James Sterling III

C/W: mentions of a bomb, description of burns on a body, mentions of attempted murder

James slips upstairs while the debate over cookies turns theatrical. Cinnamon versus chocolate chip. Danny invoking Abuela as the deciding authority. He just moves, quiet, because he’s learned how to exist without drawing attention. He leaves the door to Danny’s bathroom open, not sneaking, not hiding. Just needing four walls and a minute.

The light hums softly. Danny’s things are everywhere in small, ordinary ways. A folded towel. A half-used bottle of aftershave. 

The mirror gives him the truth without commentary. It catches him as he pulls his shirt over his head. He pauses there, fabric bunched in his hands, and looks.

The grafts are still angry in places. Pink and tight. The burns run uneven across his back, patches where skin was replaced, stitched, coaxed into doing its job again. Healing, but slow. It itches sometimes. It pulls when he moves wrong. A quiet reminder that his body is not done paying yet.

He turns slightly, angling his shoulder to see more of it. Traces the edge of one graft with his fingers, not pressing, just acknowledging it. He's learned to inventory damage like this. It keeps him grounded.

His mind doesn't stay there.

He remembers the moment under Sherrinford’s desk with brutal clarity.

The click that did not belong. The wrong silence. The way his body moved before his brain finished catching up.

There was no plan. No calculation. He hadn't thought about himself at all. He had gone over to the desk without hesitation, hands already on Sherrinford, already pulling him down, already covering him. He remembers the shock in Sherrinford’s eyes more than the explosion itself. The way he tried to twist away, like James was making a mistake.

James presses his palm flat against the counter. He can still feel the heat, the way his body moved without permission, the way he covered Sherrinford without thinking about what that meant. He had simply decided, somewhere deep and wordless, that if something was going to happen, it wasn't going to be to him.

Primrose had tried twice.

The stabbing first. Clean, organized, meant to take Sherrinford out of play without noise. A warning disguised as removal. James had known then that it was not random. Not collateral.

Then the bomb.

Not just to kill. To erase. To make a point. To make James choose between exposure and loss.

Sherrinford thinks that makes him a liability. A weakness. A complication that gets people hurt.

James exhales slowly through his nose.

It means the opposite.

It means Sherrinford matters enough to be targeted first. Not as leverage. As priority. It means someone looked at James Sterling and decided the fastest way to cripple him was not to touch him at all.

That truth settles heavy and unwelcome in his chest.

He reaches into the drawer and takes out the cream Dr. Fasse gave him. White tube. Clinical label. No sentiment attached. He turns it in his hands without opening it.

James sees it in fragments. Concrete dust. The weight of the filing cabinet. Sherrinford too still beneath him. The sound that never came back after the blast. He had been aware of pain in an abstract way, like it belonged to a list he would deal with later. He had been aware of blood, not whose. He had not been aware of breathing until Danny was there, hauling, shouting his name, dragging both of them out like dead weight that refused to cooperate.

James squeezes the tube hard enough to dent it.

What if Danny hadn't shown up when he did? What if the rubble had settled differently? What if James had been pinned another inch to the left? What if Sherrinford had not been breathing when Danny dragged them out?

Danny’s hands, rough and shaking, pulling at concrete and smoke and blood. Danny swearing. Danny refusing to let go of either of them.

Danny saved them. Not heroically. Not cleanly. He just refused to leave them there.

James sets the cream down and finally opens it. The smell is faint. Medicinal. He applies it carefully, methodically, like following orders. His hand shakes once, just once, when he reaches a spot that still hurts more than it should. He's endured worse. That's not the point.

The point is that he almost didn't make it back upstairs to this bathroom. He almost didn't hear laughter drifting up through the floorboards. He almost didn't get this quiet moment where the door is open and nothing is on fire.

Downstairs, Fabian laughs. A tray clatters. Flour gets spilled. There is an argument about sprinkles.

James lets his forehead rest against the mirror.

Sherrinford is not a liability.

He is the reason James moved without thinking. The reason his body chose before fear could weigh in. The reason Primrose tried twice.