Hi, it's me, that girl who shows up every few years with an Alex n' Wolf fic. Thank you for 200 favs on Cold Blood. Happy Holidays - here's some hurt!Alex.

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Chapter 1

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It's not a sound that wakes him - more like a feeling. An instinct drilled into him by years of SAS training: you sleep lightly, and you wake when someone is in your home who shouldn't be.

Wolf is alert in seconds, out of bed and on his feet, blinking in the darkness. He forces himself to move slowly, stepping as quietly as he can as he makes his way to the door, his toes bare against the scratchy carpet. Squeaky floorboard, he reminds himself, and carefully shimmies around it. Wolf is the sort of person who sleeps with his bedroom door double-bolted, and all the hinges in his house well-oiled.

The intruder is in the living room.

Now, Wolf can hear them. They're quiet, but they're not silent. There is a shuffle of footsteps, and a breath that seems to shake a little on the way out, which gives Wolf a moment's pause. He wonders what, exactly, this person is doing in his flat. A run-of-the-mill burglary? No. Out of the question. Wolf has enough security alarms to wake half of London. No, this must be something to do with Wolf's job.

Well, he thinks, flexing his knuckles and preparing for a fight, whoever you are, you picked the wrong house tonight.

He catches sight of the guy at the doorway: a shadowy figure beside the window, a neon skyline rising from their hunched shoulders. Wolf spends a second sizing the guy up (average height; not massively built), and then another few planning attack angles (sweep the legs out – punch to the kidneys – get the motherfucker in a headlock) before he's launching forwards to take the bastard down.

To Wolf's surprise, the guy actually gives him a little fight. Considering Wolf's advantages (knowing the terrain, being prepared, plus being two hundred pounds of solid military-grade muscle), the intruder really makes him work for it. The guy moves like a cat, like a shadow, not like a soldier. He slips out of Wolf's grasp; he dodges a few blows. But he's not as quick as he could be. It's almost like something is slowing him down. Eventually, Wolf gets the guy on the ground – and when he slams the guy's shoulders against his equally-scratchy living room carpet, a pained noise breaks from him.

Wolf pulls out the zip-ties he grabbed before leaving his room (this whole incident is totally going to win his long-running argument with Snake that it's not weird to keep emergency zip-ties in your bedside table) and prepares to tie the intruder up, knock him out and call Command.

But when the guy opens his mouth, everything changes.

"Wolf, stop! Wolf – it's me!"

Wolf freezes.

Wait a second. He knows that voice. And that voice using his codename—

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me..."

Wolf doesn't let the guy (the kid?) go, but he eases up a little, sitting back on his ankles. He squints against the dim light, and the intruder's features rearrange themselves into a familiar face. One that Wolf hasn't seen in two, maybe three years, since the Swiss Alps, and didn't expect to ever see again, in all honesty.

"Cub, what the fuck are you doing in my flat?"

A huff escapes Cub's lungs as Wolf releases him properly.

"Good to... see you... too."

Wolf shakes his head as he gets to his feet. Fucking fantastic, he thinks. This is exactly what he wants to deal with at arse-o-clock in the morning. The kid from Brecon Beacons – the annoying little enigma who was tacked onto their team – has materialised in his home, and now Wolf has to deal with his shit. In his momentary irritation, it doesn't occur to Wolf that it might be strange that Cub hasn't gotten up yet, or that there was definitely a strain in his voice that was more than just exertion, or that there is a faint metallic tinge on the air that can only be one thing.

And then Wolf hits the lights, and he freezes for the second time that night.

"Shit, Cub. Shit - what the fuck happened?!"

Cub is wincing as he makes an attempt at sitting up. There's a bead of blood on his lip from where Wolf just hit him. But Wolf is more concerned with the fact that Cub's whole body is clenched like a fist around the dark red patch that's spreading across the side of his hoodie.

"I... there was..."

Before Cub can give him an adequate explanation, however, his eyes have rolled back into his head and he's gone.

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Wolf tears open the packet of medical thread with his teeth.

"Stay still," he says. His tone is sharp because he needs the kid to follow his orders right now, but he is gentle when he pushes Cub back against the bathroom tiles.

"Just get it done, will you?" the kid groans.

Wolf begins wiping down the needle with antiseptic. "This isn't a movie, Cub. I'm not sewing you up just to give you an infection."

"What," says Cub, his lips quirking, "you mean you're not just going to pour brandy all over me and go to town?"

Very funny, kid, Wolf thinks. But when Cub's eyes have settled on the floor tiles, Wolf steals a proper look at the kid, and worry still gnaws in his stomach. The kid might be joking around, but he's scarily pale, washed out underneath the yellowy bathroom lights. Wolf's gonna need a hell of a lot of stain-remover to get all of that blood out of his carpets - or maybe he should just get rid of it altogether. His sister has been trying to persuade him to let her redecorate this place for ages; maybe it's finally time to take her up on that offer. Although he doesn't know how he'd explain all those particular marks without giving her the impression that he's a serial killer.

When he managed to bring Cub back around, he didn't suggest a hospital. If Cub wanted one of those, he could have walked into any A&E in London. Instead, he chose to scale three stories and break into Wolf's flat, and there must be a reason for that.

"How did you even get in here, anyway?"

Cub raises his eyebrows. "Are you really setting me up for the classic 'in-tru-da window' joke? C'mon, Wolf."

Wolf shakes his head. He should know better than to think he can get a straight answer out of the kid. He was the same in France: all snark, no give.

He tosses a few bloody tissues into the bin and reaches for a clean. As he examines the wound in Cub's side, Wolf finds himself frowning.

"You sure this was just a knife?"

"Yeah. When you get stabbed, you usually know - ah - about it."

Wolf shoots him a glare. He isn't a medic, but he has enough training to be able to deal with this kind of emergency; he knows what to look out for. Miraculously, despite the amount of blood, the wound doesn't seem to have punctured any of Cub's major organs, which makes him weirdly lucky for someone who was unlucky enough to get stabbed in the first place. It seems to be shallow at the edges but strangely deep at the centre of the cut. It's hard to picture how that could have happened...

Wolf shakes his head. Cub is still losing blood; Wolf needs to get on with it.

Cub tenses up at the first few stitches (Wolf curses that he doesn't have any local anesthetic on hand; he's only been able to give the kid painkillers), but after a while, he goes quiet. At one point Wolf glances up, worried that he's lost consciousness again, but the kid meets his gaze coolly. His skin is clammy and his head is resting against the bathroom tiles, but he's very much awake.

"Not gonna pass out," he mumbles. "Don' worry."

Shit, Wolf thinks. Because that's not exactly normal, is it? This whole situation, this is seriously fucked up. The kid shouldn't have that shrug in his shoulders, that "I'm-used-to-this-get-it-over-with" attitude. He's a teenager, for Christ's sake.

Wolf has a thousand questions. Why is the kid here? Who fucking stabbed him? How did he get Wolf's address? And, maybe more importantly, why did he choose Wolf to come to, of all people?

"Cub..." he starts, after he's finished and he's washing the red off his hands, but the kid reads his mind.

"Can I - can I just pass out for a few hours first, please? 'll explain ev'rything in the morning. Promise."

Well, Wolf can't exactly say not to that, can he?

"Sure," he says. "But I charge board."

The kid groans. "London rates?"

"Abso-fucking-lutely. No freeloaders in this house."

Wolf helps Cub back to the living room, and no sooner has he lowered the kid down onto the more comfortable of his two sofas, Cub is out like a light. His head nods into his chest and doesn't come back up again. Wolf sighs, then heads to the kitchen to make himself a mug of coffee. There's no way he'll be sleeping again tonight, not even with his usual two knives under his pillow. Apparently, without signing up for it, he's found himself on protection duty.

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