Beautiful Lorien

Your Embrace - Jadam

John had looked peaceful for the first time in four days beside him like that, one year ago. He had taken the chair directly next to Adam to listen in on Mogadorian radio frequencies with him and a government official. To keep himself working towards the finish. To keep himself on his feet.

He collapsed from exhaustion in moments.

Adam felt John's energy sap was to be expected. It was a miracle the Garde had energy to breathe on his own anymore with how hard he continued to push himself.

Even though Adam knew how much John would love to stay awake and listen to a language he didn't have the basics to try and understand and how bitter John might be when he would finally wake up, he left the blonde boy to rest beside him.

Peace looked good on him, Adam remembers noting. He had glanced over when he realized John stopped mumbling or uncomfortably moving around in his chair after the first five minutes and just stared. The way John's bangs had fallen across his forehead and how his mouth parted just enough to breathe in and out softly, all of it looked better than the struggling, occasionally cruel boy he was starting to get used to.

He still looked beautiful, even among the darker layers.

Nothing like the one he met in Chicago, but not a completely different being altogether. John had spent most of his time, when he wasn't arguing with the others or the officials, discussing and working with Adam.

John thought he was alone now.

Adam couldn't figure out why it hurt as much as it did at that moment to think about it. To place himself into John's head like that.

When John had slid a little to the side and landed against his shoulder during his nap, Adam never felt so warm yet so frozen all at once. He didn't know if it was John's body heat combining with his own, the fact that the basement of the facility was surprisingly warm, or that his face was the degree of ten suns from the contact.

That he was this close to and loosely touching John Smith in a room practically by themselves. That he was allowed to see John at such peace in a time where his world was nothing but absolute chaos.

John trusted Adam enough to sit with him when his body was ready to give out.

Adam almost wanted nothing more than to sit with him like this too.

Quiet. Warm.

Affectionate even.

Thus, why he was cold. Inside, he was isolated by these budding feelings. Who knew how long they'd been gathering like this.

Adam quietly hoped this moment would last forever, but he was still not completely sure why or how he felt that way. Or sure he could even want it to begin with.

John had started to shake after a while.

That's when things became the haziest.

Adam didn't know what compelled him to do what he did next in the first place. The temperature of the room he noted before, the rustling sound the fabric made when he stretched that interrupted the broadcast, the sleeping form practically buried in his shoulder that twitched and groaned midst his dreams. Maybe it was the smell of the chair next to him going up in char and smoke. Every part could have been a factor, or every part could have been an added factor to the choice he was now over thinking.

Everything of that day just added up, he deduced, because he wouldn't have given it up if the room wasn't so warm, if heavy cotton didn't make noise, if the mix of fabric and plastic didn't taste like sour salt in his mouth, and if his friend didn't sound like he was in the midst of a chaotic night terror beside him.