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Atlas knew Thomas had entered the room— even before they learned to attune it for danger, their hearing had always been keen. While they were too focused to lift their pen from parchment, a fond little grin twitched at the corners of their mouth. The heir had taken to spending more time at their apartment, as modest as it was, and that fact pleased them as much as what was beginning to bloom between the pair of them.
“Atlas?”
They began to turn, drew in air to respond-
There was a hand grabbing their shoulder from behind. Alien fingers twisted into the fabric of their waistcoat. They did not wait to find out if they were about to be dragged someplace or attacked.
In hindsight, Thomas could not even remember why he wanted to get Atlas’ attention. One moment his hand was on their shoulder, the next he was on the ground beside their fallen chair, head throbbing and a forearm pressed to his throat. He choked on limited air, feet spasming below Atlas’ taut form, head spinning from how quickly he had been taken down.
His mind reeled with alarm, thoughts racing to and fro attempting to reconcile what was happening, why it was happening, only for his eyes to catch on those of Atlas.
Thomas had seen that expression once before, years ago, as a boy. On the face of a wealthy colonel, one of the few officers that chose to be on the ground with his men in the Campaign of ‘88, after a member of the waitstaff at a gala accidentally dropped a tray. The man had gone into a panic and began calling out orders to men who were not there, reaching for a cutlass that was actually a decorative sword accompanying his formal uniform. Not to harm, mind, but to raise it with a rallying cry. Any remaining details were lost to his mother’s skirts, behind which he hid for the rest of the evening. One of said lost details was how, exactly, the colonel had been calmed.
He opened his mouth, maybe to say something reassuring, only for naught but the weakest of sounds to make it past his compressed throat.
Atlas held steady, mind stumbling to catch up to their vision as it frantically cycled through possibilities of what or who came for them in their own home. Theirs and hopefully soon-
Oh. It was Thomas beneath them.
The moment they realized this, Atlas let up and scrambled back, heart wrenching itself in twain. Phantom feelings of hands vanished, replaced with a vice around their lungs and ice in their veins.
Thomas shot into a seated position, legs askew on the ground as he wheezed, color and relief flooding to his face. Unsteady fingers came to delicately brush against his neck, sore but undamaged (he was fairly certain).
“Why…” He could not finish his question through a sudden coughing fit.
“I- am sorry. I am so, so sorry, I wholly did not mean it, I- I would never hurt you, I-“
The growing bruise on Thomas’ throat proved otherwise. Atlas’ hands shook along with the rest of them, and they stopped themself from reaching out to comfort. They could not imagine it being accepted. They could not imagine anything of theirs could be accepted by Thomas, now, but they still owed him an answer.
“I thought… I do not know what I thought. That you were a gaoler, come to hurt me. A fighter. A beast. A… a physiology professor pulling me down onto a table. Danger. I do not know.” Their speech was rushed. “But I would have never done such a thing had I realized-!”
“So you were somewhere else, and not yourself.” Despite how weak it was, Thomas’ voice halted Atlas in their tracks.
“But I… did this. I hurt you.” Tears pooled upon Atlas’ lower eyelids, but they swallowed them back. It was not their right.
“Do you know how- gentle you are?” Thomas asked, voice raspy between lingering coughs. “I would never- think this is you.” His head throbbed, his throat ached, and he was not entirely certain of why he was not as frightened as he imagined he should be. Even so, all he could think about was the look in Atlas' eyes when they knelt over him, the look in the colonel's eyes those decades ago.
Fear.