The Noble Desire (Peterick)

.•°Twenty-Four.•°

A/N: First of all before we begin, I'd like to just dedicate this part to WhisperBuddieforlife for being so supportive and kind behind the scenes, commenting on my stories and replying to random pointless messages I post on my conversation board and just being an overall sweetheart in every possible way. Thank you lots. I enjoy talking with you (where you mostly listen to me complain. sorry about that) and you deserve everything in the world for being so amazing. Go check out her stories.

She's just starting out on here, but she's got tons of potential, and I love her stuff to bits. As for everyone else, I appreciate and love you just as much for interacting with these parts. You guys fuel this dumb passion of mine and make me smile when I feel far from doing just that, and I can't thank you enough. Anyway on with the story.

It was a dream, a very long dream. There was no perception of time in the dreaming. All he saw was him. A filter was over his brain, drugs that hit him like a train going full speed, but he focused on the face in his mind that brought him a sense of comfort. It was beautiful, much too beautiful to want to leave.

The fogginess caused the image to blur and fade and sometimes return in a quickness. It was freezing cold, and he would have thought himself to be shivering, but he wasn't. He was in this magnified and intense version of the world, scenery and faces he couldn't comprehend. Then he found them to disappear as something else flickered on. The semblance he had been living in was broken apart into a blur.

He believed himself to be dead for a moment. Nothing was clicking in his brain. The gears began to turn once his vision sharpened, and he saw the man he had been dreaming of. His body was slumped in a chair, eyes closed in a slumbering state. He heard the beeping nearby first and smelled the medicine clogging up his sinuses second. His arm involuntarily lifted as he stared at the tubes and needles shoved into his skin.

His fingers skimmed the hoses fixed into his nostrils. A sharp pain thrust through him the second he attempted to sit up, and he groaned out in discomfort. The sore spots scattered in bruises along his complexion began to throb next. The sounds of complaint alerted the sleeping man in the chair, and he lurched from his position towards the patient.

"No. Don't move. You'll hurt yourself," he warned.

Patrick's eyes washed over the man's worn mien in an attempt to decipher who he was exactly. Then it dawned on him in a heartbeat.

"Pete?" he croaked, his throat burning and dry.
"Hey. Yeah. I'm here. It's me."

He looked as though he'd been crying for some time, and Patrick's chest constricted with the memories of what had occurred coming back to him.
"You've been- uh- you've been in a coma for little less than a month and a half," Pete began.
The account stupefied him. Had that been where he was, in some deep part of his head?

"God, I'm so happy you're awake. I..I should call the nurse."
But Patrick took a hold of the other's hand before he walked away and told him to stay a while until he was fully responsive.

"You saved my life," the prince said, "You took three bullets for me."

"Who- who sh-shot me?

"I think you should know Meagan was linked to the guy involved. She came forward after having heard of the man's arrest and gave up the rest of the people who had planned to kill me and my family. Apparently, as she told me, they weren't supposed to have done it until after the wedding. I...I still find it hard to believe that I almost married an assassin, though."

A chuckle strove to rise from Patrick's throat, but he tensed at the stab in his side from the action. Pete apologized for making him laugh and pressed a kiss to the back of his hand.
"We're safe now. My parents are embarrassed about the whole thing. They went into hiding a while, hoping it would all die down, but the public supported me through it. They tried to say how sorry they were. I couldn't hear the excuses.