Closed: When no one has your back
It was very late or very early depending on perception when it happened. Sebastian had spent most of the night as a wolf, curled up in the study around Reid, anxiously headbutting him any time some sound from outside the thick walls of the manor sounded out of place. That had been the theme of the full moon, more and more often
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It's fine - well, no, clearly not, but he'd gotten to the point where those two words coming out of Sebastian's mouth were automatically discarded.
Fucked up a charm - doubtful, not when every spell and charm was double and triple and quadruple checked with paranoid precision every month.
Werewolf hiding on the grounds -
"How- there was a what?" Reid all but shrieked, his voice reaching an unusual octave as he frantically took in Sebastian's appearance. "How is that even- why would-" Reid interrupted himself by clamping his mouth shut before anymore half-thought out half-sentences had a chance to escape the whirling mess of mile-a-minute panicked thoughts rushing around his head.
The why and how could wait until Sebastian didn't look like he was about to bleed out in the middle of the study.
He sucked in a sharp breath, pulling his hand back from where he was shakily hesitating, both desperate to steady and comfort and fearful of making things worse as he generally was on those post-full moon mornings.
"Fuck. Okay. Okay. Don't move." The unnecessary direction had barely past his lips before he was stumbling back to his feet and out of the study, half-running through the living room and skidding around the corner to the small bathroom which housed the well-stocked medicine cabinet.
Barely a minute passed before he came tumbling back into the study with an armful of select potions and ointments and bandages. First things first.
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Instead, he focused on not moving at all and watching the blood slowly crawl down his own chest. This was a disaster of epic proportions, and he had no idea who it had been or how bad this could actually be.
Worse yet, there was nothing he could do about it in the shape he was currently in.
Sebastian looked up at the commotion Reid brought with him and laughed, breathy and quiet. "Did you actually look at what you were bringing or grab half my cabinet?" It was weak, but it was snark. If nothing else, he thought that might prove that he wasn't on the brink of death, at least no more so than usual.
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Murderous off-the-grid deranged werewolf packs, fear-mongering journalists, blindly raging public opinions, brewing conflicts teetering on the edge of some full blown war. And now this. Whatever this even was.
Sometimes, Reid really did miss the days when his biggest worry was whether or not they would have to cancel cable in order to both eat and make that month's rent payment.
While that bit of not-at-all-funny snark did manage to buff away the sharper edges of Reid's ingrained worry-and-panic tendency, he carefully went about compartmentalizing that instinct, instead shifting his attention to systematic procedure (and purposefully ignoring the way his stomach had twisted itself up and lodged itself somewhere in his throat).
He methodically wiped away the worst of the blood with the dampened hand towel he had grabbed, lined up the potions and applied them one at a time, eyebrows knitted together in concentration as his careful hands worked over the wounds, from the deeper cuts slashing across Sebastian's shoulder and chest to the slighter, superficial scratches that wrapped around his wrist.
When every bit of split-open skin had been taken care of, and all the caps and stoppers had been put back on the assortment of vials and jars, Reid finally sat back and let out a shaky sigh.
A dozen questions, each more apparently unanswerable than the next, were piled up on Reid's tongue, but as he reflexively reached to lightly brush his fingers through Sebastian's hair, most of them were discarded for the time being.
"Think you can make it to the couch?"
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