Now that the trial has been put to rest, Rueben believes that life is on an upward trend. It's not long before he understands he is sadly mistaken.
Around every corner lies a new demon lurking with the desire to rip the rug out from under him. He m...
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𝗝ase blinked into the darkness. Immediately after Blaine snapped the cord, the flashlight's bulb popped – it scared the fuck out of all of them. The separation of his friend's mouths – gross – was all that appeared in the large space in which they were trapped in.
His hand was still wrapped around Maverick's arm – he had given up on trying to wake him up a while ago. Still, in the process, he realized that his injuries weren't all that bad. He had a couple bruised ribs and a cut up mouth, but other than that, he should have been fine. Alas, all of the blood that most likely accumulated in his mouth must have freaked him out; that's probably what caused the gagging and what he believed – was a faint.
Anyone who knows anything about Maverick understands that he has this irrational distaste for blood or any bodily fluid for that matter. It was why he worked as their technology genius and assisted in missions from a van instead of by their sides against physical humans.
Blood was bad by itself for him, but seeing his own must have freaked the dude out more than usual.
"So, are we living to see another day?" he spoke into the abyss.
"Think so—" Blaine said from somewhere in front of him, "The lights died out of the bomb, so it looks to be disarmed, but ..."
"But?"
"Something weird happened."
"Define weird."
"Well, I went to cut the orange cord, but I guess I messed up because I looked at the panel right before the light died and I cut the black one instead."
Jase sat on the back of his knees processing his friend's words. He certainly wasn't mad at him for the confession – in fact, it was honorable that he spoke about it instead of taking all the credit for himself for something he didn't even do.
"So you're saying that if you hadn't been so distracted by kissing the love of your life," he mocked, "—then the rest of us would have been blown to pieces by your inability to pick the correct wire?"
"Seems that way."
"Wow," Jase laughed, "I'm so glad that you waited til your potential death bed to admit your feelings."
"Shut up."
He could practically feel Blaine roll his eyes.
Jase let out another breath and looked down – or attempted to – at his friend. Maverick's skin had grown sticky with sweat, but his temperature seemed to be lowering. His heart rate was kicked up and if he didn't know any better, he would think that he had an internalized panic attack over this shit.
A minute later, Maverick rolled on his back by himself. Jase immediately put his hand above his mouth, making sure that he was alive and breathing and that the movement wasn't done as some last muscle twitch to his unformidable death.
