#yikes!!!

A sound escapes River; an awful, wretched whimper, the rest of him clearly too exhausted and worn-out to do anything more than shiver in the way of an animal left to the whims of winter, poised to receive the punishment that it’s convinced will be inflicted upon its body. It’s heartbreaking. It’s heartbreaking, and Lamb nearly gives in again to the urge to take River into his arms and bundle him to his chest, soothe a palm down the curve of River’s skull, murmur gentle, comforting nothings until they were all River could hear. But he restrains himself. If he touches River, if he ruins this fragile blossom flowering between them, he will never be able to come back. He’d have to cut himself from River’s life like a tumor, so he wouldn’t infect him ever again.  The prospect of it is nauseating. To be without River now would be to have a limb removed, would be to have a map with no compass rose. Lamb has to keep him. For himself as much as for River. He has to keep him and protect him. So, without knowing precisely where he’s going, he continues, “He lied, River. He lied. None of them were your fault. Not a one.” Carefully, with unerring precision, he settles his hand flat on the mattress. Not anywhere near River, but close enough to prove that he’s not going away. His fingers flex against the bedsheets, a spasm that he can’t control. The anger is molten within him; he has to let it harden somehow, or else it’ll burn his boy to the core. Because it’s not anger with River. No, never anger with him. It’s anger at Payne. At what he did. At how he stole River and wounded him with the noose of Lamb around his throat. How dare he. How fucking dare he. “I didn’t blame you for them then, and I’m not blaming you for them now. I won’t ever blame you for them.” He allows the sentiment to settle in the air and takes the pause to drink in the sight of River, bathed in the quiet lamplight. The familiar length of him, the soft mop of his hair. It looks redder beneath the lamp, a burnished russet that makes Lamb think, inexplicably, of a small boy with bright eyes and a toddling walk, a laugh that could have brought even the old bastard to his knees with devotion. And then, later, a small boy with a hot welt swelling plump on his cheek, a cowering fright of those who were supposed to protect him turning him ever smaller, ever more delicate, ever more precious. He’s looking at his River but he’s seeing another River altogether. The River he didn’t get to save. The River he didn’t get to love. It splinters within him, that loss. God, if only he had known. If only he had known. There’s an unsteady breath that travels up River’s spine, a sharp burst of inhale-exhale, and his head turns ever so very slightly. Still smothered by pillow, still hidden to Lamb. Yet it’s everything. If it’s all Lamb ever got, he would be content with it. With the knowledge that he hasn’t frightened River away from him forever.  “A baker’s dozen,” he says, soft, and his hand fists again around the bedsheets as though it’s River that he’s holding tight and safe. “Remember, lad? By now, I’ve lost ten times that. No one is meant to get hurt but that doesn’t mean no one ever does.” Tentatively, he inches forward on his aching, throbbing knees, unable to quell the desperate need to at least be close to River, if he can’t cradle him. “And you—you’re hurt, River. You think I want that? You think I want you hurting? I—never in my life have I wanted anything less.”