fic: felt my slow blood warm | Alex Rider

[justmcshane]

Title: felt my slow blood warm
Length: 2924 words
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Alex Rider
Rating: Teen and Up Audiences
Warnings: Possibly inaccurate hasty medical procedures
Characters: Alex Rider, Snake
Additional Tags: Spyfest 2019, hurt/comfort
Summary: Being stuck in a rain-drenched forest in the middle of nowhere is a great bonding exercise, apparently.
Alternate Links: AO3, ff.net

Notes: I've been pretty inactive around a lot of places recently because of the dreaded Real Life. I'd love to be able to participate in fandom and fandom-related activities a whole lot more than I do (there's so many excellent fic exchanges on that I can't do! D:) but health, work, and other such things keep me from doing so. That being said, I did manage to sign up for a challenge for one of my smaller fandoms - Spyfest, a writing challenge/fic exchange for the Alex Rider book series. So I'll hopefully be getting at least a couple more fics done for that over the next month, of which this is the first.

The week one general prompt was ‘a SAS soldier meets the animal he was named after’, which was a frankly fabulous prompt to kick this off with. I’m afraid I’m quite new to this fandom, relatively speaking, and so my writing may not be too great for the characters I’ve chosen. Title from ‘Snake’ by Ned Rorem. I’m not original when it comes to titles, apparently.

The first thing Snake was aware of was the fact that he was horizontal and lying on his side – face pressed against the rough forest dirt, rocks digging into his arms and legs. It was raining, he noted almost absently, and quite hard, too – his hair was soaked thoroughly and his clothes were well on the way to being the same.

As all this registered – and as he also became aware of the throbbing, awful pain in his ankle – he felt himself being tugged roughly forward by the arms, shifting him along the ground about half a metre. The ground grated unpleasantly against his cheek, and he let out a indistinct noise of protest.

“Sorry, sorry – ” said someone close by, and then, quieter, but no less desperate – “come on, come on, come on –” and there was another jolt as he was dragged along the ground another half-metre. That someone who was talking was presumably the one who was gripping his arms right now and pulling him along and god damn were their fingernails sharp against his skin. It didn’t hurt quite as much as his ankle did, but that wasn’t saying very much at all.

Snake muttered another indistinct few words of protest, and then tried to lever himself up to a sitting position. The ground was quickly growing muddy, and his hands weren’t quite cooperating with him for some reason, so the motion ended up being more of a flail than anything else. “Mmmfuck.”

There was a pause, and whoever was dragging him stopped and let go, and then they said, “Snake? – can you hear me?” in a voice that was surprisingly hesitant and also familiar.

Snake forced his vocal chords to start working properly again, and half-slurred, “yeah, m’up,” before cracking his eyes open, barely wincing at the brightness and the way his eyes ached from the sudden light exposure. He was a SAS operative; he didn’t have time to just lie around in the middle of the forest all day. His eyes adjusted quickly, and he scanned the scene nearby with ever-so-slightly blurred vision. His head hurt, but he was trying to ignore that. He was indeed lying on the forest floor, the one in Brecon Beacons, and he was pretty much covered in mud and rain from head to toe. There was nobody there but him, except – ah. Right.

Cub was kneeling in the mud next to him. He was just as soaked and mud-stained as Snake was, maybe even a bit more, and he was shivering slightly – from the cold or from adrenaline, Snake couldn’t tell. His eyes were wide, but the set of his jaw was pure determination. He saw that Snake was up and something in his gaze relaxed just a bit. “Hey,” he said.

“The hell’re you doing here,” Snake wondered. It came out as a touch more aggressive than he had been intending, but Cub seemed to soak it right up, a bit like how they were both currently soaking up an ungodly amount of water.

“The others sent me out to look for you,” he said. “You went missing about an hour ago... listen, can you walk?”

Snake considered this for a second, and then thought about his ankle and the mud and the rain, and he said, “I can limp, prob’ly.”

“Cool,” Cub said, and squirmed around in the mud, manoeuvring his way around so he could duck his head under Snake’s arm, and wrap his own around Snake’s waist. “This is gonna suck,” he said, almost to himself, and then tried to stand up. Snake immediately felt sick and dizzy, and bit back a curse as he struggled to remain upright.

Cub had been right. To put it plainly, it did suck. It sucked quite a lot, actually. Snake wasn’t a tall man by any means, but Cub was still just a kid. Even when, between the two of them, they managed to get themselves in a rough approximation of ‘upright’, it was awkward and uneven and Snake kept swaying despite Cub’s best efforts.

“They sent you,” Snake said, breathless, and a bit disbelieving.

Cub seemed to get what he was getting at, though. “They didn’t seem to think it was, you know, a serious thing. Whatever they thought was holding you up. Also, it was raining, so.” He shrugged, faintly, and then said, a bit quieter. “If they’d known it was bad, they would have come.”

Snake nodded, accepting that. Cub nodded towards one of the larger trees that seemed to provide a decent amount of cover from the pouring rain, which was apparently where he had been attempting to pull Snake in the direction of, and they set off, laboriously and slowly, in that direction.

Moving was even worse than standing up, although slightly better than being dragged along the ground by a kid who might have actually been half his age. The rain was making things worse, as always. Cub kept having to stop to swipe his damp hair away from his eyes in order to be able to see, and Snake occasionally slipped and fell, meaning that Cub had to spend a good few minutes heaving them both to their feet, which Snake suspected was taking a far greater physical toll on him that he was letting on.

It took them a good fifteen minutes to get anywhere near close to the tree Cub had pointed out, and by that point, they were both shivering and even more miserable than they had been when they started out. Snake winced as another sting of pain shot up his leg. “Ankle?” he asked, speaking for the first time since they had started moving.

Cub audibly hesitated, and then said, “I’m pretty sure a snake bit you.”

Snake let out a sharp laugh, devoid of any humour, at this, then coughed; frowning again. “Son of a bitch. ‘Course it was.”

There was something that probably wouldn’t be considered a smile in any other situation on Cub’s face now. “Yeah. The irony, huh?”

“Venomous, ‘m guessing.” He grimaced as something occurred to him. “Jesus, Cub, you shouldn’t be moving me. You’ve got to keep snake bites still...”

“Okay, well, now I know that,” said Cub, mouth quirking downwards, almost apologetically. “I was going to get you somewhere drier, then run back to camp for help – didn’t want you to freeze to death or something.”

Snake held back a lecture on wild animal bites and how to deal with them properly in light of the fact that Cub had probably taken the best course of action under the circumstances. He probably would have caught hypothermia, lying in the mud like he had been doing. “Good thinking,” he said, panting a bit, “just – don’t do that next time.”

“I’ll keep that in mind the next time you get bitten by a snake in the middle of Nowhere, Wales, and I’m sent out by the rest of my assigned military squadron to rescue you singlehanded, yeah,” Cub deadpanned, surprising Snake into a genuine grin.

“So you do have a sense of humour,” he said. “I – ahh – I was wondering for a second there – Jesus Christ fuck, that hurts.”

They had reached their target tree by this point, thankfully – and it appeared to be big enough provide enough cover for them from the torrential rain.

“Sit down,” Cub suggested, all but dropping Snake’s arm to lean heavily on the tree, breathing heavily. He shook his head, dog-like, to shake the worst of the rain from his hair, and wrapped his arms around himself, still shivering slightly.

“Way ahead of you,” Snake agreed, sliding none-too-neatly to the ground to nestle himself amongst the tree roots. He allowed himself a moment or two of simple rest, getting back some amount of his energy from the whole experience, and then he pulled his knee painfully up to his chest and started rolling up his trouser leg, hissing in pain as he did so. His ankle and leg had evidently started swelling up. He grimaced and started undoing the laces on the boot, knowing that getting his foot caught

“Shouldn’t I be doing that?” Cub asked, coming over to hover warily over Snake, evidently not very confident when it came to field medicine. “If you’re not meant to be moving it –”

“Probably,” Snake said curtly, and finished doing it himself anyway. He tugged the boot off, and set it aside, pulling down his sock to assess the damage done by the bite. “But we’ve probably already done a number on it by moving it in the first place.” He shrugged, and eyed his leg. Severely inflamed, two tiny tooth marks right above the ankle. It hurt like merry hell, but there wasn’t much else to see. He looked up. “Cub, did you see it?”

“The snake that bit you, you mean?”

Snake nodded.

“I think so.” Cub promptly rattled off a concise but detailed description of the animal he had apparently seen when he had found Snake on the ground, down to its colouring, patterning, and head shape.

When he had finished, Snake let out a soft groan. “Sounds like an adder.”

“Not good?” Cub guessed, looking worried.

“Very not good,” said Snake, feeling a bit panicked himself, but not willing to show it in front of a) a literal child, b) a member of his unit. “ I need medical help about half an hour ago.”

Cub stood up instantly. “I’ll run back to the camp now,” he said, without hesitation, and Snake wondered, despite himself, why exactly it was that everyone in K-Unit had decided unanimously to pick on this kid so heavily. Out of all of the teenagers in the world that could have been picked to attend SAS survival training, Cub was probably the

“How far is it?” Snake asked, holding himself against the trunk of the tree to prevent himself from slipping to the ground.

“About ten, fifteen minutes?” he estimated. “I got lucky finding you, so. Maybe faster”

Snake looked at the kid and doubted his chances. He looked like he was going to fall over, and the rain was getting worse, outside the relative shelter of the tree they were currently huddled underneath. “I – you’ve got my kit,” he said, noticing it for the first time.

“Yeah,” said Cub, and unslung it from over his back, and dropping it on the ground where Snake could get to it. “Are there medical supplies in it? Something we can do now?”

“I’ve got a few rolls of bandages and some painkillers, that’s hardly going to be useful,” Snake said, pulling out the ibuprofen anyway. He set that to one side, by his boot, and continued searching. “Hopefully it’s not too waterlogged –”

“I kept it out of the mud, mostly,” Cub contributed, and then, “oh. Is that –”

Snake flicked the dials on the handheld radio, and was rewarded by a loud crackle of static. He grinned without humour, and handed it over to Cub. “There we go. You know how to use it?”

“Yeah,” Cub said, and it didn’t sound like he was lying either.

“Good. Radio in to base, the frequency should be already tuned. Let them know to –”

“ – send out a medical team, yep. Right. Got it.”

Cub sat down and started doing just that, with a sort of calm certainty that unnerved Snake for just a moment, because the way he was talking, it seemed almost like he had been radioing in distress calls for years. Instead of lingering on this, Snake tore open the ibuprofen packet with clumsy fingers, and, after summarily checked in the back of the packet, dry-swallowed four tablets. It probably wouldn’t help much with the amount of pain that he was currently in, but it was definitely better than nothing.

When he looked up again, Cub was turning off the radio and tucking it back into his kit. “On their way,” he said, in response to Snake’s questioning glance. “ETA ten minutes.”

“Thank god,” Snake said, sighing, and he closed his eyes.

Almost immediately, Cub was next to him, shaking him and saying, “I don’t know much about snake bites, but I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t be letting you go to sleep –“

Snake’s eyes snapped open, and he flailed, trying to push him away. “God d – I’m not sleeping, I’m resting – they’ll be here in ten minutes! I’m not going to die before then!”

Cub retreated slightly, but remained in a crouch, nearby, staring at him unflinchingly. “Okay. Prove it, then. Keep talking.”

“Talking about what,” Snake said, annoyed despite the fact that he knew Cub was just trying to help.

“Not anything personal,” he said, instantly, and with enough typically teenage defensiveness in his words that Snake’s mildly annoyance evaporated, to be replaced by a sort of light amusement. “Just, you know – whatever. Like, uh, how would you ideally treat a snakebite like that? If some kid doesn’t drag you across half the forest by mistake, I mean.”

Snake was silent for a moment. The painkillers were kicking in, allowing him to think a bit more clearly. “You actually did the right thing, in that situation,” he said. “Hypothermia is a lot more difficult to treat than an adder bite. Ideally, you would have radioed for help as soon as you realized it was a snake...”

“But I didn’t know there was a radio,” Cub finished, nodding.

“Exactly. Apart from that,” Snake said, falling back into the familiar rhythm and pattern of knowledge from basic medical training. “Rule one is, don’t panic, which always seemed kind of unnecessary to me – but, there you go. We both managed that just fine, gold star to us. Rule two – for god’s sake, do not suck the venom out. Otherwise – remember the appearance of the snake –” he nodded at Cub, here, “ – well done, you – and keep the part of your body that’s been bitten still. No moving. Remove or loosen any constricting jewellery or clothing, and... send for help. There’s not much you can do on your own apart from all of that.”

“We managed five out of six,” Cub said, thoughtfully, standing up. “Not bad.”

“Not bad at all,” said Snake, managing a weak smile, and turned his head to watch the rain coming down in sheets, for a moment or two. Something occured to him. “Are you all right?”

“You’re the one that got bit by the venomous animal.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.” He looked over at Cub, now perched on a tree root a short distance away.

“I’m fine.”

“Uh-huh,” said Snake, not convinced. “You’re shivering.”

“So are you,” Cub pointed out.

“Yes, and we really need to do something about that.” Snake waited for a beat, and then, when it became evident that Cub wasn’t moving, snapped his fingers impatiently. “Come on. Conserving body heat is best done with skin-to-skin contact.”

Cub complained, of course, but not too much; and within less than a minute, they were side-by-side in the driest part of the area under the tree. Cub was – well, not exactly tiny next to Snake, but he was pretty small, all things considered; meaning that it was just the obvious course of action for Snake to pretty much tuck the kid into his side, wrapping his arm tightly around him. He could feel Cub’s shivering all the more prominently now, and – now that he wasn’t distracted by the fact that they were stumbling blindly through a muddy forest - could also feel the unusal amount of muscle that he had on him; unusual for a boy his age. This raised more questions, of course, but Snake didn’t really feel like asking them right that moment.

“You know,” said Cub, expression blank. “If you wanted a hug this badly, all you had to do was ask.”

Snake laughed softly at that, and, acting on instinct rather than any sort rational thought, reached over to mess up Cub’s hair. It wasn’t hard – he was covered in mud, and so was Cub, and so he only really succeeded in exchanging a bit of the overall grime and filthiness between them. Cub stuck his tongue out, and tried to swat Snake’s hand away. Snake let him, and then said, “thanks, Cub.”

Cub had developed a tiny grin over the last few seconds of pointless petty fighting, but it quickly fell away at that. “Yeah, well,” he said. “Might as well start pulling my weight, yeah?”

There were a multitude of things that Snake could have said in response to that, but he went with, “I think you’re doing just fine.”

Cub just nodded, and leaned into Snake’s side. Snake leaned back, but not too much – not wanting to knock him over.

In less than five minutes, help would arrive – and in less than six, Snake would be bundled off into an official-looking vehicle to be rushed straight to hospital for the venom circling through his bloodstream. The rest of K-Unit would be there too – Eagle, hiding his obvious worry by mocking Snake endless for managing to somehow step on his namesake, despite the odds; Wolf asking endless questions about recovery times and long-term effects of the poisoning; Fox eyeing Cub sideways curiously but never once saying any of the million thoughts on his mind.

But there and then, there were just the two of them, huddled at the base of a tree in the middle of a rainstorm – cold, dirty and exhausted, with their arms slung around each other, and only the endless rain there to keep them company.