It's a moment before he notices it. The shake and stutter in the younger man's voice, the slow fragmentation as his composure starts to erode. Julian blinks, looks down at him, really looks at him for perhaps the first time and sees all those sharp angles that shouldn't be there, the hard line of slim shoulders beneath Waver's clothes, the jut of cheekbones under skin. He hadn't looked this fragile, this close to breaking, the last time he'd seen him, had he?

And then the words come out of him in a whispered rush, leave the doctor looking vaguely stunned. He blinks his sea-storm eye, brows pulling tight around a look of concern, the one hand still holding the younger man going tighter, protective almost.

"My darling, I....months?" he remembers nothing of it, but again when he tries searching through his head for a clear grasp on the events leading up to the moment he arrived here, he comes up blank. There are gaps where memory ought to be, and the lines of worry that pinch his chiselled face only deepen.

"I'm so sorry. You weren't...were you all right?"

It's a loaded question, all things considered. They both know it.

"But look, I'm here now. And maybe there are others."