers knew to be on the lookout for surges, but outside of those allotted times, it was a cause of concern. More often than not it ended with his Keeper being sent in, and how was he supposed to explain himself to the man responsible for his racing heart? How could he look at Tav and confess he had been curled on his side in his simple cot, taking himself into his hand, thinking of those inked hands roaming over his body and auscultating his pounding heart?

He squeezed his eyes shut and imagined the bulbs in the third car market glowing hot, imagined that everyone knew his thoughts as soon as they looked at the little suns above their heads, and he took a series of deep breaths. Eventually, his heartrate steadied.

"There we go," Tav said softly, his fingers curling in against Adam's waves of dark brown hair. "Much better." Adam's hands itched to be around him. Instead they hung at his sides. His head laid fully against his Keeper's narrow shoulder. He thought again of all the time Tav spent with him. Not just these checkups, but most times he was the one to bring him meals. The one who doled out his medication. The one who talked him down from panic attacks and nightmares. He'd soothe him and stroke his brow until his heart no longer felt like it was going to pop, and he had never asked for anything from him. Could ask nothing of him, really. What more could Adam give him than a working train? He'd given him his heart; to the Pennydurren, that was all he could give.

"Do you resent me?" he asked suddenly. He felt Tav stiffen a bit under him and the other man shouldered an earpiece out. "Do I what?" Adam squeezed his eyes shut. He wanted to swallow those words the moment they'd hit the air. But they couldn't be retrieved now. He took a shaky breath and asked again, "Do you resent me? You... you're always at my beck and call. You have to take care of me more than anyone else. You can't really live your life, you're... leashed to me."

Tav leaned back, taking him by the shoulders. "Adam. The hell are you talking about?" When he opened his mouth to answer, he shook his head, taking him by the chin to make him look up. "No. No, of course I don't resent you. I could never. You think I'm stuck here?" He scoffed. "Buddy, I pop pills in your mouth and listen to your heart once a week. I'm not so irreplaceable I couldn't ask for a different station." "But-" Tav squeezed his cheeks towards his mouth before he could protest. "I like taking care of you. I like talking with you. You're my friend. You're..." He looked down into those twinkling doe eyes and his breath faltered a bit. Adam had the most open, earnest eyes of anyone he had ever met. He didn't know how to lie. He had never been hurt and he had never hurt anyone in turn. And yes, he was more than a friend. But Tav wasn't like him. He hurt people, people he even cared about. He didn't want Adam to be one of those people. So he smoothed his hair away from his forehead and said in a low voice, "You're my best friend. And I'll be pissed if you think otherwise again. So... stop acting like you're some burden on me."

He pressed his forehead against Tav's palm, nodding. "Okay..." He pushed his head back a bit until their eyes met. "Hey," said Tav, "What do you get from a pampered cow?" The corners of the Forge's lips turned up and he shrugged wordlessly. He scrubbed his hand over his hair. "Spoiled milk." Adam scoffed, "That one's stupid." "They're all stupid."

But he liked them anyway.

As their session for the day came to a close, Adam leaned back in his chair, the cables running from his back slotting easily into the grooves cut into the back, and watched his Keeper leave. Tav gave him a little wave over the shoulder. Neither said what was really on their mind. As one went to sulk in his bunk and the other leaned his head back to run every touch over in his mind, neither could imagine the turmoil brewing in the lower cars. They couldn't know how far some people were willing to go to try and escape the confines of the Pennydurren.

It was evening when Gustav returned for the daily round of meds. A Fetcher he didn’t recognize followed closely on his heels. He didn’t recognize them most of the time, they aged out into more useful jobs or simply no longer found the work of caring for the Forge all that appealing. This boy was a bit older than the usual lot. Most found more permanent positions on the Pennydurren by the time they were fourteen, and this kid was sixteen at least, with the acne and peach fuzz to prove it. Still, Gustav was hardly one to judge a late bloomer. He hadn’t grown his last few inches or facial hair until he was almost nineteen. He pushed aside his questions as they walked past engineering side by side.

“Enjoy being a Fetch,” he sighed, plumes of soft grey smoke spilling from his nose. “You’ll miss it when they place you somewhere permanent.” “Imagine I will, sir,” said the boy, staring down at the tray of colorless paste, the cup of little pills, and the small vial sat beside it. He hadn’t looked up yet. Tav watched his throat work for the tenth time and arched a brow. “You alright?” “Heat’s just getting to me, sir." "Ah. You're from the lower cars, then. This place is a sauna compared to the cold back there.” He rolled his shoulders, dislodging a bit of sweat on his collar to let it roll down between his shoulder blades.

The kid tried very hard not to shake perceptibly.

As they entered the engine room, Gustav once more snubbed out his cigarette on the wall. “Where do sheep spend their vacations?" he called out, voice echoing on the metal walls of the chamber. Adam grinned, setting down his book and rising to greet him. "I don't know, where?" He slid his hands in his pockets and replied, rolling from his heels to the tips of his toes and back as he inflected, "The Baaaahamas." That won a genuine laugh from the Forge and he crossed to the two of them, taking his place at the angular throne in the center of the room. The cables protruding from his back looped into the divots carved into the back of the chair and Tav rolled a tray table in front of him. The Fetcher placed the tray of food and medication down and took a step back like it was poised to bite him.

Tav gave him a glass of water and gave a cursory look over of the various pills, noting the stamps of authenticity on gel caps and tablets. Satisfied, he handed them off, and Adam chucked back the small cup of pills into the back of his throat. Once he'd washed them down, he tilted his head, opening his mouth for the Keeper to inspect his tongue. He took him by the chin, turning his face from side to side to check his cheeks and said simply, "Up." to get him to lift his tongue. Once he was sure he wasn't cheeking any of it, he patted the Forge on the side of his face.

Adam wasted no time, hunkering over his flavorless meal with a spoon. "You're a new face," he pointed out conversationally, gesturing with his silverware. "Always a new Fetch pattering around the halls," sighed Tav, retrieving his stethoscope for a quick listen, which Adam was kind enough to stop wolfing down his dinner and allow him. His heart pounded, strong as ever, the chambers moving in a shadowplay behind his sternum. The kid watched this all, trying to force his breathing and heart to slow. "He looks a little pale," said Adam. "He's from the lower cars. Probably the first time he's had any kind of heat in his bones, I'd be shivering too," Tav replied.

The Fetcher thought he might be sick. He watched the Forge scoop another shovelful of mush and stuck it in his mouth, smiling at him around the spoon. He knew, staring into that kind face and those warm brown eyes, that he had made a terrible, irrevocable mistake. "I'm sorry," he whispered, shaking. The Keeper perked at that and rounded on him. "What was that?" His knees were shaking wads of gelatin as he turned and fled the chamber.

Tav's stomach turned to lead. "What the-" He took a few hesitant steps towards him, unsure what was happening, only knowing that it filled him with an unknowing dread. His eyes went from the boy's retreating back, shoving at the button to open the glass door and stumbling through, back to Adam. His gaze snagged on the empty cup as terrible realization dawned on him. He seemed to understand at the same moment, staring wide eyed at the cup and back up at Tav. Something had been tampered with.

"Do they not vet these fucking Fetches anymore?" he spat as he turned on his heel and bolted back to Adam's side. He was already barking orders over his comm watch, "Anyone nearby sees a kid booking it for the lower cars, grab him. Gimme an engineer, now. A medic too, if we can spare it." He didn't want to say they might have to switch to auxiliary power, mainly because he didn't want to think of it. An idiot separatist, smuggled into the Forge's quarters. Allowed to touch his food and medication. He was running through the list of dead men in his head when he felt Adam's warm hand on his other wrist.

"Tav," he said shakily, looking up at him with watering eyes. His mind ground to a halt. The urgency was stopped dead by the overwhelming need to comfort, and he knelt in front of the larger man to take his face in his hands. "You're alright," Tav murmured, not believing himself. "We just... we uhm-" His throat dried up. His initial response was to get him to throw up whatever he'd ingested the kid might have tampered with, but he knew the dangers of that. If it did damage going down, it would do damage coming up, and it might not even all come up. Not to mention the risk to his airway depending on the poison. It had to be poison. That was not the reaction of a boy innocently handing off food to the heart of the Pennydurren. "We..." he tried again, and again came up with nothing.

Adam's blood swelled in his ears. The light playing against his ribs and heart flickered with the rabbit quick gait of his pulse. Something acrid, a mild bitterness he hadn't noticed while he was eating, was creeping up from his throat to his tongue. Tav's stricken face wasn't doing anything to bely his fears. Something in the Forge's expression made him move and he shifted to stand, tilting his head up. "Just sit tight, alright? I'm right here, I'm not letting anything happen to you." He immediately went to fetch the EKG machine, leads, and a few other pieces of medical equipment they'd rarely had call to use outside the annual checkups. He deposited his load at Adam's feet as the Forge tried to get air into lungs that felt like wood in his chest.

Tav placed the leads in six spots across his collarbone and sternum, and connected them to the bulky monitor at his feet. It warbled as it flickered to life, mirroring his racing heart. Already it had climbed to 100 beats per minute, his chest rising and falling quicker. His Keeper wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his sinewy upper arm and was halfway through inflating it when one of the engineers stepped through the doorway.

Marsh was a man Tav had only had brief interactions with, and he had hardly got the question out when the Keeper hurriedly informed him, "That Fetcher was some kind of plant. I think he was trying to poison Adam." "Christ," the other man said, already rolling up his sleeves as he made for the engine chassis, "Who'd be so blindingly stupid? We’ll be sitting ducks without a Forge." "I have no idea, I need you to keep the pressure valves from blowing. His heartrate is spiking." Again, a large, soft hand fell over Tav's own. Comforting platitudes rose up until he looked up into the face of his Forge.

Blood leaked steadily down one nostril. "Tav," he ground out, the ancient monitor whirring louder as his heart shot up to 150 bpm and kept ticking up and up. "I can't... can't keep my eyes open." Even as he said it his head drifted back and snapped forward again, his dark lashes fluttering. His hair spilled across his face. It was paling quickly, his normally deep olive skin blanching, first around his cheeks, his hands, his feet, then spreading from the outside in. Blood pulled from his extremities, drawing into his torso to try and keep his vital organs fed as his body rang alarm bells that something wasn’t right. In the other cars, lights brightened and flickered, radios crackled from the sudden interference, and systems began to overheat as his taxed organ pumped too hard for his body and the Pennydurren both.

“It’s okay, you’re okay,” Tav hurriedly reassured him, cradling the back of his neck with a slightly shaky hand. He glanced once more at the monitors, his stomach bottoming out as the crackling display read 170 bpm. He was fully in tachycardia. Tav’s breath shook as he tried to control his breathing. Panicking wouldn’t help anyone. Not Adam, himself, or the hundreds of people who would be forfeit to the fog outside the Pennydurren if the Forge went dark. The fog, and the things inside of it.

He pumped the pressure cuff until it finally gave him a reading, but it had no good news to share. Adam’s blood pressure was skyrocketing the same as his heart rate. It wouldn’t be able to sustain itself like this. Already Tav could see the the ventricles snapping out as the heart filled a little and recoiling as it squeezed out only half the amount of blood his body needed. If even half. He scrambled for the emergency hatch nearby which stored all manner of antiarrhythmic medications. It had something for every contingency. If his heart beat too fast, if it beat too slow, if it wasn’t beating at all. Tav shivered at the last thought, nearly dropping the vial of amiodarone as his hands shook especially hard. Beside him, Adam’s breathing had turned into noisy, sucking inhalations.

“Try to breathe deep for me,” he told him as he drew up a dose into a syringe. “In through the nose, out through the mouth, try to hold it for a few seconds.” “It hurts,” Adam ground out through a clenched jaw, “T-Tav, it… hurts to breathe…” “You gotta do it anyway, alright? Even if it hurts.” He held his forearm still as he slid the needle into a vein, steadily depressing the plunger. The amiodarone flooded into his system, and Tav rubbed a gentle circle over the injection site with his thumb as he drew away.

Marsh cursed from across the room, struggling to secure a panel of the engine which had begun to bulge and strain against its riveting. It shuddered in tandem with the ventricles in Adam’s chest, like the machinery was a crude model demonstrating what was going wrong with his heart. “Damn thing’s about to pop,” he growled, and then it did, a sharp metal sound popping like a cork as one of the bolts shot off and ricocheted off the floor. “We gotta switch to auxiliary power, he’ll overheat half the train’s systems at this rate.” “Just do whatever you need to do!”

Tav was busy hauling the defib unit up from the emergency hatch. It had sat unused for decades, and he wasn’t even sure if it had any juice left, but the thing came to life when he hit the power button, ready to shock his heart into working order. He could see the shadow of Adam’s heart starting to skip and quiver every few beats, stumbling to keep up with itself. His head was slumped forward against his chest, his eyelids weighed down. He couldn’t even sit upright. Tav thought absently how he could work better with him on the floor or a bed, but knew the ports and cables hung from his back would prevent that. “Adam,” he began, cracking on his name, “C’mon, stay with me. Stay with me, kid.”

He grabbed a tube of conduction gel from the kit and applied a good amount on the metal plane of the defibrillator paddles, rubbing them against one another to spread it evenly. He clicked the 100j mark and watched the bar climb as it charged. Adam’s body shone with sweat, his breathing deteriorated into swallow sips at air. Tav needed only a glance at his chest to confirm he had gone from a dangerously high heart rate to ventricular fibrillation. The shadow of his heart was quivering uselessly. “I’m sorry about this,” he murmured more to himself than to the Forge, who was likely past understanding him by now. He settled the paddles between the EKG leads on his sternum and to the side of his ribs, the gel making them slick against his sweat soaked chest. He jabbed the discharge buttons.

Adam felt the mule kick him in the chest. His muscles spasmed painfully, head jerking back on his neck, the muscles of his chest jumping and his arms flinching inward. He loosed a pathetic sounding groan as the charge dissipated from his muscles, unable to do much more than sit there and whimper. There was another electric whine and he felt the cold metal squish against the spots the gel had made the first time. No, he thought but couldn’t find his voice, Tav, please, you have no idea how bad that hurt. There came another click and another violent current, rippling across his muscles. He managed to find his voice enough to yelp that time, his chest heaving as he struggled to draw in air and he began to moan on every exhalation.

“I know, I’m sorry,” Tav was saying but Adam couldn’t hear him. This was a deeply necessary pain he was inflicting, but it was still pain, and it hurt his own heart to do this to his friend. A spiteful voice called him a coward for even thinking that. Adam was more than a friend, they both knew it, but Adam had been too shy for confessions and Tav too stubborn. Now he was staring into those heavy lidded eyes as they glistened with tears, and he had the horrible sinking sensation of being too late. His chest ached to hear the crackling wheeze of his breaths, and he set the defibrillator down for the moment. His heart was beating too fast still, but it was beating instead of shaking uselessly, which was something at least. Tachycardia was only a little preferable to v-fib.

He rummaged in the emergency kit and cursed when he could find no oxygen mask. Wiping his sweaty palm off on his pant leg, he stood above the Forge and leaned his head back against his shoulders, mindful not to overextend his airway. “I’m gonna give you some air,” he told him, but words had long stopped making sense to Adam. He swiped at the blood under his nose with a thumb. He pinched the Forge’s nostrils closed with one hand, the other resting on the arch of his throat. He blew hot air into his mouth. Adam’s cheeks bulged, his throat flexing with the intrusion of another person’s breath forcing its way down into his lungs.

Delirious with pain, the mouth to mouth felt like one more agony to add to the list. It forcibly expanded his chest, warring with his own breathing patterns, and he moaned out the intrusive air against Tav’s lips. Just kiss me normally. Let me kiss you without all this awfulness. Another breath breached the sanctum of his airway. He felt the warmth of tears sliding down from the corners of his eyes. When the seal made of their mouths broke, he sobbed, and became aware of the hands holding his face. They were the last thing he was aware of before the lights abruptly switched off.

“I promise I’m helping,” Tav was telling him, running a thumb over his sweaty brow. “I know this… this must all hurt like hell, but I’m helping.” “How’s he doing?” Marsh called out, fighting one of the huge switches to activate the backup generators. Tav glanced at the heart monitor and growled, “God damn it- he’s fibrillating again!” He released his hold on his face and went to scoop up the paddled again, until he caught the movement out of the corner of his eye.

Adam’s chest bucked unexpectedly. Tav paused, taken slightly aback. His shoulder jerked forward off the back of the chair and he went still. Then it jerked again, and Tav had only a moment to react before Adam locked up in a seizure. The Keeper crashed into a seated position in his Forge’s lap, standing his shaking body up so he could press him against his chest. “Christ,” he sobbed, unable to contain himself a moment more. He was cracking in two. He held tightly to his charge as his body shuddered, shaking violently against him. Adam was bigger than he was, better cared for, and a few times Tav was nearly knocked out of his lap by the surging waves of his seizing. He held tight, hooking his feet under a panel of the chair to keep him there as he cradled his thrashing body. He pressed his cheek against the other man’s and heard his teeth click and grind.

“Please,” Tav whispered in a broken husk of a voice, “God, please…” Adam’s head knocked against his Keeper’s temple until a pair of large hands slid between them and kept his head still. He looked only briefly to see Marsh on the other side of the chair, helping to still his tormented body. Tav squeezed him a little harder and nodded his thanks.

He could feel Adam’s muscles tensing at random intervals under his hands. His throat gurgled as the muscles there were caught in the tide of spasms. His heart, dangerously overtaxed, had fallen out of fibrillation and back into tachycardia. It was pounding hard against Tav’s thin ribcage, where his own heart hammered in fear. It felt like Adam’s would punch out from his sternum and crack Tav’s ribs with the intensity at which it was beating. “It’s okay,” he whispered, lips brushing the shell of his ear. “It’s okay, I’ve got you… I’ve got-“