Theo inhaled, then exhaled, then repeated.
I nodded slowly, encouragingly“you're burning.” I informed him quietly “you need to calm down. It’s over.”
“I know.”
“You need to relax,” I repeated, pressing a kiss to his shoulder and embracing him, resting my hand on the nape of his neck and caressing the spot with my thumb. His chest was pressed against mine and whilst my heartbeat was steady, beating in it’s usual rhythm, I could feel Theo’s, pounding and unnecessarily fast.
“Can you do that for me? Just breathe. Slowly. Like that, yeah, that’s it.”
Theo lowered his head, pressing his face into my shoulder and breathing in deeply.
“Okay.” I murmured “we’ll…Stryker and Jack will be here soon.”
“Mh.”
“You good now? Not scared anymore, right?” I asked after a long moment of just holding him.
Theo sniffled “wasn’t scared.” He whispered “was with you.”
The words warmed my chest. I opened my mouth to summon a response when something seemed toregister to him and he began panicking all over again. From the looks of him it hit him so hard it was nauseating; he slid down to the ground into a crouch, shaky hands holding my calves, nails digging into my flesh in an attempt to anchor himself, bowing his head as he tried to get his breathing under control.
“Theo?” I asked gently, hand resting on his shoulder blade as I tried to stay calm for his sake, tried to understand what was going on even as his panic began to grow infectious “hey-“
“They have Stryker.”
Theo was pacing the scrap of clearing they’d been commanded to attend at, nervous, frazzled.
Johnathan seemed stressed as ever, shaking-actually shaking-Jack’s shoulders, ordering him to repeat the story of how the events had gone down for the third time.
The poor lad seemed on the verge of being sick, though if that was because of his own concern or the pounding ache in his head was unclear. Probably both, if I’d learnt anything about his migraines in the time I’d known him.
“What can we do?” Alex was muttering to Nico “we don’t know where they’ve taken him. Where the prisons are.”
He kept looking over at me- I wanted to comfort him, to offer him some kind of reassurance, kiss him, but we couldn’t afford to do that right now, amongst the others, and that, if anything, made me feel even worse.
“We’ll have to go back home.” I heard my voice mumble to the others without fully registering my words or even realising they were mine; I felt oddly detached from reality, “get a plan together. There’s nothing we can do in these conditions.”
Theo winced. I knew it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Stryker could be dead for all we knew.
“I’m sorry.” He swallowed hard, turning his face away “I- he was right next to me, I shouldn’t have let him go alone-“
“Hey.” I leaned forward, moving towards him “hey, don’t…don’t do that.” I positioned myself in front of him, taking his jaw in my hand “that’s not how a battle works. You can’t be looking out for other people.”
“I-“
I silenced him by tugging him away, pulling him behind a nearby tree and pressing a soft kiss to his lips “shh.” I hummed, guiding his head to my chest.
Theo sniffled, pressing his cheek against it, tears prickling at his eyes.
“It’s scary.” I hummed “I know.”
“No.” He shook his head “it’s- I don’t- it’s-”
“I know.”
“It’s my fault.”
“No.” I took his face in my hands and wiped his tears away with my thumb, kissing him again “how could you say that?”
